#hey reblog this one instead

[icaruspendragon]

actually you know what, i have more to say about this.

i’ve identified as bisexual for a really long time. like it was one of the first things i told jp (my husband) when we started dating long time. jp has never had a problem with my queerness. but when we started dating in january of 2018, i didn’t have all of the orientation pieces. so i had sex. and i had sex because i thought that’s what i was supposed to do. and i cannot stress enough how consensual all of the sex was. but it didn’t feel fantastic like i was told it would. i didn’t think about it as much as i was supposed to. there was no bliss. my toes didn’t curl and my eyes didn’t roll to the back of my head. i just didn’t enjoy it. and i thought not enjoying it meant there was something wrong with me. and since it was a me thing, and not anyone’s fault, i had sex. i just pretended that i liked it the way that society told me i should.

so me and my husband had sex because it was something he wanted and i didn’t mind doing.

but this past year i realized and came to terms with the fact my disinterest in sex wasn’t a nerve problem like my gynecologist said or trauma based like an old therapist said or any other explanation offered to me by anyone from friends to medical professionals. my disinterest in sex was because because i don’t experience that kind of attraction.

and when i finally figured it out i was kinda devastated. because i was faced with either a) continuing to pretend to enjoy it, or b) coming out to jp. i knew he wouldn’t take it badly because i love and trust him, but i can know something is true and still not believe it. so i was scared but decided to come out even though the thought literally made me sick. i cried and apologized and told him how horrible i felt that i “lied” to him for years and how terrified i was that he was going to think i wasn’t attracted to him anymore or that i wasn’t ever attracted to him in the first place. i had to tell a man that i’d been having sex with for years that i didn’t want to anymore. that i didn’t enjoy it. that i’d never enjoyed it. that i didn’t know if i’d ever want to have sex again.

and do you all want to know what his response was?

he asked if he’d ever hurt me. and then he asked what my boundaries are. and then he thanked me for telling him. and then he said he married me because he loved me, not because i’d fuck him.

so me and my husband used to have sex. and now we don’t because six years into our relationship i realized i was aspec. and we haven’t had sex since i came out to him. he hasn’t even tried, even though i told him that i didn’t mind having sex, just that he would have to be the one to bring it up because i don’t ever think about it. but he hasn’t brought it up. not once. because he knows it’s about like going to the pharmacy for me.

so my husband doesn’t have sex with me because he loves me. because he cares about me. because he wants me to be happy. because when he asked me to go on that very first date it was because he thought i was smart and enthusiastic and funny and “lovely.” because he knew he was in it for the long haul when he watched me shotgun a red bull in a harbor freight parking lot at 7:30 pm on a thursday.

that’s kind of what marriage is about. the whole loving and wanting to take care of and cherishing your significant other thing. sex has never been a big part of the equation.

jp stayed with me the first six months of my sobriety. he stayed even though one time i had three tequila shots too many and yarffed all over him. and then again in his floorboards. he stayed when my grief made me shut down and shut out and for over a year. he stayed with me when that grief made me so depressed i’d spend days at a time just staring at a wall. or hours and hours reading fanfic so the only thoughts i had in my head belonged to someone else. he stayed even though i don’t remember most of 2023. he’s stayed through every good thing and bad thing and in between thing and literally every single think for the past nearly seven years.

so i highly doubt not “putting out” is gonna be the thing that makes him leave.

I don’t think it’s right for you to be asexual and married. It just doesn’t seem fair to your husband. He didn’t sign up to be in a sexless marriage? How do you make sure his needs are still met?

i trapped him in a jar like he’s a little bug and i throw some non-sexual intimacy in every once and a while so he has enrichment in his enclosure

[liquidstar]

This is such a tangent btw but on the topic of guilt tripping and reblogs... I remember a few years back there were some terrible fires in Greece (and again this year, entire island villages are gone now) and at that time I had family who were caught in them. I can't describe the desperation I felt with these horrible things happening to my family and loved ones in my country. And I remember being frustrated and desperate with how no one around me in America really seemed to give a shit. I remember blogging asking people to PLEASE care please share something please reblog this link for mutual aid please think about the stories and fires etc etc etc. And the thing is I was very much in a state of grief myself, maybe not every word or action was perfectly reasonable, because I don't realistically expect everyone everywhere to care about every tragedy in the world. You can't. Emotionally it's just not possible, especially with all the stuff going on in the states rn too. Yeah it's a lot. It's not like I blog about every tragedy that ever happens either. I understand.

HOWEVER what I also remember was at this time there were a couple mutuals very clearly making vagueposts along the lines of "remember not everyone has the energy to care about everything in the world uwu" while I was posting about family who died and family who were drifting in the ocean for hours as their homes and loved ones burned. Listen. You have to understand sometimes that when a person in grief and frustration with things going on in their countries and communities impacts them very personally beg you to care... It's coming from a place of needing to see that care in the world in general. They're not holding a gun to your head Specifically saying you have to reblog the posts, if you don't have the energy just ignore it.

You don't have to go out of your way saying "um actually I can't care about the horrible stuff you and your family and your country are experiencing rn. I'm too busy focusing on my own stuff so can you be quiet or more reasonable with your grief thanks." Like. Just keep it to yourself then??? Have some fucking sympathy for other people and understand that maybe it's not always logical. The same way you don't have the emotional energy to think about every tragedy in the world, people who've been impacted by them often don't have the emotional energy to handle that alone and may seek somekinda community or solidarity. Idk. It's not about forcing shit on you sometimes it's not about you

[jofiah]

The cruel irony of the r/196 crowd coming here and making their own posts with what they would have posted on reddit is that a lot of these posts originated here on tumblr in the first place.

A lot of them are unknowingly reposting memes that started here and have passed around for a long time, but they haven't been here long enough for the original to grace their dashboards

[wolpatinga]

[transbeamrooikat]

(kinda wip?) another Party sketch :3 trying to get a more solid design for them

[cowardlycowboys]

every note on that match made in heaven post is a shot to my cranium

[guiltiest-gear]

Bitches love to complain about my aggressive Firefox post as if they've never heard of a zealot before

[red-dyed-sarumane]

i dont have "liked it before it was cool" syndrome i have looking at a wiki and going "i know more than you" syndrome

[chronurgy]

I'm actually spending so much time writing that it's cutting into my time for like. posting. incredible

[jup1tersparx]

.

[disownedbytiime]

The worst take I’ve seen about tumblr ‘rules’ for refugees is “if you only like stuff, people will think you are rude”

Like ??? Who tf would think it’s rude to like posts? Are you dumb? Sure, reblogs are nice and depending on the posts it helps them more, but who in their sane mind will think it’s rude to like posts. Who? Like ffs don’t tell people how to use their blog

I’d prefer someone who only likes my posts than someone who reblogs 1000x posts a minute and only because they feel obliged to do so. Like let people use their brains and decide what they want on their blogs, don’t make them feel guilty for fucking liking a post.

[asleepinawell]

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.

[a-little-monotonous]

NAWWW NO WAY IT HAPPENED AGAIN

[autisticlee]

sometimes people reblog my posts from other people and I wonder if they went back and read my tags. my guess is no. but I add so much extra info to tags so my post is actually very vague. sometimes people will reply and say things that tells me they didn't read the tags without telling me haha

[soul-sparx]

oh great my rp blog isnt even a week old and im already having Thoughts about it

[rubye402]

Read it. Don't fucking scroll past.

Gonna say this as someone who has been critical of Game Freak both as a fan and as someone with a Pokémon SPIN for a while now:

Do not support Palworld.

The CEO of Pocket Pair, the game’s studio, openly supports AI and even made a game where making AI-generated art is its main mechanic.

Palworld is not Pocket Pair’s first instance of plagiarism, either. Their previous game, Craftopia, plagiarizes Breath of the Wild, whereas as its upcoming game, Never Grave: The Witch and The Curse, plagiarizes from independent developer Team Cherry’s game, Hollow Knight.

On top of stolen character models and concepts from fakemon artists, it’s already known that you can put Pals through what is basically slave labor BUT what’s been recently discovered is that the game allows you to capture and sell humans. This has been raising some red flags for black gamers looking into these mechanics, me included, considering this factors into the established slave labor system of Palworld.

TL;DR: I completely understand being tired of Game Freak and the Pokémon Company’s lack of polish over the years, but supporting something that is just as devoid of polish and even more devoid of ingenuity is not the way to make those criticisms clearer. This will only encourage more soullessness in the industry.

I implore you to support other creature collectors with some real passion behind them; I will reblog this post with recommendations shortly!