Shouting Into The Void

Just in case you aren't as unhealthily online as I am, the big news of the hour is that Tumblr is on track to do a massive porn purge, on violence against sex workers day no less, but that is another issue. At first appraisal, for a humble wargamer blogger such as myself, this shouldn't be an issue, as the most porny images on my blog are my photos of my mermaid bust, and I haven't even bothered to see if it was flagged or not.
This little seems to be a signal or a larger sign of looming collapse, as a large chunk of Tumblr's user base will flee the platform after this comes to pass, and we all know by now that the number of total active users are the metric by which social media platforms live or die. By doing this, Tumblr is going to take a massive self inflicted nutshot, which may well continue to platform's decline into eventual oblivion.
Since Tumblr is by far my most successful platform in terms of follower count, this should be bad for me. But ultimately, what does having a large follower count even do for me? Ultimately very little, in terms of what I even do this for... that is another question.
I like having a blog / journal for my work, more often than not I tend to spend more time curating and adding to my own portfolio than I do reading other people's hobby blogs. In terms of what appeals to me, I tend to prefer the mid range hobby painters that are sincere about their hobby rather than the pro-painters that are using social media to drum up business for their painting service. It is nice to follow people and see them improve, and in my case you can definitely track my own development from my very first posts up to now.
In terms of actual engagement, I admit, I do get a sense of satisfaction from helping people out. This is why despite my own mediocre talent I tend to prefer writing and producing guides, and I generally get around to responding to people's questions whenever they have them. And by some miracle I seem to avoid all of the hostility of online communities that seems to be the norm. I suspect this is due to my own restrained and minimalist posting style.
To be honest if this all went away, which in a sense it has certainly eased off, I'd be okay with that. I'm more interested in maintaining a well curated hobby diary and documenting my overall progress rather than chasing likes and reblogs like we're being conditioned to do so. If no one, or very few people are actually reading my work, I'm also okay with that as well.
Shouting into the void is fine, it is peaceful out here.

In other news I've been thinking about making some major additions to this blog. To start with I'm planning on pulling down a lot of my old Tumblr content and compiling my best into a series of neatly categorized galleries, more for my benefit than anyone else. I've also been thinking of expanding into some of my other interests to get more of a journal vibe going, as well as potentially writing up and publishing some of my fan fiction, mostly 40k and some original.

What I've Been Working On

I've been pushing my Team Yankee pretty hard as of late, mostly because it is a relatively large project and I want to start hammering it to completion as soon as possible. I also suspect I missed out on registering for the tourney that I was building them for, so while the urgency for building them may have been quashed, they are still taking up a lot of space on my desk. As of the time of writing I've finished the Frogfoot air support, mostly finished the additional vics, and am yet to start on the infantry. Even after I finish this batch I'll need to throw in another box of BMPs so I can fully field a Motor Rifle Battalion.

Steelheart's Champions has been progressed, granted not much. Already I've noticed enough flaws in it, e.g. mold lines, visible seams, etc, to make me think twice about entering it into the Crystal Dragon, we'll see what I feel when we get the final result.

Finally, to pass the time while searching for a re-up on glaze medium, I dipped into my single mini pile on finished off this piece from Wargames Illustrated. I wanted to practice mostly using, shading with and glazing Vallejo Model Colour. Overall I think I pulled off an okay paint job proportional to the amount of time that I wanted to spend on it.

I think that'll do for now, I'll catch you the next time I have something I feel like saying.