....I'd Like To Help. My Paleontology Special Interest Only Picked Back Up This Year, And While I'm Not

....I'd like to help. My paleontology special interest only picked back up this year, and while I'm not great at art, I do like theorizing and explaining things, albeit a bit badly or humorously. Only problem is my lack of motivation for literally anything at all.

Requiem for the Palaeoblr that Was

Once, there was a thriving paleontology community on this site. Originally entitled Paleoblr, it rebranded itself as Palaeoblr to avoid confusion with the paleo diet community. Some of the major blogs in the community included @a-dinosaur-a-day, @palaeofail, and @dinodorks. The community became big, big enough to warrant a poster at the 2016 Society of Vertebrate Paleontology conference discussing the effectiveness of Palaeoblr as a science communication vehicle.

It should be little surprise to y’all that the community is a shadow of what it once was. The tag is barren. Many major paleontology blogs have become inactive; others have ramped down content or changed focus. What happened? I can point to three major events that caused the once-thriving community to become what it is now.

The first major event was, unsurprisingly, the porn ban of 2018. As we all know, there was an “exodus” of people moving to Twitter in protest. And if you remove a few people, you lower activity, you reduce engagement, and you get a negative feedback loop here. I know several people who moved to Twitter not directly as a result of the porn ban, but because after this point engagement was higher over there. But this alone wasn’t enough to end the community. As we all know, “dead” Tumblr eventually stabilized into a new normal. And Palaeoblr still thrived into 2019.

A bigger blow to the community was the two largest blogs going inactive. In late 2019, @a-dinosaur-a-day went on long-term hiatus. This was not a decision we made lightly. The entire ADAD crew became too busy with their own lives, particularly in moving forward with schooling - especially the main author Meig (who wrapped up eir Master’s degree and is now a PhD student!). Earlier in 2019, @palaeofail‘s activity ramped down and eventually ceased, although the mod still remained plenty active on their sideblog palaeofail-explained. For the longest time, those two blogs were the linchpins of the community. And they just became too busy to move forward.

But this still wasn’t enough. ADAD remained active, even if not posting a dinosaur a day anymore. There was still plenty of activity elsewhere. And a bunch of us geared together to make Triassic March Madness, the latest in the March Madnesses that brought the community together, as big as it could be.

The killing blow was COVID-19. The lockdown hit in the middle of Triassic March Madness. It went forward as planned, and was awesome, but the lockdown started to take a toll on everyone. And then summer 2020 happened. That was the nail in the coffin. I think we all sort of lost the spoons to keep going. ADAD’s activity finally petered out around this time, and palaeofail-explained’s activity also significantly stepped down (they’ve rebranded as @jurassicsunsets, but content is still relatively thin). My blog became a full-time personal account as my main objective became Survive 2020 With Mental Health Intact.

So where is everyone now? Meig’s primary stomping ground is now TikTok. I’ve moved my paleontology posting to Twitter, and I think many others have too. A few, such as @i-draws-dinosaurs, @alphynix, @dinodorks and @albertonykus, still carry on. But dedicated paleontology blogs have significantly fallen off the map. In fact, that’s an observation I notice around here in general. Is it just me or are dedicated science/nature blogs falling by the wayside around here? Nowadays it seems like many people intermix science/nature posting with personal stuff and memes, and the individual posts are what get big now. So maybe that’s another part of it - it just sorta sunk and meshed into this general new Tumblr culture. And it’s not like paleo stuff doesn’t still roll around on here. There’s just less of a community. And I pin this mostly on the major posters - who didn’t just post, they acted as the focal points for the whole community - stepping down due to extrinsic factors.

But as we ask ourselves what happened to Palaeoblr, we should also ask ourselves: should it stay this way? Can a paleontology community thrive on here once again in the new era of Tumblr? I don’t have the time or spoons right now to carry a community on my shoulders alone. But if any of you wants to step up to the plate and help bring the community back, you have all the support I can give.

suffering from canned peaches deficiency

symptoms

sad

hungry

craving canned peaches

everyone shit e fuck up I'm gonna listen to this now

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fuck I wish I was faking some days

yeah because of like trauma reasons but also because uh

HELLO [[?!?!]] I AM LOST IN A THEATRE

that.

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god.

gonna lose my fucking mind over the spamton neo fight. it's been a week and I'm finally getting past the face part.

we should dismantle capitalism because its shit and a horrible way to run a functional society but also because my mom's crying over having to work 11 hours in a day today and I think that's fucked up