The Snap

Maybe you’ve heard about this, maybe you haven’t. Tumblr was dropped from Apple’s app store for the appearance of child porn on their website and as a result they decided to ban all adult content (although in fact this had been brewing for a while, the Apple thing just prompted them to do it sooner). While getting rid of child porn is dear god always a good thing, keep in mind that this website has a TON of users who have been advocating for child abuse and Tumblr has done nothing—nothing—to stop them. People report them all the time and nothing happens! No bans, no deletions. But the second Apple snaps its fingers, uh-oh, better ban all adult content because that will also somehow double their user base. I’m not making that up. They think that’s how it will work. It’s been likened to Thanos’s snap in Infinity Wars due to both how arbitrary it hits people and how ineffective it is in achieving the professed goal.

As someone who has actually been on Tumblr, I know for a fact that there are a huge amount of porn bots. They’re like, half my followers. I don’t really care because I’m not stupid enough to engage them and frankly, they’re spam, and that’s literally what my blog is about. But in Tumblr’s pervious attempt to curb the porn bots and adult content, literally nothing happened to them. But you know what does happen? Click here for an example of the posts that get flagged. Yeah. Not porn. Not adult.

And go take a look at Tumblr’s announcement about what’s no longer going to be allowed after December 17. First of all, female presenting nipples? So does this mean that if the nipples have mustaches, they’re okay? Or is it just an excuse to be able to single out trans people easier? Spoiler alert, it’s the latter. LGBTQA+ people already get flagged for “adult content” all the time so you can bet this so called algorithm is going to screw them over even more, and this is especially bad considering that Tumblr was a major place where they connected and shared with each other. But you know what isn’t banned or restricted on Tumblr at all? White supremacists. You can’t find any boobs and the chronic pain tag is banned, but want to kill all POC? Go right ahead.

For the kids, right?

I’m bummed about this. I generally enjoyed my time on there. It kept me up to date on the freshest of memes. So what’s going to happen to the Spamfiles after December 17. I don’t know, but I don’t think it’ll be on Tumblr anymore. It does occasionally mention sex after all. What a sad way to end the year.

Today I Did Something Crazy

Not that crazy, but for me totally insane. I…started a Tumblr. An idea hit me with such force that I had to make it real and share with all of you.

It started a couple of months ago when I was setting up posts. I looked at page views and found that my Spamfiles post did pretty well considering it was on a Saturday on a relatively dead week. I thought to myself, “It is funny how despite being an annoyance, spam is also pretty damn amusing.” Then, on the heels of that, totally unbidden: “This is the kind of thing I’d expect to see on Tumblr.”

And bam. Like that, I had to make it happen. I’m sure this idea has been done before but, to paraphrase REACHED, it hasn’t been done by me. I find spam hilarious. The scams that never seem to change. The promises to enlarge an organ I don’t have. The way it seems translated into another language, then back to English, then back and forth a few more times to make sure it’s totally incomprehensible.

So I give you…The SpamFiles. I’m not sure how popular this will be, so it’s only going to be once or twice a week since that’s about how often I get a really outrageous piece of spam. If any of you guys have one to share, send it to me! There’s no need to open it—I don’t want you to risk any viruses on my account. You can take a screen cap of the subject line and email address and send thatto me. For those wondering, a screen cap is a picture of what’s on the monitor/laptop screen at the time. You get it by using the print screen (Prt Sc) button, one of those buttons in the upper right corner of a keyboard that doesn’t seem to do anything. I’m not sure about computers but I know that on laptops you have to hit the Fn (function) button, which is usually by the arrow keys, at the same time as Prt Sc. Then you go to something like Microsoft Paint and hit paste/Ctrl+V and crop out any information you don’t want to share.

If you have a Tumblr account, you can just submit to the Files but since I don’t want to exclude anyone, you can also email it to my SpamFiles mailbox. Like a query letter, please, no attachments, just paste it in the email. If you want credit, be sure to include your name/website and I’ll link to it in the blurb, but if you want to stay anonymous, that’s cool too.

Will you join me on this endeavor? I hope so, because it sounds like it could be a fun one.