#miyamiwu.nf

[miyamiwu]

Tumblr should notify those who voted in polls when the results are out

[miyamiwu]

just heard the news about the global cyber outage. terrifying how one faulty software has caused such a wide and devastating impact. airports here have stopped operating

[miyamiwu]

Pros of reblogging:

You get to keep a copy of that post FOREVER. Tumblr is not like Twitter in that if OP deletes the original post, all the shared versions of the post will be deleted as well. This is how Tumblr still has posts from 100000 years ago circulating around.

You get to classify posts with your own tagging system. It makes finding things easier. Searching a blog using tags is also more reliable than searching with keywords.

You get to leave comments in the tags of the reblog! It’s handy when you wanna react to the post but are too shy to talk to OP and/or others in the reblog chain.

You get an archive/scrapbook of all the things you like, which you can then showcase with pretty custom themes.

You get to identify as part of a community. Among fandom blogs, fellow fans will know you’re one of them if you actually reblog things. Any outsider can leave a like, but it takes a fan or someone really interested in something to dare to reblog.

You get to make friends! People follow other people based on what their blog is like. If your blog is empty, then what’s the point of following you?

You give the impression that you care about what other people say, and it will make others look at you more nicely (empty blogs can be suspicious).

You are less likely to be blocked by artists/writers. (I’ve seen some posts from artists/writers saying that they’ll block spam likers.)

You are less likely to be mistaken as a bot or a creep (again, empty blogs are sus).

[miyamiwu]

You don't understand the superiority complex I have right now

[miyamiwu]

Reblogging is a form of self-expression

I’ve seen a lot of posts about how people aren’t reblogging much art anymore, with the authors encouraging people to reblog coz it helps support artists. But the thing about most of these posts is that they don’t really talk about how the likes-reblog gap isn’t just widening for art posts. It applies to other types of posts as well—be it short or long text posts, some edit you made, photos, etc.

I don’t have that much followers, but some of my posts have reached over 1k notes. (And some rare popular ones have reached 5-6 digits). I write a lot of metas both here and on one of my side blogs. I also make gifs occasionally, and I have lots of original posts in general too.

But in all of my posts, there are always more likes than reblogs, and the gap is often wide.

When I look through some of the blogs in the notes, several of them are empty but with their Likes visible. And if they’re not empty, then all their posts are just their own. No reblogs at all...

Many of those Likes vs Reblogs posts talk about how reblogging helps the original poster but make little to no explanation on how reblogging serves the reblogger. And I guess that’s why the likes-reblogs gap continues to widen. People are framing reblogs as free advertising for the OP when we should be framing reblogs for what it primarily is—a form of self-expression.

When you reblog something, it’s like saying...

You’re so excited about the post that you want others to see it

You agree with the idea/opinion being expressed in the post (opinions, discourse, analysis, etc.)

You care about the things said in the post (like sharing pro-Palestine posts)

You identify with the community being represented in the post (like being part of a certain fandom)

You find the post funny and want to save it (like how you’d save memes to your phone)

You think the post is cute and want to squish it (cat photos, animal videos, kawaii stuff, etc.)

Or you just think the post is going to be a popular one so you’re “investing” early

etc.

You can even expand these ways of expression by adding your own commentary through tags or reblogs. You can’t do that with just liking.

Actually, you don’t even need to have a clear reason for reblogging something. Posts can simply be like stickers or stamps, which you collect to put on your scrapbook (your blog). Years later, you can then go through your archive and look back on how you were before at certain times in your life.

[To those who don’t know: Yes, we have an archive. It’s at username.tumblr.com/archive. You can filter posts by post type and by month/year of posting. Only posts/reblogs show up in the archive. Likes are not included.]

Moreover, reblogging is how you gain friends. Mutuals, after all, are two people who follow each other, and well, for someone to follow you, you must have something on your blog that they’d want to see more of. If you only like posts, then what’s there to see?

Original posts are nice, of course, but when I see a blog where all posts are just their own, I’m immediately given the impression that it’s being run by a brand. And it may be that the blog really is trying to maintain its Brand image—such is the case for side blogs dedicated to a certain topic (like poll tournaments or art-only blogs). But even then, people will expect you to have a Main blog or another side blog where you do reblog stuff.

It’s kind of how we know you’re human. And it’s also how we know that you’re open to actually engaging with others on this site.

A blog that’s empty or contains nothing but their own posts sends out the message that you’re not interested in or just don’t care about what other people are saying.

[miyamiwu]

Of course the caterpillar was gonna win. It has 6 legs. Worm and snail have none. Worm should've come in second, though. That snail is carrying a house, how could it be faster than worm

[miyamiwu]

Interesting article by The Guardian

The most interesting aspect of the controversy, though, is the effrontery of Huffman’s attempt to seize the moral high ground. What’s bothering him is that the data on Redditors’ interests and behaviour over the decades that is stored on its servers constitutes gold dust for the web crawlers of the tech giants as they hoover up everything in training their large language models (LLMs). Providing a free API makes that a cost-free exercise for them. “The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,” Huffman told the New York Times. “But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”

Note the sleight of mind here. That “corpus of data” is the content posted by millions of Reddit users over the decades. It is a fascinating and valuable record of what they were thinking and obsessing about. Not the tiniest fraction of it was created by Huffman, his fellow executives or shareholders. It can only be seen as belonging to them because of whatever skewed “consent” agreement its credulous users felt obliged to click on before they could use the service. So it’s a bit rich to hear him complaining about LLMs which were – and are – being trained via the largest and most comprehensive exercise in intellectual piracy in the history of mankind. Or, to coin a phrase, it’s just another case of the kettle calling the slag heap black.

[miyamiwu]

omg my youngest sister is arguing with my mother in the group chat about the Carlos Yulo issue. As expected, my mom is on the abusive mother’s side. Fucking boomers

I honestly don’t have the energy to argue with my mom, so I’ll just leave it to my activist sister 🤣

Context for my non-Filo followers: Carlos Yulo is a Filipino gymnast who won two gold medals in the Olympics (men’s floor exercise and men’s vault), but before he won, his mother was rooting for the enemy team (Japan) and hoping for her own son to lose. Now, with Carlos winning two gold medals, her previous hateful statements were dug up and slapped in her face.

In defense, her mother started talking about how Carlos has been an unfilial child and how she thinks his girlfriend, Chloe, is causing him to drift apart from the family. This in turn caused a lot of people to turn against Chloe and throw misogynistic statements at her.

Carlos and Chloe had to post a video to clear up the misunderstanding and show their side of the story.

In the video, they said that they and Chloe’s family made a group chat and pulled Carlos’ mom into it so they can resolve the issue in private. I didn’t read all the screenshots, but one part had Carlos call out his mom for withholding the allowance he got as a national athlete/prize money from previous international competitions (can’t remember if it was just one of these or both) and using it to pay for the family house (which is under his mother’s name) in bulk without asking for his permission beforehand (his mother held his bank account card back then). The mother was unrepentant though, thinking that there’s nothing wrong with what she did and that she doesn’t have to explain herself to her own son.

Carlos also defended his girlfriend, saying how his mom has been very critical of how she dresses and speaks, as a result of how Chloe grew up in Australia, where the culture is very different. (The traditional ideal of a Filipino woman is someone who is “demure and self-effacing” like Maria Clara, but Chloe is the complete opposite of that. She’s an outspoken, strong, independent woman, and the conservatives and misogynists don’t like that.)

There’s a lot of articles explaining the whole thing better online, so just google them for more info

Anyways, this whole issue really blew up in the Philippines, with the conservatives/older generation admonishing Carlos with justifications like “That’s still your mom” and the younger generation rallying with Carlos and praising him for his courage in breaking free from an abusive household. It really brought to light the toxic Filipino family culture, rendering the issue as not only personal to the Yulo family but also a societal one that is prevalent in a lot of Filipino households. The Philippines is so poor that some parents have treated their children as “investments” to bring them out of poverty.

I’ve witnessed this problem in my own family. I remember when my older brother was in college, he had a scholarship that entitled him to P15,000 per semester (adjusting for inflation, this is now about $350). However, my mom held his ATM card and would only send him a little of the allowance. In the end, my own brother would starve and sometimes even steal other people’s food from the dorm 😔 (As someone who now also lives in the college dorm and has had her own food stolen, this is why I can never really hate or be mad at people who steal. I understand the desperation when you’re really hungry).

In the beginning, my brother thought there was nothing wrong with this and it was only right for him to give back to my mother, and it took my aunt (who housed my brother in his first year of college and also gave him some allowance) a lot of talking into him to convince him how this was wrong. As a parent, my mother had every obligation to provide and raise her children and my brother shouldn’t have to feel like he owes her a favor.

In the Philippines, tradition is to support your child throughout college. In some households, the support is until the child turns 18 or 21. But on the first year my brother left for college (he was only 16 then, as he was part of the old curriculum), my mom just threw him to our aunt’s place, which was near the university, and let him depend on our aunt—who had no obligation to even raise him—while also expecting him to hand over his scholarship allowance to her. It was awful.

I have a lot more examples in the family, but this post is getting too long… but yeah, I am both pissed and disappointed with my mother siding with Angelica Yulo, but at the same time, I kind of expected it. She and Angelica are the same kind of person 😩

However, I can only hold myself back from arguing since I’m not in any position to argue with my mom about this. Mom is still supporting me in college even though I am now an adult (got delayed because of mental health issues and stuff). And by support, it’s her giving me a weekly allowance of P500 (~$9)—which is far from enough for me to cover my meals and other necessities, so I often have to borrow money or do some gigs. I’ve been trying to find a part-time job, but there hasn’t been any luck. I also can’t apply for just any job coz I need to look for one that fits with my schedule and has a salary high enough for me to able to send money to my mom while also leaving some for myself (she’s been pressuring me on this, but as I said, I’m really in no position to talk back 😔).

My brother’s been telling me to just focus on my studies and not worry about it, but I know he would also like my help on the bills in the future. He’s currently paying for the family house that is under my mother’s name and which he doesn’t even live in anymore. He really wants to stop so he can focus on his career and build a future with his girlfriend, but it’s just so hard to break free from this kind of culture, especially when society here is so ready to judge you for being unfilial and lacking utang na loob if you do. And well, we also can’t just throw our mother to the wolves (debt collectors)

So yeah, I’ve been having a hard time, and my mom weighing in on the Carlos Yulo issue unprompted made it even worse 😔

And I swear I don’t mean the end the post like this, but since I’m talking about my troubles anyway, I might as well mention how I’m currently running a Ko-fi goal to help cover some expenses. If you have any spare cash, please consider donating to my Ko-fi 🙏

[miyamiwu]

just watched Carlos Yulo’s statement regarding his mom’s interview against him and his girlfriend, Chloe

and it’s just…heartbreaking how toxic Filipino family culture can be, but I’m also at awe at how calm and humble Yulo remained throughout the video. Like, he doesn’t even sound mad, and in the end he even says he forgives his mom and prays for her well-being

the younger generation are definitely siding with Yulo here, but every now and then I still see comments on how Yulo lacks “utang na loob” (lit. debt of the inner self) and it makes me mad

kudos to Yulo for handling this situation maturely

[miyamiwu]

Me: Seriously, does anybody still use this Chat format? The font is so ugly.

Ghost in my room: The font looks like the one they use on drama scripts, so it’s fine.

Me: But the thinness of the letters unbolded and the lack of spacing between each speaker make this format difficult to read, especially when the text is long.

Me: Before the NPF post editor was a thing, the Chat format served a purpose. It used to be that theme editors can easily format the Chat post to look like actual chat messages on their themes

Examples:

Dusk and Sempiternal by @ cactusthemes

Space Race by @ laurenashpole

Discord by @ starlightthemes

Me: Now, with custom Tumblr themes and the username.tumblr.com view being sidelined as a way to push users to the Tumblr mobile app and shove ads in their faces, theme-makers are less motivated to give the Chat format any fancy styling. That, or maybe it’s just not possible to make it fancy because of how NPF works. Idk, I don’t code.

Ghost: I see your point, but I think the Chat format is still handy for short text

Ghost: Like this

Ghost: or this

Ghost: People don’t really use it for long text

Me: True

Me: I still hate the Courier font, though

Me: It looks fine on print but not really on a screen

Me: May I propose a different monospace font?

Me: Like the lovely Roboto Mono or perhaps Source Code Pro?

[miyamiwu]

If this site ever sinks, I really don't know where to go

Twitter is too confrontational, downvotes on Reddit are scary, can't post long fandom metas on Instagram, Tiktok, etc. Facebook is too personal... And I just hate a feed that's not in reverse chronological order

Discord requires too much energy. Pillowfort, Cohost, and Bluesky don't seem like they have that much of a community

If worse comes to worst, maybe you'll just find me on AO3 sbhdjdjd. A fic is the blog, and chapters are posts or something idk

[miyamiwu]

Tumblr @staff could go further by giving us the ability to make uquizzes

[miyamiwu]

I don’t understand American politics, so I don’t get the despair over Biden stepping down from the elections. I thought he was a bad guy (not that Trump is any better). Can’t you just get a good guy to replace him and then hype him up til he stands a chance against Trump???

[miyamiwu]

THIS!

On my birthday last month, my brother and his girlfriend took me to an all-you-can-eat samgyeopsal restaurant. They gave us a qr code to access their online menu. I was out of data, so I just let my brother order for me. And I can understand why they had it digital because it makes tracking the orders easier in an all-you-can-eat resto (it wasn’t a buffet-style restaurant). BUT their system was so fucking inefficient. My brother would place an order, but then we wouldn’t get it after so long (oh and this was because our order apparently didn’t reflect on their end). We ended up calling waiters several times just to follow up on our order, rendering the online menu thing entirely useless

[miyamiwu]

I hate Cloudflare.

I didn’t care so much about it before, but now a lot of websites have turned on its automatic captcha thing that blocks the page from loading until it's done and it makes me so mad!!!!

THIS IS SO FUCKING ANNOYING!!!! ESPECIALLY ON SLOW CONNECTIONS!!!!

I click on the checkbox and it loads for a while, but then nothing happens!!! The checkbox will just go back to being unchecked, and I have to check it over and over again just to fucking access the site!!!!

So now when I go to a site and Cloudflare tries to block me, I'll just exit and go to a different site. I'll only stay if I really really want to read that content and if it can only be found on this specific site. But if I had options, I'm not staying.

[miyamiwu]

GET THEM!!!