A decision made.. welcome to a new COALSPEAKER.. Just as good as the old one

....and maybe that's because it's about the same as the old one. Design, check. Attitude, check.. Sloppy style of writing about breaking news.. of course..

There is a big difference though, one that may not be evident at first glance.

Since the year 2009, COAL SPEAKER existed on the blogging platform TUMBLR.. There is quite an extensive archive to prove it .. However, a recent decision was made by yours truly to ditch the TUMBLR technique and move beyond it, more to a blogging platform that pays more attention to individuality and creativity and less on the group-think that so often takes precedence at TUMBLR..

I had a great experience with TUMBLR.. I was only threatened by Neo-Nazis one time.. And over the years, hundreds of porn-bots followed me and then ditched me quickly.. And I posted a GIF of Katy Perry's breasts jigging in her ELMO outfit and that quickly became my most popular post on the site. However, the posts about breaking news, science, paranormal subjects, politics, family life, fatherhood, and my own son Ayden often went unnoticed.. 

There were moments when I had sincere friendship on Tumblr. Or at least I thought .. There is something about the site that provides you with near meaningless moments of self-gratification. Times when you purposely post something to get the 'likes' as opposed to writing up something truly meaningful and moving, or thought provoking and deep. GIFs work best on Tumblr.. it's a fancy picture site, actually. There is no age limit and quite often the discourse on the site reflects that attitude..

During the run up to my decision to leave TUMBLR, I visited a number of websites that were written by other awesome people who came to the same conclusion I did..

For example, the author of a site hosted on Wordpress called COFFEEHOUSEJUNKIE.NET wrote this:

Increasingly, I was disturbed that the lack of exchange of ideas was altering the way I think as I succumbed to an avalanche of images falling from the blue Tumblr interface screen. One blogger noted that someone said Tumblr is an intellectual version of Twitter, [4] and further noted correctly that most Tumblr users post photos. How is that intellectual? I must confess, when I began to use Tumblr as a blogging platform I posted a lot of text pieces. It was an easy platform to post my writings, art work and photography. I liked the ease that it offered. But I got caught in the cycle of seeking validation of posting content simply to earn “likes” from “followers.” So, like an addict, I’d post more content — images that I didn’t create, but I liked (and sometimes “liked”) or inspired or informed me. But there was little if any engagement with other Tumblr users. Facebook and Twitter offered more discussion and conversation than Tumblr. It felt like a completely self-centered arena that offered nothing but consumption of content with no way to seek the best in others. I was not growing or learning from my Tumblr experience. I wasn’t meeting new people and exchanging ideas.

This is a great point made.. I looked at myself in the computer monitor and wondered if I was learning anything, either. I was not.. Actually I was losing knowledge, losing information.. becoming a frenzied psoter who just wanted to perform a task and fill up a web queue as opposed to providing readers with things that may matter to them, or opinionated pieces on subject matters I deeply cared about. . . No, nothing was being learned at all..

While I don't want to simply keep this TUMBLR hate fest going, I found another website, much more opinionated, that had this quotable quote: 

Tumblr has made me a more cynical person
Tumblr has made me doubt and hate myself.
Tumblr has ruined other media for me
Tumblr has made me cry.
Tumblr has ruined fandoms for me
Tumblr encourages hiveminds/groupthink
Tumblr is designed to be addictive.
Tumblr's askbox system encourages cyberbullying without the fear of repercussions.
Tumblr encourages harmful, dangerous behavior
Tumblr encourages armchair activism, rather than real activism, and Social Justice Warriorism rather than real social justice

Hardcore criticism.. but read more on the TUMBLR IS TOXIC post, there's a lot of text that backs up the opinions rendered about TUMBLR..

So welcome to the new COALSPEAKER. Same as the old one, in effect.. 

I don't know if any readers will follow me over from TUMBLR, but I sure hope they do. There is a handful of fine people who I actually got to know and a few that defied the norm--people who spilled their secrets to me over the years, and me to them. Now that information is housed on YAHOO forever, I suppose.. 

Which reminds me..

I have a request for anyone who can help..

I have a large TUMBLR blog database--huge as a matter of fact with almost 12,000 posts over the years.. I have a few different thoughts about how to back them up, but I am having some major trouble.. My initial thought was to import them to Wordpress.com and then export them as an XML file for use, but each time I try it's timing out and not loading. My fear is that these posts are stuck on TUMBLR forever.. 

A last resort, I figured, may have been http://boutofcontext.com/tumblr_backup.php ...That would have worked a few years ago but now everything changed.. It doesn't anymore. 

All methods have fallen flat for me..

The important thing for me is to keep everything I have written. I am proud of it.. My ultimate goal is get that XML file.. Any help from readers would surely be helpful.. Thank you in advance... 

Welcome to the new COAL SPEAKER.

Same as it ever was.