#niche or specific questions u have to really search through a discord server or ask a question that's probably been answered a million time

[kuromi-hoemie]

I've used tumblr since 2011 and some big factors for me are:

I've seen how nasty ppl can be when you leave anon on both personally and through others, and turning it off usually eliminates 100% of hate mail you'd get because people can't hide who they are anymore. This also means people who want to talk to you but are too shy to show themselves won't send you anything either, but it also cuts out an avenue for creeps to bug you through so ╮⁠(⁠.⁠ ⁠❛⁠ ⁠ᴗ⁠ ⁠❛⁠.⁠)⁠╭

i don't remember when tumblr introduced DMs but part of the role asks fulfilled is being handled there, like having a space to have a back n forth conversation with your mutuals. i do still like to send asks sometimes though bc i don't necessarily want to talk i just want to say something real quick but in a way that's more obvious than just leaving a tag on something.

to that last point, there's also this relatively newer etiquette to talk in the tags when u reblog stuff that's not quite the same as adding to a reblog. this also kinda fulfills the role asks play in letting u put passing comments on things or make comments in passing to people (and a lot more, talking in tags has been a neat development i really enjoy actually!)

and i guess that's it as far as my major points go? i see ppl post "send me asks" sometimes or share one of those reblog/ask games and i try to participate if i can; sometimes too i just don't know what to say so i don't send anything :3

I think though between having DMs on here, discord and tag conversations alongside traditional replies/reblogs, asks don't really have to facilitate as much as they used to anymore.

they are also part of an older aspect of the Internet i think (CuriousCat, quora, yahoo answers etc). the only other active place you can send asks that I know of is Cohost. which isn't to say all the other places u could send an ask or post a question to are completely dead - just not as prominent as they used to be.

retroactive edit but also: asks tend to be the most broken communication method right now. i get email notifications about a new ask but it'll only actually show up for me in the UI probably like.. half the time? and then sometimes they'll just randomly reappear before disappearing again.

You know, an interesting tumblr transformation that's happened gradually, and which I've seen no one talk about: ask-culture has essentially dropped off to nothing.

By which I mean, asks used to be WAY more of the tumblr economy. They used to be more common to send, and receive, and see. They were integral to the collaborative, forum-like behavior of old tumblr communities, not even to speak on the HUGE number of ask-blogs that used to exist to only be interacted with in ask-form.

I'm not saying this in a vying-for-attention way but instead in an observational way: I used to get way way more asks in like 2015, even with a fraction of my follower count. I wonder if it's due to the homogenization of social media sites? There's a lot more of this divide between "content creator" and "consumer" instead of just a bunch of peer blogs who would talk to each other. "Asks" aren't really a thing on twitter, are they? And as I understand it, the closest thing to an "ask" on instagram or tiktok would be a creator screenshotting some comment and responding to it in a new reel or video or whatever those content mediums are. Are asks just too tumblr-specific? Is that aspect of the site culture dying out as more and more people converge to using all their social media sites in the same way?