#if you're baffled as to why me a random intern tagged you in this post it;s because i perceive you with good vibes in my heart

[anthraxplus]

forgive me for writing so much about tumblr but i have a lot of thoughts

here's the thing about tumblr. i've found it interesting how we continue to call our profiles our "blogs" even though they function differently to the common idea of a blog (like livejournal). but in a way, calling our profiles our blogs makes sense. they're our place to post things we've made or repost content we like. it's more personal than twitter, which has an "information" or "discourse" lens applied to it. the focus on twitter has increasingly been to encourage sharing of information (i.e news or opinions). tumblr's focus has always (afaict) been to encourage sharing of our creations, kinda lumping blogging in there as "self expression" or something to that effect. technically speaking, artists should be more at home on tumblr than on twitter.

but people using their blog as ONLY a blog (no reblogs, just their thoughts or creations - like a livejournal) are in the minority on this site, right? make no mistake, i follow tons of artists who use their blog in a very focused way, but mostly we're all reblogging other people's posts, putting their art on our blogs and riffing in the tags on people's jokes. it is very much a site of Content, Things To Share. the fact that we can blog on here almost feels oddly secondary. but, ok. tumblr is a site for people to post their creations/content, and said content finds an audience through being discovered or reblogged.

so why is it so damn hard to find anything?

like, ok, obviously we can do that. type words into the search bar and you will definitely find posts. but dont you often wonder why the hell some posts showed up in your search and others didnt?

you're telling me filtering searches by top posts of all time isnt showing me the post that has this exact string of text (+- punctuation), but is showing me posts that... have those words in them, scattered, and sometimes not even that exact word ("piss" vs "pissing")?

what about when you try to search for a word or phrase that you KNOW is on a blog in some post, but searching for it brings up NOTHING? i just had to deal with this when searching someone's blog for a specific post i had just seen on my dash - i can only imagine tumblr told me no such post existed because it wasnt tagged with that word.

and all of this feels so obviously wrong, right? even without tags, we should be able to search for words or phrases in a more reliable way on both the site and our blogs. i dont think im alone in the thought that the search function is almost useless - even if it gives me what im looking for sometimes, it can be a struggle, and mostly it just doesnt feel worth it. this is how we can keep ourselves in insular circles and struggle to break out of them. it is literally easier to do this than it is to find new shit.

so, yknow, staff isnt wrong when they say this:

tumblr does need growth, but not necessarily by attracting new users (though, idk, i wouldn't mind that). tumblr needs internal growth. this site is stuck in the early 2010s in a way that is baffling to me, and it has continuously failed to adapt to its userbase's needs in a way that honestly doesnt make sense, and when they do change something, it just ends up causing more strife between staff and users.

so, for example: tumblr needs money to keep functioning, obviously. the common practice is to have ads on the site. but oops, the ads suck and everyone hates them. ok, allow users the option to pay to get rid of ads. but oops, a lot of people dont want to give money to the site that continuously breaks itself (among many other complaints). ok, meet users in the middle and allow them to pay to advertise their stuff - this should be, like, the perfect mix of everything, right? being able to advertise your content on the content site? but oops, this is only a good option because finding new content is so goddamn hard that random people shoving their posts onto your dash is the only remaining viable option. when you have to rely on pure chance/luck for your posts to even be found, even when you do everything in your power to increase their visibility, you're not gonna want to stay here.

i feel like addressing the search function should be the staff's top priority before they implement anything else. we need to be able to find content on the content site. i think thats pretty obvious. once it works the way it already should have, then they can worry about what comes after. i think people feel this animosity with staff because we're struggling to continue to use this site while they struggle to find ways to get money out of us. i think if people felt they could actually use tumblr in the way it intuitively feels like it should be used, that kind of animosity would be more rare*. but until we get that, any change to the site is going to feel wrong.

fwiw though, i'm glad to see staff say that the site basically doesn't work. like. goddamn. took them long enough. i just hope (probably baselessly) that their acknowledgement of this issue will lead to some fixes that benefit the foundational usage of the site.

*yes, there is animosity towards staff for other reasons - like, yknow, how innocuous selfies of trans women get flagged as "mature" (among other things) - but that's an issue of culture/enforcement and not necessarily the raw function of the site, so i feel like it's best suited for a different post

tl:dr PLEASE FIX THE FUCKING SEARCH FUNCTION, IT NEVER SHOULD'VE BEEN ALLOWED TO BE THIS BAD AND I THINK ITS ISSUES HAVE BEEN A MAJOR REASON FOR TUMBLR'S STEADY DECLINE

[kaibacorpintern]

hello I am new to the fandom and wanted to introduce myself, i love your content and was wondering if you'd recommend any active blogs to follow. thanks!

ahhh for sure!!

@rainstormcolors is one of my top fav yugioh bloggers and a beloved friend. @yuujoh and @emblematik and @danieco and @kuriboh-i-choose-you and @atembomb and @nenya85 and @dxmichelle and @kaibacorpstocksplit and @millenni-em-tauk are also beloved friends (some of them post a mix of things, not just yugioh <3)

i love @zombiekaiba's yugioh posts, although they post less yugioh nowadays.

@millenniummmbop posts hilarious and lovely rivalshipping art although i believe she's currently on hiatus.

here is storied list of yugioh bloggers that i know are active and post or reblog a lot of yoog, mostly DM but some other series thrown in: @norealgoodbyes @marikism @crushcardvirus @zorcskhakis @duelistkingdom @dominonary @popflythesky @shinayashipper @millennium-tin-stick @alectoperdita @millenniumblog @king-thief @beanist GO WILD. a truly wide variety of bloggers, tastes, opinions, ships, types of fanworks (fanart and fanfiction and meta) etc <3 enjoy!!

drop a note in the comments if you're also an active (mostly) yugioh blogger!! we're thriving, baby!!!

AND HOW CAN I FORGET MY BOSS: @kaibacorp !!