#idk how to use twitter or reddit or any other social media platform so tumblr is my haven

[ricochetyears]

self-promoting thursday bc this is an ao3 war and we die like regulus black (that’s a lie he’s happy and alive)

ac: sophithil

[sweeteacrummble]

Ayo!

Ayo! It has been a while. I haven't posted any art for a while now (which I will get back to doing soon).

Where have I been

For the short answer:

I have been busy. College, Home, and being a Christian

Now for the long answer:

I am going to break it up into parts while I rant cause it gonna be a minute and there are a few things I need to let off of my chest.

College Update🏫🎓:

I normally don't like sharing how I am busy with other things than art, but now I am at the point where I have a voice and I need to use it for once. Yes, I go to College for a degree in Animation. So most of the time my hiatus is because of College, especially Finals. Yeaaaaaaaah! Overall I have been busy with work. I would love to post my progress but I feel as if it is not my best. Oh well.🫤 After, I will be able to have a break in the middle of May so their some good news there.

Youtube Update📽️📺:

For my YouTube Friends/Viewers out there and newcomers joining the party, breathes THANK YOU! THANK! YOU THANK YOU! SUPER! DUPER! OH SO MUCH FOR SUBSCRIBING TO MY CHANNEL!!! 🤗😍😄😆THANK YOU LORD AND THANK YOU ALL!!! YOU ALL ARE THE BEST! I started with 7 subs and I never thought I could get 50 subscribers. But now 641+ SUBSCRIBERS!!!!! I wanted to make a special video for when I got a 100 but the numbers quickly kept going higher and higher and I was happy and yet overwhelming. I am so grateful to have this opportunity to share goofy goobers stuff with you. 🤗😊👍. Now with the question. Am I still going to do YouTube you haven't really posted any new videos yet? Yeah, I know. But Yes! I am still going to do YouTube. I am working on 2 new videos, so I will have a poll ready for you guys to vote on which one you want to see first. I finished 1 video now I am about 60% done with the 2nd video. Until then you can Vote on which video you want to see first while I do some catch-up.

link to poll: https://www.youtube.com/post/UgkxdoxchkFP1fHQr6LfhVp_z21IbWmKqrBm

Social Media Art Update📲📳:

I will be posting art again BUT I will stop posting in some social media accounts. For those who want to be an artist, I definitely recommend doing 1 website and then expanding if you can. But not just that, if you are a beginner/new artist and you want to know what place to post your art, Firstly I recommend posting on sites where your favorite artists post. Most of the time They have some good pointers on where to go about posting art. Secondly and MOST IMPORTANT, post art in places where you can look it up AND it will show up on Google or Bing. For instance, If you look up Mario fanart on Google and click on images, (I know it's fanart but hear me out), The sites you will see are mostly Twitter, DeviantArt, Pinterest, Reddit and sometimes Tumblr will show up. Others like Artstation too. But not much of Instagram or Facebook. That's odd? The number 1 website for artists, from what people have recommended me, is NOT showing up on Google. Well, not a lot. Why is that? IDK. All I know is that should have been a warning sign that my art wouldn't be shown to the masses in the degree I was looking for. So when I post on Instagram, It does feel like I am posting to an endless void of nothingness. Your Artwork is valuable and should be treated as such so everyone can see it (unless you don't want to).

Here is my tier list of the Social Media I use daily for entertainment and posting as a creator on these platforms.

Update:: okie….. sooooo….. about the Mario fanart thingy. Apparently, Google has been overhearing me rant (literally) and rolling in Instagram and Facebook art on Google images which wasn’t the case before. But at least they are taking measures. But even though Google is allowing Instagram to be more recognized, I'm sorry but THE APP itself still has problems that Google can't fix. (Unless they bought it of course)

Besides YouTube, I can recommend Twitter, DeviantArt, Pinterest, Reddit, and Tumblr, just because you can post without feeling like you have to be a pro artist to be considered good, and you can grow and share with a community. And the best part is if you're an introvert (like me) You can post and worry less. I like to comment when someone comments back to help build confidence for myself but you don't have to if you feel shy. It takes small steps so don't rush yourself or your art. Another thing I would like to add is that if you love making GIF Art, you can do it on all the other platforms except…

Instagram. 😒😠😤

A literal sweat job with an inconsistent indiscriminate rate of changes left and right. Make reels, Make stories, Make post, all at once, every day, AND BOTS. Even watching reels about artists struggle just seems unhealthy to me, but Instagram loves this apparently. I mean, yes, we are struggling and there are plenty of underrated artists out there, I know it. But how are we helping them by promoting reels about art struggles and ways to get big on Instagram, instead of exploring new art techniques and trying new things when creating art. It also doesn't help that it is hard for me to refresh my feed from scratch. My bad Instagram for liking 1 Sonic fanart post, I just like 1 okay. I don't mean for you to give me all of them. Sheesh 😤There are just too many negatives of this platform I can't even begin with. Kinda like Twitter but at least Twitter hashtags work "sometimes". It is hard to trust a platform when you have bots swarming to your page and when you think that a live PERSON responded to your post BUT it is a bot recommending you to give them your art for the bot to share it. What kind of place is this? At the time I was trying to figure out where to post my art, I searched on Google, Reddit, and even YouTube, and most of the art videos I saw at that time all recommended Instagram. Well, I am here to say DON'T USE INSTAGRAM! This is a warning for someone who first uses this as their first art account. DO NOT USE IT PLEASE!

Man, this is the most negative thing I said but I'm just tired of thinking that this is okay and I need to put up with this and I don't.

In short, I will not post any future art I make on Instagram but the page will be open for those who want to see it. I may even come back to Instagram, but changes must be made for to make that move again. For now, I am happily posting on all the other platforms for now.

Being a Christian⛪✝️:

I am a Christian. I have been a Christian But I am a Sinner. I know I have done things wrong and I know I deserve hell, but I repent, repenting constantly for God to forgive me of my sins.🙏 I know I am sounding a bit Biblical but I am being serious. Heaven is real. Hell is real. And if both of those are really real then that must be God is real and the Bible is a history recorded for use to read and learn and hear from Him. No, I am not trying to convert you to Christianity, this is more for me than anyone I suppose. I have been dealing with doubts in my life and some things I just can't explain. But I know there has to be something beyond this life. There are just too many signs pointing in that direction and it is hard to keep quiet about. I know God saved my parents. I have seen it multiple times. But at the same time, I tend to forget and lose faith in Jesus at times which is sad. Is Jesus coming back again? If so then sign me up I will do my best to be closer to Him. It's just that I don't want to go to hell for all of eternity, so if I don't want to go there I need to believe in Jesus Christ. It is a lot easier said than done but I also want to share the good news with others that Jesus loves them but I don't want to offend anyone if that makes. But I guess I can tell you if you don't mind.

Jesus loves you! 💖💝

Yay, I said it! Oh I forgot to add that I don't want to rush anything that I do moving forward and take it easy. But don't worry I still draw fanart of my favorite video game characters is just that I am adding one more layer to what I post that's all.

Oh

You're still reading this?!?

...

uuh

I don't have anything else to say

I guess I can end it off like VeggieTales did

God made you special and He loves you very much

Buh bye👋😊

Happy Blessing

Sweeteacrummbles

[fluffybunnybadass]

the fact that y'all turned comments/ replies off means you're well aware that you're ringing the death knell for the website and are turning it into the things ppl are running away from. which, in turn, is going to cause an exodus again, and not because you have to abide by some app store rules-- simply because you want to capitalize on the people who are leaving other, failed websites for here.

literally no one wants this change that is a user

also it's rude to think "a user should not know how it works" as a starting point, because the way it sounds is like. you must always assume we're stupid and thus change the current social ecosystem, not realizing that by doing this you're harming it. Like, idk, The fact that you guys had to bold italicize it? (which, ironically, is something giving me issues to format while writing this post on mobile-- maybe you should look into that instead? ) feels so incredibly rude lol

anyways, what current, active, long time users are complaining about these things? new users are going to adapt, because that's what we used to do back in the day, before every alleged social media website decided to turn into the same, basic, annoying formula that LACKS PROPER CURATION. tumblr users have been making and spreading out as many "WELCOME TO TUMBLR!!" guideline threads and posts to help BOTH Twitter and reddit users adapt.

and i'm sure many others are going to agree that the site IS easier to curate than literally any of these other current platforms people have been migrating from. i can LITERALLY KNOW WHAT TO EXPECT when i come on here to look at my dash. i don't have to get annoyed by the 20th advertised tweet in a set of 30 tweets, because the ads don't look like regular posts (thank God), (and also don't act like them either, which makes them at the very least visualizing interesting too linger on for a break). I don't have to worry about being shown things that I'm not following, beyond the occasional blaze post, which has so far quickly AND PROPERLY adapted to what kinds i want to see and hasnt shown me "random selfie of hot person 3477412" like it did at first. (and by using the "this post isn't for me" or whatever button it was, i haven't needed to remove a post)

also? we can inject random content onto our feed already if we turn on "include posts from followed tags"? and we can chronologically search posts, so we can also see stuff that's not popular in a tag? or at all if we've set our dash to it?

all in all I'm not seeing a single thing listed here that wasn't already being accomplished. you're just making mountains out of ant hills that don't even exist to the average user, and despite our propensity for sarcasm, tumblr users are actually genuinely willing to help someone new to the platform "learn the ropes". Just pay attention to people who are actively trying to harm and maybe look at things people are actually having issues with STILL instead of, well, making more issues.

thanks,

a 2011-ish tumblr user

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.

[pybun]

i have once again forgot to post here for months

even tho i didnt respond, i appreciate all the messages yall have sent ;_;

the last time i went inactive was bc of bad internet. but in the past 6 months, i found it harder and harder to keep up with different platforms. i used to post art on twitter, artstation, tumblr and reddit. as time passes, ive slowly let go of  posting on one platform after the other until theres only twitter. in tumblr’s case, i have an unwritten rule of needing to post art/memes at certain times of the day for “maximum” traction. whenever i post on twitter, ill forget to post it on tumblr, by the time i remember, itd be too late for me to post bc ive missed the time rule. ik i could just wait for the next day but i forget...again. rinse and repeat to all the stuff i couldve posted here until ive gotten tired of having to follow said rules

the demand social media have been very overwhelming. its been p hard to keep up with everyone. top that with me experiencing carpal tunnel symptoms since last year. ever since that happened, ive been adjusting my lifestyle so i dont worsen my condition. its been working so far. it took me months before i felt like i was ready to take on “regular” workload mentally and physically. there are some mindsets and habits i had to give up for me to accept my “new normal” and want to get better. i didnt realize how unhealthy those were and ive improved since to some extent

the only place im active on in the past months is twitter. i have checked my tumblr a few times in the past months but was mainly checking my inbox. i did not have the energy to post art here. there were a few things i used to look to forward to on tumblr which has also slowly faded away in time. this isnt the first time this happened. what happened to my deviantart seems like what’s gonna happen to my tumblr as well. idk if ill ever have the braincells again to keep up with several platforms. ill be keeping my blog up for archival reasons and occasionally checking my inbox. i cant guarantee if ill be posting here again or at least not any time soon. on the other hand idk if i wanna say my goodbyes just yet. i kinda wanna try again and see if i can somehow still be “active” here

[historicfailure]

Hey!! I’m excited for the discord ^^ Atm my favorites are either Choice 1 or Choice 6? My one worry is that the subheading won’t be seen on an icon, so maybe you could incorporate that as part of the server banner or something? And another question: are you going to be active in the server often, or is it a space for your readers to convene? :) And ofc, how are you? ~ 1AM

Hey there! :D

Hell yes, someone is happy ^^ I'm also really hyped already, and have many ideas what could be possible with the server and what I would do.

I'm also really caught between the two Choices 1 and 6, and probably will go with 1 for the time being (minus the subheading then, because I agree, you can't see that anyway), with number 6 as backup if necessary.

I also don't worry about the server banner atm, as I don't plan to boost the server for the time being, and that feature apparently is only available on a certain boost level? ^^''

And to your question: yes, I would be active on the server. I planned to not only do more "live" announcements of me posting fics in a separate channel, but I also would love to discuss and talk and just interact with people. For sure, it will also be a space for my readers to interact with each other, but I just want to remove the barrier in interaction. Or at least, pull it down the tiniest bit.

Fact is, I'm way more active on discord these days than on any other social media platform. Besides, I am still stubborn and:

don't have twitter, Instagram (or only a dead account there which I have no idea how to use), no reddit, etc

I only have tumblr, AO3, discord and a very private facebook account, which is under my real name and all that, so that is obvs out of the question ^^''

Social-media-wise, I'm a boomer lol

besides, on Discord, I can instantly see/notice messages. On Tumblr, I more often than not don't see messages due to me being a lazy ass, missing notifications etc. On a server, I hope that I can be more communicative and connect more with you guys :)

To your other question: I'm kind of in between ^^'' For example, I haven't slept well, maybe only 3 hours in a row today, but I still feel really awake? idk. Still fine by me, because tomorrow I have to get up really early for work and I desperately hope that I will fall asleep fast today xD Other than that, it was a relaxed weekend ^^ Just some light cleaning, some cooking, me trying to help my parents out with stuff in their garden etc And ofc, work at the discord server and familiarize myself with the in and outs ^^''

Thank you so much for your lovely ask! Damn, it's a mammoth of an answer, I'm sorry >-< How are you?

[mariaiscrafting]

can i ask why you dislike dream? im not being passive agressive or something lol i am genuinely curious

S’all good, kinda figured you weren’t being, and a lot of people have asked me this lol. There are so many reasons, and I’ve said this so many times already, but I’ll try to go over some of the main things I can remember:

1) Arrogance: kinda put me off how he’s always responded to criticism. Always kinda had an air of superiority about shit, and it never really bothered me on its own because I think lots of CCs are arrogant & I’m arrogant myself, but combined with all of the following, it became a reason for me to dislike him lol

2) Manipulation of his audience: look, I kinda always knew that CCs with huge fanbases, especially CCs who grow this quickly, have some kind of grasp of how to treat and foster their audience to their greatest advantage. I’ve always been wary of CCs that put on soft or nice personalities, especially since the whole Shane Dawson debacle. But with Dream, it’s been a whole other thing ever since his cheating response video, and I’ve never been able to see him in a good light in regard to how he responds to his fans, ever since. I went into it in a lot more detail back when I first watched the video, the day it dropped, but I’m too exhausted to scrounge that post up, so I’ll summarize: that video had a very specific strategy that he used to victimize himself and appeal to his fans’ compassion for him, and after rewatching the video for the third time that day, it felt gross and calculated to me. The way that he focuses very little on the actual mathematical part of his argument. The way he frames the issue of the mods having favoritism or bias. It was already proven on Reddit and throughout Twitter that the numbers the mods looked at were for good reason, and not because they just wanted to pick the numbers that made Dream look the worst, but that’s how he framed the argument. When I logged onto Twitter and Tumblr that day, there were thousands of fans who had latched onto what he said in the latter half of that video and coming to Dream’s defense, and that’s kinda when it hit me: this guy fucking knows what he’s doing, and he’s doing it well, and I really really dislike it. There’s about a hundred other ways he manipulates his audience, including not coming to people’s defenses when huge chunks of his audience attack them (even though the people had respectful and correct criticisms of him), defending stans so adamantly in the face of antis, and posting periodic alt tweets that help garner the illusion that he super cares about his fans; but, that cheating response video was the major red flag, for me.

3) Cheating & lying: as is likely no surprise to y’all, I think Dream cheated lmao. At first, I was ecstatic that he had actually made a detailed response video and put out a report with the help of an actual professional, but as I read up on his supposed statistical argument and dissected the parts of his argument that felt off to me, I realized maybe he had cheated. Talking to some STEM major friends of mine, who weren’t into MCYT but had obviously heard about the whole debacle because they like Twitter and Minecraft, kinda put the nail in the coffin for me. I’m not nearly smart enough or have a good enough memory to detail exactly why I think he cheated on this blog, right now, in April, but essentially: his main argument relied upon claiming mod bias, instead of a sound mathematical or statistical argument; there’s no way of proving that the world files he provided to the mods and in the open source weren’t altered; the statistical problems he points out (i.e., stopping effect) don’t actually skew the original mods’ model nearly as much as his supposed PhD guy would say; and the odds he comes up with might not be nearly as impossible as 1 in 7 trillion, but they still come up to around 1 in 100 million, which is still fucking ridiculous, considering that there are only, like, 120 million people in the world who play Minecraft.  Not impossible, but laughable that he expects people to believe that. But... I guess they did, lmao. The thing that peeved me the most about the whole thing was the adamant lying lmao. When you look at the situation from the perspective of “dream cheated,” you realize just how fucked up all his Twitter responses, his adamance in streams and that video, and the general mood among his friends is... idk man, it’s just highly fucked.

4) Relationship with stans: look, there are significant numbers of  his fans that take part in Twitter cancelling vendettas, who spread around information about other CCs and their fellow fans that is false and meant to villify them, etc., and he never fucking says anything. It really, really bothers me. There are too many instances to enumerate, but a few that have caught my eye were when Dream stans would attack Techno, prior to their battle and when a Native American woman politely explained why he shouldn’t use Native music, he responded and said he wouldn’t, but tons of stans continued to attack her in her replies for “being so harsh/mean.” Like, he knows that just one word from him will make his fandom follow his beck and call. All it would’ve taken was one fucking word. There are so many fucking people that have been harrassed off of social media platforms because of the hivemind that is dttwt, for christ’s sake.

5) Reddit posts: All of the above were reasons for me to mildly dislike the guy prior to the Reddit posts, but they weren’t really enough to make me stop posting about c!Dream or reblogging fanart or reading DNF fics or watching Manhunts. I kinda just clowned on the guy, answered the occasional ask about the cheating thing or something related, and left it at that. The Reddit posts not only pissed me off for their content, but for the lying, as well. Do you think I fucking cared about him cheating at speedrunning Minecraft, of all games? Fuck no. What I cared about was the adamant lying that went into the whole debacle. Kinda the same with the Reddit posts. I’m one to usually forgive creators who acknowledge past errors, obviously. It is creators who try to brush stuff off, or even worse, create an elaborate lie to cover up allegations, that put me off a fuck ton. This is the reason I could never be comfortable with watching Pewdipie after I realized all the shit he had brushed off, and it’s now the reason I can’t go back to watching Dream. There is so much evidence that points to guilt, including but not limited to: his first move when the slideshow dropped (before posting to Twitter) being deleting as many old Discord messages as he could, the contradiction between him at first denying the account was his at all then changing the story to say he shared it with a friend, the wording and phrasing in the political posts being almost identical to the non-political posts that were clearly him (i.e., the one that explains his demographics perfectly), and the timing of the political posts (some of them being posted mere minutes after posts that were verifiably him, like the picture of Patches to the cats subreddit). People can claim that he’s likely changed, and what this it matter, as long as politics don’t affect his work now, but I can’t believe this fundamental misunderstanding of why bigotry in entertainment matters. I’ve always had a problem with the adoration this fandom has for cishet white men, and the constant criticism of non-cishet, non-white, non-men, but this really feels like the final slap in the fucking face. It’s like everyone truly believes that it doesn’t matter, that his beliefs couldn’t have possibly affected the way he’s treated fellow CCs in his circles or any of the number of people that depend upon Dream, directly and indirectly, for employment/CC clout. It’s like everyone truly believes that political ideology has no effect on the way we perceive, treat, and behave around other people in literally any field, not just politics. I, just... Christ. I don’t really wanna unpack my emotions about this whole thing right now, so I won’t. I’ll just say: I dislike Trump supporters and ex-Trump supporters alike, I dislike conservatives who claim they’re centrists (every fucking guy my age does this, it’s infuriating and makes me want to bash my head into the nearest wall), I dislike people who levy their fans against criticism - even when it’s righteous - and I dislike people who lie about their past actions; Dream fits all those categories, so I dislike him.

[generallyunskilled]

I find it so weird how much every social media site fandom hates each other bc I’m on literally every single one and each one is just??? Made for different things??

Tumblr is great for long form content like analysis, theories, headcanons and fanfiction. The lack of a restricting character limit allows for long thoughts and rambles to be clearly conveyed. Features like the asks adds an interesting sort of interaction not seen on any other site. Reblogs also allow thoughts to be built upon. If you like someone’s idea, you can take it and add your own to create something truly collaborative. Fanart is also really good here, but fanart is everywhere you can post images.

Twitter is great for interaction. You can bounce your ideas off other people quickly and in a very simple manner. It’s also the best to have for getting info from ccs and interacting with them. Again, fanart. This is a good site to use if you want your fave to see said fanart.

Insta is the weakest for any of the writing based things of course. The algorithm is a little wack but the fanart content on there is amazing. There’s whole fancomics and off the wall things like that. As long as you’re properly supporting the artists, it’s great.

Tiktok has a lot of what Tumblr has, verbalized. Lots of fans talking about their headcanons and theories. There’s animatics, too, which are sick! But most of all, the COSPLAYERS. That shits an art form in and of itself in the mcyt community, since we have so little to go off with on the skins. Tiktok does have the wildest cringe but so does every site. 99% of it is trolling and the tiniest portion of it is the weird side of the fandom. Ignore it and only interact with stuff you like and eventually the algorithm will cater to you and you won’t see it.

Reddit is also really good for interacting with certain ccs and is really built on a sense of community. It’s mostly formed on that. There’s a lot of camaraderie on Reddit because of this. Some ccs are part of their respective subreddits, so if you want them to see something or interact, it’s good for that. The fanart on there is also fucking exquisite.

Idk maybe I’ve just been lucky enough to never see anything abhorrent on any site. There’s downsides to each and every one, and it’s all up to personal preference which you prefer to use. I have no real preference because I’m a social media addict who’s hyperfixated on mcyt and wants to only see that on every platform, but I understand why others do. All I’m saying is I do not get the vitriol some of y’all have for each other. Just ignore it and mind your business on whatever you like.

[chariot313]

Western social media has no respect for Japanese online artists - and it’s killing online art

The visual arts have evolved to suit the most popular medium of each era. In nowadays’ case, the internet is the go-to method of sharing the fruits of one’s labour). However, as stated in that tweet thread of mine you can see if you scroll down a bit (assuming you’re viewing this post on chariot313.tumblr.com) different cultures have different attitudes towards how their customers react to their products. This include you know what fuck the formalities, I’ll just say it: The exclusively western concept of someone seeing something they like online and hitting the share button to stimulate the “Haha, upvotes go ‘brrr’!” dopamine in their smooth-ass lizard brain will be the death of online Japanese artists. Or rather, it has been already, and you would know that if you’ve ever seen an artist’s Twitter bio be in mostly Japanese save for one sentence in English; “Reprint is prohibited.”.

If you want to hear me rationalize the absurd claim I just made, feel free to click the “Keep reading” button. Otherwise, turn back now and save yourself from me possibly wasting your time.

Alright, you’ve chosen to stick with me. Just remember, you asked for this.

Introduction

Social media as a whole is based around sharing (posting, uploading, submitting, tweeting, blogging, streaming etc.) and other’s reactions to what one has shared (views, likes, subscribers, favorites, followers, upvotes, retweets, reblogs, crossposts, etc.).

However, miscommunication and culture shock due to language barriers and cultural differences is one of the many factors that can negatively affect one’s experience on social media. For example, the Japanese artist community, active on sites such as Twitter, Pixiv, NicoNico Seiga, FC2 blogs, etc.. Twitter is mostly inhabited by English-speaking users. Here in the west, our main motive for sharing something on social media (such as art) is for fame and recognition. However, over in the East, most online artists only upload their works to the internet for personal use. I’m not saying one cultural attitude towards sharing art is better than one another, but when these two worldviews collide, the culture shock can negatively affect the careers of artists who are unaware of the other culture’s differing views on sharing art.

So, I’ve listed numerous social media platforms below and I’m going to elaborate on how each of them contributes to the alienation and discouragement of Japanese artists.

DO NOT WITCH-HUNT OR HARASS THE CULPRITS I’VE LISTED AS EXAMPLES; THEY ONLY SERVE TO BACK UP MY ARGUMENT

Twitter

Go into the twitter search bar and type in the name of an anime character (usually female). What do you find? Most likely an account named after said character that does nothing but post unsourced fan art of said character with cheesy “in-character” captions on them.

Exhibit A [NSFW]

Exhibit B [NSFW]

Exhibit C [very NSFW]

Aside from that, Twitter isn’t that bad in this regard, as a lot of the art that gets stolen is originally uploaded to Twitter anyway. But I’m just getting started. 

Wattpad

Ah yes, Wattpad. One of the “trinity” of fan fiction communities (the others being fanfiction.net and AO³), featuring many different stories with varying degrees of readability. The problem is the option to add a picture to adorn your fanfiction, at which point most of the authors google “<fanfic subject> fan art” and use something from there without considering the repercussions. This causes Wattpad to be one of the top results when reverse image searching to find the source of some fan art, aside from another site I’ll mention later on...

Reddit

There’s a subreddit I often browse called r/ChurchOfJirou, a community for sharing anything relating to the character Kyouka from My Hero Academia (I mean come on, she’s like the cutest thing ever). A lot of the posts on that sub are sharing fan art of the aforementioned character. One of the rules in the sidebar is “always include the source in the title or the comments”. And most of the submissions make good on that rule. However, a lot of the posts are from Japanese artists on Twitter or Pixiv, and following the source link leads you to find the artist’s bio, which usually has something along the lines of “don’t repost my work”. And what’s more, the biggest offenders (of submitting art to the sub without OP’s permission) were the moderators of the subreddit. You know, the ones who are supposed to be enforcing the rules? I even got so fed up that I called it out, to which one of the mods replied,

“It doesn’t really make a difference, does it?”

Luckily, not all subreddits are like this. For example, other MHA-related subs like r/BokuNoShipAcademia or r/ChurchOfMinaAshido have moderators that are more considerate of artists’ wishes. Overall, Reddit is usually a hit-or-miss when it comes to this kind of thing. At best, you’ve got subs like the two I just mentioned which make sure to respect artists, and at worst you’ve got people trying (and failing) to edit out watermarks. Also, not to self-promote, but this tweet of mine represents this situation pretty well:

Imgur

Imgur isn’t that bad compared to the rest of these, but it’s a common one that people link to when asked for the source of whatever they’ve shared on Twitter or Reddit or whatever.

Amino Apps

Amino Apps is a strange case. I don’t know much about it since I’ve never used it, but from what I do know it seems similar to Reddit in that there are numerous communities for different niches. That said, judging from the way it clogs up Google image search results, I doubt OC art is posted there often.

YouTube

Now, you may be thinking, “How does a video site rip off others’ art?”. The answer is uploads of soundtracks. Look for any OST from a video game or anime on YouTube and the picture used for the video will likely be some fan art by a Japanese Pixiv artist, usually one that forbids reposts of their work. Not only that, but if the uploader did bother to add the source in the description, it’s usually not even a link to the actual source, more likely a link to Zerochan or Pinterest or something. Now take into account that some of these videos get millions of views. Imagine working hard on something, and some numbnuts takes it, slaps some music onto it, uploads it to YouTube, and gets millions of views while you get next to nothing in comparison.

Exhibit A

Exhibit B (re-upload; original had nearly 40 million views before it was copyright claimed)

Exhibit C

and many many others

Pinterest

Alright, this is the big one. When Pinterest isn’t giving recipes or wardrobe ideas to suburban white moms, it’s clogging up Google reverse image search, punishing anyone who just wanted to find the source of some cute fan art. I feel like this meme by ZebitasMartinexSi on Facebook sums it up:

For example, this piece of Legend of Zelda art by Twitter artist @_nomeri_ (I’ll just link to it, since it would be hypocritical of me to embed the image even though @_nomeri_’s bio warns people not to repost their art). Good art, right? Well, if you right-click and hit “Search Google for image”...

...yeah. Pinterest is a plague. It thrives on theft. Even worse is when someone will post fan art on Twitter/Tumblr/Reddit/etc. and have the nerve to say “IDK the source I found it on Pinterest ^_^”. Or worse yet, they link to Pinterest saying it’s the source.

Instagram

While many other sites rag on Instagram for its reposting of memes, it’s no better when it comes to reposting fan art, especially from Pixiv. I’ve seen lots of stolen pieces with fan fictions written in the description. Personally, if I were an artist, I’d rethink my career choice if I saw my art reposted on Instagram with a half-assed fanfic under it, so I don’t blame Japanese artists who close their Pixiv accounts after seeing that. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to prevent it from happening in the first place.

DeviantArt

DeviantArt is more “renowned” across the web for its niche circles of bizarre fetish art, but in its defence, there are some legitimately good pieces on there. If you do find a good one though, try checking to see if all of the uploader’s pieces have a similar overall art style, because if not, that’s a sure sign of someone passing off some Pixiv user’s art as their own, which is unfortunately fairly common on DeviantArt.

9Gag

Not a whole lot to say about 9Gag. I mean, it does contribute to reposting of art, but nothing really separates it from the others on this list, aside from its watermarks. At least the watermark gives away the fact that something was reposted.

Know Your Meme

You know that Zelda pic by @_nomeri_ I was talking about earlier? Well, to add insult to injury, it became an object-labelling meme.

Imagine putting hours into something and politely asking others not to repost it, only to find that some nincompoops on r/DankMemes made it into an object-labelling meme.

But this isn’t KYM’s fault, per se. Know Your Meme only documents memes; they do not create them. However, as someone who regularly browses the Know Your Meme image galleries, I can say that the image gallery has essentially become Know Your Fan Art (unlawfully reposted fan art, that is).

Redbubble

There’s an NSFW artist I follow on Twitter by the name of Nico-Mo. A while ago, his Pixiv account was suspended, and there were numerous pictures on there that he had not uploaded to his Twitter or DeviantArt, so I found a mirror of one of those pieces on Gelbooru and reverse-image searched in hopes of finding it on his Twitter. No such luck. What came up instead was a .png of the piece made into a sticker being sold on Redbubble. In fact, that’s one of the major reasons why artists disapprove of their art being reposted, as it may find its way onto a sticker or a T-shirt being sold as merch without the original artist giving consent nor the artist receiving so much as a single nickel.

Facebook

Surprisingly, I think Facebook is one of the least offending sites on this list. Still worth mentioning, though.

Funnyjunk

Like Imgur, Funnyjunk isn’t that bad compared to some of the rest of these, but this exchange in the comments of a repost of an MHA artist that deleted their account (not hard to see why considering people straight-up ignored the big-ass watermark at the bottom) is proof enough of western social media’s flippant attitude towards ruining online artists’ careers.

Aggregator imageboards such as Yande.re, Konachan, Danbooru, Gelbooru, Rule34, SankakuComplex, Zerochan, etc.

I don’t think I need to explain these. But like Imgur, these are what most people link to when asked for source instead of bothering to find the original post.

We Heart It

I don’t know much about “We Heart It”, but it seems to be a “Pinterest Lite” considering it clogs up image search almost as much as Pinterest does.

iFunny

Basically the same as 9Gag, in the sense that its watermarks are a dead giveaway.

4chan

I’m not sure if 4chan really “counts” among these, as it’s a chat board where nearly everything is impermanent anyway. However, I was once on an NSFW subreddit where one submitter used a 4chan thread to get Patreon-exclusive material from an artist to upload to the sub (even though one of the rules of the sub was “no paywall content”), so that alone earns 4chan its spot on this list.

Tumblr

Yes, not even Tumblr is innocent. Although I’m sure you knew that. Similar to what I said about Twitter, look up any blog named after a fictional character and it’ll likely be chock-full of unsourced fan art.

“Why is this even important?”

Because if an artist sees that their work is being reposted, depending on the artist, they may delete the original post when they wouldn’t have to if people had just respected their wishes. Now, if an artist wants their works gone from the internet for other personal reasons, that’s up to them and we should respect them for it. But artists taking down their works due to mass reposting is 100% preventable, which is why it’s sad. If you don’t respect an artist, they won’t create art. Simple as that.

“Why do you care so much?”

Eh, I’m just weird like that. It just ticks me off when anything online, whether it be art, or a video, or whatever, is lost. In my opinion, nothing hurts more than clicking a Pixiv link on an imageboard and being greeted with “The work was deleted or the ID does not exist.”.

“But lots of western artists forbid reposting of their art too!”

Indeed, that is correct. But while many artists of every nationality and culture frown upon reproduction of their work, it seems only western social media is responsible for reposting art in the first place. I mean, why else do you think Japanese artists are saying “Reprint is prohibited” in English when the rest of their bio is in Japanese? Because English-speakers are the ones reposting.

“But exposure can help an artist!”

Yeah, that’s true...

...but “exposure” doesn’t mean much if those “exposed” to one’s work don’t know or care who it came from.

And if you need even more reasons, look no further than these posts about the same topic by other blogs:

https://cranberrywitch.tumblr.com/post/143456002228/stop-reposting-art-from-japanese-artists

https://thegospelofnagisa.tumblr.com/post/143308182398

https://edendaphne.tumblr.com/post/163117317030/ive-been-wanting-to-make-this-educational-cheat

https://marklightgreatsword.tumblr.com/post/190056977650/discourage-art-theft-in-fandom-in-2020-dont

https://letusrespectpixivartistconsent.tumblr.com/post/92189994896/why-is-this-important

also, not to self-promote but I made a thread on Twitter on this topic about a month ago that you can check out here.

That’s all.

posted Jun 14; last edit Jun 21