#at least tumblr has its tags system

[ganondoodle]

zelda live action thing is gonne be the worst thing on twitter bc my timeline is gonna be spammed with people saying who they want to be cast as the characters and of course its all *bland white american actor chosen solely bc of their looks alone*

[ghastlyaffairs]

for something as trivial and simple those feelings sure are hard to get rid of

also made a gif a version for fun + alt version with no tears under the cut

the gif is in very low resolution...this is a feature (i could make it bigger but that would require saving each frame individually and than glueing it all together. also i feel like low resolution suits it better. aesthetically and fits the mood)

[raylasgf]

i beg of you all please tag spoilers it’s not that fucking hard

[iwakuraz]

how do people consider tumblr to be confusing or strange to use whenever twitter exists? I genuinely cannot use twitter it is just so. headache inducing.

[feedthefandomfest]

Comment Bingo: Old Fic Edition

Very simple rules: connect 5 squares in a line by commenting on fics that suit the task in each square

Very simple goals: encourage readers to comment on older fics; encourage fandom writers to KEEP WRITING

STEPS:

Download Bingo Card HERE (png) or HERE (jpg) or HERE (pdf)

Complete the tasks on the card, marking off each as you go, until you've completed 5 in a line (vertical, horizontal, or diagonal; NO double-dipping; center ♥️ is a free space)

POST your winning card (or list your filled squares) and tag @feedthefandomfest! Glory in your victory.

SEARCH TIPS:

This card requires some familiarity with AO3's search filters. Once you've narrowed your results according to fandom/ship/additional tags, certain squares require you to sort the results by Date Updated, which is the default. Other squares require you to search for fics posted within a certain range of years, which you can do by scrolling on the search menu to More Options:

Note that to enter a date range, you must format the date as shown.

REWARD:

✨ victory badges ✨

New badge for this card, but here are examples from previous cards:

Tag me when you earn a bingo (or double, triple, quadruple... FULL CARD bingo) and I'll reblog a shiny badge with your name on it to commemorate the win.

FAQ:

Can I comment on tumblr or only on AO3?

Either one is great! This card especially is more designed with AO3 in mind, but some can be adjusted to suit tumblr as well, so I say go for it. Tumblr fics deserve love, too.

Can one comment count toward multiple squares if the fic fits more than one category?

Since the goal is for as many fics to receive comments as possible, try to comment on a different fic for each square.

Is there a time limit?

Nope! Take your time or set your own deadline, whatever works for you. This blog is still in its early experimental stage, so feedback welcome. Play around and let me know what you like and what might be added/changed—including ideas for squares on future cards!

Do I have to record progress on the actual card?

Nope! If it’s easier to keep track in a different way, that’s fine. This is all very honor system, so if you say you earned a Bingo, we’ll call it a win 🎉

Some people have been tracking not just completed tasks, but the fics they read along the way, so that when they post a bingo, they can also promote the fics/authors in a little rec list. Not required, but definitely cool to see!

Can I adjust the task in a particular square to suit my comfort level?

Of course! If you deliver something in the spirit of the task, then it’s all good. Use your best judgement in constructing a comment that will make the author smile, and you can consider it a job well done.

In general, so long as each square has produced at least one comment, you’re golden and I salute you 🫡

Happy commenting!!

[catboybiologist]

So.

Re: tumblr bans of transfemmes.

Let's ignore PhotoMatt for a moment. Manbaby tech CEO doubling down on a stupid decision and making himself look like more of an ass doing so is not a new phenomena.

Tumblr has consistently said, in both public statements and leaked internal communication, that they're essentially running a skeleton crew.

They keep saying that they don't have the resources to moderate, manually review posts, have any kind of appeal process, or anything. So, as people have widely received communications about, they seemed to have automated a significant portion of the moderation to operate solely on the quantity of reports (probably with a basic filter, eg quantity of reports regarding a certain post, within a certain timeframe) to automatically ban or shadowban accounts.

And so, they wipe their hands, both to the users, the public, and their own consciousness, and go about their automated operations.

All of this is likely true. Tumblr, at this point, is essentially abandonware internally, a kind of weird vanity project/dumpster ground for server infrastructure for Automattic. Likely, they don't want the bad press of "shutting down" fully. Or maybe the trickle of revenue they get here just barely exceeds operating costs, so why not keep it around?

Whatever is the case, the bans are a result of an automated process working in the background. I'm giving them some benefit of the doubt here, of course, we can't know anything for certain- but it seems like the individual bans are not based on any specific, manual action.

And that doesn't fucking excuse anything.

Because at some point, multiple people sat down at tumblr, and decided how to cut costs.

And they decided that the bare minimum of report abuse prevention was one of the first things on the chopping block.

Before the boops. Before GUI reconfigures.

They decided to cut something that is necessary to manage online communities.

They decided to cut something that ensures any targeted group will have any kind of community online.

And then, after all of that, the only manual intervention is doubling down on the shitty decisions that the automated systems make, and plucking reasons out of their ass for why they were the right decisions all along.

It's pure silicon valley brain. Blame the computer often and always. Use it to shield the active decisions you made when designing the computer that way. Treat it as a fact of life as opposed to something they actively made decisions for.

Is tumblr staff hitting the banhammer on each transfemme one by one? No.

Is tumblr staff deliberately crafting a system that allows TERFs and other conservative bigots to get rid of the "undesirables" for them? Yup. But they sure as hell are trying to not say the quiet part out loud. If they can always point the finger somewhere else, to the advertisers, to the automated systems, to the TERFs, then they can always have juuusssttt enough plausible deniability.

But being the "queerest place on the internet" requires concious acknowledgement that queer people will be targets of harassment, and you will have to protect against that.

Side note, this is why I do try to keep my blog at least somewhat SFW. Its one of the main reasons why I choose not to reblog all of the posts I'm tagged in- if the post is overtly NSFW, I've probably seen it, appreciated it, and consciously decided my level of interaction with it mostly based on how "tumblr friendly" it is. Is that bowing down to them? A little. It's also my choice. I value the community I have here. The pushes that y'all have given me gave me the strength to transition, and honestly gives me a lot of motivation to research HRT biology as much as I can, among many other things.

Yeah, I post pictures that are clearly meant to be found attractive in ways that are generally not socially acceptable , but never actual NSFW. I would like to think that I'm pretty safe from bans, but hey. Who knows. I don't want to lose my follower base, and the community around it.

And yeah, I'm gonna annoyingly remind you of the other places to find me, make sure to check my pin. If you don't know where to go, just find me on reddit and go from there, I'll post about it if anything happens.

[ms-demeanor]

Not to be rude or derailing your answer to the ask about the scorched earth post, but I do think quite genuinely that the site is becoming more openly hostile to its userbase, or at the very least its disabled userbase. While I’m not a fan of mobbing people’s personal blogs in targeted harassment campaigns, I think some people are also ignoring that staff blatantly said in a recent post that epileptic users would need to pay for ad-free to have their safety assured

I kind of don’t think that’s being ethical or user friendly, to me that sounds like they’re refusing to meet basic accessibility requests and answering with ‘pay us money to be safe’. Strobing and flashing ads aren’t just eyestraining, they can legitimately lead to serious injuries for epileptic folk, and telling people with epilepsy to just pay up or get lost is kinda… I dunno… disgusting?

So it looks like in a livestream (not on a post so far as I've been able to see) either photomatt or zingring made a glib and inappropriate response to an epileptic user asking about flashing ads and suggested that maybe they needed to pay for ad-free.

That's bad, I don't like it, and if it was supposed to be a joke it was a shitty one.

Zingring, tumblr's COO addressed that comment in a post where she said:

Buying ad-free (or gifting ad-free to someone else) is always an option, but that is not the solution (and of course, some folks simply can’t afford it). Sorry that it sounded dismissive in the session! That was not my intent.

I still think that's inappropriate (it's not that ad free isn't *the* solution, ad free shouldn't be *a* solution to accessibility), but it looks like Zingring has addressed this issue multiple times.

She got tagged in this post listing ways that tumblr could improve accessibility for photosensitive users and seems to have pretty consistently followed up; she has explained that there are rules against flashing ads that are sometimes violated by the advertisers and asks people to please report ads that break those rules so those advertisers can be blocked, has noted that there is apparently a "stop all autoplay" option in the works behind the scenes. She does also seem to take it seriously when users reach out with complaints about accessibility issues and seems to be willing to explore options.

Looking through that blog, this does not seem to be a site that is hostile to users with accessibility issues so much as, like everything else that's wrong around here, it is ridiculously understaffed so every project that someone wants to have as a priority is a project that someone else needs put on the backburner.

However, to very gently push back: how much of what you're experiencing as hostility from tumblr is actual hostility and how much of it is seeing posts like this, which suggests that tumblr is removing accessibility features because the lightbox didn't have double-tap-to-zoom on mobile for some users for a short while, claims that the blocking/flagging issue is a false flag against trans women, shared the inaccurate fearmongering post about tumblr live's ToS, and also claimed that tumblr "allowed" flashing ads that violated the in-place rules that tumblr has for advertising?

(this kind of goes with the 'nobody understands the ToS' but also nobody understands ads; tumblr does not have enough staff to look over the ads that go on their site every day, no social media company does, they rely on advertiser agreements as a sort of enhanced honor system and reports from users if the advertisers don't hold up their end of the bargain; the only way around this for any site that uses ads is to not have ads and that post is explicitly saying don't pay for tumblr because they are doing ads wrong - either they have to run ads and some bad ones are going to slip through and users will have to report them or tumblr will have to be 100% paid by the users or tumblr will go away. If you see ads that are unsafe for photosensitive users on *any* website you should report them to the site because the site almost certainly doesn't know that there's an advertiser violating the ad ToS unless someone tells them)

Generally speaking, I am actually *not* seeing worsening accessibility features, I'm seeing improvements compared to where we were five years ago - alt text on images is now built-in and devs are working hard on making tumblr more compatible with screen readers (as noted in the changes blog regularly); tumblr itself started offering different dashboard themes for users after years of complaints about contrast levels and readability; the "tiktok/twitterified" desktop dash view that everyone hates is supposed to be more readable on wider screens.

Compare this post in October of 2022 when Changes celebrated adding animations for posting (and told users those could only be disabled at an OS or browser level) with this post from July 2023 when they rolled back a feature because of an unexpected use case that could cause problems for photosensitive users.

These aren't things that I'd expect to see from a company that didn't care about accessibility, or that was openly hostile to questions around making the site more accessible.

I don't disagree with you that the comment from the stream about buying ad free was inappropriate; it absolutely was and it must have made photosensitive users feel like shit. But in the three months since that comment tumblr has been very responsive about getting flashing ads removed as soon as possible and seems to be working on more permanent fixes. I think this may be an instance of able-bodied people not realizing how shitty and dehumanizing their joke was (and it was) and taking the steps to do better.

If you don't think they're doing better, I probably can't convince you. I certainly don't think that tumblr is perfect about accessibility and I think that users need to continue pushing for improved user control of how the site displays and interacts with various devices. But compared to the kind of responses users complaints got from staff in 2018? I feel like things have improved a lot.

[toki-woki-fnaf]

"As a new Faz-Trainee, you are mandated to be taught by our new and improved Helpi model."

In 3 Lives at Freddy's: Follow The Yellow Rabbit you will have a new buddy throughout it all, say hello to Helpi! He's a great conversationalist and a great source of information for your new job. He'll learn how to best suit your needs as he learns more about you, way better than any in-person job training!

WELCOME BACK TO 3LAF!!! With 3LAF: GOLDEN THREAD ENDING IN SEPTEMBER, ITS TIME TO TEASE THE NEXT!!! If joining a Minecraft Third Life server based fully on fnaf and a unique fnaf mod interests you then I'm happy to announce that Invites are open yet again for 3LAF:FTYR! Before you do ask to join or if you want more information then I do suggest looking at our posts for the first 3LAF (Introduction, Animatronic Reveal) and 3LAF:Golden Thread (Introduction 2, Animatronic Reveal 2, Structure Reveal) to get a good vibe on what its about, although both may have incorrect information as they are older! For FTYR we will be having a fun fnaf twist on the Boogeyman mechanic which will be explained in the next teaser more specifically!!! FTYRs start date is around mid-november to december at its latest and will run every saturday from 1PM to 6PM pst (It is that long so people can join late and or take breaks, you do not have to stay for all 5 hours and you may join late into the time <3) 20 out of the 36 slots are currently full so there is plenty of space to come join in as either a player, spectator or backup player, send me a tumblr message asking to join and bam if slots are up then you're in! A note for any players who are wanting in, you got to have a skin that is at least a little vaguely tied to fnaf and I heavily recommend making a character for when you play in sessions, a lot of players use this opportunity to do a lot of roleplay and make silly guys (I suggest looking at the #3laf #3laf-gt and i think #3laf art tag as there you can see a lot of the players FUCKING BANGER ART AND CHARACTERS I LOVE THEM ALL SO MUCH!!!!)

Regardless, thank you for reading!!! I am the sole modder that makes this mod so it's very very fun to be able to show my work in these silly little teasers, on a more developer side: Coding Helpi has been such a pleasure and such a nightmare, i've had to rewrite his code twice... the second time I fully coded his main system and as soon as a celebrated it all got corrupted... only Helpi got corrupted which was quite ironic. I'm giving this one an extra month and a half as I don't want to burnout on developing but I've been having a very silly time with what I have been coding, I'm very excited to see people go silly with all the new stuff!!!! <3 <3 <3

[tio-trile]

Hi there! I wanted to let you know that tumblr updated its tagging system so that “like” tags appear together. If somebody writes “I like the show Supernatural” (i think only in the tags, but maybe in the post itself too), the post will show up in the tag “Supernatural.”

Douglas Adams Voice: This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

That’s presumably why people “us/e tags like th/is all th/e tim/e n/ow/.”

Oh my god 🤦‍♀️ welp, good to know, thank you. On the bright side, at least I found out about it now and didn't find out about this from a post where I say "I hate [InsertPopularMainTagHere]" 😂

[jakes3resin]

Can you tell us about your other fics if you already have an established plot?

I'd love to! So there's quite a number of them I won't lie. I tend to get inspired by the randomest things. These are all in various stages of plotted out and written.

A/B/O fic (technically turning into 3 fics) that follows Bucky & Buck through the war, described below.

Courting Arc (top of my list to finish writing) - Bucky POV as he is anonymously courted during his time in the states just before he gets sent over to England (there's a post I'm basing my writing around I'll link it in a moment) <- published

England Arc- a quick look into their lives as they run missions with A/B/O elements (this will be pretty short I think) mostly snippets of scenes from the show just now with Omega Bucky and Alpha Buck <- published

Stalag Arc - Omega Bucky and his awful time in Germany. Here is where we see what being an Omega in war is really like in my omegaverse. Bucky is the highest ranked Omega in the camp meaning he's technically 'in charge' of keeping those Omegas in line. He's tested by his heats, keeping his pack together, and finally by a German order that could tear Buck and Bucky apart. This is a big fic for me to prepare for, and I'm building up to it by writing the Courting Arc first <- next on deck

Biker Gale AU (my beloved, genuinely obsessed with this AU) - this was inspired by one of hogans-heroes AUs. So, Gale leads an outlaw-esque biker club, and Bucky used to be his right hand (and lover) except one day out of the blue he just disappeared. Gale does everything he can to find Bucky, but there's no trail to follow, no clues to put together, nothing. Fast forward about two years, Bucky arrives on Curt's doorstep holding a small baby with the brightest blue eyes and prettiest blonde curls and begs Curt to watch his baby for 5 days. 5 days later Bucky comes back in town bruised to all hell with the FBI on his tail with their own nefarious reasons for tracking Bucky down. Bucky has nowhere else to turn especially since when he comes back to Curt's he finds Gale holding his little baby. (This could be A/B/O I haven't decided, but it's definitely at least mpreg)

Amnesia fic - this is based off of a post I made about the effects of Bucky getting hit over the head like 3 times in the span of two days, its... somewhere (edit: here). But its about Bucky waking up with no memory of who he is just before he gets interrogated by the Germans and sent to Stalag Luft III where he meets a man that his heart rejoices at seeing but his mind doesn't recognize. Buck of course has to deal with the love of his life forgetting him.

Magic AU - Bucky is a Scamander and its now everyone's problem to deal with it. The tag to find all of my ramblings for it is magic au (not that Tumblr's tag system works), and @getinthefuckingjaeger just wrote the best ever fic of Bucky and Theseus so go read that.

I've also got a few paragraphs written of Foster Kid Bucky somewhere but that might never see the light of day (that's also from a hogans-heroes AU) where Bucky is a jaded teenager just trying to make it to 18 to get out of his shitty foster placement when in comes Buck whose mother finally divorced his dad, got custody of her kids, and moved to her hometown to escape. It's about a Bright Buck meeting a Jaded Bucky (a flip on their usual dynamics)

Blonde Bucky AU - I wrote a blurb on the Twin Cleven AU post, and the idea of Bucky bleaching his hair on a drunken night out with Curt and Bubbles has haunted me since <- published as well

There might be more? But these are the only ones I can remember off the top of my head right now that are plotted out beyond oh that'd be a good fic. I have a lot of time spent sitting and waiting right now, so I have the ability to write a multitude of fics. I'm happy to talk about any of these fics if you want to come into my inbox or my messages.

[5ummit]

New Mandatory #NSFW Mature Label

I rarely post NSFW content so I'm not sure how long this has been a thing, but just a heads up, if you use the #NSFW tag, tumblr will now automatically apply the mature content label to your post.

A few important notes:

(1) You can't remove this label. Well that's not 100% true, on original posts you can manually change the label back to "everyone." However, if you save or publish the post with #NSFW still included, the mature label will automatically be reapplied. Aka it's now impossible (with the new editor) to publish a post tagged as #NSFW that's not flagged as "mature."

(2) The mature label is also applied to reblogs tagged with #NSFW. This is where we get into a bit of a problem. Community labels on reblogs are not normally editable. The option is grayed out (as you can see above), which means that once you add the #NSFW tag to a reblog, even if you decide to later remove it, that post will forever be labelled "mature" and locked away from any of your followers who filter those posts out (remember mature filters are turned ON for everyone by default). As far as I can tell tagging a reblog as #NSFW does NOT apply the label to the post globally though, it's just on your own blog, but it's still not ideal.

(3) This only works when using "#NSFW" on its own. If any other text is included in the tag the auto-applied community label is not triggered.

(4) No other tag (that I've been able to find) has a mandatory community label. What's interesting is I did find an official @changes post from about 6 months ago stating that tumblr "will add the pertinent label to the post automatically" when the label is used as a tag, with #violence even being explicitly provided as an example, but I tried it (along with as many other "mature" tags as I could think of) and it didn't work. #NSFW appears to be the only one, at least right now.

Not being allowed to use the #NSFW tag without a mature label is annoying, particularly for those who are overly cautious about tagging it even when it may not be necessary and particularly since it's uneditable when applied to reblogs. However, I'm not going to outright say this new "feature" is 100% a bad thing and that everyone should get up in arms about it. This post is just meant to make you aware of it.

Most posts tagged as NSFW probably should be labelled "mature" and I bet most people just forget to do it or may not even know about community labels in the first place. As much as I want to return to the old "go nuts, show nuts" tumblr, I'm aware that's never going to happen and this new community label system is our only way forward. If there's any hope of tumblr ever broadening the mature content guidelines and getting us closer to where we were before (yes, I know it's a longshot), this system has to work and it only works if people use it.

[echo]

this is a response to @anarcho-yorpism's tag for me in this post. i'm not directly rbing bc that post is long and it has a lot going on in the notes.

anyway please note all of my responses here are my own, and not representative of Staff or tumblr. i am not T&S and have zero power to make any moderation decisions here.

with that disclaimer:

Predstrogen received a message from Tumblr saying she was banned for "sexual content". If she was not, why was she told this, why were her transition photos removed, and why has she still not been told the actual reason? (I understand not making it public, but it is your policy to tell the user) If she was, what was this sexual content, if not her transition timeline?

i can't really directly answer this for few reasons. firstly, i feel that staff shouldn't talk about her anymore bc i feel this continued controversy will only attract more harassment for her on other platforms.

secondly, as a low-level staffer talking about moderation decisions can get me, y'know, fired. i'd prefer not to do that.

also just like... i want to avoid getting into a narrative of "well she did bad things so she deserves it" or whatever. idc if she broke the rules or not, she didn't deserve what happened.

i know this isn't terribly satisfying to hear, but i'd like to be honest about why i'm not saying more at least.

If you can't answerblegal questions, ignore this question: The NYCLU settlement agreed that Tumblr would fix its moderation so it targeted transfem users less. Why has there been no comment on the settlement and actions taken since? There could genuinely be a large legal case against Tumblr after this, and I love this site and don't want that to happen. Also, wasn't it illegal under GDPR to release her usernames?

i'm not able to answer legal questions. i don't know the exact text of the agreement, but it mostly boiled down to some training and stuff from my personal experience there.

however not as a staffer but as NYC trans human: i would not put a ton of faith in the NYCCHR. they have some noble goals but they are a chronically underfunded city agency that in practice does very little to curb real-world violence against marginalized people. i tried to use them myself when my landlord was kicking me out right after i had surgery and they didn't even get back to me until months after everything resolved. nobody i know in the community out here has been helped by them off the top of my head.

i have sincere doubts in relying on the state to help people here.

A lot of transfem users don't like vague language like "prioritize", especially given point 2 and Matt's statement that improving moderation was not on the agenda. I understand you can't reveal company secrets in an already risky post, but we would like to see the specific actions taken after this, given a lot of broken trust by what @\photomatt has said. Are any of the trans women banned recently for "sexual content" going to have their accounts restored?

i don't know. i'm pushing internally for at least a review of everyone suspended to see if the less egregious stuff can be reversed. but like i said, i don't have a ton of power as i'm not in charge of anything.

and yeah, "prioritize" is vague corpo-speak. i know some stuff is shifting internally and what we said does match what is happening inside. but also... i've been disappointed before.

i can say i'm tentatively optimistic. people are responding seriously, and being asked our opinions for once is pretty nice. but also, systemic stuff is hard. i trust in my fellow workers and i'll continue to fight until i can't anymore.

so... yeah. i genuinely wish i can be more informative here, but what we wrote (and i want to emphasize we here, it was not just me by any stretch!!) is what we can say in an official capacity.

i'm just frustrated, tired, angry, depressed... and also weirdly hopeful?

[blubberquark]

Are Game Blogs Uniquely Lost?

All this started with my looking for the old devlog of Storyteller. I know at some point it was linked from the blogroll on the Braid devlog. Then I tried to look at on old devlog of another game that is still available. The domain for Storyteller is still active. The devblog is gone.

I tried an old bookmark from an old PC (5 PCs ago, I think). It was a web site linked to pixel art and programming tutorials. Instead of linking to the pages directly, some links link led to a twitter threads by authors that collected their work posted on different sites. Some twitter threads are gone because the users were were suspended, or had deleted their accounts voluntarily. Others had deleted old tweets. There was no archive. I have often seen links accompanied by "Here's a thread where $AUTHOR lists all his writing on $TOPIC". I wonder if the sites are still there, and only the tweets are gone.

A lot of "games studies" around 2010 happened on blogs, not in journals. Games studies was online-first, HTML-first, with trackbacks, tags, RSS and comment sections. The work that was published in PDF form in journals and conference proceedings is still there. The blogs are gone. The comment sections are gone. Kill screen daily is gone.

I followed a link from critical-distance.com to a blog post. That blog is gone. The domain is for sale. In the Wayback Machine, I found the link. It pointed to the comment section of another blog. The other blog has removed its comment sections and excluded itself from the Wayback Machine.

I wonder if games stuff is uniquely lost. Many links to game reviews at big sites lead to "page not found", but when I search the game's name, I can find the review from back in 2004. The content is still there, the content management systems have been changed multiple times.

At least my favourite tumblr about game design has been saved in the Wayback Machine: Game Design Tips.

To make my point I could list more sites, more links, 404 but archived, or completely lost, but when I look at small sites, personal sites, blogs, or even forums, I wonder if this is just confirmation bias. There must be all this other content, all these other blogs and personal sites. I don't know about tutorials for knitting, travel blogs, stamp collecting, or recipe blogs. I usually save a print version of recipes to my Download folder.

Another big community is fan fiction. They are like modding, but for books, I think. I don't know if a lot of fan fiction is lost to bit rot and link rot either. What is on AO3 will probably endure, but a lot might have gone missing when communities fandom moved from livejournal to tumblr to twitter, or when blogs moved from Wordpress to Medium to Substack.

I have identified some risk factors:

Personal home pages made from static HTML can stay up for while if the owner meticulously catalogues and links to all their writing on other sites, and if the site covers a variety of interests and topics.

Personal blogs or content management systems are likely to lose content in a software upgrade or migration to a different host.

Writing is more likely to me lost when it's for-pay writing for a smaller for-profit outlet.

A cause for sudden "mass extinction" of content is the move between social networks, or the death of a whole platform. Links to MySpace, Google+, Diaspora, and LiveJournal give me mostly or entirely 404 pages.

In the gaming space, career changes or business closures often mean old content gets deleted. If an indie game is wildly successful, the intellectual property might ge acquired. If it flops, the domain will lapse. When development is finished, maybe the devlog is deleted. When somebody reviews games at first on Steam, then on a blog, and then for a big gaming mag, the Steam reviews might stay up, but the personal site is much more likely to get cleaned up. The same goes for blogging in general, and academia. The most stable kind of content is after hours hobbyist writing by somebody who has a stable and high-paying job outside of media, academia, or journalism.

The biggest risk factor for targeted deletion is controversy. Controversial, highly-discussed and disseminated posts are more likely to be deleted than purely informative ones, and their deletion is more likely to be noticed. If somebody starts a discussion, and then later there are hundreds of links all pointing back to the start, the deletion will hurt more and be more noticeable. The most at-risk posts are those that are supposed to be controversial within a small group, but go viral outside it, or the posts that are controversial within a small group, but then the author says something about politics that draws the attention of the Internet at large to their other writings.

The second biggest risk factor for deletion is probably usefulness combined with hosting costs. This could also be the streetlight effect at work, like in the paragraph above, but the more traffic something gets, the higher the hosting costs. Certain types of content are either hard to monetise, and cost a lot of money, or they can be monetised, so the free version is deliberately deleted.

The more tech-savvy users are, the more likely they are to link between different sites, abandon a blogging platform or social network for the next thing, try to consolidate their writings by deleting their old stuff and setting up their own site, only to let the domain lapse. The more tech-savvy users are, the more likely they are to mess with the HTML of their templates or try out different blogging software.

If content is spread between multiple sites, or if links link to social network posts that link to blog post with a comment that links to a reddit comment that links to a geocities page, any link could break. If content is consolidated in a forum, maybe Archive team could save all of it with some advance notice.

All this could mean that indie games/game design theory/pixel art resources are uniquely lost, and games studies/theory of games criticism/literary criticism applied to games are especially affected by link rot. The semi-professional, semi-hobbyist indie dev, the writer straddling the line between academic and reviewer, they seem the most affected. Artists who start out just doodling and posting their work, who then get hired to work on a game, their posts are deleted. GameFAQs stay online, Steam reviews stay online, but dev logs, forums and blog comment sections are lost.

Or maybe it's only confirmation bias. If I was into restoring old cars, or knitting, or collecting stamps, or any other thing I'd think that particular community is uniquely affected by link rot, and I'd have the bookmarks to prove it.

Figuring this out is important if we want to make predictions about the future of the small web, and about the viability of different efforts to get more people to contribute. We can't figure it out now, because we can't measure the ground truth of web sites that are already gone. Right now, the small web is mostly about the small web, not about stamp collecting or knitting. If we really manage to revitalise the small web, will it be like the small web of today except bigger, the web-1.0 of old, or will certain topics and communities be lost again?

[feedthefandomfest]

Comment Bingo (Original Edition)

Very simple rules: connect 5 squares in a line by completing the task in each square

Very simple goals: encourage readers to comment on fics; encourage fandom writers to KEEP WRITING

(reposted so a cleaned up version links back here rather than my main blog)

STEPS:

Download Bingo Card HERE (png) or HERE (jpg) or HERE (pdf)

Complete the tasks on the card, marking off each as you go, until you've completed 5 in a line (vertical, horizontal, or diagonal; NO double-dipping; kudos ♥️ is a free space)

POST your winning card (or list your filled squares) and tag @feedthefandomfest! Glory in your victory.

REWARD:

✨ victory badges ✨

Tag me when you earn a bingo (or double, triple, quadruple... FULL CARD bingo) and I'll reblog a shiny badge with your name on it to commemorate the win.

FAQ:

Can I comment on tumblr or only on AO3?

Either one is great! The tags are drawn from AO3, but most can be adjusted to suit tumblr as well, so I say go for it. Tumblr fics deserve love, too.

Can one comment count toward multiple squares if the fic fits more than one category?

Since the goal is for as many fics to receive comments as possible, try to comment on a different fic for each square.

Is there a time limit?

Nope! Take your time or set your own deadline, whatever works for you. This blog is still in its early experimental stage, so feedback welcome. Play around and let me know what you like and what might be added/changed—including ideas for squares on future cards!

Do I have to record progress on the actual card?

Nope! If it’s easier to keep track in a different way, that’s fine. This is all very honor system, so if you say you earned a Bingo, we’ll call it a win 🎉

Some people have been tracking not just completed tasks, but the fics they read along the way, so that when they post a bingo, they can also promote the fics/authors in a little rec list. Not required, but definitely cool to see!

Can I adjust the task in a particular square to suit my comfort level?

Of course! If you deliver something in the spirit of the task, then it’s all good. Use your best judgement in constructing a comment that will make the author smile, and you can consider it a job well done.

In general, so long as each square has produced at least one comment, you’re golden and I salute you 🫡

Happy commenting!!

[highlordofkrypton]

What is this "proshippers" stuff that I have been seeing all over the internet? Is it a bad thing?

Good morning, anon!

I just gotta say before I start, your timing 😭 I absolutely love this question because you're making me research and I have a lot to say, but I just finished the gym so please picture a trembling T-Rex over the keyboard as you read this.

Short answer: Proshippers are people who believe in 'ship and let ship', even if the ships can be viewed as problematic, but not all proshippers ship problematic ships. It is not a bad thing, if you take into account the whole picture and not just specific problematic examples. BUT over time, people have come to use proshipper as 'problematic shipper' so it depends who you're talking to?

I'm not an authority on what is bad or good, the best I can do is give you the different points, and let you decide how you feel about the topic.

WHEW, THIS GOT LONG AND PERSONAL SO BUCKLE UP!!

This Reddit thread sums up what proshipping is really nicely, and I'm just going to add onto what's already said there.

CONTEXT

As an older fandom member myself, and back in my day, proshipping and a lot of the labels you see floating around wasn't a thing. At least, not to me. Back when I was active on Tumblr over a decade ago, everyone just kinda stuck in their own corners, doing their own thing with their niche group of people.

Then, as time shifted, the fandom became more popularized and acceptable, you have more people coming in to engage with the culture. As I mentioned in my ACOTAR fandom analysis (which can be applied more broadly), fandom really started as the weirdos being weird together on our weird little site (and I say this with the utmost affection). With more people participating, you have more opinions coming into the mix with more discussions happening. Not to mention, how the pandemic brought fandom to the eyes of the general public making it a lot easier for them to shame and comment on something they don't necessarily understand.

One thing that you'll see me repeating on this blog is that art is a form of expression, exploration and therapy. Art can be problematic and it can be harmful to some people, but the beauty of fandom is that tags are a form of etiquette to help cater your experience and I do see most people trying to do it. You are in control when you are in fandom. You do not need to engage with anything you do not like, but the responsibility is on you (not others) to manage your experience.

TWO WAYS TO LOOK AT PROSHIPPING

As mentioned above, at its core, to be pro-ship means that you are all for people shipping whatever the hell they want because it's none of your business. By that definition, you could look at it more as a movement or a belief system, rather than a 'label'. It's a belief of freedom of expression and being anti-censorship rather than focusing on problematic ships.

As of late, and with my return to Tumblr after an eternity (it feels like a whole new place, btw), proshipping has morphed into meaning 'problematic-shipping'. I see people tagging their blogs as 'proshippers DNI' and then list that they are anti-incest or underage content. This is a totally fair request, but it lumps the idea that you have the right to ship anything as you're specifically pro those two things or anything that is specifically problematic.

THE PROBLEM WITH 'PROSHIPPING' READ AS 'PROBLEMATIC SHIPPING'

If you're someone who stands by the second definition and that proshippers are all, by default, people who stand by problematic ships, you may risk falling into the trap of extremes, generalizations and censorship in a way that I find is harmful to people who use fandom as an escape.

Where do you draw the line about what's problematic? Some people say that age gaps are problematic, but as an adult, I think that a 30 year old dating a 50 year old is not inherently problematic. At 30, your brain chemistry changes and you are mature enough to make these kinds of decisions. There is a certain age where the ages start to blur and you don't really feel the difference between generations. Then, there's a hundred other questions you can ask. Did those two people start dating now at those big old ages? Or did it start younger? What was the context?

Speaking of context, there are a lot of people who will see a tag or a ship and immediately deem that work as problematic. It's important to remember that there is so much more at play than just the text itself, and you can't always make a direct moral correlation between the art, artist and perceiver. All three of these present a different perspective. The art is the finished product, the artist comes with their own set of experiences and so does the perceiver.

SOME EXAMPLES & DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES

(tw: abuse)

Two more things I'd like to add.

I haven't yet read the Death of the Author which a theory that says you shouldn't take into account the author when you are reading a text, but rather how the text or the art makes you feel, but fandom is so tightly knitted with creators that this is a tricky approach to take. With larger more traditionally published works, there's a separation between you, the perceiver, and the author. It's easier and better for discourse to disassociate so you can discuss with your peers what you got from the text.

In fandom, you are among peers and you are already in the community. I am not absolving any problematic ships and I do have personal hard boundaries that I enforce (and do not engage with), but I will say that there are things I can empathize with. There's a reason in fandom that we always so 'don't like, don't read', or why we don't leave critical reviews or why some people think it's bad form to censor/police others.

In fandom, you are creating for you or directly for your community.

Now, I'm gonna get into more personal examples.

As someone who has been neglected, abused (every version under the sun -- physically, sexually, verbally, emotionally, financially, etc.) and other stuff I don't want to get into, writing is my outlet. I don't personally claim the label of victim for personal reasons, but for all intents and purposes, I am one. I am someone who has spent most of my life alone, with my emotions (alone) and my thoughts (alone) because any form of vulnerability or imperfection was punished. When I look back at my life, sometimes I wonder why it feels like I lived the Murphy's Law of abuse.

That said, I only had writing. From the age of 11 to my big old age now, it's the number one way for me to work through emotions without ever having to put my name on it. I didn't have to be the victim and if I needed it, I could write myself a hero. It's a question of reliving experiences or exploring themes in a setting that I can control.

What if my character is assaulted? But what if someone came to comfort them afterwards? Made them feel seen and didn't diminish that pain? Or what if they did take away that pain so the main character doesn't have to carry it for as long as I did? What if I write about power dynamics because having someone you can inherently trust with everything brings me peace?

What if the violence I portray is my way of feeling in control of a situation like that? What if I support women being violent in my work because they deserve to stand up for themselves with the same force of the violence committed against them?

What if I write about ugly things because I see myself as an ugly thing and I want to celebrate that? I love villains. In the eyes of my abusers, I am the villain. (Have you ever been under the thumb of a narcissist? Many narcissists? They are always right, and you are always wrong.) Did you know that as a woman of colour (depending where you are), the more your stand up for yourself and the more you maintain firm boundaries, the more you're treated as a bitch? Or some kind of poison to the world around you? Some men will go out of their way to make you submit, even professionally.

All that said, I do not wish any bad thing on anyone and when I'm done writing my silly little work, the only reason I share it is because I hope someone sees a part of them in this and feels a little less alone. When I finish writing, I log off and live my life bringing as much positivity as I can to every person I interact with because I don't know what they are going through.

I never shared my writing before this year, and let me tell you, the number of people who have told me that they cried, they felt sadness and felt seen by the way trauma was depicted in some of my work -- THIS is why I share. The world is so big, and everyone is so focused on fitting in, or hell, just surviving, and it's easy to feel alone.

So, I can't imagine taking that label of anti-proshipping, or bringing that whole energy of trying to silence and police people when some of the 'problematic' content you see might actually help someone work through some things in a way that works for them without harming real people. (These are works of fiction, and art.)

Would you prefer wiping the entire board because there are some people, yes, who glorify problematic things, but there are more people than you know who see themselves in seemingly 'problematic things' and it heals a little part of them? I'm not saying everyone has a 'valid' excuse, but who am I to play judge and jury? That's not a task I'm personally willing to undertake in a fictional sandbox. I block and move on, that's it.

If, after everything I've said, I do fall under proshipper, please keep in mind that I am fighting for the people who find community, the people who are healing and the people who just want to get away from the performance that is our daily lives.

[ardate]

I've been checking out the OC tags for a little while, and I can say the state of OC sharing on tumblr is in absolute misery.

We've all discussed how bad the ratio of reblogs has become, how the amount of them have been dwindling those last couple of years, but I think an extra important emphasis has to be made on original creation. Though everything is hit by the lack of sharing, fanarts at least have a tag people will look for, improving their visibility - fandom OCs are sadly shared less than fanarts, in general, but they still enjoy that same visibility.

But what of the purely original? People who have OCs belonging solely to their own world, with a tag nobody will look for? I've been seeing awesome OC art that has been sitting for days and weeks with 0 or 1 notes, sometimes 5 or 6 with luck (though most of the time only likes)... And though there are exceptions, overall, it's a frankly saddening sight.

The way for someone to get attention on their OCs is to already be a well established blog or to produce fanart on the side to build a following. Blogs solely creating original content sit at the bottom of the note pool with no escape in sight.

As much as we praise tumblr for its tagging system and the fact it doesn't kill old posts the way other social media does, it still does fail in the way of uplifting creation that isn't fandom-based.

I don't have a solution to this. It is merely a sad observation. It's only natural that people would look for what they already know and love. But in a world where all of our interactions are linked to consumerism, in a world where automation replaces human imagination, I'd love to see a community of people willing to actively search for, and uplift, the creatives that are trying to peek out of the water.

One reblog may lead to another may lead to a follow, may lead to a creator feeling like their work matters.

So I'm doing it, one reblog at a time.