Have to hand it to you, staff. Lesser minds might have been put off by the constant chorus of people on here telling you that you didn't know what you're doing, that the changes you keep forcing through are deeply hostile to the site's existing culture and won't even work at attracting the new users you so desperately want. Weaker souls, indifferent to the needs of the shareholders, might have caved in and realized Tumblr Live was a terrible idea, rather than forcing it out on more and more people across the world. People with less bravery in their hearts might have had second thoughts about the fact that the new layout looks like dogshit. Not you though. You were resolute. You held firm.

You had the confidence to know that none of the people who actually use your site matter in the slightest. We're basically deadweight at best. How arrogant we are to think any different. What matters are the people who don't use Tumblr and never have, the people who have never even heard of Tumblr or who think it ceased to exist years ago, the people who might -- someday, somehow -- choose to make it profitable. If only you can find the right way to trick them into it. (They'll forgot to keep snoozing Tumblr Live eventually, I'm sure of it.)

And I must admit, the one thing that's always held me back from recommending Tumblr -- to friends and family and casual acquantances and total strangers I walk past in the street -- was the fact it didn't look like a shitty, off-brand Twitter clone. Now, at last, I can show them all the site with pride, basking in the warm glow of their indifferent "oh, is this the new X that Elon Musk is always talking about? It looks kind of bad, honestly -- I might try Threads instead."

And this latest experiment -- removing avatars from reblogged posts, on a site where most posts are reblogs, to make "more room for badges"? Another master stroke.

Personally I've always hated quickly and easily being able to tell which of my mutuals has reblogged something (almost as much as I hated having a purely chronological list of reblogs or being able to view previous tags -- thanks again for fixing those bugs!), but I love knowing how much money they've given you. Remember when people on here actually thought you were making fun of the idea of Twitter Blue, not earnestly co-opting it? Idiots, am I right? No wonder you have so much contempt for your userbase. We deserve it.

You don't need me to tell you to ignore the haters (and you wouldn't listen to me if I did), but I'll say it anyway. What do they know about Tumblr after all? They've only been here for a decade, most of them. What are they going to do if they don't like things, leave? Teach themselves programming to fix all the changes you've made? I'd like to see that. I really would.

But if I could make one modest proposal: why stop there? Get rid of gifs next, I say. Nobody on Tumblr really likes them. Nobody who matters, anyway. Get rid of asks. Get rid of text posts. (Pivot to video!) It's all just useless unprofitable clutter, isn't it? Think how much more space there'd be for badges and crabs on my dashboard if you got rid of it all.