Hey, Miss Simone! First off, thoroughly enjoy your work and second: I'm doing a speech on tumblr and would like to ask why you think tumblr is a good site and the downsides to it for someone in your status. Hope that makes sense and thanks very much!

I think the best thing is that it’s a level playing field and it seems to have almost an anti-bullshit function built right in, to some degree. By that I mean, Tumblr seems to reject attempts to manipulate it commercially in the way that advertising has taken over virtually all other media. I know there’s some, but Tumblr doesn’t seem to work well for some company to promote their crap to everyone. That’s nice.

But more than that, it’s an equalizer. One true voice on Tumblr can be more powerful than a billion dollar film company, or a billion dollar record company. They both have basically the same access. If the one true voice has a message and method that appeals to more people, they win that battle over ad men and the endless, endless promotion we see everywhere else.

But for me personally, I have two things I like about Tumblr.

First, I just like to look at the art and the cosplay and all that stuff. It’s nice to me, the creativity of it all is inspiring and makes me happy. When I see something like that little girl yesterday who wants Wonder Woman to be president, where else am I going to see that? Just here. And it warms my heart.

Second, a lot of people have voices here that aren’t represented well anywhere else. I live in a nearly all-white town in the middle of nowhere that has very little culture or diversity. By reading the true, heartfelt experiences of these amazing people, I feel like I get a TINY bit less ignorant and uninformed every day. Where do you see trans people talk about the shit they have to deal with every day in the mainstream media? Where do you see racism pointed out WITHOUT being painted over two seconds later on television or msm news sites? Reading that stuff, not throwing in my own uninformed two cents, that’s a huge value to me.

I realize I’m a big mass of ignorance and privilege but Tumblr helps me move that needle a teensy bit every day and I’m very grateful for that. The fact that I’ve made hundreds and hundreds of friends I would otherwise never get to meet is just a bonus.

All in all, Tumblr’s essential to me. I try to give back by sharing a little bit about the only thing I really know about that some readers are actually interested in, which is genre writing. That’s kind of my poor but well-intended payback for what I get from here.

The downside is probably that there are some people who project everything they’re mad about or frustrated with onto me at least partly because I’m available, or partly because I’m an outspoken woman in a genre industry that still is very skeptical of women at times, or because I put my foot in my mouth at some point. And those people can be very nasty, they can be very deliberately ugly in the way they react. That’s not fun, exactly. But it’s actually a pretty small price to pay overall. :)