#and as someone who is largely multifandom this past year and something I wanna stay on tumblr to see the stuff from other fandoms

[llitchilitchi]

sometimes I wish this site had a mute option

[sugarjared]

Bring Back The Real Tumblr: It’s not just staff changes, it’s us too.

The year is 2019 and we’re currently facing a reblog problem. As most of you have noticed, most creations and original posts go untouched for reblogs but get plenty of likes. This has been happening for over 2 years now, but it’s only more pronounced now that high traffic bloggers are complaining about the same issues. Text posts like, “If I have a blog with such high follow, why are my creations going unnoticed?” pop up in my feed almost on a daily basis. It’s not just that the site has changed tremendously for the worst ever since Yahoo took over in late 2013, followed by Verizon in the past year-- it’s that the population killed itself in its own thirst for quality control. We’ve turned it into a geekier version of Instagram. Yikes.

 If you find yourself skipping this post just because it’s long, you too are part of the problem. Specially if you blacklist long posts.

Simpler days, more community roles, more reblogs, less inhibitions.  Back in the days of the mishapocalypse, the days of when tumblr grandmas used to start networks and chats for newcommers and creatives, the days of lot’s of plain REAL socializing with people OUTSIDE of your cliques, that’s when most of our first succesful blogs hit the big tumblr boom.  It was fun to start new friendships. It was fun to reblog just because it was a funny post, or because you agreed with someone’s opinions. Everything was done at the tune of one simple rule: “I like this, so I’m putting it on my blog”. Commenting on a post till it got outrageously long wasn’t a fashion faux pas either. People didn’t attempt to control how many blogs they were following. Oh yes! We were MUCH, MUCH, MORE LOOSER with the amount of people we followed. At one point in 2012-2013, I remember celebrating when I reached 666 followed blogs... all multifandom of course. What happened, why did we change?

Monkey see, Monkey do and the quest for elitist fame. Eventually, many blogs got tremendously big. Even small effort bloggers like me would reach over 10k followers in about 1-2 years. A dumb text post would get 500 notes within a day, and 2-3k easily by the end of the week, if not the month.  So imagine someone sitting on top of 25-30k followers, answering questions day in and day out, upon impressionable smaller bloggers who wanted to create such an experience for themselves. You know what we often saw in those replies? Examples along these lines: “I try not to follow a lot of people. I have 32k follwowers but only follow about 92 blogs. “I only follow people who post original content daily/weekly.” “I only follow my closest inner group, but I’ll give sevral posts a like or a little promo, but won’t follow sorry.” “I don’t follow blogs that have too many text posts.” Exclusivity was birthed, visual content was in, real life text posts and low quality compositions were out.

And that’s when other’s started doing the same shit. I’m guilty, I did the thing too. BUT WE DID TRY for a while to combat this because we KNEW IT THEN AND WE KNOW IT NOW that it’s a shit move that WILL come back to bite the community in the ass, and THAT’S when networks became a thing. 

The Networks Renaissance 

We created networks run from sideblogs, and used text posts as chats. We had our own network tags to help everyone in our respective communities get more exposure. Across all the big fandoms that’s what we started doing. Welcoming people with less followers, welcoming people of all walks of life and all levels of artistic skills, no matter how often they were available, no matter how shit their beginer content was. We were there to HELP them grow, just like we once did. It was the perfect template... but it died. And it died a horrible, dragged out death. People went back to their clique-y holes, college and work demanded other people’s times... we just, forgot networks all together. The reblog apocalypse now had a clear path to truly end our golden years.

Now we’re here.

At this point, bringing Tumblr to its more humble, social, reblog and follow friendly nature is probably near impossible. Unless of course we use the formula that works, “The Monkey See- Monkey Do” Formula of course!

Y’all love to think you’re independent thinkers, but not really. All humans are social animals, and heard mentallity is found in every single group ever. You wan’t your old tumblr back? You gotta lead the revolution. Oh what’s that? Don’t wanna start giving in order to recieve? Well, guess things will have to remain as they are. 

But if you find yourself in a position where you never gave up your blog, are sitting on top of a lot of followers, and have a large group of friends who are also there with you, do the right thing, and bring back the reblog economy. Nobody else can. It starts with the top. DO SOMETHING TODAY, and you’ll profit tomorrow. Stay friendly and humble, and encourage people to be more positive, less shallow, and fill your blog with life once again, not just regurgitated over-reblogged posts. Bring back the old tumblr. Or you know, keep on going like it is now and completely give up on it when it’s truly dead another 2 years from now.

Your Move, Fandoms.