An open letter from a pissed-off writer

Dear Tumblr @staff,

I recently learned that tagged reblogs don’t show up in that tag, even though that tag might not be related to the original posts tags.

What. The flying. FUCK?

Writers and artists depend on being seen. That means reblogs and tags. Reblogging with a tag used to mean ‘all the people who follow this tag will see the thing’. But now it just means ‘anyone who follows the reblogger will see the thing’.

That’s a narrower audience. That’s less people who see the thing. Less money for the OP. And the less money the creators have to spend, the less they’re going to be interested in buying anything you’re trying to sell on this site.

Creative people will go to fresher fields. They will find an arena where they will be seen by as many people as possible. They will leave and your content will be solely made up of people who reblog memes all day long.

And once people see a constant stream of the same meme on their dashboards, they’ll go to where the creative people are.

And then you won’t be able to sell anything to anyone.

But -hey- you might _want_ to kill this site. We all know that the owners are losing money on it. And it’s such a sinkhole because of _your_ mismanagement.

I’m only staying here until Pillowfort is up. You’ve already lost me. You’ve probably already lost a lot of people who dislike your ham-handed attempts at making a profit out of people who are already broke. We’ve all tried to tell you better ways to do that, but you never listen.

And that’s why you’re going to get a sudden drop in content the instant you have a viable competitor.

One Old Fart’s Opinion: Suncorp Insurance Repairs Process

A little while ago, Hound got into my car and ripped its shit.

I called my insurance people - Suncorp - and they promptly arranged to have it all go away for the measly fee of $500 up front.

It’s okay if you don’t remember the original blog. It’s been a while. That was published March 10th. It’s been a whole month and a day since then.

They first told me “two weeks” [the standard bullshit estimate for all repairs]. Then they said April 13th. Now they’re saying the 20th.

I leave the country on April 22nd.

If it’s still in the shop by May, I am calling every damn atom of legal help I can on this thing. And you can bet your arse I’m bad-mouthing these guys [the repairers] to everyone who crosses my path.

And that includes all of you.

The instant I actually get their name, it’s getting plastered across all my available channels. Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook. I may even sign on to some social networkings just to bad-mouth these guys.

Their reason why it’s taking so long? Their supplier is dawdling and not talking to them. I told them to get a better supplier. The response? “Aw, we don’t want to take it that far…”

Fuck you, shonky repair people. At this rate, it’s faster and cheaper to fly a courier over to Japan and get the fucking part.

I’m as mad as hell and I want my car back.

And Suncorp - you’re next. One more delay and I’m demanding my $500 back. I can do way better things with it than you arseholes are.