#and this is precisely why i will never be a twitter user

[bugisbonkerz]

honestly wish transphobic 12 year olds would go back to saying “i identify as an attack helicopter 😝😝” bc nowadays they just tell people to kill themselves constantly

[cadejos]

ON NANAMI'S POWER LEVEL, DOMAIN EXPANSIONS, DOMAIN COUNTERS, AND HOW JUJUTSU SOCIETY PLAYS A ROLE.

This analysis originally turned viral on twitter. I'm posting it here for archival.

Nanami treated sorcery like a job and Gojo treated sorcery like a lifestyle. I've thought long and hard about why Nanami does not have certain skills (DE, Simple Domain, etc) that'd easily bump him up in terms of power, as he's already very strong. The reason is two-fold:

He never set out to do more than what he absolutely had to do. ("Moderate effort where moderate effort suffices," etc)

Information about sorcery is very gatekept and compartmentalized, because Jujutsu society sucks.

For point number 1, we are to keep in mind that Nanami is a grade one sorcerer, very much the peak of what sorcery is supposed to be outside of Special Grade work. The purpose of sorcery, up until very recently, has been about killing curses, most of which are not special grade or intelligent. The disaster curses are anomalies, and battles with Domain users were very rare until they showed up. They vastly skewed the power system. Remember that not even Naobito Zenin, the head of one of the great clans, had a Domain expansion either, and it took the work of a Domain user (Megumi) and an experienced sorcerer killer (Toji) to properly counter Dagon in his domain.

If domain battles are truly so rare, I don't really blame Nanami for not going out of his way to work on developing one, especially since Domains require an element of self-assurance that Nanami, due to trauma and disposition, was never geared toward developing.

His soul was strong enough to protect against a novice Mahito subconsciously, which is a promising start, but once Mahito grew too strong he was way out of Nanami's scope (not to mention Gege deliberately tired him over the course of Shibuya) and Nanami was more inclined to take his loss gracefully than to force himself to craft an spontaneous Domain Expansion. It's not like he really had the energy to try, either.

Overall, developing a DE for the off chance that he stumbled upon a Domain user just doesn't sound like his style. And he wouldn't do it for fun, either, because jujutsu is not fun for him, and it never has been. It's just work.

Let's say he would want to at least develop a domain counter, though. That's where point number 2 steps in. The whole reason something as fundamental as a domain counter is so rare in jujutsu is purely because jujutsu society is inherently selfish and self-serving.

If I recall correctly, SD is not something you can teach due to a binding vow tied to the technique. It has to be something you learn on your own through observation and intuition, or by joining New Shadow Style. Up until UiUi's soul swapping, there wasn't a reliable work around for this conundrum. And the other domain counters? Old, not very well known, and gatekept by the clans.

Sometimes I'm inclined to believe jujutsu sorcerers learn sorcery not because of the school system but in spite of it. Unless you're already a genius, born gifted, or willing to go an extra -- ambiguously illicit -- mile (like Kusakabe), there's not much the average sorcerer can do, and not many tools for them to learn to begin with. Nanami is presented as the baseline of what modern day good sorcery looks like; what you can achieve if you're competent, and don't have the privilege of relying on very good mentors, obscure knowledge, or ancient techniques. Even then he had an expansion technique, not something every sorcerer has, and he was capable of achieving one of the pinnacles of Jujutsu, which is the black flash; precisely because of his attitude toward jujutsu and his ability to focus when things get serious.

Maybe if given enough time to heal from his psychological wounds, and given opportunities for more black flashes, as well as a strong enough incentive, he could have circumvented a lot of problems and enlightened his way toward a DE or other such jujutsu-relevelations.

But that's speculation and not really the point of his character.

Had he been a villain though? Gege probably would've made him stronger, if his Culling Games score in JJK's draft Jujutsu Sousen is anything to go by, which is amusing.

Supplementary reading:

In regards to black flashes: a post where I go over why I think Yuuji and Nanami are especially good at them, and why I think they require conditions that are in opposition to Domain expansions.

Measuring Nanami's critical hit power: where I use a statement to further analyze and evaluate the capabilities of the Ratio Technique.

[qweerhet]

To your latest post: https://www.tumblr.com/aronarchy/723133162841047040/

mmm... i can understand why twitter user butchanarchy's rhetoric sounds good to people who posit "survivor" as a coherent category that is in direct opposition to the ontological category of "abuser," and i can definitely understand why some people see "reclaiming power" as a positive (in that their frameworks see "power", as in "the ability to control others via negative consequences," as a thing that must continue to exist, and we should support existing), but i've had a long and storied history of disavowing butchanarchy's critiques in the general anarchist online sphere precisely for these reasons--that is not the lens i am coming from, and i disagree fundamentally with multiple of their premises.

i do not agree that the power to control other people via threat of violence is good, nor that it should be utilized in community contexts. social contexts that arise out of necessity during class struggle are, imho, inherently flawed and dysfunctional in the context of forming strong community on equal footing. treating community members as if they were militant arms of the state (provided they are not, in fact, literally acting as militant arms of the state i.e. police officers, prison guards) is fundamentally flawed as a mode of operation.

i also do not agree that victims of harm are necessarily experts on how to stop that harm from happening by virtue of being traumatized; again, i'm speaking as someone who decided almost a decade ago, due to my own trauma, that the best community response was to attempt to run the person who date raped me out of town, and now regret that because it caused more harm and did not stop future harm from occurring. positioning "survivor" as an ontological category of expert on harm reduction necessitates believing that victims of harm not only always and invariably have a robust emotional toolkit with which to operate and to make decisions for other people who are not themselves, but also never have any material reason to perpetuate further harm and abuse, and that's... simply not true. it gained me a significant amount of social clout to run an impoverished 18-year-old transfem out of every community space and isolate her with her abusive father--i operated for a handful of years on the social clout i gained from that! i got popular in the local communist scene because of that!

i don't think that any one person should direct any community response to interpersonal harm, tbh, and harm reduction/prevention requires a large support network of dozens of people working in parallel. it also requires robust social welfare networks that inherently predispose someone's ability to get their crew to run someone out of town or kill them; unconditional housing, food, utilities, medical care, and home aid (i.e. cooking and cleaning) cannot coexist with the ability for these things to be removed based on someone's individual desire, regardless of if that desire is morally justified or not (and i don't agree with frameworks that apply a universal system of morality to begin with, but that's a digression).

i think it's rather shortsighted and myopic to overlook basic principles of community care in order to justify furthering pre-existing systems of violence in non-state contexts, and i also think it's pretty myopic to not integrate the inherent power structures of targeted violence into your analysis + your harm reduction praxis... like. it's literally already the case that a white woman can point at a black guy she has literally never met before, say "that guy raped me," and get all her white friends to jump him at a bar. it is literally already the case that she can utilize her social networks to get him run out of town. it's not particularly revolutionary to be like, actually, we should make that more possible and do more of it.

[kulay-ng-banaag]

In the spirit of releasing all emotional debts on New Year's Eve, I’m going to open up about my frustrations regarding Desa aka dinosaurusgede aka the creator of Maaf.

For context, she made a Twitter account around the time that Himaruya properly introduced the newly canonized cast of SEA nations (Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia). Like many other fans, she rode the nostalgia wave in creating content of them. By this point in time, Maaf was more or less a “finished” story to her — whatever Hetalia/SEAtalia content she published from that point onward was not as a continuation of, nor even as a reboot, of Maaf (although she did mention entertaining that idea). For the most part, the newer works she uploaded on Twitter were independent stories and were not necessarily linked to one other either.

Regrettably, I cannot present the problematic page/s for a more thorough and guided scrutiny because she deleted her Twitter account. Unless someone out there saved them, and frankly I wouldn't know who did nor would care to find out, everything was lost to the void. I’m literally working on what was imprinted in my memory by spite, so I apologize if I misremember details.

This will include discussion of anti-indigenous racism and other issues pertaining to colonialism.

She had an IndoPhil story titled Trust Me? and it was inspired by a fanmade BruPhil AMV wherein Indonesia was manipulating Philippines into believing that he was married to Indonesia and not Brunei. Trust Me? kept that concept of a manipulative Indonesia; the key difference being that Indonesia’s motivation for it (in Desa’s story) was the mix of hurt over Philippines “losing his precolonial memories” — based on popularized misconceptions of early Philippine history — of and how that was “aggravated” by his Westernization™, made worse under the United States (350+ years in the convent getting ratio'd by 50 years in Hollywood is hilarious ngl).

That was a lot to unpack, but before we even get there:

Indonesia and Philippines were having a tender moment when HWS America (as in the Hetalia personification that is Alfred F. Jones) walks in calling out "MY LITTLE BROWN BROTHER!"

Indonesia entered his Joker arc because he recalled how HWS America dumped the Philippines in a human zoo at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. There was an explicit panel of Philippines in Igorot* dress and a painfully forlorn bearing.

What "triggered" Indonesia was when, after the flashback, Piri goes up to Indonesia and asks him if he's a Bolshevist 🥺 (the idea was PH being brainwashed by Red Scare propaganda). Cue kabedon moment from Indonesia, and basically a yandere walk down "memory lane."

I did not have it in me to finish reading that comic...

*Igorot is an outdated umbrella term for the upland indigenous peoples of Northern Luzon

Aside from the clearly intended shock value of that depiction, I was taken aback by the painful lack of objectivity on her part when it came to the reading of history. To be fair on Desa, she never specialized in history studies, so it was only courteous that we could not expect her to have as developed of a critical reading as trained academics of history. Unfortunately, that was precisely why I disagreed with the popular notion of Desa as both a great researcher and a great storyteller of her research — all the more when Maaf was just the mangafication of certain Wikipedia articles.

To be fair as well on Wikipedia, it was, at best, a satisfactory jumpstart into more in-depth reading, and we could give it the benefit of the doubt that revisions had since been made to at least some of the articles that Desa relied on while making Maaf (more than 10 years is more than enough time for change). Nevertheless, the articles themselves did not teach users how to scrutinize the sources — most especially the biases of the sources’ author/s — utilized in building up the information.

That mattered because much of the retrospect narratives about the St. Louis Fair had a tendency of raising awareness through the newspaper articles that covered the exhibition at the time. These chronicled the impressions of the visiting authors, who likely (and I say likely because we would have to more exhaustively discern their personal politics one by one) were biased in favor of the “benevolent assimilation” of the Philippines — and the sights that they beheld only validated it further. They did not, however, explain why these Philippine indigenous peoples were brought in in the first place — information that could have further cemented Desa's reputation had she truly spent the efforts, even while understandably juggling other commitments as we all do. Instead, she only perpetuated the habit of sacrificing the veracity of equally important, finer details to the bigger picture in order to sensationalize righteous fury against colonialism.

The 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair was also formally known as the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, giving away its purpose as a commemoration. More appropriately, it was the centennial anniversary (technically delayed by a year though) of the acquisition of French Louisiana, expanding the territorial bounds of the United States. Additionally, the point of a world’s fair was to showcase the achievements of a nation, and one could also think of it as the sale of a fever dream — what more for a fast-growing, fledgling power the likes of the United States, itself a former colony? On another note, the St. Louis World’s Fair was not the only one of its kind so no, the US is not that original lmao.

One could thus see how the inclusion of a dedicated exhibit to the newly acquired colony that was the Philippines neatly fit into the themes of a world's fair centralized on the US. It was all the more a paramount topic of debate, with prominent Americans the likes of Mark Twain (here are selected excerpts, but I highly recommend reading the entirety of his To the Person Sitting in the Darkness) publishing anti-US imperialism opinions, even after the endgame of the Philippine-American War essentially favored the pro-imperialists. While dissent from the American side at the time remains poorly studied AND THAT'S ON OVERRULE BY BIAS, we at least have a glimpse, if mostly obscure still, of its existence.

If we can assume that it must have indeed been a prominent discourse in America, loud enough to get the White House furrowing its brows, then it's plausible to understand how it was of utmost importance that the the Philippine exhibit was to be carefully — because, in a way, America had to sell itself as the "lesser evil" vs notable "rivals" — curated while still ultimately corroborating assimilation of the Philippines. Thus, enter Truman Hunt, the man who oversaw "the Igorot Village" of the St. Louis Fair, having won the hearts of the native Igorots for a powerful reason:

Section from Claire Prentice, The Lost Tribe of Coney Island: Headhunters, Luna Park, and the Man Who Pulled Off the Spectacle of the Century, New York, NY: Amazon Publishing, 2014.

While the cholera epidemic that occurred at the onset of the American Colonial Period was arguably the worst in the history of cholera epidemic management in the Philippines, I want to make it very, very clear that it was not the first and only wave that hit the archipelago. There had been a handful in the prior century alone — all of such magnitudes that it embedded a deep collective trauma; farmers refused to harvest their crops for fear of infection, tragically enabling famines and contributing starvation & nutrition deficiencies on top of a viral & swift killer (the experience of severe, rapid dehydration is such that one can fall dead within hours of infection).

Given such an imaginably harrowing experience (and it was an awfully painful topic to study as someone who got infected with and survived COVID-19 and has family working as frontliners), how could the natives turn away a stranger with such miraculous powers? Who knows how they comprehended it (e.g. a benevolent sign from heaven they must accept) because, unfortunately, we have yet to discuss preserved accounts on that matter, if any at all.

What is known, however, is that there were Igorots who were not just enamored by the "opportunity of a lifetime," but the selected lucky candidates clearly expressed their consent to participate:

More sections from Prentice, The Lost Tribe of Coney Island.

I will quickly add that, unfortunately, a few members of the Igorot delegation died from illness in making the trip, and Hunt aged like milk over the years (fell into the trap of capitalism in pushing for more subsequent exhibit trips, to the point that less care was extended to the Igorots and he was ultimately arrested for embezzlement). Given that our scope remains to be the 1904 St. Louis Fair, any signs of abuse inflicted upon the Igorots during their stay based on preserved photographs is simply not clear. To assume that they were in a pitiable state would be to enforce a presentist reading that might betray not just their memories & experiences but also their right to self-determination.

EDIT (01/02/24): A good example to demonstrate what I mean in analyzing photographs, here's an article on the author's personal, genealogical research into the Igorots — specifically, the Suyoc — who were at the St. Louis Fair.

It truly is ironic that a Filipino is making these points as if to defend the United States as a whole (no I am not, and if you think I do, lumayas ka). I agree that white people gawking over the peoples of the Philippines with such fascination that borders fetishism warrants all the eye-rolls. At the same time — and it is even more ironic that I am pointing this out as a lowland, Christianized Tagalog based in the metro (not just any urbanized part of the country) — there is a character of patronizing these indigenous communities in the unspoken assumption that their participation is the fault of their ignorance. Pay attention, once more, to the demographics that constituted the Philippine exhibit in the 1904 St. Louis Fair — what kind of "Filipinos" were included and who were left out? There were also Negritos*, Visayans, and Muslims from Mindanao (historically referred to as Moros) in the same event, yet we hardly hear about their experiences. Perhaps it might have to do with how they were considered "more civilized" than these upland groups.

*OUTDATED term (and please blame the Spanish for it); these are the Aeta.

I understand Desa's reservations against US imperialism and sympathies for communities marginalized by Western colonization. I just hope that I was able to clarify as best as I could why I was so taken aback in how she depicted the Hetalia personification of my country the way she did. I agree that, as far as I ever got to interact with her, she is generally very polite and kind. That's why I gave her the benefit of the doubt when she approached me in DM to apologize for how her narrative choice was offensive. As someone who despised red tape in academia, I tried to talk to her about how there were valid reasons as to why the American Colonial Period was considered a mixed blessing, even by PH historians.

Instead, she pulled a complete 180.

She said that — to a Filipino who condemned imperialism (no matter who started it), who also happened to study history as a profession, and was also a Hetalia fan who wants to explore Hetalia narratives differently from what was popularized. Half of the reason was because some fandom takes left a bad taste, like eating a dish with ingredients that even Gordon Ramsay would tell you shouldn’t go together; the other half was because I saw things differently and wanted to express it because why not?

I want to say it's not necessary to bring up something from a private conversation, but I will anyway to reiterate that my issue is not that she isn't nice. Bluntly, however, the way she said those words so formally did creep me out, but ultimately, my issue lies in how her biases have led her into making off-putting takes from time to time. I will not say more, but Trust Me? was not the only Twitter comic by Desa that got bombastic side-eyes.

And if only because Sukarno got dragged in, I felt compelled to briefly debunk that as well: even he initially viewed the United States in a very positive light: “The United States occupies a very distinguished part, a very distinguished place, in the hearts of the Indonesian people.” That was uttered in 1961, and it took a very specific historical context to instigate a complete shift by 1964:

Sections from Vincent Bevins, The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade & the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World, New York: PublicAffairs, 2021, 121-123.

EDIT (01/02/24): Note that Desa was citing Sukarno's later sentiments in the late 1960s as her reason for characterizing Indonesia as such in her comic. However, the setting of the story was the late 1920s (Indonesia's visit was based on Tan Malaka's abscondence to the Philippines). I'd dare say the anachronism was not due to oversight but a deliberate choice in using a certain fictional character — namely HWS Indonesia — as propaganda for Desa's anti-Americanism.

It's definitely depressing to think about all the "lost" history & culture that thrived before the arrival of white colonizers. It's why I'm surprised that, for a fiction work, she didn't project all that anger onto Spain instead — it had to specifically be the United States. Was it because they basically cockblocked Philippine independence, even though Spain practically sold the Philippines to the US? The implication that Spain should be permitted to wash its hands clean of all accountability was an awkward message to convey.

I understand that nothing could be 100% accurate (I'm actually quoting Desa defending herself on that matter) in fiction, but the level of projection coming from a certain non-Filipino reading Philippine history was so silly. And again, how did it all justify the explicit depiction of HWS Philippines as an indigenous man in a human zoo? (END OF EDIT)

As my professors will also never tire of saying: you can disagree with a historian’s interpretations but you can never disagree with the evidence in themselves. You don’t have to morally agree either, and I can guarantee you that many Filipinos do not. I, myself, resented the endgame of the particular war that brought that period about in the first place. How dare, then, she said it was “not her place” to defend US imperialism, while granting herself the freedom to express her country’s feelings on the matter?

Oh, it’s all just fiction? I do not condone the subsequent treatment she received, but why then couldn’t she stop trying to “educate” NLID shippers? I do not know how both sides talked to one another, only that what caught me eye was: Why does everyone else have to respect her fiction while she gets to disrespect others’ fictions for not aligning with hers?

EDIT (01/20/24): Just to clarify further on that point — over a decade ago, she went ham in the comment section of someone's (APH) America x (fem!OC) Indonesia. That ship is not in my lore either simply because I follow a totally different route. To cut to the chase, she took that fanart very personally and infodumped on US war crimes that involved Indonesia.

I know Tan Malaka started the whole North Indonesia agenda, but come on, neither was it Desa's place to just treat HWS Philippines the way she did. An Indonesian schooling other Indonesians on ID history is not surprising, but an Indonesian schooling a Filipino on PH history? I'd be humbled if they had the credentials. She didn't and, unless she enrolled herself in a graduate program, she still doesn't.

By all technicalities, she can’t ship IDPH because the Philippine government was (unfortunately and grossly) complicit in the chain of events that led to the 1965-66 genocides in Indonesia. Yet, she does despite of that fact. We thus circle back to Trust Me? and how that was a manifestation of her stubborn refusal to acknowledge any nuances by projecting HWS Indonesia as a self-proclaimed savior of HWS Philippines from the beguile of US neocolonialism.

I empathize with her anger. I'm sorry that the US government by extent enabled what her family went through. I agree that it's not her place to defend them; in fact, she shouldn't. But when even the so-called "highest of Malay nations*" is worth her neutrality, how can she expect me to forgive her?

*That is literally what the Philippines is to her; I know this because she explicitly said so to me in DM. DO NOT ASK FOR RECEIPTS, I am not comfortable revealing that particular conversation.

I cannot — in fact, NO ONE SHOULD — afford to be neutral about Duterte or Marcos, etc., and for her to be so flippant about her privilege (by way of ethnicity/citizenship/cultural upbringing) to be neutral** about Philippine politics, while simultaneously NAGGING ON EVERYBODY TO RESPECT INDONESIAN POLITICS, is annoying at best and plain selfish at worst.

**Also explicitly said to me in DM. Again, DO NOT ASK FOR RECEIPTS.

(END OF EDIT)

I’m not Indonesian but I do not have it in me to politely accuse a native Indonesian of allowing their personal biases to misread their own history. As a Filipino, however, while I'm not surprised by the reductionist chronicling of the histories & cultures of the Philippines, I am at a loss for words over the continuing idolization for Desa & Maaf, when she was not the best and most reliable narrator, especially given her negligence in representing indigenous peoples through her comics.

I mean, guys, I'm not saying this as if the Trust Me? comic was the first and only instance when this was literally Maaf canon that sat comfortably in the internet for over a decade, and continues to be appraised as THE BIBLE OF HISTORICAL HETALIA.

EDIT (01/20/24 — originally added via a reblog): I cannot believe this needs to be said because this is the consequence of when Hetalia fans take their fiction too literally because creators have made careless takes.

There were SEAtalians joking about how the Yolngu are a dead people.

I repeat.

THERE WERE SEATALIANS JOKING ABOUT HOW THE YOLNGU ARE A DEAD PEOPLE.

(END OF EDIT)

So as 2023 comes to a close we enter 2024, I'd like to conclude this post with the following points:

At best, Wikipedia is a satisfactory jumping point, but please believe me when I say no historian will respect you for (over-)relying on Wikipedia. And given that anyone with a decent device & internet signal can access Wikipedia, Desa is just not a GOAT in historical research.

At worst, idolizing Maaf patronizes the work of historians. It doesn't help that PH historians have been targets of harassment because of dis-/misinformation campaigns. I bring this up because it's already bad enough to have to confront that reality outside of fandom spaces on a regular basis in standing our ground for more just historical truths. I hope that folks understand why that's a particularly sensitive struggle for me, and why receiving such comments like the one I shared above deeply hurt. She was not apologetic about that — and every time she would post about apologizing for the moments she has offended others, or when others compliment her for being so open-minded, I cannot help but feel bitter.

Other BIPOC — yes, not just other SEAsians and that's on literally drawing nations other than SEA — have spoken up on the matter. If you can talk about how you learned so much from Desa, you can also learn as much from other perspectives. I hope that in raising all of this, more SEAtalians understand that we risk othering non-SEA BIPOC.

The idolization of Maaf (and the creator in question) is personally far more off-putting than the problematic points of Maaf or any comic she has ever made, because I think she caved to peer pressure instead of learning to wield her fiction more sensitively without being too reliant of the opinions of those she has pleased. Not even Hidekaz Himaruya writes his nationverse characters like that — the one time I’ll admit that canon trumps fanon.

I’m not stopping people from liking Maaf or Desa anyway. I just cannot help but take issue with how the SEAtalia fandom feels less of a safe & inclusive community than it is a cult centered on one person — almost as if her fiction is unquestionable canon and anyone who disagrees gets the boot. Once again, I do not condone the subsequent treatment she received in retaliation, but frankly that's just not what I'm addressing here.

I'm also not saying it's wrong to give words of reassurance and validation to people you admire, only that some of you need to understand you're forcing a parasocial relationship with your idols. It may feel good to you, but please be mindful of the unwarranted pressure it imposes.

I apologize for dumping all of this at literally the end of the year. I want to let it all go in a manner that is clear, concise, and not overwhelming to digest. I do hope that my candid thoughts will push the fandom one step forward in critically consuming media without having to resort to crab-mentality tendencies — because it's been especially hard seeing the demeaning takes made about the Philippines in this fandom.

[dieinct]

do you have a post about b a b e l? I haven't read it yet but would loooove to hear why you personally dislike it

legend thank you. some spoilers below.

good things about babel

(sort of a good thing): interesting magic worldbuilding conceit. the idea is that lexical gaps across translation power magic, and that as europe gets semantically linguistically closer, magic is fading - time to for the institution to exploit east asian languages! this concept conceptually fucks. however every single thing about the execution was awful that this actually pisses me off more, because i want to read the book that actually does this and now i never can because this came out first.

bad things about babel, in approximately ascending order of how agonizing they make the experience of reading it

literally the basic execution. the prose is clumsy; it's historical fiction that's trying to be historical-voiced and the character voices are completely indistinguishable from 1. one another 2. your average twitter user. this is incredibly embarrassing for the author but it doesn't even seem to be something on her radar to be embarrassed about; this is the first thing i noticed as off and the thing that kept me closest to DNFing throughout. if she would like to teach intro colonialist theory seminars with modern jargon and terms then the author could have done that as an academic. it would have been really lovely to have something of a window into how this issue was being discussed at the time! what frameworks contemporary colonized and colonial people used to understand their own resistance to british rule... but absolutely no research on this was done (if it was, none of it was in the text)

apes the craft of more effectively written books without understanding what made them effective, which is just genuinely agonizing to read. particularly notable here are its attempted utilization of footnotes but it is not jsmn. yk. there's a chapter that's just one sentence, with a footnote that takes up the whole page with a bunch of diagrams, and then the next chapter repeats the previous sentence with a comma and goes on into the prose... you didn't have to do that... (this one is admittedly kind of BEC-y) (also the copyediting was not great throughout i found a number of problems. that is not really the author's fault but it felt like the book was trying to literally precisely gaslight me about what good prose looks like)

ahistorical in the extreme. again, i cannot express this effectively but it really demonstrates a lack of basic effort and care throughout. as this reviewer notes regarding oysters, the author seems incapable or unwilling to imagine how people might have thought or felt about something if it's different from how she feels about it. the author's note devotes like 7x as much page time apologizing for slightly altering how long it takes to get from oxford to london as it does for CHANGING THE CORONATION DATE OF QUEEN VICTORIA in a book that's in large part about the expansion and impacts of GLOBAL COLONIAL EXPLOITATION. one of these things impacts the part of the world she can clearly imagine - her oxford, where they serve oysters - and the other one has massive global implications.

NONE OF THESE CHARACTERS WHO ARE TRANSLATORS CARE ENOUGH ABOUT LANGUAGE TO DELIGHT IN LANGUAGE. all of the discussion of translation is pretty rote, but also like... my friends who are into language and i joke, we play with sounds and words and cross-language puns. none of the characters seemed to actually enjoy their academic passion. stressed me out on their behalves (also no one, like, studies, but this is typical of the genre)

this isn't really a full point but it annoyed me SO badly it's going in here. MC describes a later-revealed-to-be-bad female character as something like 'giving feminists a bad name'. A) it is set in the like 1830s and the word feminist makes no sense in context B) yOU WROTE HER ACTING LIKE THAT, SHE IS NOT AN INDEPENDENT PERSON WITH FREE WILL. YOU MADE HER DO THAT. basically you can clearly see the author's strings moving the characters around, the author tries SO hard to make sure you like and dislike all the correct characters that it is like can you please just let them move around and act like human beings.

by extension - incredibly flat characterization. the characters move to the beat of the plot, rather than seeming internally consistent. the MC's father is villainous in a very specific way - condescending white man's burden pushing for economic/cultural influence and assimilation of talented ~colonials into the imperial core - right up until the MC needs a justified reason to murder him, at which point he is magically revealed to have been a virulently racist war hawk trying to spur on the deaths of thousands. like, sure, okay, racist one way will be racist another, you could do this effectively - but again, you can see the author's hand in these matters and the timing of these revelations, and she is clumsy with her dolls.

i am not an expert in these matters personally but i definitely did find it ironic that babel's thesis is "empires are bad!" and then it immediately undercuts itself discussing china like "unless they are empires run by poc, then the protagonists should root for them" like skill issue all empires are bad definitionally. thanks.

i was thoroughly underwhelmed by its attempt to engage in class politics. really embarrassing.

it's dark academia with no homoeroticism in sight

[nataliescatorccio]

genuinely asking why is tumblr trying to twitterify itself

staff have this idea that tumblr is 'too confusing' for new users and that's why tumblr isn't as profitable as other social media sites, so their grand plan is apparently to make it as similar to twitter as possible. personally, i think they're going to get themselves into a hole where they'll never be 'twitter enough' to convert people who would rather be over there whilst alienating current users who are on tumblr precisely because they don't want anything to do with twitter

[turntechshitass]

first of all, sorry that you're getting all the harrassment that you're getting. it is not deserved and i hope you make the best out of it. i also hope like other users said here that you stay away from the adult circles and engage in the content as safely for you as possible.

i wanted to ask about the harrassment precisely. i remember back on twitter when you hadn't been outed that you participated in the dogpiling and contributed to the harrassment of other hstwt accounts who got outed as having private proship accounts. i'm not here for another cancellation or to make fun of you for it. pressures from anti circles to participate in the dogpiling exist, to fit in and to avoid being outed, or even repressing it. it doesn't justify it, but it's somewhat understandable. i know personally of other proship hstwt adults who faced or still face pretty bad harrassment for exactly the same reasons you are getting harrassed now. the feelings of betrayal and distrust can be really hard to handle. i feel like this would be a great opportunity to voice your opinion if it has changed since then, how you feel about what happened in the past or what you think about the general behavior of usual fandom spaces, leading to processes of "witch hunt", infiltration, constant moral questioning of all and everyone... which aren't helpful at all in actually ensuring safety and boundaries being respected. many thanks.

I used to be a hard-core anti, but I wouldn't go into people's dms and whatnot telling people to off themselves. I did though believe a lot of their ideas that they were terrible people and hurt sa victims, blah blah blah. The hivemind is pretty strong in the anti circles. you just believe whatever your friend tells you (thats why most antis dont even know what a proshipper actually is) think harassing people online over things like drawings and ships is toxic and doesn't help anyone. telling a proshipper to kill themselves will not help them get better. People just like hurting others and being vile so they look for people where they can justify it because they're "bad people" and "deserve it". When you ask them to stop harassing you they just tell you to stop doing the behavior they don't like. You have to walk on fucking eggshells in the anti community because everyone is actively searching for a mistake or take they dont like so they can harass and make threads on you for it. Everything is also extremely performative. I do not like how these people claim to be understanding and tolerant and then do this. Antis always say mental health is important and shit until the mental health issues makes you start doing things they don't like. People have so much fucking sympathy towards people who cut or people who have eds but not people who draw/consume certain content of fictional fucking characters to cope with their sexual trauma??? And they always say "well it's a bad coping mechanism stop it " but they've never told a cutter to die because of their bad coping mechanism??? Make it fucking make sense

[earlgreytea68]

Ruminations on Social Media Platforms

Since Tumblr has decided that it Needs to Make Money and the Only Way to Make Money is to turn all users into Mindless Servants of the Algorithm, I've been thinking a lot about social media platforms.

Tbh, I'm always thinking a lot about social media platforms, it's kind of part of my field of scholarly endeavor, if you will. But I think a lot about them not in the abstract but as an active user of many of them. And Tumblr is my faaaavorite. And of course so much of what makes Tumblr my favorite is what makes it "unprofitable" or whatever. I put these words in quotes because the definition of "unprofitable" is an extremely narrow one in our capitalist society. Could a website that has allowed many people to form communities / relationships / friendships / connections with people they would otherwise never have met in ways that have vastly improved their lives really be considered unprofitable, ever? Could a website that gives people any moments of pleasure or joy or delight be considered unprofitable? Could a website that sometimes makes you think or at least give you pause be considered unprofitable?

Yeah, it's also a website that's, you know, a hellsite, but, like, it's on the internet and it's made up of people, c'est la vie.

I left Twitter when the Elon Musk thing went down, partly because in those days he was actively taunting Twitter's userbase and it felt a little like I was just on this social media platform being bullied by its owner? Idk, I didn't like it, so I decided to take a break until things calmed down. I really thought he'd get bored and sell it, so kudos to Elon Musk for not doing that. But, anyway, sometimes I think about going back to Twitter. I miss my friends there, I miss knowing what they're up to. Twitter was actually, let's face it, terrible for keeping up with people but Tweetdeck, where you could put people in chronological order and better organize things, was great for it! (As usual, the only way to make the social media platform usable was to use it in a way it wished you wouldn't.)

But I've been going back to Twitter recently to find Tourdust content and I was reminded that Twitter is just...awful. Like, it is almost impossible to have an encounter with Twitter that doesn't drag you down a rabbit hole of terrible discourse of people being awful. I fully admit this is my own fault, for clicking on things I know are going to upset me, but this is why it's better for me just to be off Twitter entirely. Twitter's functionality makes it way too easy to trace and follow outrage, and then you end up just hate-clicking deeper and deeper into these spirals. My mental health is much happier for having given up Twitter, because I'm not a strong enough person not to get sucked into all the unhealthy snippiness of the place.

The reason I've been on Twitter looking for Tourdust updates is precisely because it's better-organized than Tumblr, easier to find the stuff you want to find (in among all the other stuff you wish you wouldn't find, of course). So Tumblr's poor searchability is why I was driven to Twitter, BUT I've come to the conclusion that in a lot of ways that is a feature and not a bug. I can see the ripples of a bunch of kerfuffles that have happened in bandom recently, they lap delicately up against my dash, but by the time they get to me they're the tiniest of waves instead of a tsunami, and if I wanted to figure out what went down, it would take me actual effort. I'm sure I could do it, of course -- it's not like it's utterly impossible -- but it's not as frictionless as figuring out on Twitter. I have to make more of an active effort to go in search of the drama, it's not just RIGHT THERE blinking at me to click on it, and that makes me better able to resist it. I am at heart a lazy person, after all.

So, like, in a way Tumblr doesn't function right, and in a way Tumblr functions beautifully. It all depends on what you're using Tumblr for. And Tumblr was always my escape platform, even when I was still active on Twitter. When I was feeling anxious or sad or upset, I would scroll my Tumblr dash and it would be mindless and soothing and endless (I follow a lot of people. This is for me the key to Tumblr, but see, it all depends on how you're using Tumblr! They don't all share my interests anymore, but I don't care. I just want to sometimes not be in the shouting match that Twitter seems to devolve into so often). And so this is why I feel like it does make sense that there should always be multiple social media platforms in the world. This idea that social media platforms seem to have that they should be the ULTIMATE ONLY ONE is so harmful. Different platforms are for different things. Chill out. (Of course, this is the conquer-the-world mentality formed by capitalism. I am really worried what's going to happen when Netflix realizes it can't keep growing subscribers indefinitely because the population of the planet is finite. Does it know this? I don't think it knows this...)

I was thinking of all this not just because of Tumblr's algorithm thing but because everyone's fussing about Threads, and like, in a way I get it. Clearly I still have a need for Twitter in my life even if I'm simultaneously aware how dysfunctional it is for me. I get that everyone's still trying to find a way to replace Twitter. But first of all, I dislike Facebook as a company so intensely, like, a lot. (I refuse to call it Meta. That's how much I dislike it lol). Second of all, the fact that people seem to think it's a good thing that Threads integrates with your Instagram, I'm just like, ......imagine behaving on Twitter exactly the same way you behave on Instagram? What??? This doesn't even computer to me lol. The same platform that wants you to post photos of your kids should be integrated with the one where people are constantly just yelling at each other over nothing???? Those seem like two completely different places to me?????

Facebook is obsessed with the idea that everyone needs to be Exactly The Same on every corner of the internet, and I just do not agree with that at all. Imagine me being the same on LinkedIn as I am on Tumblr. Like, God, what a boring world that would be!! What a boring life I would be leading!! I guess some people ARE that way, and either that is awesome that they are so fully themselves at work as to just post porn they've written, or it's that they never have any interests that aren't totally aligned with work, which just...is astonishing to me.

What I REALLY think Threads is doing -- and honestly what I think Facebook essentially wants -- is to turn all of us into some curated facsimile of ourselves. I mean, all social media does that, but if you only have one facsimile of yourself, then you never have any other aspects to explore. And if you only have one facsimile of yourself, it's probably going to be the one most designed to make yourself money. Like, isn't that what everyone wants to be doing these days? Using social media to make money? I saw people talking about Threads, and every single one of them was talking about building their brand.

So in a way I am totally sympathetic to Tumblr's problem. They're right. Social media is just a way to sell us stuff now, and if they're not selling us stuff, it's a "problem." Capitalism has finally succeeded in commodifying literally every relationship we have. Literally every single one. And we kind of just let it happen, like there was no other possible way the internet could ever have been designed but to create a handful of billionaires making money off of the fact that people want to feel connected to each other. And then taking that fact and making it all about "but what's the point of connection without making me some more billions?"

Anyway. I wish things weren't like that. Tumblr still is my favorite. Who knows what happens next. Sigh.

[radiomanique]

hello tumblr : open rants about grieving myself as a twitter user

i joined twitter in november 2019, around the same time i developed agency and autonomous thoughts. a girl from my school had suggested i try it out, and like everyone, i did not understand the concept; and like everyone, i came back to it a few weeks later, and it became an integral part of my life ever since.

i don’t exactly know whether twitter altered my brain chemistry, or if i had a brain chemistry that was initially compatible with twitter and pursued its own path to exhaustion. i have always been a very talkative person; my parents would plan an hour at the end of the day just to listen to me talk about my day in extensive detail. i never, ever, ever shut up. and that simultaneously must’ve been the reason why i joined twitter AND the reason i started writing : if i don’t have friends i can talk to my day in extensive detail about, i can tell the entire world.

i haven’t been able to leave twitter since i started. it wasn’t even that i tried : i defined myself by being a twitter user (by the way, how horribly hilarious to define yourself by being a “user” of something and insist it isn’t a drug). the one time i tried to leave, i came back after a month, not because i experienced withdrawal, but simply because i decided i didn’t like using instagram as my main social media. i told myself, and others, when they asked why i was so inintelligible : 

i am a twitter.

(twitter as in twitter account, or twitter as in ‘one who tweets’ ? i don’t know myself. i’d like to keep that ambiguity. i’ve been intertwined with the accounts i’ve had, my usernames have been enmeshed in me the same way a family name. “hi, i’m Cassandre, known as chi3ur on twitter.com, “oui chieur avec un trois” [originally in French])

i think it would be intellectually dishonest, though, to deny that twitter has changed the way i think. it has given a parasocial flavor to almost all my relationships, including ones with people i know in real life. it has made my humor and sometimes my everyday babbling absolutely incomprehensible to people who didn’t have “the reference”, but it made me feel like i was a part of something. it was an identity marker; something that as someone who has been excluded from most if not all large groups of people, i could brandish and say “look! look! i’m a real person too!”. 

i haven’t always had a good relationship with the people on twitter. i have been harassed, doxxed, threatened, i’ve had to leave my hometown for a few months because of how bad it got. yet, i never had an issue with the platform itself. it always found its way back to me, and i eventually managed to curate an experience that was so euphorizing to me.

as i am writing this, the “twitter ship” is currently sinking. like musicians on the titanic, my most prized followed accounts, and often friends, are providing this one last part of entertainment before the app/site completely shuts down. it is rumoured to give out during the night, and by tomorrow morning, i may wake up and find my tidbits of personal history from the past year or so has been wiped out from existence (yes, i did request an archive, i hope it isn’t too late to do so).

i saw it coming.

i read it in the early signs, like a religious person would try and predict the Apocalypse : i followed software updates as though i knew anything about programming, read stories of the employees upon employees fired, and once i started mourning this website, it got me thinking :

who am i if not a twitter ? 

my brain chemistry that i mentioned being compatible with twitter, moreso than the incessant rambling, was precisely that i felt compelled to share my every thought with the world. over the years, it got to a point where my first, jolt-like reaction, when i experienced a well-worded or articulate thought, was to tweet it. minor event happened during the day ? tweet it. overwhelming realization about who i am as a person ? tweet it. witty play on words, or, as i’d say, “banger”? tweet it. the muscle that required me to think was inextricably intertwined with the routine that went “open twitter, compose tweet, write down thought, tweet”.

over the past few days, i have been finding myself more and more reminiscent of who i was in my past lives, that is to say, any year prior to 2020. i listen to music from when i was in middle school. i dream about dating someone almost exactly like my first ever partner. but what scares me the most is that i’ve started to unravel the layers and layers of irony, sarcasm, rizz, memes, that i’ve coated myself and my feelings in to survive them. and now that all of this is tumbling (lol) down, i find that the thought to tweet instinct is, in fact, not that natural to who i am as a person. i find in me the child who spoke with an unnaturally elaborate language that i’d learnt in books, who used proper punctuation and prided myself on being able to carry long-winded reasonings.

is it that child that is sitting here today, in my very adult apartment that i rent with my very adult money earnt at my very adult job, typing for the first time in a long time a text that is longer than 240 characters ? 

i prided myself for so long in being able to kill my inner child. but i find with both ecstasy and horror that they are very much still alive, that the person i prided myself in inventing from scratch was actually an articulate jumble of pieces i picked from others and from myself, and now the headquarters of twitter are closing and my mask is falling off, the app is slowing down, and i am more and more cringe, but i know that this makes me feel good in a way that is much deeper than the surface-level personality i assembled the past three years, and if i need to know anything about myself, it is this :

i am not a twitter.

[finlaure13]

As It Happens

Why those AI-generated portraits all over social media have artists on edge

Apps like Lensa are powered by AI trained on images by real artists — without their permission

Sheena Goodyear - CBC Radio

Posted: December 08, 2022

AI art

From left to right: A Greg Rutkowski-style image generarted by the Stable Diffusion AI, a portrait of YouTuber Casey Owen Neistat generated by the Lensa app, and a generic avatar from Lensa. (Stable Diffusion/Lexica, Lensa/Twitter)

Greg Rutkowski makes his living creating detailed fantasy art depicting epic scenes of swords and sorcery.

He labours for hours on his freelance illustrations for major gaming titles like Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering and Horizon: Forbidden West.

But an art generator powered by artificial intelligence can churn out a decent reproduction of his style in mere seconds.

"I was terrified that it was being made so quickly, and with really better results over time," Rutkowski told As It Happens host Nil Köksal.

Rutkowski, who is based in Piensk, Poland, is one of many artists speaking out about the dangers of AI-generated art as the technology becomes more precise, accessible and popular.

These AIs are often trained on datasets, or collections, of millions of images scraped from the internet, including ones that are copyrighted or watermarked. But the artists who created them never consented for their work to be used — and they don't get a cut of the profit.

"We could say that, ethically, it's stealing," Rutkowski said.

The problem with those pretty avatars

Rutkowski's name is one of the most popular prompts on the AI art generator Stable Diffusion, which launched in August, according to Technology Review.

Stable Diffusion works like this: You type in a phrase or list of keywords describing the type of image you'd like to see, and then the AI generates an image that fits the description.

For example, you could write: "Powerful wizard battles fire-breathing dragon Greg Rutkowski" and get an illustration that, at first glance, looks like something Rutkowski drew himself.

According to the website Lexica, which tracks Stable Diffusion images and prompts, Rutkowski's name has been used as a prompt more than 93,000 times. Some of the generated images even have his signature, he said.

"I was really confused for people that were searching or exploring art and then came across images that weren't mine, but were signed by my name," he said.

Greg Rutkowski art

This is one of Greg Rutkowski's actual illustrations. He is known for his unique style of epic fantasy artwork. (Greg Rutkowski)

Enter Lensa, the app that's been taking over Facebook and Instagram feeds in recent weeks.

This photo-editing app has been on the market for some time, but has recently seen a surge in popularity when it launched a new feature powered by Stable Diffusion.

A user can upload a handful of selfies, and Lensa will generate a series of avatars in different artistic styles. For $7.99 US, you can get 50 unique portraits.

Karla Ortiz, a San Francisco-based concept artist, says people using apps like Lensa need to understand that the avatars they're getting are the product of real labour by millions of uncompensated artists.

"I think they need to understand that those images look really good because artists' work was stolen to make it good," she said.

Karla Ortiz and Greg Rutkowski

Artists Karla Ortiz and Greg Rutkowski both say their work has been used in datasets to train artificial intelligence to generate art. (Submitted by Karla Ortiz, Submitted by Greg Rutkowski)

Ortiz first noticed her work showing up in AI datasets months ago on smaller, niche software. But she says it really exploded with the launch of Stable Diffusion.

"I found a lot of my work there. Almost every artist I know who's a peer, who's a professional, who's been working for a while, whose work is recognizable, was in those datasets," she said.

"Furthermore, I started seeing that people were using our full names to generate imagery."

She says none of the companies that have used her work to train their AI models have contacted for permission. But even if she could somehow force them to extract her work from their datasets, it wouldn't really matter.

"The way that machine learning, you know, works, you can't even take it out. You can't unlearn your work once it's trained," she said.

AI dragon

This AI-generated image of a dragon uses artist Greg Rutkowski's name as a prompt. (Stable Diffusion/Lexica)

Neither Stability AI, the company that created Stable Diffusion, nor Prisma Labs, the company behind Lensa, responded to a request for comment from CBC.

Prisma Labs defended its AI art on Twitter, stating that AI-generated images "can't be described as exact replicas of any particular artwork."

"As cinema didn't kill theatre and accounting software hasn't eradicated the profession, AI won't replace artists but can become a great assisting tool," Prisma tweeted.

"We also believe that the growing accessibility of AI-powered tools would only make man-made art in its creative excellence more valued and appreciated, since any industrialization brings more value to handcrafted works."

Prisma Labs tweet

Prisma Labs, makers of Lensa, says AI will never replace human artists. (@PrismaAI/Twitter)

Is it legal?

Rutkowski and Ortiz are still considering what steps to take next. But whether they have any legal resources remains unclear.

Ken Clark, an intellectual property lawyer with Toronto-based law firm Aird and Berlis, says copyright infringement is a deeply complex subject, and the laws around it were crafted long before the proliferation of AI.

"You have to ask yourself: Who's doing the creating? Is it the person who is smart enough to create the computer software to go and analyze things … or is it the artist who you're taking these ideas from, right, in such a way that you've substantially reproduced their work?" he said.

But one thing is clear, he said. You can't copyright a "style" of work, only a piece of work itself.

Omens

Omens is an artwork by San Francisco's Karla Ortiz. (Karla Ortiz)

Daniel Anthony, a trademark and copyright lawyer with Toronto-based Smart & Biggar LLP, agrees.

"We can replace AI with a human as a thought exercise. If a human reviewed many photos and learned a style of an artist and then produced their own work from scratch in that style, it is not an infringement," he said in an email.

"Indeed, copyright is intended to inspire other creators, provided they make their own versions. Therefore, at its core, what these artist AI software does is likely not infringing."

But that doesn't mean an individual artist couldn't make a case against these companies.

"If the AI-produced work is 'changed enough' from any original source input, it will be very hard for the artist to claim infringement. However, if the AI work is substantially similar to any artists' prior work (such that it appears to be copied), then infringement may be present and legal remedies would likely be available," Anthony said.

Legal or not, it's ethically dubious, says Karina Vold, a University of Toronto associate professor who specializes in the philosophy of science and technology.

"At a minimum, companies should seek informed consent for the data that they use to train their machine learning algorithms," Vold said in an email.

"When it comes to works of art, these are not public property just because they may be publicly available online."

Artists are losing money

Ortiz, who works for big corporate clients, says she's not losing work to AI. But she says most smaller-scale artists that she knows are feeling the burn.

"I have a friend of mine from Romania. She was telling me a lot of illustrators there do a lot of work for musicians, and they're losing out now. They're cancelling commissions left and right because a lot of these musicians are just using [AI-generated art] as covers," she said.

Rutkowski says anyone who makes digital art could be impacted. Some organizations, including the San Francisco Ballet, are already using AI-generated art in their promotional materials.

"We get into this industry using our skills to sort of create better visual designs for movies, for games, for book covers," Rutkowski said. "And right now it's being replaced by AI-generated images."

Interview with Greg Rutkowski produced by Morgan Passi.

[plague-of-insomnia]

Yeah this post is so full of corporate bull-speak I can’t even begin to dive into it all.

But this?

Finally getting to read about this new tumblr bullshit. From one of the Reblog:

When I first joined this site in 2009, I was taken through a screen that asked about my interests and I got to pick 3 of those interests. It then showed me the top blogs who posted things related to my interests and I followed some of them. This gave my dash content. It was a lovely little tutorial on how to use the site and how to make it a place that felt like me. Somewhere along the way you seem to have stopped doing that, and thus your new users are apparently 'confused'.

This is STILL how it works. I literally made a new tumblr account completely from scratch unattached to my current one, only about 2 weeks ago, and it required that I pick topics and follow people before I could even get to my dashboard.

All they need to add is an explanation that tumblr doesn’t use an algorithm and that’s that.

New users are only confused bc rn all social media sites EXCEPT THIS ONE use an algorithm. And most people who use tumblr regularly, who have been here and will continue to do so for years (unless it changes completely) do so precisely because we do not LIKE other social media sites.

I cannot stand what twitter has become, even before Musk took over. Because I don’t feel like I can even see the crap I want to. IG is even worse. I stopped using it because I couldn’t ever find any of the content of people I followed and was just being shoved reel after reel after reel, which I do not fucking want.

Reddit has annoyed me for years by constantly sending me notifications I cannot dismiss for reddits I don’t follow and never have even visited, often that have nothing to do with my actual interests.

This sounds all well and good, like “we’ll help make sure newer and less popular creators are seen!!” And yet you keep making changes (like fucking the tags up majorly) that actually makes it even harder to be seen.

And generally, algorithms always favor popular blogs, or people who can afford to use at least half of their time doing the “right” things on social media to make sure they are picked up by the algorithm.

I use tumblr bc that’s exhausting and often futile, a never ending hamster wheel of trying to guess what words to use or when to post to make sure you’ll get picked up… and generally if you’re new or small or niche you will NEVER get picked up.

Stop

Fucking

Trying

To

Make

Tumblr

Like

Instagram or Facebook or Twitter

It’s survived so long largely because it is NOT like any of those sites.

I know it’s why I’ve been here, even when y’all majorly fucked the user experience by changing the navigation.

I get you wanna make this site more profitable. I do. But an algorithm system is NOT what this site needs.

Tumblr’s Core Product Strategy

Here at Tumblr, we’ve been working hard on reorganizing how we work in a bid to gain more users. A larger user base means a more sustainable company, and means we get to stick around and do this thing with you all a bit longer. What follows is the strategy we're using to accomplish the goal of user growth. The @labs group has published a bit already, but this is bigger. We’re publishing it publicly for the first time, in an effort to work more transparently with all of you in the Tumblr community. This strategy provides guidance amid limited resources, allowing our teams to focus on specific key areas to ensure Tumblr’s future.

The Diagnosis

In order for Tumblr to grow, we need to fix the core experience that makes Tumblr a useful place for users. The underlying problem is that Tumblr is not easy to use. Historically, we have expected users to curate their feeds and lean into curating their experience. But this expectation introduces friction to the user experience and only serves a small portion of our audience. 

Tumblr’s competitive advantage lies in its unique content and vibrant communities. As the forerunner of internet culture, Tumblr encompasses a wide range of interests, such as entertainment, art, gaming, fandom, fashion, and music. People come to Tumblr to immerse themselves in this culture, making it essential for us to ensure a seamless connection between people and content. 

To guarantee Tumblr’s continued success, we’ve got to prioritize fostering that seamless connection between people and content. This involves attracting and retaining new users and creators, nurturing their growth, and encouraging frequent engagement with the platform.

Our Guiding Principles

To enhance Tumblr’s usability, we must address these core guiding principles.

Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Retain and grow our creator base.

Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Improve the platform’s performance, stability, and quality.

Below is a deep dive into each of these principles.

Principle 1: Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Tumblr has a “top of the funnel” issue in converting non-users into engaged logged-in users. We also have not invested in industry standard SEO practices to ensure a robust top of the funnel. The referral traffic that we do get from external sources is dispersed across different pages with inconsistent user experiences, which results in a missed opportunity to convert these users into regular Tumblr users. For example, users from search engines often land on pages within the blog network and blog view—where there isn’t much of a reason to sign up. 

We need to experiment with logged-out tumblr.com to ensure we are capturing the highest potential conversion rate for visitors into sign-ups and log-ins. We might want to explore showing the potential future user the full breadth of content that Tumblr has to offer on our logged-out pages. We want people to be able to easily understand the potential behind Tumblr without having to navigate multiple tabs and pages to figure it out. Our current logged-out explore page does very little to help users understand “what is Tumblr.” which is a missed opportunity to get people excited about joining the site.

Actions & Next Steps

Improving Tumblr’s search engine optimization (SEO) practices to be in line with industry standards.

Experiment with logged out tumblr.com to achieve the highest conversion rate for sign-ups and log-ins, explore ways for visitors to “get” Tumblr and entice them to sign up.

Principle 2: Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

We need to ensure the highest quality user experience by presenting fresh and relevant content tailored to the user’s diverse interests during each session. If the user has a bad content experience, the fault lies with the product.

The default position should always be that the user does not know how to navigate the application. Additionally, we need to ensure that when people search for content related to their interests, it is easily accessible without any confusing limitations or unexpected roadblocks in their journey.

Being a 15-year-old brand is tough because the brand carries the baggage of a person’s preconceived impressions of Tumblr. On average, a user only sees 25 posts per session, so the first 25 posts have to convey the value of Tumblr: it is a vibrant community with lots of untapped potential. We never want to leave the user believing that Tumblr is a place that is stale and not relevant. 

Actions & Next Steps

Deliver great content each time the app is opened.

Make it easier for users to understand where the vibrant communities on Tumblr are. 

Improve our algorithmic ranking capabilities across all feeds. 

Principle 3: Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Part of Tumblr’s charm lies in its capacity to showcase the evolution of conversations and the clever remarks found within reblog chains and replies. Engaging in these discussions should be enjoyable and effortless.

Unfortunately, the current way that conversations work on Tumblr across replies and reblogs is confusing for new users. The limitations around engaging with individual reblogs, replies only applying to the original post, and the inability to easily follow threaded conversations make it difficult for users to join the conversation.

Actions & Next Steps

Address the confusion within replies and reblogs.

Improve the conversational posting features around replies and reblogs. 

Allow engagements on individual replies and reblogs.

Make it easier for users to follow the various conversation paths within a reblog thread. 

Remove clutter in the conversation by collapsing reblog threads. 

Explore the feasibility of removing duplicate reblogs within a user’s Following feed. 

Principle 4: Retain and grow our creator base.

Creators are essential to the Tumblr community. However, we haven’t always had a consistent and coordinated effort around retaining, nurturing, and growing our creator base.  

Being a new creator on Tumblr can be intimidating, with a high likelihood of leaving or disappointment upon sharing creations without receiving engagement or feedback. We need to ensure that we have the expected creator tools and foster the rewarding feedback loops that keep creators around and enable them to thrive.

The lack of feedback stems from the outdated decision to only show content from followed blogs on the main dashboard feed (“Following”), perpetuating a cycle where popular blogs continue to gain more visibility at the expense of helping new creators. To address this, we need to prioritize supporting and nurturing the growth of new creators on the platform.

It is also imperative that creators, like everyone on Tumblr, feel safe and in control of their experience. Whether it be an ask from the community or engagement on a post, being successful on Tumblr should never feel like a punishing experience.

Actions & Next Steps

Get creators’ new content in front of people who are interested in it. 

Improve the feedback loop for creators, incentivizing them to continue posting.

Build mechanisms to protect creators from being spammed by notifications when they go viral.

Expand ways to co-create content, such as by adding the capability to embed Tumblr links in posts.

Principle 5: Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Push notifications and emails are essential tools to increase user engagement, improve user retention, and facilitate content discovery. Our strategy of reaching out to you, the user, should be well-coordinated across product, commercial, and marketing teams.

Our messaging strategy needs to be personalized and adapt to a user’s shifting interests. Our messages should keep users in the know on the latest activity in their community, as well as keeping Tumblr top of mind as the place to go for witty takes and remixes of the latest shows and real-life events.  

Most importantly, our messages should be thoughtful and should never come across as spammy.  

Actions & Next Steps

Conduct an audit of our messaging strategy.

Address the issue of notifications getting too noisy; throttle, collapse or mute notifications where necessary.  

Identify opportunities for personalization within our email messages. 

Test what the right daily push notification limit is. 

Send emails when a user has push notifications switched off.

Principle 6: Performance, stability and quality.

The stability and performance of our mobile apps have declined. There is a large backlog of production issues, with more bugs created than resolved over the last 300 days. If this continues, roughly one new unresolved production issue will be created every two days. Apps and backend systems that work well and don't crash are the foundation of a great Tumblr experience. Improving performance, stability, and quality will help us achieve sustainable operations for Tumblr.

Improve performance and stability: deliver crash-free, responsive, and fast-loading apps on Android, iOS, and web.

Improve quality: deliver the highest quality Tumblr experience to our users. 

Move faster: provide APIs and services to unblock core product initiatives and launch new features coming out of Labs.

Conclusion

Our mission has always been to empower the world’s creators. We are wholly committed to ensuring Tumblr evolves in a way that supports our current users while improving areas that attract new creators, artists, and users. You deserve a digital home that works for you. You deserve the best tools and features to connect with your communities on a platform that prioritizes the easy discoverability of high-quality content. This is an invigorating time for Tumblr, and we couldn’t be more excited about our current strategy.

[kimtaegis]

i'm terrible with words, so i'm gonna quote some things that made me reflect and that i honestly agree

"You often see fans and celebrity-obsessed users fall into the same patterns for global movements as they do for stan wars - strategies to get your favs trending online or on the charts, tabloid tactics to disparage a celeb's competition with old receipts, and other engagement strategies are all fair game to fight for the oppressed. But I think we have to remember the goal here. Is it real change or to clock who is on the "right side?"

"Why are we reducing palestine sufferings to boycotts and competitions among celebs when real people are dead? Why are we pressuring K-pop artists? It's true that they have big platforms for the better reach and donation but are they actually gonna change anything when they didnt have actual control? People who actually needs to be pressured and addressed are local leaders and world leaders WHO CAN ACTUALLY MAKE CHANGE AND SAVE LIVES. Some people use this moment as "at least my favs speak up" "if my favs can speak up why cant your favs" so they can feed their egoistic self, flaunting your favs are "good people" so you can wave your moral flags. You just want to feel "save" stanning them. The goal isnt for celebs to speak up, boycotting and donations, while they can actually help, the ACTUAL goal is CEASEFIRE- for politicians and leaders to stop israel, stop supporting israel and stop funding them."

and also... all these years as their fans, we know that they support a cause like this, bc it's what a good person would do, and they are good people. we don't need to have "proof", this isn't about them, they are singers who love what they do and they save many many lives and help so many people doing their jobs. i keep thinking about namjoon's lyrics in RPWP. that was also a message for us, you know?

and i think that sometimes we forget that twitter is a bubble. i would have no idea about the boycott for McDonald's (and other brands) if i wasn't online there every day, always knowing what's going on. this never even showed up in the news on TV in my country, not even once. and the members aren't chronically online, they've never been like that, ever since 2013. people around me don't talk about that. so yeah.. He probably doesn't know, even if it feels absurd for some

sorry if this got long... since you're open to it, it's just my opinion and i'm not trying to change yours T-T if you don't want to answers asks about this anymore, you can also ignore this

well definitely thank you for being polite and not using a weirdly mean and aggressive tone when talking about your opinion, I appreciate it!

I totally agree with the first statement, it feels so freaking pointless to even argue about this lol, it’ll literally change nothing and that energy can for sure be used for better, more helpful things.

the second one is a little trickier because while I agree that the whole ego-trip thing is being a huuuuge issue in music fandoms for ages, and now more than ever when it’s about actual human lives and threats, I do think that big artists speaking up does indeed make a difference. and it would be amazing for them to do that precisely because politicians don’t do shit to help. raising and donating money would totally increase if they encouraged it which would save so many lives. hell I’m also not a politician but I still try to do everything I’m capable of to help, as little as it may be in the big picture.

what makes you a good person, though? just saying you are? no, you have to actually do good things. that’s my opinion. I also don’t think that having knowledge about what’s been going on only happens when you scroll through twitter. My expectations might be too high here but I’d hope people go and educate themselves because they wanna do the right thing. also, I hate to say it, but of course the news won’t tell you about boycotts etc, literally every countries’ leader is kissing isreal’s ass (the reports about gaza here are unwatchable wow) 🙃 just because people don’t talk about it doesn’t mean it’s not happening. I simply won’t believe they haven’t heard anything about it. we’re nearing a whole year of this, and so many years before that.

if they’re not speaking up so be it – everyone, them included, has to follow their own moral compass and decide if what they’re doing is enough for their consciousness to be at ease. it certainly won’t change what I try to contribute

[ai-writer-tool]

What is 'No Prompt' AI? The Future of Content Creation

As a content marketer, one of my biggest frustrations has always been the time it takes to research and write blog articles, social media posts, and other digital content. Coming up with engaging topics, researching facts and figures, structuring my content strategically - it all adds up to a lengthy process that I have to repeat almost daily to keep my company's online presence fresh and relevant.

That's why I was so excited to discover Addlly.ai and experience their No Prompt AI technology for myself. As the name suggests, No Prompt AI tools like Addlly remove the need for lengthy prompts and allow users to generate helpful, optimized content with just a few clicks or simple inputs.

The first Addlly tool I tested was their 1-Click Blog Writer. After entering a keyword and selecting a topic, I hit "Generate" and within seconds had a fully-formed, optimized blog article on the chosen subject ready to publish. The article included relevant subheadings, insights from industry experts, facts, figures and quotes - all laid out logically and seamlessly. I was blown away by how human-like yet targeted the writing was for my audience without any input beyond the initial keyword and topic.

As an added bonus, the 1-Click Blog Writer also provided me with optimized meta descriptions, titles and FAQ sections to boost my SEO. The time savings alone has been massive compared to researching and writing blogs manually.

Naturally, I was eager to test out Addlly's other No Prompt AI tools as well. Their Social Media Post Generator allows me to input a brief description and topic to receive ready-made posts tailored for platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. Again, all I have to do is select from the optimized options provided - no crafting lengthy prompts required. The AI analyzes trends and hashtags to ensure each post will engage followers.

Clearly, Addlly's No Prompt AI model represents a total paradigm shift in content creation that improves productivity, quality and results like no other solution on the market. By understanding marketing nuances, industry trends and my target audience's language from just a few signals, their AI becomes my invaluable digital assistant - crafting precisely what I need without wasted time or effort on my end. The brand-aligned, human quality of the text it generates has even impressed clients and CEOs.

If you're tired of the grind and inefficiency of manual content creation processes, it's time to put Addlly's revolutionary No Prompt AI model to work for your business. You'll gain back countless productive hours each week while producing unparalleled quality and results. Your digital marketing will never be the same, and customers will thank you for the engaging, targeted content. The future of zero-friction marketing is here thanks to Addlly.

[shwetagoel7]

Why Knowledge of digital marketing is necessary?

Hello, curious minds! Have you ever wondered why there is so much excitement about digital marketing? However, you are in the right place! Especially for Beginners, let's delve into the realm of digital marketing and learn everything there is to know.

What is Digital Marketing?

Now, let's define digital marketing precisely. Simply put, digital marketing is the practice of leveraging digital technologies to promote products or services. Digital marketing uses a variety of online channels, from social media platforms and search engines to laptops and cellphones, to connect and interact with potential consumers. Take a free trial session at Digital School of Delhi to learn more about their Digital Marketing Course.

Why Digital Marketing Matters?

Now, you might be wondering, why should I care about digital marketing? Well, let me tell you, digital marketing is a game-changer, especially in today's digital age. It allows businesses to connect with their target audience in a more personalized and cost-effective way compared to traditional marketing methods.

Types of Digital Marketing

Different types of digital marketing have their own special uses. Widely used digital marketing strategies include: Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Have you ever wondered how certain websites appear better on Google? This is because of search engine optimization (SEO). In such situations SEO is useful. Optimization is important to increase your website's visibility on search engine results pages. Social Media Marketing: Social media marketing enables companies to interact and communicate with their customers on a more human level through sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Email Marketing: Never underestimate the effectiveness of email! Sending tailored communications to a particular audience to advertise goods or services is known as email marketing. Content Marketing: In the digital sphere, content reigns supreme! The goal of content marketing is to attract and retain customers by producing practical and timely information. PPC, or Pay-Per-Click, Advertising Are you looking to target the right audience with your ads? Businesses can bid on keywords with PPC advertising and only get paid when an ad is clicked.

Digital Marketing in India

Now let's talk about digital marketing in the Indian context. With the increasing number of internet users and smartphone penetration around 659 million users, India presents a huge opportunity for businesses to leverage digital marketing to reach and connect with diverse audiences.

Digital Marketing Courses and Agencies

Looking to learn more about digital marketing? There are plenty of digital marketing courses available in India that can help you sharpen your skills and stay ahead of the curve. Additionally, digital marketing agencies abound, offering expert services to businesses looking to boost their online presence.

The Bottom Line

So, there you have it, folks! Digital marketing is a powerful tool that can help businesses thrive in today's digital landscape. Whether you're a business owner looking to expand your online presence or an aspiring digital marketer eager to learn the ropes, digital marketing offers endless possibilities. So, what are you waiting for? Dive in and discover the world of digital marketing for yourself!

[drivenbycheese]

A well articulated article in Slate points out why Google+ has lost its chance to compete with Facebook

Google+ has lost its chance to compete with Facebook:

That launch-first, fix-it-later strategy has worked marvelously for Google in the past. Gmail didn’t match all of Microsoft Outlook’s features from the beginning—it didn’t even have a delete button—but the stuff it did have (lots of storage and fast search) was so compelling that people were willing to stick with it until it became the best email program in existence. In the same way, I switched to Chrome because it was faster than any other browser I’ve ever used—and I stuck with it even though it lacked add-ons or the ability to bookmark many tabs at once. (It has since added those features.)

But a social network isn’t a product; it’s a place. Like a bar or a club, a social network needs a critical mass of people to be successful—the more people it attracts, the more people it attracts. Google couldn’t have possibly built every one of Facebook’s features into its new service when it launched, but to make up for its deficits, it ought to have let users experiment more freely with the site. That freewheeling attitude is precisely how Twitter—the only other social network to successfully take on Facebook in the last few years—got so big. When Twitter users invented ways to reply to one another or echo other people’s tweets, the service didn’t stop them—it embraced and extended their creativity. This attitude marked Twitter as a place whose hosts appreciated its users, and that attitude—and all the fun people were having—pushed people to stick with the site despite its many flaws (Twitter’s frequent downtime, for example). Google+, by contrast, never managed to translate its initial surge into lasting enthusiasm. And for that reason, it’s surely doomed.

[antoine-roquentin]

Curtis: I am nervous about saying this to you, but I do think computer games have played a very powerful role over the past 20 years in reinforcing that managerial way of seeing the world. I’m nervous because you know much more about the games than I do. But it has always seemed to me that, at some point, as well as running around and shooting and solving puzzles, games introduced this other thing. Which was that you spend a lot of time choosing and managing things – not just how you looked, but what weapons and what powers you had, and how you could balance one against the other to produce the most effective online-being for the system of the game. That computer games were one of the pillars of the modern ideology which says that the most important thing is to keep the system stable

Booker: I’m sure you’re right about the influence of games, but I think you’re describing the front-of-house user experience, which is probably the part that’s influenced the wider world the least. Games where players are juggling equipment and abilities tend to be combat-heavy exercises in perpetual instability, and any kind of management game I’ve ever turned my hand to, where the aim is basically to build and maintain a stable system – whether it’s The Sims or Tropico, or whatever – usually ends in stressful chaos. Although maybe that just underlines why I shouldn’t be running the country.

But I agree that the principles of game design, the background structure, are popping up everywhere. A few years ago I fronted a Channel 4 list show about influential video games. They were listed chronologically, so we started with things like Pong, and the final entry on our list was Twitter, which I described as a “multiplayer online game in which you choose an avatar and role-play a persona loosely based on your own, attempting to accrue followers by pressing lettered buttons to form interesting sentences”.

At the time people sort of scoffed at that, and I was slightly taking the piss, but I do think we were right to classify it as a game, because it’s designed like one. Not just in terms of the “score” feedback, the retweets and likes and so on, but the rhythm of it, the flow of little moments of delight or disappointment, just like a Mario game. There’s a clear gameplay loop where, the more you engage, the less you want to put it down. If Twitter didn’t already exist, you could launch it today on the Steam game store as an RPG.

I don’t want to just dunk on social media, because it gives voice to people in a way that wasn’t really possible before, but its inbuilt tendency to encourage escalating, heightened speech seems guaranteed to ultimately turn a lot of users into performers, a bit disconnected from the complexity of what they feel. Sort of like the way people talk after a couple of drinks. Actually, I don’t know why I’m telling you this, because you touch on it in the series.

I’m not sure if you’ve heard the gaming term “grinding” – it’s sort of half-pejorative; it basically describes a player happily and voluntarily performing a series of repetitive tasks over and over, for hours or sometimes weeks on end, in the hope of some eventual reward. It requires some quite sinisterly well-calibrated game design to work properly. It has to feel like popping blisters on an endless sheet of bubble wrap – monotonous and fulfilling at the same time. If I had to invent a word to describe it, I’d say “emptifying”. I don’t know if it’s as evil as some people think – playing a game like that can be really soothing and oddly meditative. Like knitting. But I remember reading that these grind-y gamification principles are creeping into lots of real-life situations, like Amazon warehouse jobs, to make them feel less tedious.

Anyway, I’ll shut up about games now. I’d love to see you explore game design though.

Curtis: I think that’s a brilliant observation about Twitter. That makes a lot of sense. And I really like the idea of the gamification of everything. It’s also true in politics. Do you remember that man who Tony Blair brought into be his press person – Alastair Campbell? He immediately set up a thing in Number 10 called The Rapid Response Unit. Its job whenever Blair or the government was attacked was to immediately attack back, and monster them before they had time almost to breathe. It was very Twitter before Twitter – but it also had all the attributes of a video game. Number 10 became a place under constant attack from zombies, or whatever, from outside, and you had to spend your time stopping them coming through the windows or up from the cellar. And there was never a time to relax because there would always be another wave.

It was something that Armando Iannucci captured very well in the Thick of It – that constant attack sensibility. But that mood of constant crisis that Campbell created also had another function. It was a brilliant way of hiding the fact that you as politicians didn’t have any real ideas any longer. Gamification as a way of creating a world of constant hysteria that never allows you to stop and ask, “What is this all for?”

And I think that idea of “grinding” touches on something that I know in myself. That sometimes having to do an extraordinary set of repetitive tasks is really calming. I find it when I am editing – when at points I have to do some logging or checking, which is very time consuming. It does allow you to drift into a dream state, which liberates you from all the inner voices. You lose yourself, which, in our very self-conscious age, is something quite unusual. I read a piece a while ago that argued that people’s relationship to factory work in the age of mass-production was much more complicated than we think. That of course it was depressing and exhausting, but many people also liked the repetition in a strange way precisely because it allowed them to move into another state, into a form of calming and liberation.