#<- there was no algorithm or 'new' section so a lot of people just tagged everything with this to do that. Kind of funny tbh

[not-the-conversation-starter]

The Death Of A Website.

tl;dr click source to see an AU of my blog.

As many of you may not have heard, Cohost has gone read only. The website infamous for "Zero Discoverability" and its users "Not Being Funny." Servers will close down at the end of 2024, if not earlier, being backed up on the Internet Archive before that. Since their user counts were still low after 2 years (about half of all sign ups ever were from people evacuating twitter, which then didn't know how to use the site so most left almost immediately. Kind of hilarious) they didn't feel like anymore money bleeding OR the fact that a staff of only four people being on call 24/7 was worth it anymore.

However,

the people who DID use the site loved it. And they did some genuinely cool things on it, far cooler than anything I ever saw even in the glory days of Tumblr. You know, like Finn and Jake hi-fiving between 2 posts. Stuff like a playable maze, or a fully navigable 3d room you move around in with your mouse entirely within a post. They really did some cool stuff.

There were also a ton of really talented people, people like the composer Lena Raine(Celeste/Minecraft) who loved the site because you could just. Actually talk to people on it! Without an algorithm to boost their posts, the only people who saw it were genuinely looking for it.

Also some of them were just good posters, we did get Pikmin 18 billion and eleven from Cohost after all.

The point is, I think if anyone outside of Cohost actually knew what was being done on Cohost, it would of succeeded. There would of been enough active users for them to invest more. If I knew about all of this I would of been there way more!

But rather than just you blindly believing me, I decided to spend (almost) every hour I would of on Tumblr, on Cohost instead. Clicking that link, or the source, or the link on the source above in the tl;dr, will take you to my Cohost blog. At least while it's still read-only.

You should check it out. I reblogged a lot, but the first page or 2 (every 20 posts, I kept trying to stop but I got sentimental and reblogged more) is pretty much just people's last posts. I'd say give it 3 pages to see if you're interested or not in exploring more of what the website has to offer.

If you've ever wondered what people would post on a dying website,

If you ever wondered what some of the best posts people were making on Cohost that got shared again in its last dying moments were,

If you want some reference for what inside jokes would look like to an outsider,

If you're just bored and need something to scroll through,

if you ever wondered what I would of reblogged on that website if I remembered my password easily enough to log back in easily...

You could think of my blog as a small encapsulation of a small website. There's only 60 pages, including the ones from before the announcement from me just rarely using the site!

I reblogged all kinds of posts. Goodbyes, sarcastic hellos, mourning, long speeches about the spirit of Cohost set to sad music, nothing burgers, inside jokes I didn't understand, The New Garfield, posts I flat out didn't read past the title because they were too long and I just wanted to move on really there's a lot of posts to archive, CSS crimes, stuff I found funny, "Where to find me" and webrings and website posts for people I never knew, Love Honk, reviews for movies and games I never intend to play or watch, 88x31 buttons, music recommendations and history, entire games, signing up for RSS feeds, asks and answers related to other stuff I didn't share on accident, regular memes, Intern Secretary Eggbug, a post that's just an image hosted off-site so it'll update even after readonly, and so on.

(Nothing overtly NSFW. Tag search still works if you want that)

One that I, personally, am sad is gone. That I'm glad I got to see at least in its dying days. That I genuinely hope someone makes another attempt at creating.

[animentality]

Dude I'm so confused

Why are the redditors refugees here-

Whats up with the tag 196

AND WHY IS EVERYONE BEING SO NICE WITH THE TWITTER REFUGEES CAME WE GAVE THEM HELL (almost)

The Reddit refugees are here because several subreddits have gone private in protest of reddit's new policy of charging third party developers for access to its API.

Hence the term reddit blackout.

196 specifically was a very queer friendly subreddit that had one rule: that you post before you leave. 196 is trending because those Redditors have come here and they're basically sharing their memery here instead as they protest reddit's greed.

As for why we're welcoming them when Twitter refugees were seen with a little more irritation, well.

Think of the culture similarities.

Tumblr and reddit have far more in common than Tumblr and Twitter.

Twitter is about clout and manipulating algorithms and discourse in 280 characters or less. It's about bad takes that reach the right people and it forces you to see things you don't want to see and it's crawling with the worst people imaginable and you're forced to see them, all the time. They also brought bad tagging and 2016 Tumblr discourse with them, because Twitter culture really involves starting fights for clout and braindead opinions that no one really wants to come back to Tumblr culture.

There was a time when Tumblr did the same thing, but worse, with more words...but nowadays, it's really calmed down.

The worst people...went to Twitter after the porn ban. Ironically, it made the site less toxic and hostile.

But then they came back.

And it was like...hm. no thanks. Stay back where you came from.

But Tumblr and Reddit have much more in common.

Both have a more streamlined way of customizing your online feed. You can choose what subreddits you see on your home screen, just like Tumblr only shows you the content of your followers, on your dashboard, and in chronological order rather than what's trending. You can join a very specific weird niche group of freaks with a shared obsession, and not care about the rest of the site at all. You also don't have a character limit on either site, which lets you ramble more and share weird detailed stories.

Reddit might have karma, but like Tumblr, the majority of people are lurkers and not posters. It also allows you to downvote bad opinions, and moderators who have to adhere to certain guidelines of behavior, which means a lot of banning disruptive people.

Granted, sometimes their mods are power hungry, but. You know.

It does more to control its users than Tumblr do, and that's a good thing in terms of keeping toxicity and illegal shit off its subs.

Reddit also has a way more leftwing attitude than you would think.

It has a reputation for being full of incels but I honestly think that's outdated.

It's cleaned up its act quite a bit since the old days.

I see way more vile shit from Twitter and TikTok. Like seriously.

Twitter is crawling with conservative bots and propaganda machines and just outright inflammatory lies. TikTok literally has the worst comment sections I've ever seen, like edgy teenagers cracking racist and misogynistic humor and acting like it makes them different and special. Its algorithm also spoon feeds you garbage and is designed to be as addicting as possible.

At least reddit's culture, while chauvinistic and regressive in certain subcultures, is mostly on the tech positive, atheist libertarian side.

It can be a little pretentious and caustic about certain subjects, and a little full of itself. Some reddits are also very male leaning and disregard female concerns in favor of moaning about how men have it worse than anyone else on earth.

But for the most part?

...well.

I welcome them here, because if they left reddit in protest, then we always support protests. But 196 specifically is also a queer subreddit, and we support that even more.

Plus they're funny as fuck.

What's not to like, really?

You should welcome them with open arms too.

[mylittleredgirl]

while we’re having the endless debate about sorting by kudos or not on ao3, i have to stump for my personal favorite way to find fics:

i basically always go straight to the “bookmarks” page for whatever pairing/tag i’m reading rather than the “works” page, and i literally just realized why: it lights up the same parts of my tumblr gremin brain as my dash does.

content hand-selected by people who are bookmarking shit for their own reasons entirely unknowable to me, so it’s a mix of quality peer review and user xyz’s to-read list

if you keep going back to it there’s a repetition over time as new people bookmark old fics. as a tumblr girlie my brain enjoys seeing Thing I Recognize

brand new fics often show up there if they’re good!! (equivalent: new posts tagged “investing at 5 notes”)

a lot of the top kudos fics keep showing up too because so many people sort the works page that way (equivalent: heritage post)

but so much random stuff shows up too that i would otherwise never find, thanks to the hardworking folks out there sobbing into the bottom of the tag at 4 am (equivalent: those posts with 56 notes from 2011 that somehow?? end up on your dash like bestie how did you even find that)

sometimes there are 30 bookmarks in a row by the same person who has a new hyperfixation and you get to think “good for them”

sometimes you get to recognize a username as someone having good or seriously bad taste

sometimes i see my own fics in the mix!! and get that little hit of positive attention (or neutral attention i guess, when people add a bookmarker tag like “it’s about [my fave character] but it’s ok”)

yeah! people can add bookmarker tags and their own notes! so sometimes people rec fics or add marginalia and their own sortable tags (but most people don’t)

there’s always that one fucking harry potter crossover fic with 194 tags in the mix (equivalent: manscaped ads you can’t escape). not saying this is a plus, but scrolling past the same long post you hate for the dozenth time is also an essential part of the tumblr experience.

re: that last bullet point, the one downside of the bookmarks page is that the filtering isn’t quite as robust as on the works page. you do have all the usual include/exclude filter options, but the very last section of filtering (crossovers, WIPs, word count, date range) is not available. (@ ao3 coders please i’m begging 🥺🙏)

anyway i’m sure the bookmarking economy is different across fandoms, but this will give you a semi-randomized feed of the tag, weighted toward new and popular fics (and, for better or worse, unfinished multi-chapter works and megafandom crossovers). it’s probably a good place to start for people who long for an algorithm, but unlike the usual user-targeted panopticon experience it’s more like the chance to rummage through strangers’ junk drawers for fic. tumblr vibes. you get me.

[mwg-drwg]

Welcome guide for redditors

A lot of the guides I've seen don't actually seem to understand how reddit works in comparison to tumblr so I'm here to fix that

"Following" blogs is the same as "subscribing" to a "subreddit" be sure to "follow" "lots" "of" Blogs "."

You can edit other peoples posts on tumblr, to do this reblog a post and retype the entire post in the way you'd like and tag it with #edit

Reblogs are used in the same way as comments you should reblog and type your thoguhts always, be sure to @ the person who made the post or they wont see it

engage in discourse it is the best way to attract like minded followers to your profile

when engaging in discourse be sure to shoehorn in sick burns as people respond well to this

to start a new post you just need to reblog someone elses post and add your post underneath tumblr automatically seperates your new post from the reblog

This website has rules against talking about the soviet union brought in by the new owners, we are trying to get this removed it is just like the reddit shutoff protest - section 3.4 of these rules is the worst, on google search "SU rule 3.4" to find out more as i cant discuss it here

use 3 colours on your post to help people see it better

if people dont respond to your post you reblog it with popular words like "swag" and "top post" - the algorithm will boost your post!

threats of violence are allowed and encouraged

at the end of the day you should write a "post summary" in your diary and file it away

write "PROTECT ME" on posts that frighten you

pray at the end of the day after every post if possible

god won't be so merciful

push over a pedestrian when possible

release GMO micro organisms into the envrionment

murder wihtout consequence

tags are reblogs

reblogs are follows

follow for follow to make a mutual send the 6 asks daily to maintain this

if they unfollow you send them repeated asks about it it was obviously a mistake youre so funny

report people who post about "vriska" as this is a homophobic and transphobic dogwhistle

[skyfallscotland]

@heartfeltletters-written asked me 💥 How do you feel about criticism? and it felt like something that needed its own post, so here goes: the hypocrisy of critics in modern fandoms, an essay.

Criticism. I don't like getting it or giving it when it comes to writing. I struggle to even gently give it to friends, even when they ask me what I think of their work. Writing is such a personal thing that we pour our heart and soul into and like you say, many criticisms aren't necessarily valid. By that I mean, there's a difference between "Amy you use em dashes a lot babe" (I do) and "This story would have been so much better if Remi were a virgin" (actual criticism I have received, lmao). 

Unlike traditional authors, we will never make money from this, we do it for the love of it and it's time we will never get back. For some of us, it's time we could be working on our own original manuscripts too. I don't think people who give the second type of criticism are writers, generally. They don't understand the craft and what goes into it. Whenever I post and someone says a chapter was short or they immediately ask when the next one is, and that's all they say, I die inside a little. I try not to take it personally, but it's hard.

Personally, I think fandom behaviour is getting worse and that flows over into our comment sections and tumblr asks. I have a whole other dissertation on this that we’ll call ‘the slow death of fandom as we know it: an essay’, but that’s perhaps for another post. I don’t know how welcomed that commentary would be. 

You said the word ‘entitled’ in your original ask and I think that’s spot on. People have become more entitled in general and downright rude (which is not restricted to online spaces, by the way). I write for ACOTAR, but you’ve never seen me discuss it here because no matter what you say in that regard, you can’t win. Someone will always attack you and I do mean attack. Even in regards to Fourth Wing, I don't talk about my opinions a lot outside of my own little bubble of friends and readers.

And that's the kicker to this whole conversation, really. If I were to criticise Iron Flame/RY everyone would jump down my throat (as has happened on other platforms), even though I'd never say it to her face. Do I stand by my opinions? Absolutely. But it would be rude to tell her them, unless asked. I’m not allowed to (validly) criticise certain elements of her story, a published novel, without being attacked for it, but those same people are fine criticising my work directly to me. Hypocrisy at its finest.

There’s a new influx of people to fandom spaces who are completely unwilling to integrate and completely unwilling to be kind. You mentioned those who criticised your work could have saved themselves the trouble and read the tags, but the thing is: they don’t want to. They can’t be bothered to take five seconds and figure out how they work, to curate their own experience, because that’s what half these people are like. They want an algorithm to do it for them, gods help us.

For me, personally, I'm my biggest critic. I also have raging generalised anxiety, so just posting on the internet is enough to send me spiralling (seriously, I feel sick just typing this out). It's very, very out of my comfort zone and I've been very, very lucky so far to have cultivated the readership I have, full of very like-minded people. Perhaps due to some of the darker content matter. But the second I get harshly worded comments, I get upset.

I don't say that to elicit sympathy, it's just a fact. I get upset about it the same way I would if you were standing in front of me saying it to my face, and for someone with depression and anxiety, that lingers. I'm getting better at laughing at them, but it's like when someone tells you they don't like you and your mum says "just ignore them"—not that easy, right? 

So yeah, I don't mind if you want to tell me I use a lot of em dashes, or that I've used a word incorrectly in context, but I don't need to hear how much you hate original character fic when you could just use your last remaining braincell the back button and continue on with your day. Just be kind, is all I'm saying.

[shonpota]

Twitter Re acquisition Startegy Things that can be done to get Elon out from Twitter for good

(It is can, and it doesn't meant to be taken seriously anyway)

Please be kind when commenting and reblogging

Everything here are just options, not step by step:

Twitter blue or not, whenever Elon tweet something just make spam of pollings with questions or rephrased of "Do you want Elon Musk to be in Twitter in any job title? Yes or no." If you are afraid of getting accounts, then make dummy accounts. Remember to always vote "no" 😆 we can do it! Flood Elon's reply tweet sections woth that polling and nothing more, only interact with polling and like other polling with alike question to fight against bootlickers algorithm.

^This question is basically improved version of Elon's polling about whether he should step down from CEO position. Which he used the "no" As to move to other job position. This improved question will leave him no space to slip to other job position or even to just exist in Twitter.

Gather information about former twitter employees, make a group chat with them. Ask them about new and old twitter, the good and the bad. Make articles about it, go publish it everywhere.

Make all public posts settings on other social media about how bad twitter is for business and advertisements, tag local and international news and other influencers and request them to do the same.

Make one day or few days without twitter campaign to make social interest in it goes down, notify any local and international news media about this so they put it on news to make twitter popularity goes down and harms also humiliated Elon's megalomaniac and egomaniac side.

😇 Alternative "Good guy" Route😇 : Work together with HQ building owner (because Elon is renting it) to kick Elon out but keep everything intact.

Warning: ?? Unknown??

👽 🍹 Raid 51 But In HQ 🍹👽: Let's hold a gathering party to goes into Twitter San Fransisco HQ on Market Street! Go get barbecue, ice cream, juices, cold snacks and hold a picnic there and try to hold it in the HQ too (you can ask the building owner to open up the door cuz Elon doesn't pay the office) . The polices and armies will less likely arrest such a peaceful fun raid. Go feed the workers and passerby but not Elon.

If this is done then hold an open public job open requests to everyone in around the world and US to be engineers, website and logo designers, codings, etc. Twitter has branches around the countries

DELETE ELON MUSK ACCOUNT/S. Ban his phone number and e-mail.

If possible: Collect money to set a lawyer against him. Remember that Elon is stupid enough to challenge Wachtell (a big name in lawyer world). Go open public fundraising. Demand a high cost compensation from Elon.

News that hold information about lay offs:

More idea to try! 💡 if possible, you can ask the journalist in the news about name details of who got lay off

CEO: Parag Agrawal

Chief Financial Officer: Ned Segal

Head of Legal Policy: Vijaya Gadde

There are also people who get unemployed in Ghana as told in CNBC, the journalist who interviewed is Elliot Smith.

For news about the lay off, The Verge, Euronews, etc can be used.

HQ Location:

Xspace office

https://maps.app.goo.gl/XxtfQNmz3sNp4H1W6

Tesla Factories

Potential Allies for Twitter Take over:

Microsoft:

Meta

Wachtell

Warning: Don't publish this in Twitter, on DMs is fine. It is better if Elon Musk doesn't know about this so he can't prepare anything. Make sure that each accounts unfollowed and block elon musk Twitter too.

Oh anyway a good read:

[tasteleeknow]

hihi jade !! i’m fairly new to tumblr and wanted to ask what’s the best way to reblog a post? i want you and my other favourite writers to get the attention + support you deserve but i’m still quite not sure on how it works ><

hihi !! that's really nice to of you make the effort to understand ! i'll put a little tutorial under the cut for you and anyone else that would like to learn. this is one of the best ways you can support writers on tumblr and i really encourage readers to stop and read this !

main or side? if you have no problem reblogging fics onto your main blog you can skip this section! this is just for people who don't feel comfortable putting fic on their blog for whatever reason.

tumblr has a thing called sideblogs where you can make secondary blogs on the same account. no one else looking at that blog will know it's attached to your main unless you tell someone. it's a great option for people who want a blog only for fic they read. the downsides is that you can only reply to posts from your main and send asks off anon from your main. but it's a great option for reblogging fic.

on mobile: just go to your blog then press your name and then 'create a new blog'

on web: click the profile icon then 'new'

how to reblog this part is easy! the best way to help writers is to reblog any fic you read and enjoyed. leaving a little comment in the tags is a lovely bonus and i'll show you how to do that soon. first i'll show you how to reblog really quickly with no comments. it's as easy at liking!

on mobile: at the bottom of a post, HOLD the reblog button. the icons of all your blogs will appear. DRAG then RELEASE over the blog you want to reblog the post to. your main or any sideblog you've made. that's it!

on web: hold the e key on your keyboard and icons from your blogs will pop up. then hover over the icon you want to reblog to and click. same deal as mobile. will reblog to the blog you clicked, quick and easy.

adding feedback/tags this is the bonus step that will make any writer's day. i read every single comment people leave in the tags of their reblogs! here's how you can add comments to your reblogs!

bonus: using tags is also how you can organise your blog. if you add tags like 'minho' or 'favourite' and then search them on your blog later, you can find your favourite fics. much easier to organise than likes.

on mobile: press the reblog button instead of holding it.

where it says '+ add tags to help people find your post', click and add any and all thoughts about the fic you just read. it can be a little keysmash or it can be an essay. adore anything you feel like offering. type a sentence or word then hit return on your phone keyboard then type the next word or sentence. and so on and so on. (this is also where you can put your organisational tags). then when you're done press reblog.

on web. click the reblog button. you'll get a popup like this. type your tags. all your thoughts. then any tags to help you find the post later. hit reblog!

bonus: if you really do want to write an ESSAY (always welcome). this is where you can put your thoughts into the caption instead of tags. where i've written 'long comments/essays here' on mobile screenshot and where it says 'go ahead, put anything' on web.

when should you reblog? whenever you finish a fic that you enjoyed! tumblr works by sharing posts with others through reblogging. when you follow people any posts they reblog will show on your dashboard. it's great for organically sharing content without algorithms like other sites use. fanfiction is all about fandom and community. writers write. and readers share and comment on the writing they enjoy. healthy ecosystem!

what are likes for then? exactly what it says on the tin. hey, i liked this! a lot of people use them as bookmarks. i can only see this being a good use of it if you also reblog fics once you've read them. i can only imagine how many liked posts some people have. they must have to scroll for ages to find anything. i use it just as a like button. literally, i liked this! or to just show support for my mutuals personal posts. if i find a fic i want to read later, i'll use it for that sometimes too.

what if i'm shy? firstly, tumblr is entirely anonymous. i don't know who you are and all i'm doing is reading whichever tags you've decided to add to my work. no one you know can judge you for the fic you read if you make a blog just for fic. and i'm certainly not judging you. i have anxiety myself, i understand the struggle. exposure therapy! just give it a go, see how you feel. i really feel you if you just make the effort to start doing it, you'll realise it really is okay! writers on here adore feedback and they'll appreciate you a lot for being a reader that reblogs and comments. reblogging with no comment to start off might help you ease into it.

writing takes a lot of time and effort. the only thing i've ever seen asked in return from the people that write is for you to let them know what you thought of it in the tags of a reblog! it's a very minor action compared to the time and effort it took to write the fic as well as the time and effort it took you to read it!

anyway, appreciate anyone who made the effort to read this and understand. readers who reblog and comment are the reason anyone is still on this site writing! ♡

ps. if you use desktop you can add the extension 'xkit rewritten' to chrome or firebox and use the feature quick reblog which makes tagging and reblogging even easier. the quick reblog feature looks like this. xkit rewritten is also how i make tag bundles that i can add to posts with one click instead of typing 20 tags out everytime i post a fic.

[quinloki]

Writers - Where You Gonna Post?

Hey all, so the TL;DR of this is that I post on Wattpad, Tumblr and Ao3 - All have their pros and cons, and this post is going to get into those (with a neat little summary at the end).

Note this is not an endorsement or criticism of any of them. Just my personal understandings of each, the pros and cons I've noted, and a chance to put it all in one place.

We're going to touch on - Ease of Posting, Visibility, Tagging, Searching, Cost, Security & Visibility, Functionality, and less objectively - Vibe.

word count: 1,874

-:- Ease of Posting -:-

Wattpad: 7.5/10 Tumblr: 9/10 Ao3: 4/10

Wattpad and Tumblr have direct-from-source formatting, meaning your paragraphs, italics, bolds, etc. stay in place when you copy from Word, google docs, or - I assume, Scrivener.

Tumblr has more options for font size, color, and links within the body of the text, and so scores higher than Wattpad's more limited capacity (Wattpad does allow for centering, justified, etc. positioning of paragraphs.)

Ao3 has far more CAPACITY than both, but the ease isn't there. You have to know your HTML markups, and for so people that can be a pain. There's a very useful Google Doc markup template that can do a lot of the heavy lifting for you, but hyper linking, image inserting, and other functions that are available have to be done manually.

This is great, in terms of options, but lowers Ao3 on the whole "ease of use".

-:- Visibility -:-

Wattpad: 4/10 Tumblr: 3 or 9/10 Ao3: 9/10

Wattpad has an algorithm and their tagging system - compared to Tumblr and Ao3 is pathetic. I realize I said I was going to be objective, but that is being objective. It's a spaceless tagging system, so you get really awesome tags like roronoazoroxblacklegsanjixreader and... yeah. There's also a limit on the number of tags, so if you're doing a collection of one-shots it's hard to get everyone in there.

On the upside, their search function doesn't just search by tags (would that it did though.) So having information in your summary will help your visibility. What really gets your stuff visible are reader interactions - knowing someone established on Wattpad and having them give you some shoutouts when you start is your best bet for being seen.

Tumblr's visibility - tagging, searching, etc rely HEAVILY on what kind of writer you are. SFW items are far easier to search than NSFW ones, and the Mature label hides you from people who have opted in to see Mature content, which still boggles me. The in-site search function leaves a bit to be desired, but google searches in better enough to off-set that a bit. Tagging is far more robust on tumblr, but it's also a little hit or miss, especially with new users. (I had no clue how to "tag" properly when I started, believe you me).

There's a solid foundation of readers here, so that makes it a good place to get your feet under you without being on TikTo-- I mean Wattpad.

I'm not going to say much here, because let's be fair, Ao3 was BUILT for visibility. There's no algorithm and the tagging system is robust and customizable. Searching is easy - as long as writers are decent with their tagging, and it's not too hard to find what you want, fluffy or otherwise.

-:- Tagging -:-

Wattpad: 4/10 Tumblr: 7/10 Ao3: 9/10

I've touched on this already in the other sections. Wattpad has a lot of restrictions on its tagging system, and aside from using it to "rank" stories, I'm not entirely sure what else it does. I really don't think it comes into play with searching - key words pull from titles, user names, and summaries at the minimum.

Tumblr tagging is a bless - for the most part. The site deems some words "problematic" and doesn't let you search them, which is poor practice because it doesn't differentiate smut from sex ed. (Personally, not that I want it to block anything on my behalf. If I type it Tumblr, I mean to look for it.) Fortunately, as stated, you can use external search engines to get around this.

Ao3 has probably the most robust, and most customizable tagging system of all three. This is great, as long as you know what you're doing, and terribly confusing if you don't. There's primers out there for tagging in Ao3 and other general "good to know" type things, but it's not intuitive. You really do need the primers.

And Ao3 limits neither content nor tags, so take care when searching, and use the omission functionality if you need to - Ao3 won't hold back unless you tell it.

-:- Searching -:-

Wattpad: 6/10 Tumblr: 6/10 Ao3: 10/10

Smash visibility and tagging together and you get search ratings. Wattpad can be hit or miss because of the Tikto- er - algorithm, my best advice is don't be afraid of the results on page 2 and beyond. As much as it tries to "rate" works, rating is just too subjective. You're going to have to dig, just like you do on Tumblr and Ao3.

Having fan fic reader connections is really your best bet when searching, but slugging through the proverbial trenches yields gems too - and one man's quartz is another man's diamond, so I'm not putting any writing down when I say this - what we're looking for varies, and what's out there is multitudinous and variable.

Ao3 is your best place place for good hunting - it's literally built around it. The only hangups are the limitations of what an author puts in for tags vs what you think to search. Differences in how we perceive some words regionally can limit what bounces back - and sometimes a writer might not think of the word in the first place to add it.

-:- Cost -:-

Wattpad: 3 or 9/10 Tumblr: 10/10 Ao3: 10/10

Wattpad has ads - on the mobile app. You can pay for some stuff on the desktop too, but it's not in your face there like it tends to be on the mobile app. Still, you can use it for free.

Tumblr and Ao3 both request money and offer stuff in exchange for money. Sites need money to run, so it makes sense. Neither locks functionality behind cost (neither does Wattpad, not even on the mobile app), but it's easier to ignore ads on Tumblr than Wattpad's app (and no ads on desktop at all for Wattpad >.> just fyi).

-:- Security & Visibility -:-

Wattpad: ??? Tumblr: ??? Ao3: ???

What's important about security and visibility changes from person to person and I'm not really sure how to rate them numerically.

Tumblr and Ao3 let you make your works private - member or password access only, so there's a layer of visibility control with these platforms that does NOT exist on Wattpad.

Ao3 let's people download works to read offline. Technically you can copy/paste with Tumblr and do this as well. Wattpad does not allow this - you cannot download or copy/paste a work from Wattpad (you can copy/paste when in edit mode on things you own on WP, but readers cannot).

You don't need an account to interact with Ao3 and Tumblr - I *think* you do for Wattpad, but all three are free sign ups - Ao3 is just by invitation (when did that start, btw? I signed up years ago and missed that change).

Which is best, is up to you.

-:- Functionality -:-

Wattpad: 8/10 Tumblr: 7/10 Ao3: 10/10

Let me start by saying that Tumblr's functionality for Short Form Fiction is easily 10/10 - the search limitations notwithstanding. Tumblr's functionality for LONG Form Fiction can be a real pain in the ass, hence the 7/10 overall. Linking posts is a manual nightmare, and sometimes breaks between mobile and desktop for no reason.

Wattpad's limitations on some styles of formatting and linking aside, it does have an easy to use update process, and if there's a limit to how many words can be in a chapter, I haven't seen it, or heard of it.

Wattpad's mature settings are also more functional than Tumblr's, leaving the onus of if the reader is old enough on the reader by the words of their own ToS (I still block minors, personally, since you can see who votes and comments.) They do have stricter limitations, regarding "dark" content, and there is by no means any threat to be levied against minors allowed. Shonen levels of violence, sure, but you're not posting Juno the novel on the site without some issues.

All three sites - Wattpad most recently - have blocking functionality. Wattpad's recent changes allow for deleting comments as well as blocking users, which can be a cathartic ability to have.

One thing Wattpad and Tumblr have that I'd LOVE to see on Ao3 (and if it has it I've missed it) is the ability to schedule your posts and updates. Wattpad added this recently - it's only functional on the desktop, but it works.

For those of us who can write 10k words one day, and none the next two days, it's useful for spreading out your posts. Plus there's just something nice about being able to create a backlog of content, especially if you post on a schedule.

-:- Vibe -:-

No rankings, we die like blorbos.

One of the best things - to me - about Wattpad is a paragraph-by-paragraph ability to comment. Wattpad's readers have a similar vibe as Tumblr's readers - and I mean this affectionately.

You're all GREMLINS.

It gives me life and I love it.

Assholes exist everywhere, but my general vibe of who has the most goes: Wattpad Tumblr Ao3

Maybe some of you aren't assholes, you just don't think about how your comments can be taken before you post.

Ao3 gives me the most Long Form Comments I get out of anywhere else, and I love them. Please, PLEASE, gush to me about what you loved. Feel free to toss in what you didn't vibe with - as long as you're not cruel about it, I can take it. I can't possibly write something everyone perceives flawlessly.

I post to all three, because I like the combined experience I get from them. Ao3 feeds me in ways Wattpad and Tumblr can't, and honestly you can exchange all three of those entirely.

Ao3 feels like I'm walking down the street perusing sex toy shops and someone stops me and goes "Oh I read your story and really liked it, please keep up the good work!" (sometimes maybe they throw a drink in my face.)

Tumblr feels like I'm at a rave with 500 other people and there's 50 blorbos people are doing body shots off of and we're all having fun - and occasionally some asshole comes in, but they're handled pretty quick.

Wattpad's like... being at a Barnes and Noble having coffee in the cafe that's inside the store, and there's a BDSM class being taught in the manga section that's upstairs, and sometimes people take the escalator up and right back down again cause oops.

That's my breakdown - I hope it's helped you, or at least made you laugh a little. Good luck out there, where ever, however, and whenever you post, I hope you find the words you're looking for.

(I do want to add that Wattpad does, as mentioned, have a bit of a TikTok vibe. If you don't vibe TikTok you're not gonna vibe Wattpad, flaws and all).

[twisted-tales-told]

I’ve been wondering recently about how people find fanfics. so i’m going around asking some of my favourite authors: what is your preferred way of finding new fics to read?

Do you find them from recommendations, whether that be from friends or social media and who do you find gives the best recs? Do you just read the works of some of your favourite authors? What about their bookmark lists? Do you go searching by looking at all the works under your favourite tags and if so, what are they?

I actually have a lot of feelings about searching for fics because people on TikTok have, in a way, ruined the fanfiction experience for a lot of people so I’m using this as an excuse to be blunt about those opinions & they are not targeted at one human being they are simply a comment on the culture of fandom right now.

ALSO DISCLAIMER this individual tumblr user is one of the good ones I’m assuming so we are having this tea party together & anyone who disagrees comes to me because I am the host. Okay moving on,

We’re not meant to rely on other people for recs.

We’re not supposed to have “popular” fics

And for the love of god, stop complaining there’s no fics you like, ranking fics, rating fics, making videos about your opinions on fics, and complaining about fics in comment sections. You’re not cute, you’re not funny, you’re not coming across as smart, or cultured, or intelligent. You look like an asshole. You are one of those people with big trucks who everyone rolls their eyes at. You have a small dick and are showing it off to the world. Nobody wants to see that. Stop sending unsolicited dick picks of opinions.

I do get fic recommendations from friends because that’s a perk of having friends in fandom, and I do post about the fics I love because I love them, and they’re also usually my friends works so I want to support them and show them all the love in the world. But more and more I’ve seen this culture of complaining “there’s no fics about ____” or treating fics like they’re this thing created specifically for the readers. Like, Buddy this is the fucking woods. Why do you want the little animals to make you a plate of food like this is a fucking fairytale. Find a river. Find some mushrooms that won’t kill you. It’s every bitch for themselves unless you find a community that shares your values.

Like, did you actually go to ao3, use that tag system, use your own detective skills, and not find them?

If so, then the only option you have is write it so stop complaining to other people and for the love of god don’t you dare ask a writer to write your idea for you. That random tumblr user does not work for you. They don’t write for other people. They’re just a silly little guy, stop asking them for things in their own home.

If you haven’t searched for those fics yourself, and you constantly require people to deliver those recs to your doorstep then you my friend are exactly what I fear about the world. Y’all are getting way to used to algorithms for my liking & have stopped understanding that you are the one in charge of your social media experience. You are an individual. Act like it.

Um anyways I think there’s a lot of newer fandom people who are whiny little bitches who don’t understand the days where you would have to search on your silly little computer and maybe halfway through the fic fanfic.net would just mass delete works and you would just go on with your life like a normal human person.

Fanfiction is a privilege not a right, and some people do not understand that.

[vivaciouscynner]

Welcome to tumblr

Introductions: You'll notice very quickly that tumblr has a very different vibe than most social media sites. One of the biggest differences is that no one here is really aiming to be popular or have a ton of followers.

This isn't to say you won't be super popular. That can still happen. But, unlike other sites, there's no algorithm to fight here. And honestly, there's a lot more respect at tumblr than anywhere else.

{Can't believe I said that, but when other sites dig themselves into an abyss... well, you get the idea}

Rules: Honestly, there's not really any other than:

if you intend to be garbage, do it lovingly.

If you intend to be loving, don't miss.

If you want to be fun, go loud.

if you want to be a mess, love yourself first

Do know that if you attempt useless discourse for the purpose of just causing a fight, you'll likely see this quickly fail. Tumblr is a lot LESS reactionary. And because of this, you'll be promptly ignored and freely blocked.

But also, rest assured, people generally have higher critical thinking skills here. You will not have to wrap a statement with an overwhelming, over-explained, disclosure that you didn't mean something else (especially unrelated). Example:

I like pancakes Oh, so you hate waffles?

You don't, generally, have to worry about that too much here. And if you spot it, just block it 👍

About: Do whatever you want that makes you happy. The only real way to get any form of engagement is through the tagging system. Also note, that it's a form of communication. See tagging section below.

Tumblr has a lot of benefits, one being, you are not shown any posts unless you want to see them. There's no forced "for-you" page, there IS a "for you" page, but it's not forced, and honestly, it's actually kind of good.

IF YOU'RE NEW: It's really important that, BEFORE you follow anyone, you must have AT LEAST, BARE MINIMUM, somewhere on your blog, something that says, "bear with me, I'm new, I'm not a bot, I'll have posts and reblogs soon".

::Context:: Tumblr users have recently been getting a lot of bot follows. And they're pretty easy to pick out. So easy, that if you even somewhat look like one, you'll be blocked and reported immediately. So here's what NOT to look like:

The blog is EMPTY - no posts or reblogs

The title is "Untitled"

The user avatar is the DEFAULT avatar OR a random woman (please just choose some cartoon character or something)

The Likes and Follows page are inaccessible (this is generally fine but if you hit the other bullet points, then this immediately tells us you're a bot. Seriously, if I see default icon or human face/body follow me, there's a 99% chance they're a bot.)

So please, to avoid getting blocked by possibly your favorite artists/writers/interests/whathaveyou, please do the opposite of the bulleted list there.

Basics: ::Tagging:: Unlike other sites, we don't dump the tags in the body of the post. Instead, at the very bottom - the footer, basically - there is a spot to add tags. Tags are converted to tumblr quick-links that navigate to similar posts with the same tag. As mentioned before, the tags are also used as a form of communication, usually after-thoughts or punchlines to a joke. They are also a good way to let the person you reblogged a post from know your thoughts without adding to the thread of posts.

::Likes:: "Likes" work a little differently than most sites. This acts as a bookmark, basically. It's also what tumblr uses to curate the "For You" page should you choose to use it. It does absolutely NOTHING to spread information other than you told the poster that you, indeed, liked their post - which is good!

::Reblogs:: It's pretty straight forward and acts like you think it would. It's essentially a retweet (if coming from twitter) or a retoot (if from Mastodon). Reblogs help spread the blog post. The post will show up on your follower's dash (the main timeline, if you will) as well as on your blog site (your yourusername.tumblr.com or tumblr.com/yourusername) Reblogs and tagging, help "spread the word" and allows more viewers to see the post.

::Chat/Replies:: In a blog post you can leave a comment and each one can be replied to. These replies are actually a lot LESS intrusive than twitter. They're also a lot less noticeable. Usually only the original poster will "notice" them unless you @ someone's handle (or click the triple dot and reply to the user which adds the @ automatically)

The separate, standalone chat function that tumblr has is like a private direct message. You can even start group chats like you would is most places.

::Asks:: You can set your blog to accept Anonymous or Non-Anonymous asks where they can simply shoot you a question or comment in your inbox. Do what you're comfortable with, but you'll more likely to get asks if you allow anonymity.

Final Thoughts: You really can't "screw up" here because this IS the place to screw up. This site is like that meme where it's, 🎶 "Thanks for checking in, I'm still a piece of garbage" 🎶

I think the biggest issue people have when coming here from another platform (namely bird app) is that there's a mission or competition to survive. And, that's just not what it's like here.

Take your shoes off, sit on the couch, relax.

[ashes-of-alar]

An Open Letter To FR Staff & Users (But Mostly To Staff)

This post will be long and I'm sure one or two people will deem it as brown-nosing staff, so here's a read more because I love my friends and followers and anyone perusing the Flight Rising tag. This is a very long post.

Preemptively, yes, you can reblog and add on, but I probably won't respond, as immediately after posting I'm muting this post.

There are 3 TLDRs under the read more, alongside the bulk of the post. Again. This is very, very long. 2.4k words long. I have 9 years of thoughts rattling around in this post.

TLDR for section 1 (No Wait!! Only Dragon): The art staff needs to draw, adjust and recolor (if this is seen past 3/24/23, over.) 7,244 individual pieces of apparel for every new modern breed (this is including both poses, not just one pose) they add, along with 324 genes (including f pose, m pose and h pose) and make sure all 177 colors with 2,680,125 combinations of colors possible (I.. I think? This is including all 3 poses also. Additionally, if I'm not wrong, they have an algorithm handle coloring to make things easier, but it doesn't change the fact that these still need to all be tested as they come up. Also this doesn't include every gene and gene combo, so uh, you can have fun with THAT math) don't break anything, and paired with their 'no crunch policy' it is no surprise we need to wait 5+ years between modern breeds, and even without modern breeds being taken into consideration, it makes sense that we have glitches with colors and genes just breaking.

TLDR for section 2 (Communication): Staff (Specifically those in positions like Aequorin, where they can be a bridge between coders/artists/etc and users) needs to communicate more with their users in regards to accessibility rollouts, issues with 'ban waves', false multi-account claims, actual multi-accounters being unnoticed for some time, etc. Full stop. The lack of communication can be a bit egregious, but it's slowly gotten better.

TLDR for section 3 (Final Thoughts): Staff messes up. With people they hire, things they do and decisions they make - We see it a lot more because they're effectively 20 or so people being eyeballed by (as of writing this) 4,221 people. So does the userbase. But we don't see that as much because the average user does not have 4.2k eyes on them at any given moment. But they're just a bunch of humans. They still deserve to be treated like them, even if you don't agree with every single thing they do.

v-v-Actual Post-v-v

To start, please know, I have been an active user off and on since 2014. This is not coming from a user who has been coddled by the release of Obelisks and onward. Additionally, I have plenty ill opinions on staff and some of the hills they've decided to dig their heels in on, as they are not perfect, no one is, but I would like to write this post to no one either way. This is more so in regards to their 'no crunch policy' and several other things that I've noticed over the years.

I'll focus on my main and only issue here first, the "no crunch policy." I'm not sure if they've ever quite explained what they mean by that, but, at a glance, it means they don't make their artists rush to finish pieces, which is fine, however it becomes frustrating as a user when they keep, in the case of Aberrations, putting the release off because of a 'no crunch policy.' There is a definite difference between not crunching and ensuring your artists adhere to a release schedule- That is to say if Stormlight Workshop intends to handle Flight Rising like a professional website, then they need to hire artists with the intent of making a set release date, rather than hiring them under the pretense of 'not crunching under any circumstances, ever.' Realistically, we should've gotten Aberrations a little sooner than we did.

Now, staff has said on multiple occasions they are always working on new breeds, and only in the 2020s have we been able to get a good view of that being true, as we have had three Ancient breed releases in the past 12 months alone, a massive step up from the previous release 'schedule' where we got two in 2014 (Coatls, Nocturnes), one in 2016 (Bogsneaks), two in 2019 (Gaoler, Banescale), one in 2020 (Veilspun), one in 2021 (Obelisks), two in 2022 (Aberrations, Undertides) and one (so far) in 2023 (Aethers).

This isn't to be ignorant towards the artists employed at Stormlight Workshop and the fact that artists regularly, without fail, get absolutely shafted when it comes to income VS the work they put in and time constraints, etc, to the point where freelance artists (the average artist you'd commission off of Tumblr or other social networking sites) need to greatly undersell their commissions to even get one commission. For example, an artist who I'd put their art at maybe 45/50$ for one fullbody charged 20$ for a 2 character fullbody with full shading and details, it is that bad when it comes to trying to find work, so I can ABSOLUTELY understand why they'd choose to push for a 'no crunch' policy to give their artist a dang break when it comes to work they receive. However as far as I'm aware, no artists have ever come forward to speak about pay they receive working on Flight Rising assets. This is in no way me claiming they are not paying their artists a fair wage or not paying them at all, this is me saying that no official artist, as far as I am aware, has stated what they are paid and how (gems, USD, etc.), so guesses cannot be made re: hourly pay until then.

This is a very, very long-winded way to say I think the userbase should be a bit.. More understanding re: wait times. I know in recent times, as we've stopped being kids/early 20 year-olds, the agitation in regards to everything has gone down. And I still think the wait can be pretty egregious and I'm hoping we get more modern breeds soon, or a better idea on what release schedules we can look at going forward.

Now. The following segment is not about the art staff and issues in regards to the waits, but the company Stormlight Workshop as a whole. I am not claiming anything I say going forward reflects on the company, workers and staff in a negative light, nor am I claiming any/all of these bans were done to 'get back' at a user, were done 'incorrectly/in error' or were done without reason. These things happen with sites like Flight Rising where they have a smaller staff and cannot 100% screen every single ban/email inquiry re: a false ban/etc. But the communication is an issue all the same.

Moving onto other my secondary, significantly lesser issue is the lack of communication regarding this stuff. Staff - User communication should be kept at a minimum without being cold, snarky, standoffish, etc, (sort of like the behavior Aequorin(? i think that's how you spell her name) displays with users, she can be serious at times and silly others, it depends on the context really!) lest we get sites like PokeFarm Q where the site owner/main coder can be a total jerk and traumadump to a userbase consisting primarily of mentally ill minors while having no repercussions. However, the issue with this comes in when we don't have details regarding breed releases, actual ETA dates for when we're getting (for example) achievements back. Additionally there are some lesser promises that have fallen through that we've gotten no word on, such as more merchandise like the pins we never got, and why it can be such a complete pain in the butt to get Wildclaw scrolls and why they've only been in circulation for a total that's around a month when stuck back to back when they were intended to more 'regularly' cycle. (The post I saw claimed a cumulative 20 - 40 days? I don't recall exactly.)

Additionally, there are the, at times, false ban waves that staff goes on every once in a blue moon that makes a subset of the community lose their collective minds. I have been friends with two users affected by this. One I will not give details to, as they are back on-site under a new account (which is permitted under the pretense they give up on getting their old account back), but her husband and her both got banned. Staff can be very inconsistent with who does and does not get banned for multiaccounting, even while reporting is taken into account, as I've seen what I deemed to be a pretty blatant case not get taken care of for quite some time, when reported.

However I am aware this is very likely a case of personal bias. I am very aware that this is a topic that is very personal to me as I lost a pair of dragons to someone being banned unfairly for multiaccounting (context: they admitted they had an acc prior to their current one on the forums and got banned), and even when they relented the account and just asked that the dragons to be sent back to me, staff refused, per their TOS re: dragon ownership (once it leaves the original owner's lair, ownership is forfeit, so technically they weren't mine anymore). The final case I can think of here is when a user known best for their darker lore and was widely disliked for it being 'problematic' (see: it was dark, and people did not like that) was falsely flagged for multiaccounting and had their account locked, and staff eventually just stopped responding to their emails, so they gave up on waiting and made a new account. (I know that this was false because the user who flagged them admitted to it.)

Next are the many complaints regarding accessibility. Starting at the landing page on the site, it is VERY bright- Painfully so- And those with migraines, eye issues, so on and so forth, are not permitted within site rules to even use an addon to change the way the site looks. I won't do a deep dive into the issues with this, but they claim they 'will see' about a dark mode in the future. I am somewhat photosensitive. Not in the 'rapidly flashing, bright colors can give me a seizure' way, but more in the 'this can give me a migraine' kind of way, so while it is less harmful for me to have it open in a low-lit room, it still isn't particularly pleasant. Even sites several years it's predecessor, like Dragon Cave, even have alternate color schemes for their website, so I never quite understood the logic.

That is to say that things like this are not excusable, especially the lack of a darkmode and basic accessibility features regarding familiar bonding being marginally less painful to do than clicking and pressing left on your keyboard up to 215 times (this is 100% excluding those who bond ALL of their familiars every single day. they are not being counted in here, as even if they are disabled, they are making the intentional decision to bond 1102 familiars every day even if it hurts them) and that is a 'lesser' task that one can do in maybe 5 - 15 minutes if they're on the Desktop version of the website.

The coli captcha being changed was an incredible step forward, one that I'm very pleasantly surprised we actually got. And that's why I think we need to push more on these things in a respectful way. Key emphasis on respect. You obviously won't get anywhere being too gentle and kind and letting staff get away with ableism like the lack of a darkmode and banning of those who use applications to make the screen dark so they can use the site.. It doesn't make the site out to be a very friendly website to users who suffer from various disabilities. But they are making changes to help that. Several users enjoy writing in tiny, barely visible text, so they added a 'toggle text style off or on for this post.'

I know full well that no war was ever won with kindness, but you need to avoid making a donkey of yourself on the public forums- Especially ones where the minimum age is 13. Calling staff stupid/incompetent/nasty names is hurtful, even if you DO feel that way and it's a knee-jerk reaction to the lack of accessibility they seem to be digging their heels in on, that's just not how the real world actually goes.

This is not to say that staff is exempt of criticism, if anything they need to be critiqued more than they are in constructive ways that don't come off guns blazing.

All of this is to say that staff's communication, as a whole, not just about, say, a delay or two, but rather developer updates, needs to be done much better. I feel like I should actively be seeing more developers talking about what's going on rather than just Aequorin sniping misbehaving users and locking a thread, or Undel talking about what she's wanting to update next (for the encyclopedia, full disclosure, nothing too interesting.)

Going three pages into the dev tracker I have only seen the following administrators: Aequorin, Undel, Kaepora and Mutron. Aequorin seems to do a lot of the heavy lifting regarding engaging with the community, which makes sense, she's the community manager, but I sincerely think there needs to be more communication going on, more updates and such that aren't .

I could just be saying that as I feel every website, especially sites like this where a lot of it is on the users to make the fun out of the game, could benefit from more clear, concise communication. I am not asking a lot, I don't think at least, for them to maybe get one or two more community managers and hold more regular Q&A sessions like they used to. It is not right that we need to claw at staff for some of the things that we've gotten after 10 years, and it's not right that staff needs to shake us off their legs like rabid dogs from time-to-time because of a misstep they made that makes a small and very vocal subset of the community go ballistic, which sends ripples out to other parts of the community.

That's about all I have to say. I've been writing this nonstop for almost 3 hours, and I honestly can't think of anything else I have to say. Sorry if it's disjointed/doesn't make sense at times. I guess my very last thought is I don't know what I'd do to change the issues I have. I'd say monthly updates on various aspects of the site or maybe a Q&A, as I feel that's a fair request, given that's the average amount of updates a Kickstarter game gets, but that could prove annoying, frustrating or just ineffective in practice.

But again, I want to put emphasis on this: None of this is in any way, shape or form meant to reflect badly on Stormlight Workshop as a company or it's employees. This is merely a series of opinions I have in regards to Flight Rising, Stormlight Workshop and the staff behind Flight Rising.

[mintymemesandrpshop]

@torens-nightshift replied to your post “Open for Business! Hello~ This is an RP help blog!...”:

Hi!! sorry if this isn't the right place to ask (i still struggle with tumblr etiquette & didn't see anything against this in your rules ><) how do people get started in tumblr rp? i've been quietly observing a few blogs for a while and it looks fun but i feel like no one would be interested in talking to me or whatever ( _ _")

Hello there! Getting Started™️in tumblr rp has two parts, I think. making the actual blog, and networking (while Doing Things.)

Your blog itself probably needs a rules page, this can be anything you want to say or express- some people's rules are specific, some are just a few sentences. Establishing some boundaries or guidelines can be pretty important! But! it's entirely up to you, it gives a first impression to others on you as the writer. People mostly hesitate or have anxiety about accidentally upsetting others, so having something there helps! Even if it's just saying you're pretty chill.

Something else helpful is a muse page- people want to know what kind of character that you are writing! For some they will link to a wiki page, and for some they write out a whole bio for their headcanons- For example if you looked in my Volo's bio, you'd see that he's 32, cisgender, albino, and can see through fog. all headcanon stuff that might not appear in every reply i do! For OCs especially there can be a history section detailing their life and who they are!

The other major half is networking. Following RP blogs, making a promo (which you can make visible in tags;; blahblahfandom rp, multifandom rp, crossover rp, etc.) when you find a blog you are interested in, you can reach out! through ims or asks as well. (If your blog is curated enough and has its own dash/account, your sidebar may of course recommend rp blogs! that's about the only algorithm involved. the rest's work. sideblogs notoriously have trouble because they can't Follow people.) Like, I figure a lot of personal blogs find my posts/blog through tumblr's search function- which i'm still not used to because it's the new default, rather than going into the Actual #tag.

a subset of networking is Doing Stuff. Making headcanon posts, in character posts, open starters, and threading with other people will show off your writing enough for people to notice. Some people turn their nose away if a blog 'only' contains 'too much' RP memes, vent posts, or just doesn't have what they're looking for. While it's not a requirement, it may be helpful to make sure you have examples up to see. This part kind of really never ends imo, networking and doing stuff, but it's pretty essential to getting noticed. But like any facet of the internet or world, there's always someone who wants to talk to you! And would love to hear what you have to say! I'm sure that's something that even seasoned rpers might need to hear, everyone gets discouraged sometimes. It only takes a few people getting going to boost you along tho, so! Try to appreciate people! Y'know, socializing and all that, haha.

As far as some etiquette goes, try not carelessly spam-like or reblog. Since the person is writing a story thread, they use their activity to keep track. 'hmmm i wonder if someone replied today?' i ask! i look in my notes! somebody liked this somebody liked this somebody liked this somebody liked this

oh no! where is my post? it can be a little frustrating, so try to keep likes to real time or so, it's much more manageable. People do enjoy likes and feedback, but the first major reason that people block personals is to avoid this kind of thing. In my opinion, it probably doesn't help that it's a wordless interaction, but it depends! If you're not overdoing it, it's delightful, too!

Replies are much more free game imo, it's words as feedback and a bit more enjoyable. (I'll admit a reply on a pinned post is...a first for but hey! this works!)

Asks are enjoyed and adored. Literally as long as it isn't hate, any tumblr user likes getting asks, but RPers are ravenous, lmao. Some may get overwhelmed by their own workload and have to delete em, but socially speaking people love talking about their muses! Or how they as a mun write!

The second reason people block personals is discourse. I'd say the biggest cultural difference, if you are stepping into rp, is to please learn to share. Especially with the onset of Search showing things even mentioning character names. (some people even cen.sor their muse's name to avoid this.) You've probably seen mockey of kin discourse 'no doubles' and etc. Basically, don't be an ass about headcanons and try to respect people's portrayals. RPers would rather write, so many will not deal with the bullshit and their blog is not for arguing. Trust me that when anons or whoever interject in order to be a dick, you become the butt of the joke for that blog's whole audience. Many people love to write threads with duplicates! But even those whose rules say no duplicates as far as interactions go know that it's not nice to insult people and stay in their lane. Be Kind! Ask questions! If you'd like to share a headcanon of your own, the blog owner might like to see it, just don't be pushy and you're good! They might even have their own headcanon even if they disagree with yours and may share that! Everyone's writing is unique and that's the beauty of it! I've personally even had some random personal reply trying to shut down my headcanon/simping in a belittling way, which....i didn't fucking ask. let me have my fun!!! Sooo yea read the room! Have fun!

hopefully this isn't too much of a ramble but the first two sentences I said are the short and sweet answer :')

[voidpumpkin]

A Guide For New Users Fleeing From Twitter, From A User Who Needed One When They First Started:

Hi to everyone fleeing from twitter, Elon Musk is shit and he already has had an actively harmful effect on the site, one that will only get worse. So, welcome to Tumblr, it can be kind of intimidating, given its reputation and how many different features there are, I was certainly confused and intimidated when I first logged on and as I'm active on both I sympathise with y’all, so here’s a guide to anyone new:

Put your hashtags in the hashtag section. This is the only way they’ll actually have any sort of effect, or appear when you search for something. Don’t post them on the post itself.

There is a character limit for hashtags and a quite high hashtag limit. Go wild. Writing entire speeches is common. 

Don’t tag lots of unrelated stuff to your posts, that’ll get you reported for Spam and just hated in general

Don’t censor words, users are fine with swearing, doing so especially with triggering content makes it hard for people to limit their exposure to said triggering content.

There’s no such thing as ratioing.

We don’t have quote retweeting, every reblog, comment, etc counts to op’s post. They can see it all, and will be notified depending on their notification settings.

Change your icon, people will think you’re a bot if you use the default.

Give yourself a bio, it’ll make you look like a person.

Follow people and tags, that’s the only way you’re gonna see the content you wanna see. The foryoupage isn’t to be trusted.

Actually reblog stuff, liking has no effect, reblogging is the only important thing here as there is no like based algorithm. Doing so will also make you appear human.

You can hide your likes and who you’re following. Doing so is not frowned upon in the slightest.

You can block tags, similarly to muting words on twitter.

You can have multiple blogs tied to one account. 

You can customise your blog, go wild.

There is no word limit, you can write as you want. But if it gets too long make use of the keep reading feature, (the three dots beside the add gif feature)

There is an image limit of thirty, up from the former ten, though for some they may be stuck at only using ten, tumblr is kinda inconsistent. If you want to add more you’ll have to reblog your own post. 

There is no reblogging limit when it comes to a post, though there is a daily posting limit, go wild, only your followers will be upset.

You can have videos, gifs and pictures in the same post.

You can just post audio.

Adult content is still banned, but actual moderation and enforcement is spotty, especially if it’s written. 

Spam liking and reblogging isn’t a thing. Go wild.

You have an ask box that people can submit stuff to. You can respond or just delete the post. You can remove anon capability from it (which will get rid of most of the hate), or outright bar it.

You can’t private your account but you can restrict commenting and reblogging. Edit: I’ve been informed that you can in fact make your blog password protected, it’s just that it’s a rarely done thing and not widely known.

Block whoever and whenever, it’s not a big deal. Though if someone you’ve blocked has reblogged and added to a post and someone you follow reblogs that, their commentary will still be included in the post you see.

We don’t have muting, only blocking.

Yes, direct messaging is a thing (it’s the little smiley face)

The only way to promote your is through ‘tumblr blaze’, you pay a certain amount of money and your post will be promoted, but not targeted, so no invasions of privacy. You are subject to the employee’s whims on whether or not it gets promoted and unfortunately hate speech has been allowed.

Tumblr has tendency to hide/consume comments, posts and asks, don’t be surprised if they go missing.

Tumblr searching a blog relies on tags, words in the post and the users name, keep that in mind.

Posts will remain after you delete your account or the original post if they have been reblogged.

Years old posts are still circulating and that is considered normal.

You can queue up posts to be released when you’re not using your account. Or you can just post whenever you’re active. Go wild.

Wizards exist and are very popular on this site. Accept it.

There are posts with no notes that will never gain any more than a sing note for your like. Accept it.

There are posts will no op. Accept it.

Trans and autistic people dominate this site.

Don’t get pissy when someone tags a post ‘tw (insert slur)’, or any trigger warning for that matter, most are just being considerate of their followers who may be triggered by such content.

Twitter discourse is regularly mocked, it’s not gonna fly here.

No, we don’t call each other oomfs, or anything like that. We just have mutuals.

Tumblr in general lacks a lot colloquialisms that began on twitter.

We do have ‘blorbo’ ‘poor little meow meow’ etc.

Trying to go viral or trying to corporate is frowned upon.

Tumblr has a tendency to blacklist things tagged like ‘crowdfunding’ so bring that kind of logic you use for twitter posts over to tumblr.

We don’t have twitter circles, co-posting, etc.

Tumblr is surprisingly good at recommending blogs.

There are no verified accounts, and your follower count isn't visible. This is a good thing, trying to change it will get you laughed at.

People are going to just make up stuff, don’t believe everything you see and if it’s a claim about someone, investigate it rather than just believe it.

You can edit your posts after you’ve posted them, but the versions reblogged before said changes will still circulate. This editing of the original has been used as a spruce of comedy

If your worried about people seeing your potentially triggering, or even graphic content and they haven’t blocked the tags you’ve used you can use the keeping reading feature to put the content under the cut and post a warning at the top.

And this is quite important:

Stay anonymous and have fun. There isn’t an expectation to constantly expose inner details of your life, you aren’t expected to use your real face, your real name, age, etc. You’re not even expected to be truthful here. Exist however you wanna exist and have fun, that should be the point of social media. 

Also keep in mind that tumblr has its own distinct culture that is going to take some getting used to. As well as a history any user who’s been here a while will at least somewhat understand.

Also I'll be editing the post with additional info and corrections provided to me.

[chipped-chimera]

I always felt the live push was kind of weird, and that explains it (goddamn corpos).

Maybe an unpopular opinion (please do not boo me off stage) but I think Live could have a place if done correctly and - and this is the important one - regulated. I think the primary problem with live - aside from feeling like it is constantly being shoved down our throats - was it felt more like it was trying to capitalize on the TikTok adjacent, influencer farming, algorithmic content bs that frankly so many of us are fatigued from being exposed to. The amount of control a Tumblr user has over the content they choose to engage with by comparison is phenomenal. And Live was the direct INVERSE of this principle.

Live could work well as a feature, but as long as it integrates with the rest of the existing experience. The current problem is it feels like Tumblr and then this weird thing tacked onto the side of it. Again people are here on Tumblr to get AWAY from being pushed content from people they're not following and have no interest in.

To really get this to work I feel you need to restore the user control here. For example - an artist you really like is going to stream? Cool! Maybe you can get a reminder when they go live (again, only if you choose to get the notification from them - either because they have a promotional post and you can click it to 'set reminder for this stream' or something) and you could pop the stream out like the videos do and keep it on the side of your dash with a chat box underneath while you scroll through your dashboard (at least for the desktop experience). Or you can open a tab of 'who is live now' from people you actually follow. Now if people actually want to go through a discovery section that's more algorithmically managed, that should be contained in it's own thing.

Honestly I feel this is the underlying theme of why a lot of us long-haulers cling to Tumblr - we want the user experience to be prioritized. We don't want to be 'told' what we like constantly and feel like we're merely being grifted for money all the time. Algorithms can be good, I don't mind poking around in the 'For You' tab on occasion to find new people to follow, but that's merely to add to my existing curated dashboard feed. Not to replace it.

In summary, the closing points of my Live related TED talk:

Live could work, but it has to fit with what core Tumblr actually IS if you want it to work.

Content curation is extremely important to Tumblr users and is the whole appeal in an internet that is just constantly using machine learning to squeeze as much money out of us as possible. It's against the grain. It's our hellsite.

Don't shove Live in peoples faces unless they choose for it to be there. And if they choose to look in the algorithmic section, for the love of god please have categories, filters, tagging etc. and whatever it takes to keep the pornbots off it please. (aka another reason why forcing live = bad because now you've got the full monty on your dash and you can't control it)

Emphasize user privacy and choice. I've been seeing shit about the intense level of data Tumblr Live apparently collects, which I am presuming is within the terms of that contract. Tumblr users, again like control. Of both what they choose to engage with and what is done with our data. We pass around enough firefox/adblock/anti-data-scrape posts as it is, it should be obvious.

USER. CHOICE. That's it. No really think about it, the whole internet is turning into a wriggling pit of algorithmic bs that's engulfing everything. It's going to get stale, really quick (I mean with the way I keep seeing articles about social media 'dying' - it already is. And they're all sites that have either been heavily focused on or pivoted towards algorithm). Freedom of choice is the whole appeal here.

Treat your userbase well, they'll treat you back. It's a longhaul strat but it's more guaranteed than alienating your entire userbase to make a quick buck (see the website formally known as Twitter for this one). This is an extremely out of left field example but - Final Fantasy XIV, I feel has treated its community excellently over the years. That game initially was a train-wreck. It's now considered one of the best (and possibly biggest) MMOs, all because they stuck to their core userbase who stuck by them, and listened. I am willing to let my FFXIV sub roll over, for months, without playing sometimes because it's one of the few subs I will pay for where I feel what I get out of it EXCEEDS the value of what I'm paying. And I'm actually happy to do that, I consider it a donation.

Look up 'Enshittification'. Yeah. Don't do any of that basically.

Uh thanks for coming to my TED talk idk where else to stick this so sorry it's being tacked on here 💀 Signed, person who has been on tumblr way too long (since 2010) and seen like 2-3 social medias die in my lifetime.

Since the other ask didn't seem to cover it, Why is Live being kept as a feature? It's almost universally hated, there's a post that circulates every week reminding us to turn it off so we don't forget to do so, the only feature live has is porn users which appeals to small portions of the user base but otherwise isn't worth the hassle. Why is this feature still Around? I'm genuinely wondering, this isn't meant as an attack, I just do not understand how a feature so detested could possibly be beneficial to the site.

We have a contractual obligation to try to make Live as successful as possible through the end of the year, and we'll do our best there. By January, aligned with the new more focused approached of Tumblr teams, we'll re-assess whether it should be part of the Tumblr app anymore. That's all I can really say about it, and I hope that answers your question and gives you something to look forward to in 2024.

[powdermelonkeg]

I’ve seen a lot of lists for “hey, if you’re here from Twitter, here’s what you need to know,” so here's a bit of my own advice.

You’ll learn the culture 100x faster if you follow a few hundred blogs, reblog from them without tacking on anything, and just read what shows up on your dash. Guidelines are great and all, but having to remember a checklist is hard. So, some simple step-by-step instructions:

Personalize your blog Get some picture besides the default as your icon. Doesn’t matter what it is, maybe a meme or something, it just can’t be a geometric shape with a few dots. Also worth noting, you technically CAN use a selfie for your icon, but people will give you weird looks. We more or less don’t do that here (99.99% of the blogs that do this are porn bots). If you can’t decide on an icon/header, etc, then at least put “New here, haven’t figured out the site yet” or something to that effect in your bio. We block blank blogs here, because they’re usually bots.

Pick a fandom and go on a following spree This is the easiest way to fill up your dashboard. Search whatever fandom you want, find artists in that fandom, and follow them. Rinse and repeat as many times as necessary, and your dashboard will be full of things you enjoy. If you’re like me and are constantly refreshing looking for new content at 4am, you’ll need to follow 1000+ blogs. If you’re more interested in searching things than having your dash bring you content, keep it around 100 to 300.

Reblog things without commentary Tumblr is a VERY different culture to Twitter, and if you’ve been on Twitter a long while, you’ll have habits around how you interact with people. The two generally do NOT mix well. I’m sure you’ve seen by now the posts like “reblogs are good, likes are worthless” or “don’t censor things in your tags” or “don’t tag like Twitter.” Genuinely, the best way to speedrun getting used to this place is to reblog things you like without adding onto them, and learning the culture by reading the posts on your dash. Once you’re confident that you know how we do things here, go ahead and sprinkle in some tag rambles or Tumblr memes, but that adjustment time is going to be different for everybody.

Scroll through your dash No, really. If you’re bored, take a tour through the recent posts of the people you’ve followed. You’ll find good artwork, cool stories, funny moments, and everything in between, but most importantly, you’ll start building those habits we regulars on Tumblr learned awhile ago, like which memes are a genuine response (Apollo’s dodgeball and red for color theory, currently) and how people tag things here.

Curate your dash Everyone’s pretty much been screaming it from the top of their lungs, but there is no algorithm here. The dash you have is the one you make from the people you follow. This means that you’re responsible for the company you keep. If you see a post you dislike, unfollow them. If someone’s going on a fandom spree that annoys you, unfollow. Point of view you don’t agree with? Unfollow. You can block for the same reasons, and block liberally. On top of this, you can filter out terms and tags in your settings. This is a link to it on desktop; scroll down and you’ll see an entire section titled “Content you see.” On mobile, you can find it by clicking the little person icon in the bottom right, then the settings wheel in the corner of your blog. From there it’s “General settings,” then scroll down a bit to “Content you see” and click it.

And that’s the easiest way to cozy up in this place.

If you’re worried about things not to do, everyone will give you a different list, but here are a few universal faux pas:

Sending hate Sending hate in the ask box is, unfortunately, something this site is known for, but doing so here tells everyone that can see it that you’re an obsessed child. If you do it on anon, you look even worse, even if you can technically “get away with it.” A mature Tumblr user doesn’t send hate no matter what; they block the user they dislike and move on. If you get hate, block them. Yes, even if they’re on anon. It blocks their IP address from sending you anything on anon, forcing them to use their real username if they actually want anything to get through.

Negative commentary Things along the lines of “I don’t even like this show, but-” are not compliments. They’re very discouraging to artists, and using them makes you look insensitive at best. If you want to convey “I don’t watch this show, but I like this art,” you can start it with “I don’t even go here, but-” instead. And if you want to criticize—don't. Genuinely, do not. It's the easiest way to get people not to like you here; if you don't have something nice to say about an art piece or fanfic, then just don't interact with it.

Censoring sensitive words The “content you see” feature on this site does its job and it does it well! If I, a Tumblr user, dislike the mention of “cleaning supplies,” I will block it. This means any post that contains “cleaning supplies” will be filtered from my dash. What this also means is that if you write it to get around this—for example, “clean*ng suppl*es,” “clea/ning sup/plies,” “cle@n!ng $uppl!es,” and so on, it will not be filtered, and I will have cleaning supplies on my dash despite my precautions. The only time you'll see someone doing this is if they don't want a specific user or term searched: squ/id-ink-per/sonal won't show up if I search my username, ze/lda won't show up in the "zelda" tag for that audience to see, etc. People on this site do not get terminated/shadowbanned for specific words. The closest we have ever gotten to that was when Apple tried to block sensitive content and made it so things like #girl wouldn’t show up on Apple devices. Which was a bug that was then fixed. Believe it or not, our moderation team is actually human, so if you’re terminated, it’s not because of some search-and-destroy program built into the site.

Now, before I go, here are some quality-of-life things to help you more easily use Tumblr’s features.

Only the first five tags on a post are indexed If I tag something #zelda, #loz, #fave mutuals, #ask bee, #worldbuilding, #you have no idea how long i spent on this, #i’m going to bed now then only the bolded tags are going to show up in the search results. Someone searching #i’m going to bed now won’t find my post, because it’s not in those first five tags.

You can change the color scheme of the site You’ll have to do it once on desktop and once on mobile, because the two platforms have different color schemes. On desktop, click the little person icon in the top right, then “Change Palette.” On mobile, tap the person in the bottom right, then settings wheel, “General settings,” “Color palette.” We have a lot more than dark and light mode!

You can insert links without interrupting your text Find whatever link you want to insert first, then highlight the word you want to turn into that link, press the “insert link” button, and paste it in. On desktop, it looks like a little infinity symbol. On mobile, it’s a little chain link icon. It lets you do cool things like this whenever you want.

Text can be colored! On mobile, it’s really, really easy to color text—just highlight what you want and the colors will pop up automatically. On desktop, it’s trickier to do, but we have a lot more options here: In the corner of your post, there’s a little settings wheel. Click that, then change “Rich Text” to “HTML.” Your page is going to look like weird code. This is normal. I recommend coloring text as the LAST thing you do because of this. Go here, type the text you want to color, and pick your colors out, then copy the HTML code at the bottom. Then go here, paste that in the box, and replace the “;” with nothing (I’m serious, nothing; not a blank space, just leave the “with this” box empty). Copy the semicolon-less code, go to the Tumblr post, and paste it in. It’s that easy! Fun fact, you can also do this in your desktop blog description, if you want; that little box is fully HTML-configurable.

And those are my starting tips! Have fun out there!

[asimovsideburns]

The New Tumblrite’s Guide To The Modern Hellsite

(Or: So You’re New In Town, Here’s What You Need To Know)

This post aims to be a guide for the new user to help them understand the tumblr culture. Don’t worry, new user—we’ll have you blogging like a native in no time!

I’m putting the rest of this post under what’s known as a “readmore” (because you have to click to read more, and it says so), which had a few benefits and drawbacks. It prevents the post from being extremely long on people’s dashboards, and any edits will be consistent across all versions because it will link to the post on my own blog, but because it’s on my blog, it will break if I ever change my url (barring an update that changes or has changed this—it can be hard to keep up with the actual mechanics of the site sometimes)

Table of Contents:

1. First Steps — what you should do immediately on making your blog

2. Reblogs — the most important part of using tumblr

2a. Reposting vs Reblogging — yes, these are different

3. Likes — what they are and aren’t for

4. Asks, Replies, and Reblogging With Comment — the different ways of engaging with other users

5. Tags — how to use them like a true tumblrina

6. The Prev Tags Schism — how and why to peer review properly, whether or not you use “prev tags”

7. Blockable Offenses — a list of things not to do

8. Best Practices — various tips and/or tricks to get the most out of your tumblr experience

1: First Steps

So you’ve just created a tumblr! Welcome! I’m sure you want to follow some people, but let’s take a moment to get things in order first. You wouldn’t want to be mistaken for a bot and get blocked, right?

The very first thing you’ll want to do is customize your blog. Start with an avatar—lots of people use picrew, or screenshots/edits of their favorite characters. DON’T use a photo of yourself! This is what we call “Bot Behavior”—bots often use pictures of random people, so any real person icon not immediately recognizable as a celebrity is a red flag; if you want to put yourself in your icon, the picrew route or other artwork communicates that a real person put some effort into creating the blog.

You’ll also probably want to give your blog a title, a header image, and a bio. Don’t give out identifying information in your bio! A first name for people to refer to you is fine, but lots of people use fake names or go by their URL (or a shortening of it). You don’t need to give your age, and you definitely shouldn’t be giving your exact location. One of the main draws of tumblr is anonymity, and you always have the opportunity to give specific people more information, but you never have the opportunity to take information away from people.

Next, feel free to go through the settings to do things like turning off things like “best stuff first” so that your dashboard is always in chronological order, turn on sensitive content, and disable showing your likes and what blogs you follow, if you don’t want people to be able to see that. Most people don’t display those, and it can be seen as Bot Behavior if you do, but not to the extent that an un-customized blog is.

Speaking of, make sure your URL isn’t just four words smashed together—that seems to be the current trend for bots, so you’re likely to get autoblocked.

Finally, start following AND REBLOGGING. Reblogging will be covered more in depth in the next section, but it really is the MOST important part of using tumblr! If you enjoy a post, reblog it! Likes serve a different purpose, and blogs without any posts or reblogs are HUGE red flags for Bot Behavior, especially if they follow more than a few blogs.

2: Reblogs

Reblogging! The most important feature of tumblr! You would think it would be posting but actually? Not so much. Reblogging will be the main thing you do on tumblr, and you’ll probably be doing a lot of it.

Okay, so here’s the deal: tumblr does not (and hopefully never will) have an omnipresent algorithm that governs what you do and do not see. Instead you see 1) the things that the people you follow post and reblog, in chronological order, and 2) recommended posts, unless you turn then off. Recommended posts come from either tags you follow (more on that later) or occasionally tumblr will try a “based on your likes” system that doesn’t work and everybody turns off. Oh, and there’s featured posts but that’s a thing tumblr the corporation is specifically posting/boosting for everyone to see, it’s not algorithmically generated for you specifically based on your usage of the site.

THIS MEANS!! If you are not reblogging, you are not contributing to the tumblr ecosystem!! People who follow you will ONLY get something from that IF you are reblogging and/or posting original content!!

If you like something, reblog it! That’s the only way you have of sharing it with other people and getting more eyes on it. Likes do not work for this. Likes are something else entirely.

When you reblog a post, here is what happens:

1) the original poster sees in their activity that it was reblogged by you, and anything you said on the post itself or in the tags

2) the person you reblogged it from sees in their activity that it was reblogged by you, and anything you said on the post itself or in the tags

3) it shows up on your blog and on your followers’ dashboards, with anything you added to the post itself or in the tags

4) anybody who looks at the notes of the post can see that you reblogged it, your addition to the post if any, and your tags if any, but it’s really hard to find someone specific in here on big posts and these things aren’t always in the same place as each other

5) the number of notes on the post increments by one

When you reblog a post (or when it is reblogged from you), comments on the post itself stay attached to the post, but tags do not. We’ll get more into when and when not to Reblog With Comment in section 4, but for now it’s enough to know how reblogs work.

Oh, and of you see someone tag a post with something like “dnr” or “do not reblog” then you SHOULD NOT reblog it! Sometimes people post things that they don’t want to go beyond their immediate followers, like vent posts or unfinished art they don’t want overshadowing the finished piece.

Finally, don’t worry about the age of a post when you reblog it, or if you’ve reblogged it before. Tumblr has lots of “classic posts” or “always reblog” posts from years and years ago that are still circulating, and that’s fine! The culture here encourages reblogging older posts, and there’s no limit on the number of times you can reblog a post. Many of the more recent popular memes have originated from posts that were made years ago, and only got popular after they’d been around for a while!

2a: Reposting vs Reblogging

Reblogging is very very good, but reposting is very very bad. What’s the difference?

When you reblog a post, you are using tumblr���s built in functionality to give somebody else’s post more visibility.

Reposting, by contrast, is when you take somebody else’s post and create a new post on your own blog using that content. Saving an artist’s work and creating a new post so that it originated on your blog is reposting, as is taking a screenshot of a text post and making a new post using that.

If you repost an artist’s work, for example, people can’t find that artist very easily, and the artist doesn’t see the user engagement from their post. If you reblog their posts instead, you help that artist build a following, and you still get to have cool art on your blog. Win-win.

Reposting also includes posting things from one website onto another—stealing from an artist’s twitter for your tumblr, or from their tumblr for your twitted.

Most of my reposting examples are about artists because that’s the field that is most commonly reposted, especially without credit.

It’s bad, it sucks, nobody likes reposters. Just use the reblog button instead.

You’ll see some posts where tweets or reddit posts are reposted, but even those should include usernames and links to the page they were taken from, and do not represent the work as their own. It’s still iffy, though—you’re getting notes off of somebody else’s funny thought or idea or story.

Generally, pointing and laughing at a twitter user’s incredibly bad take is accepted, in which case usernames are usually blocked out to prevent harassment.

3: Likes

Likes mean almost nothing here. People use them in a couple of different ways, but they’re far, FAR less significant than reblogs. Liking a post can mean that you enjoyed it, or that you wanted to look at it later (by going through your Liked Posts), or that you wanted to remind yourself that you’ve already seen it when it inevitably pops up on your dash again in two months. It can be a way of silently sending emotional support on somebody’s vent post, or indicating that you’re interested in hearing more when somebody says “3 likes and I’ll post about this thing”. What Likes AREN’T is a way to show a post to anybody else.

When you Like a post, here is what happens:

1) the original poster can see in their activity that you liked the post

2) if you clicked Like on somebody else’s reblog of that post, they can also see it

3) the number of notes on the post increments by one

Unlike reblogs, Liking is a binary state: either a post is Liked by you, or it isn’t, meaning that a Like can only ever add one note to a post. In contrast, every time you reblog a post it adds another note to that post, AND it puts it in front of other people who can then like and reblog it.

Finally, reblogged posts can be searched for on your blog using the search function (questionably useful) or by going through an organizational tag (very useful), while Liked posts are not (to my knowledge) something you can search through—you’d have to scroll manually with no filtering system.

As you can see, reblogs are superior to likes in almost every situation, unless the post is something the person would not want reblogged.

4: Asks, Replies, and Reblogging with Comment

Now, there are several ways to interact with other tumblr user, and they’re each good for different things.

The first is Asks. Tumblr users can control whether or not people are allowed to send them asks, and whether or not people are allowed to do so anonymously. Do not be an asshole. Do not be the reason someone has to turn off anon or close their askbox.

Asks are the most acceptable and widely used form of direct communication on tumblr, for several reasons. First, if somebody’s askbox is open, it is implied that they are willing to receive an ask. Second, asks can be answered publicly or privately, if you have not sent anonymously, giving the recipient maximum control over how they respond, if they choose to do so. Third, asks don’t create a conversation the way a direct message does, so if you say something and they never respond, it isn’t hanging there in the message thread like a neon sign proclaiming your shame the next time you go to message them. Unless they never deleted it out of their askbox. Usually that’s their shame, though—a lot of people simply forget to answer asks until it’s been long enough that they feel awkward about it.

When you send an ask, the recipient will receive a notification to check their inbox, at which point they will see your url, message, and the option to respond. If they respond, and you did not message them anonymously, YOU will receive a notification on your activity page that they did so, although the notification won’t link directly to their response if they answered publically, only to their blog.

Only “main” blogs (the first one you create, as opposed to “side” blogs on the same account) can send asks, but any blog can receive and respond to asks, publicly or privately.

Next are Replies. THIS ONE IS IMPORTANT. YOU WILL ALMOST NEVER USE REPLIES. IF YOU ARE USING REPLIES ALL THE TIME, STOP USING REPLIES. There IS a time for replies but they are a sometimes tool.

When you reply to a post, here is what happens:

1) the original poster receives a notification in their activity that you replied, and a partial view of what the reply is, but must go to the post and search through the notes to find the whole thing, which can be difficult to find on a large post

2) if you are replying to a reblog of the post, the reblogger also receives the notification and also has to go to the post and hunt for the reply, same as above

3) if either of them have email notifications on for replies, you are blowing their emails up constantly. Each reply sends a separate, unthreaded email notification, if they have those enabled. Although at the very least the email contains the full reply

4) the only other people who see replies are people specifically looking in the notes of the post—your followers do not see them and they do not show up on the dashboard or attach to a specific reblog chain.

5) if you are reblogging to an addition to the post, nobody will be able to tell because, again, replies do not attach to a specific reblog chain. They’re just loose in the notes. Sometimes people will @ mention each other in the notes to have a conversation but this is very inefficient and, again, absolutely blows up the notifications of the original poster and also the person who reblogged the version you are replying to.

Replies do have a function, but it’s very limited in scope:

1) when you want to send something directly to the original poster, usually because they’ve asked a question that you are responding to or you are attempting to start a conversation about the specific subject of the post. DO THIS ON THE ORIGINAL POST, and don’t bother on massive posts with lots of notes

2) if you are replying to the person who reblogged the post but sending them an ask or DM isn’t a viable option for some reason

Also, keep in mind that for someone who is not the OP or reblogger, you need to @ mention them—if someone replies to your post starting a conversation, you should reply to them by going to your own post, start with “@[their url]” and select them so that they receive a notification, and then type your message. This ensures that only the people who need to be notified get notified.

Oh, and if you see a post that says “tag yourself”, DON’T reply to it! It says tag for a reason—that goes in the tags of your reblog! It’s a way to talk about yourself to your followers, not something for you to send directly to the original poster or the person who put it on your dashboard.

99% of the time, though, you’ll either be talking in the tags or reblogging with comment.

Speaking of which, Reblogging with Comment! This is like regular reblogging, but you’re also adding your own words to the post. Most of the time, you’ll add anything you have to say to the tags, where it will need to pass peer review, but if you feel passionately about something or feel like you have something to add, you can.

Before you do, though, you should know that 1) people can and will go to the person you reblogged from and reblog it from them instead if they don’t like your addition (this is a feature and not a bug), 2) both the original poster and the person you reblogged from will see your addition, and 3) this is best done sparingly. Use your best judgement as to whether you really want to bypass the peer review process and add something, and don’t forget that tumblr is a pvp enabled zone.

If you reblog with comment, you will not get notifications on that post unless it is reblogged or liked from you. This means that you will have no idea when or if your addition goes viral until you see it on your dashboard. It also means you don’t have to deal with any of the notifications unless somebody @ mentions you. This is, honestly, the ideal way to go viral if you’re going to do it, because the notifications on a viral post are a fucking nightmare and everybody hates it. That said, don’t try to go viral. There’s literally no benefit to going viral on this site, tumblr clout isn’t real, there are no sponsorships and you cannot try to sell anything without being torn apart like a cartoon cow by a school of cartoon piranhas. It will take seconds and there won’t even be bones left. Some people make it work but it’s almost always something that happens to them instead of being on purpose.

Also, at least some and probably many of the back-and-forth posts you see are staged by people who know each other, and you’ll generally have better luck if you’re adding on to the posts of people you at least kind of know, either as mutuals or through sending asks and reblogging with tags.

5: Tags

Tags!!! Tags are great. Tags are your best fucking friend on this hellsite and they serve a couple of purposes:

First and foremost, we use them not as intended but as a way of adding to a post in a quiet, less intrusive way. If reblogging with comment is shouting from the rooftops, tagging is chatting with your friends. Tags used to be only visible when directly viewing your reblog of a post, but then tumblr updated so that the original poster and the person you reblogged from can see them in their activity page, and people can look at them on the notes. Nevertheless, they remain the most polite and unobtrusive way to comment on something. You can also put a frankly ridiculous number of tags on a post, which is great.

Second, tags can AND SHOULD be used for organizational and filtering purposes. Many people tag for things like fandoms, characters, common trigger/content warnings, and safety concerns.

When you use tags for organizational and filtering purposes, is important that you spell them correctly and use a consistent tag; if you spell a tag incorrectly, it will be useless for searching and tumblr’s filtering won’t catch it. If you use inconsistent versions of it, you won’t be able to find things easily, and people will have a harder time knowing what to filter.

For example! If you want to have a way to find all your posts about (for example) power rangers, you would go to the tags portion of the reblog window and type something like “power rangers,” (the comma is what closes the tag, so it would then look like “#power rangers”). Then, to find all the posts with that tag, you would go to “[your url].tumblr.com/tagged/power rangers” (yes, with the space—tumblr used to use dashes instead of spaces but it can now recognize spaces in tags and your URL bar should autofill the correct symbol. Unless it tries to google search, in which case you need to put the actual symbol, which is something like %20 I think? So it would be “/tagged/power%20rangers”. But that’s way more difficult and easy to fuck up than just putting a space).

Tag filtering allows tumblr to see a tag and automatically hide the post from you, with an option to open it anyway. If you absolutely HATED power rangers, you could filter the tag “#power rangers” and any post tagged with that would show up saying it was hidden because it contained the tag #power rangers, and that you can click to open it if you want. A lot of people use this to avoid spoilers for things.

If you tag something as “#power ranger” instead, it WILL NOT show up when you go to your power rangers tag, because you forgot the S, and it WILL NOT be filtered for anyone who blocked #power rangers, for the same reason!

Because of this IT IS VITAL THAT YOU DO NOT CENSOR CONTENT OR TRIGGER WARNING TAGS. If someone is trying to avoid triggering content, and you use a bunch of random asterisks and slashes to censor it, their filter will not pick it up. You will be doing the OPPOSITE of keeping your followers safe and providing a comfortable space.

Censoring tags is usually done with the purpose of “keeping hate out of the tags”—ie, if I am saying something negative about power rangers, I might write it as “p*wer r*ngers” instead to prevent tumblr’s search function from serving my post to people looking for power rangers content. When doing this, censor in both the content of the post and the tags, and it’s still good to be consistent in your method of censorship.

Tumblr does have a search function—you can search for tags, and will find posts that are tagged with the tag you’ve searched for. You can also “follow” a tag, which will make tumblr periodically put posts from that tag on your dashboard as recommended posts. DO NOT TRY TO GAME THE SYSTEM BY USING A BUNCH OF UNRELATED TAGS. That’s a fast track to being blocked not just for Bot Behavior but also because it’s annoying. There’s no real algorithm to game, here—just keep blogging and people will either decide they like your content and follow you or they don’t and they won’t.

Speaking of Bot Behavior and how to avoid it, talking in the tags is the absolute best way to let people know you’re a human. Bots can use tags, but they use them like bots, not like humans—talk away in the tags and it’ll be clear you’re a real person.

Finally, I mentioned ���peer review” earlier. “Peer review” is a term we use for a phenomenon similar to “stealing tags”, which is actually a GOOD thing. If your follower or the original poster reads and enjoys your tags, they may choose to copy and paste them into a reblog with comment (or use a screenshot, although that isn’t as screen-reader friendly). When doing this, it is common courtesy to append “(via @[the tagger’s url])” so that people can easily tell who wrote the tags.

If you enjoy the tags but don’t want to add them as a comment (especially if you want to reply to them), you can “steal” them instead. When stealing tags, it’s important to let people know they aren’t yours! a quick “#these tags ->” before and “<-[comment goes here]” after are my go to (you can make the arrows by using a < or > combined with a -). This gives credit to the person who made the tags, rather than looking like you’re trying to pass off their jokes/ideas as your own.

Speaking of peer review and stealing tags, that brings me to our next section:

6: The Prev Tags Schism

Okay, here’s the deal. Some people, when reblogging, will simply tag “prev tags” as a clue for their followers to go to the previous reblog and look at that poster’s tags. I can understand the draw—it’s low effort, it’s unobtrusive, and it gives credit to the tagger.

On the other hand, tags can be edited or deleted, which means the thing you’re endorsing may be changed or even outright gone when your followers go to check what you’re talking about. It also tends to create “chains” where someone will have to go through many, many posts to find the tags being talked about, and often the chain will be broken by a deleted post, rendering the referenced tags either gone or unreachable. In addition, you have to scroll to the top of a post to go to the previous reblog, which is annoying on longer posts.

I’m not going to take a moral stance on the issue, but I will say that it’s a recent shift in behavior and that it is not tumblr native behavior—and you’re here to blog like a tumblr native, right?

I get the appeal. I’ve almost done it myself a couple of times. But I don’t, because if I have to sit through one more 10 minute session of going through a bunch of posts that just say “prev tags so true” until I reach a version tagged only with “hannibal” or some bullshit I’m going to lose my fucking mind. The post wasn’t even that good. It was not so true, besties.

Anyway you can use prev tags if you want, it’s your blog, I just wanted to get that off my chest.

But also it’s literally SO easy to just tap on the tag to copy it if you’re on mobile or copy/paste if you’re on desktop, it’s really, really, really not hard. I promise.

7: Blockable Offenses

Okay listen. People are probably going to block you. Don’t take it personally. However, this is a non-comprehensive list of things you can avoid to minimize being blocked, and things you might block people over. Some, but not all, of the things on this list also fall under Bot Behavior.

Blog suspiciously empty and un-customized

Only reblogs porn gifs

Says some absolute rude dumbass shit on your post, especially if it’s clear they have no reading comprehension

Annoying

Likes a media/character/ship you don’t like

Clearly an attempt at boosting a company’s search engine optimization

Clearly a multilevel marketing scheme

Clearly a cryptocurrency scam

Your mutual doesn’t like them for some reason

Constantly involved in drama and you don’t want to get dragged into it if they reblog your post

They like your favorite media/character/ship, but they’re doing it wrong and you hate seeing their shit ass takes

They reblog unmarked spoilers for something you’re trying not to see spoilers about

They don’t tag for triggers/content warnings and you need to not interact with them

They sent you a rude ask, with their url attached

They sent you a rude ask, anonymously (yes, you can block anonymous askers, but be careful because you can’t UNblock them)

You thought it would be funny

Their vibes are simply rancid

Their vibes are not rancid but you just have kind of a weird feeling about them like you don’t have proof but ehhhhh idk better safe than sorry

You have IRL beef, petty or otherwise

You know them IRL and you don’t have beef but you still want to keep your blog private from them

They stole your tags without crediting you or noting that they were copied

Literally any reason

So there you go! Some reasons you might block or get blocked by someone!

It’s also SUPER important to block bots—they feed off of your real-human-behavior legitimacy to appear more human and less like a bot to moderation systems, and if they get caught then YOUR blog could get flagged as a bot by association! When you block someone, it cuts their ability to interact with your blog, and means you don’t have to see anything they say either.

If, for some reason, you want to unblock someone, you can always go to your blocked tumblrs list in your settings and unblock them there.

8: Best Practices

This is a place for tips, tricks, and hashtag pro strats. Little things that will make you look and feel like a tumblr native in no time. Some of them will be repeats from earlier sections, put here in condensed form for easy reference.

Reblog things if you enjoy them

Customize your blog, and don’t use a default avatar or a photo of yourself

Talk in the tags, that’s what they’re there for

“Tag yourself” means IN THE TAGS OF A REBLOG, and NOT in a reply! It’s about sharing lore with your followers, not starting a conversation with the OP or the last person to reblog

People genuinely love it when you go through their blog and like and reblog a bunch of stuff all at once—it means you enjoy their blog!

Reblog, don’t repost.

Replies are a sometimes tool, don’t overuse them

Curate your space. Don’t follow people if you don’t like their blog. Block people who annoy you.

Nobody knows if you’ve seen a post or not; you can always scroll by without interacting with it

If you use the queue function, also use a special tag that you apply to queued posts (with the word queue somewhere in it) so that people know they’re queued

The apostrophe key on mobile and desktop read as different characters when you’re creating/searching a tag, it’s really annoying

If you use quotation marks in a tag, it puts whatever was in quotes at the very beginning of all of your tags, which is very confusing—use apostrophes instead (ie: say ‘thing’ instead of “thing”)

Find people whose takes you enjoy and then stay out of the search function, it’ll save you from a lot of aggravation

Don’t get involved in fandom drama, just stay in your lane

DO NOT POST PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION. Seriously, you do not want to get doxxed. It’s easier to track people down than you think.

If you copy somebody else’s tags, note that you’ve done so! Also, don’t use an extension that automatically copies people’s tags when you reblog from them. It’s a blockable offense.

I may or may not update this, but I’ll try and keep a “last updated on: [date]” tag if I do