#how do i internet

[mzminola]

"omg ur so cringe" I grew up in a hippie tourist town where the most common bumper sticker was "[town name] We're All Here Because We're Not All There" you don't fucking scare me.

[mzminola]

Image: black T-shirt with holographic rainbow screenprint of a fairy and text reading "WE ARE ALL GOD'S NEOPETS AND HE FORGOT THE PASSWORD" /end ID.

[inkskinned]

the thing is that they're so fascinated by sex, they love sex, they can't imagine a world without sex - they need sex to sell things, they need sex to be part of their personality, they need sex to prove their power - but they hate sex. they are disgusted by it.

sex is the only thing that holds their attention, and it is also the thing that can never be discussed directly.

you can't tell a child the normal names for parts of their body, that's sexual in nature, because the body isn't a body, it's a vessel of sex. it doesn't matter that it's been proven in studies (over and over) that kids need to know the names of their genitals; that they internalize sexual shame at a very young age and know it's 'dirty' to have a body; that it overwhelmingly protects children for them to have the correct words to communicate with. what matters is that they're sexual organs. what matters is that it freaks them out to think about kids having body parts - which only exist in the context of sex.

it's gross to talk about a period or how to check for cancer in a testicle or breast. that is nasty, illicit. there will be no pain meds for harsh medical procedures, just because they feature a cervix.

but they will put out an ad of you scantily-clad. you will sell their cars for them, because you have abs, a body. you will drip sex. you will ooze it, like a goo. like you were put on this planet to secrete wealth into their open palms.

they will hit you with that same palm. it will be disgusting that you like leather or leashes, but they will put their movie characters in leather and latex. it will be wrong of you to want sexual freedom, but they will mark their success in the number of people they bed.

they will crow that it's inappropriate for children so there will be no lessons on how to properly apply a condom, even to teens. it's teaching them the wrong things. no lessons on the diversity of sexual organ growth, none on how to obtain consent properly, none on how to recognize when you feel unsafe in your body. if you are a teenager, you have probably already been sexualized at some point in your life. you will have seen someone also-your-age who is splashed across a tv screen or a magazine or married to someone three times your age. you will watch people pull their hair into pigtails so they look like you. so that they can be sexy because of youth. one of the most common pornography searches involves newly-18 young women. girls. the words "barely legal," a hiss of glass sand over your skin.

barely legal. there are bills in place that will not allow people to feel safe in their own bodies. there are people working so hard to punish any person for having sex in a way that isn't god-fearing and submissive. heteronormative. the sex has to be at their feet, on your knees, your eyes wet. when was the first time you saw another person crying in pornography and thought - okay but for real. she looks super unhappy. later, when you are unhappy, you will close your eyes and ignore the feeling and act the role you have been taught to keep playing. they will punish the sex workers, remove the places they can practice their trade safely. they will then make casual jokes about how they sexually harass their nanny.

and they love sex but they hate that you're having sex. you need to have their ornamental, perfunctory, dispassionate sex. so you can't kiss your girlfriend in the bible belt because it is gross to have sex with someone of the same gender. so you can't get your tubes tied in new england because you might change your mind. so you can't admit you were sexually assaulted because real men don't get hurt, you should be grateful. you cannot handle your own body, you cannot handle the risks involved, let other people decide that for you. you aren't ready yet.

but they need you to have sex because you need to have kids. at 15, you are old enough to parent. you are not old enough to hear the word fuck too many times on television.

they are horrified by sex and they never stop talking about it, thinking about it, making everything unnecessarily preverted. the saying - a thief thinks everyone steals. they stand up at their podiums and they look out at the crowd and they sign a bill into place that makes sexwork even more unsafe and they stand up and smile and sign a bill that makes gender-affirming care illegal and they get up and they shrug their shoulders and write don't say gay and they get up, and they make the world about sex, but this horrible, plastic vision of it that they have. this wretched, emotionless thing that holds so much weight it's staggering. they put their whole spine behind it and they push and they say it's normal!

this horrible world they live in. disgusted and also obsessed.

[taffywabbit]

reminding myself there are no truly "bad days", because every single day, someone somewhere in the world has taken a photo of an extremely tiny animal and shown it to someone else, and that's very good actually

[sciderman]

well - webtoons is over, gang

[originalartblog]

Apparently much-needed reminder that reposting artists' art (by saving the images or screenshotting them and reuploading them yourself) on other platforms without the artists' expressed permission and without credit is theft and an insult to their passion and craft. You are profiting (in views, in attention, in feedback) from someone else's work and ideas, who do not get that feedback for sharing their creation.

If you are an art reposter, you are a thief and I have no respect for you.

[mzminola]

Petition to replace the second half of “do you / are you ____, or are you normal?” with “Or are you chill?”

[mzminola]

Note from personal experience: if you already had “custom theme” active when this change happened, you need to turn it off and then on again.

Currently my blog is visible to anyone who looks at mzminola.tumblr.com, but has the above pop-up for non-logged-in viewers who look at tumblr.com/mzminola. Previously, despite having “custom theme” active, the mobile internet would automatically reroute people from that first address to the second. Had to turn it off, save, turn it on, save again, to fix it.

I don’t know if I’m late to the party here noticing this, but @staff what the actual hell is this. This is what I get when I click on the link to my own mantis shrimp post, shared on Twitter. I can see the first half, and then I get forced to log-in to keep reading.

I write a free blog on your free platform, and you’re using link sharing on mobile to try to force people to sign up? Not only is this absolutely not okay - this isn’t a paywalled site and my content isn’t subscription only - but it really fucks me over as a science communicator who relies on posts being shared easily to disseminate information.

This is absolutely not okay. I’ve used this site for eight years to do for science outreach and loved it. This choice leaves a really nasty taste in my mouth.

[puppyeared]

littlest furth shop

@laikascomet

[mazeyphaedra]

was rewatching fabian’s baron moment on account of it being the most delicious piece of pvp in my recent memory and ally beardsley’s growth as a player just shone through so brightly and with such clarity. after dusting off their shock they immediately asked about the nemesis ward, had enough knowledge about fellow pcs stocked to remember adaine’s ac with such like frustrated confidence and certainty, suggested to siobhan to dimension door out of adaine’s room, like. they came into this making a character with 4 dex. and now the dice deity offered to roll a check to sense if adaine was in danger. making decisions, asking questions, getting invested in the story, trying so hard with the tools they have to save characters from danger; ally beardsley is an incredible d&d player.

[avpdpossum]

can we talk more about avpd being a (proposed) schizospec disorder? because i almost never see that theory talked about but i wish it was. like…

avpd makes me censor my thoughts because i think someone might hear what i’m thinking and see what a horrible person i am on the inside or judge me for thinking embarrassing things.

avpd makes me so afraid of someone walking in on me doing something i Shouldn’t Be Doing that my brain twists background noise into the sounds of whispers and footsteps behind me.

avpd makes me so worried about people staring at me that in my peripheral vision, anyone near me looks like they’re already staring at me, and it’s only when i look at them directly that i realize they’ve been looking in a totally different direction the whole time.

avpd makes me so convinced of how much everyone must secretly hate me that i often start thinking everyone secretly wants to hurt me too, to the point where i’ve had panic attacks from a person walking too close behind me because i feel like they’re getting ready to attack me (when i haven’t had any kind of trauma that would create that fear), and the paranoia just serves to reinforce my need to avoid people.

avpd makes me lose my ability to speak or reduces it to nothing more than one word answers only when spoken to, turning the thoughts i wanted to express into a jumble that’s impossible to turn into words or just throwing them away completely and making my mind go blank, so i end up just staring at people silently or even acting like i don’t see them standing there at all (not on purpose but because my brain won’t let me engage with them).

avpd makes me look damn near emotionless around everyone but my safe person (and sometimes even around my safe person) because showing my emotions would be far too vulnerable for its liking, so it completely takes away my ability to express them.

and i could keep going! there are so many things i experience because of avpd that i’ve seen really closely reflected in the experiences of schizospec people. i don’t know how common these kinds of things are in avpd overall, but they’re a really prominent part of my experience with it, so when i found out that some research suggested it could be considered a schizospec disorder itself, that made so much sense to me! and i’d be so curious to see how many other avoidants have dealt with this stuff but haven’t talked about it because it’s never mentioned as being part of avpd.

[mzminola]

Image: tags which reads "#both have different uses! mountain king works for slowly escalating drama #orpheus is for when everything is a wild shitshow from the beginning" /end ID.

[rarespawnwrites]

Hm. I admit I didn't expect my reblog to be hidden under the readmore. I guess I have to reblog it from someone else?

[inkskinned]

we were sitting on the floor and i was cutting out tiny pictures to make a collage for a friend's birthday. you were on your phone and you laughed about something, and i was still in love with you then, so i asked what had you giggling.

"sorry. i was just..." you took a moment and went back to texting. "i was telling someone about how you're afraid of the dark."

i'm afraid of the dark because something bad happened. "oh." i felt a little slinky of shame crawl down my throat.

you glanced up, and maybe it showed on my face, because you rolled your eyes and held the phone to the side casually so i could see the group chat. "what? was it a secret?"

i looked down to the scissors in my hand. "i just..." no, it's not a secret. it just felt like something private, something serious. saying why would you tell someone that just feels like an accusation. it's unfair. i honestly am not even ashamed of it, it's just a fact about my person that i don't usually share.

what a strange experience. is this a human thing or a generational thing? for our grandparents: did they need to worry about how quickly someone can just... share your personal information? again, i didn't even really have a true objection. what could i say? i want any person in my life to feel they can be honest with their friends. it's not like i said don't tell anyone this.

i cut out another letter to complete the rainbow happy birthday, started hunting for the exclamation mark. i heard you sigh dramatically.

"don't make a big deal about this," you said.

this entire conversation was a pattern for us, and this was when we got to my least favorite part of the pattern. i would get my feelings hurt in some oblique not-technically-terrible way, and then it would be making a big deal about something. you'd get frustrated for me for being soft, but i was born soft. you knew i was soft when you pierced me. it's one of the things that made controlling me so easy.

"i'm not," i felt my voice crack. the question came without my wanting. "why are you guys talking about me?" and why are you saying that thing? why not like - i'm telling them how you're generous and kind and pretty.

you let out this low, tragic groan. "oh my god." you tossed the phone away from your body. "there, see? i just won't talk to them if you don't like it."

the rest of the hour went the way it always went, between us: i said i don't actually mind if you talk to your friends but -, you found a way to call my minor expression of discomfort "being dramatic." you got upset that i had been offended. i ended up apologizing, even though i hadn't actually done anything.

afterwards, you picked up the phone again. after texting for a little bit, you snorted. "okay," you said, "but it is kind of funny you're afraid of the dark. i mean, when you think about it."

[hansoape]

warhammer dudes will treat the female characters in the nastiest way. Degrade Celestine's and Yvraine's characters to nothing but waifu bait. Talk about what they'd like to do to sororitas with consent optional. Gleefully describe what a daemonculaba is and act like its so cool and edgy. But the minute female fans and queers start to talk about finding a male character attractive NAW that's where they draw the line. How dare we find Titus handsome. Filthy perverts degenerates all of us. Its apparently too much for them and they get really, really mad about it. Stay pissy you gross ass weirdos, your hypocrisy stinks through the walls

[mzminola]

It is not intuitive. And when I sent a feedback ticket before encountering this post, and tumblr's own feedback page still says that you can reach earlier versions of the post by clicking the username.

Additionally, what about simply reaching the "reblogged from" (aka Previous) version of the post? Why can we no longer do that?

It's not intuitive, because the internet is a completely made up thing full of semi-arbitrary rules often based on trying to cudgel together "how do we code this" and "what do users do in the testing phase" and "what color background the coder of an earlier 1990's website thought was pretty and no one wanted to change in case the code broke".

And you know what? The internet does not need to be uniform. It is OKAY for people to explore a website that is new to them and figure out how it works.

And if you really are trying to make the internet uniform, does that mean you're going to change the site every single time another big platform does? Because that sure does not sound like a great user experience to me.

Edit: oh and the "click on the blank space next to the username" won't let me right-click to open in a new tab. I would have to click on the dots, copy the link, open a new tab, paste it, and THEN click on the blank space to open it separately.

I do not and will never want dashboard pop-ups replacing the ability to open things in a new tab. I can live with them co-existing but it is detrimental to how I use tumblr to take away the "right-click to open in new tab" option.

Second edit: I think I misunderstood what "we’re making to the reblog consumption experience across all platforms," means, but I also feel that it is perfectly fine for the mobile and desktop functions to be a bit different from each other, as long as they both work. I don't have a mouse on mobile, I do on desktop. Making things require more steps for the sake of uniformity is obnoxious.

Edit July 6th 2023: it appears we do have right-click-open ability on the desktop now. Thank you.

Edit Aug 13th 2023: aaaaaaan the right click is gone again. It was never a visible spot within the box but I have experimented with where my mouse is and it's gone. WHY.

Tuesday, May 30th, 2023

🌟 New

Please enjoy the frogs on web. 🐸

To clarify a point made in last Friday’s post: on web, clicking the reblogged-from blog name in a reblog’s post header now takes you to that blog, not their reblog. Clicking in the empty space in the post’s header, and in the header of each reblog trail item, now takes you to that specific post in the blog view popup. This is one of a series of updates we’re making to the reblog consumption experience across all platforms, to make it more intuitive and consistent, especially for new users.

On web, and in version 29.7 of the Android app and version 29.5 of the iOS app, the blog names in the “Liked by…” recommendation reason on posts will be clickable/tappable, taking you to the listed blog(s).

🛠 Fixed

Fixed a visual glitch causing misplaced padding rules in the notes view on posts on the web.

🚧 Ongoing

Nothing to report here today.

🌱 Upcoming

We’re working to open source StreamBuilder, our framework that powers the dashboard, recommendations, and most of the feeds on Tumblr. Stay tuned!

Experiencing an issue? File a Support Request and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can!

Want to share your feedback about something? Check out our Work in Progress blog and start a discussion with the community.