#oh well hope this makes sense despite the brain fog and NyQuil

[shego1142]

Hi I’ve been on this website for almost 10 years and I still don’t know what I’m doing

For starters, yes please use tags! You don’t have to “earn the right” to use tags at all, so long as you aren’t like spamming unrelated tags just for visibility’s sake! 

Also this is an older rule that’s not thought about as much these days but if you don’t like say a certain ship or a certain tv show or something, it’s perfectly valid not to like things, but don’t spam hate in the tags of said things!

The old saying was “that’s like going to a cheese convention in Wisconsin and shouting about how much you hate cheese.” Idk where that mentality went but I sure would love for it to come back, it’s really just a respectful sort of thing!

Also, you can just make your own tags up! Like I have a tag that’s called “law aesthetic” on my blog and it’s about a character named Lawrence, not about like the legal system.

A lot of people far more organised than me have unique tags for their own posts (like if I were to do one it might be something like “shego1142 talks” or something lame like that)

But basically, treat tumblr a lot less like a public meeting and a lot more like your house/diary/inspiration board/personal garbage fire! Don’t treat it like a popularity contest or you’ve already lost! Nobody really cares about our numbers here.

If you want to, you can tag for triggering stuff, it makes it easier for the peeps that want to follow you but are triggered by certain things to go through your blog, but you don’t actually have to either. Your blog is your blog.

Like, be nice to people, but you don’t actually have to do much else.

If you do want to tag for triggering content, please please please do not censor the words! Whatever triggering content it is, don’t censor it! Not in the main post and not in the tags. Otherwise people who have the word “rock” blocked but not the censored version “r0ck” will still see the post with “r0ck” (and yes, I’m using the word rock to avoid using anything more triggering so this post will stay visible to as many peeps as possible)

Also, please don’t trigger warn for flashing lights or gifs or whatever with the hashtag #epilepsy, that makes it difficult for people with epilepsy to have a place to talk about their condition. Tag strobing effects with #eye strain or #flashing lights instead!

Also yeah, putting a tag in the body of a post does nothing lol! You gotta put it in the notes!

Personally I kind of trigger tag sporadically. I tried to tag for everything a while back and realised I was both burning myself out and making my experience so much worse and not really helping anyone anyway tbh. Because I was so afraid to post anything that I kind of just stopped posting. I had to take a step back and say “this is my blog, if you need to block me for your safety that’s okay but I’m going to run my blog my way.”

That’s sort of the thing about tumblr in general, people will block you and it will have to be something you’re okay with! People curate their own experience! It happens!

It’s rarely anything personal!

I once blocked someone who made a post saying lasagna was gross.

Someone once blocked me because I referenced a character from a comic (Shitty from Check Please) and they thought I was calling them a mean name!

Block as much as you want! Don’t feel bad when you get blocked! Make your blog yours, not anyone else’s!

As for reblogs counting as the op’s post, yes they do! Again it rarely matters, because tumblr is not exactly a popularity contest. In fact you’ll often see posts sort of tongue in cheek being like “Eugh how dare this website give me this many notes” also just because someone has one post that gets a lot of notes doesn’t make them any different to any other tumblr user

But no, adding stuff to a post isn’t seen as rude, but tumblr does function somewhat on like improv rules, like “Yes, and” or “No, but” at least on the joking posts anyway, so keep that in mind I suppose!

You will occasionally get someone saying “make your own post” and if you genuinely don’t see anything you did wrong (like for example you weren’t speaking over someone or derailing a post) then it’s probably a joke because “make your own post” is sort of an inside joke in and of itself. But if they’re like actually mad at you for adding something harmless onto their post then just block them. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Reblogging is preferred over replies also because that’s like… the mechanism of this website!

Your blog is like your house and your posts are like the art you made as a kid that got put up on the fridge. It’s not necessarily all great and requires no credentials to qualify as art but it’s hanging up because you value it!

Someone replying to a post is like someone leaving a sticky note saying something on your art. Someone liking a post is like a friend coming to your house and complimenting your art.

But a reblog? That’s like someone coming to your house and getting super excited about your art and taking a picture of it and being like “I love this so much that I’m going to put this up on my fridge too!” And then everyone who goes to their house will also see your art on their fridge!

That’s a bit of an oversimplification but listen, that’s basically how it works. Especially with actual art/fic! See, for artists on tumblr, especially peeps who are trying to make a living making art, a reblog is soooo much better than a like. That’s probably where you’ve seen the whole “likes are bad” rhetoric the most. Likes aren’t really bad exactly but a reblog actually shares the art, which for the average starving artist, is invaluable!

Also yes! Following anyone is okay!

You can totally make a post that’s like “hey I’m [name] and I like These Things: [list of things you like] follow me or like or reblog this post if you like any of those things too and I’ll maybe follow you!” And tag it with the tags of all the things you like!

That’s one of the best ways to find peeps to follow! Also just searching the tags of the things you like in general is a good way too!

Although some tags may be… not what you’re expecting them to be (for example, I’m autistic but I wouldn’t search #autism to find other peeps like me, I would search #actually autistic or #neurodivergent)

Sometimes communities have interesting/unexpected tags either because of inside jokes or for other reasons.

Like with my example, the autism tag was at one point overrun by non-autistic people complaining about their autistic children and speaking over the actually autistic people. So peeps tag #actually autistic now to show that the person who is writing the post is autistic.

So tldr: don’t censor anything, use tags, use weird tags even, talk in your tags if you want to, reblog stuff, likes aren’t bad they’re just bookmarks and are not gonna share the post, make your blog your own, follow and block to your heart’s content and without remorse, and don’t take any part of tumblr (or the internet) too seriously!

Okay so basically let me restate what I think I’ve learned from reading some “how to tumblr” posts.

Making random “my random tossed-off thoughts of the day” posts like I would on twitter is not discouraged. I don’t have to worry about being the funniest dude ever before I start tagging my posts, especially when I am on this new account. Right? I don’t have to, like, “earn my tagging rights”?

Reblogging is preferred over replies because it puts it on my timeli—dashboard, but also still counts as the OP’s post? This is the weirdest thing to me, QRTs on twitter are sort of like me trying to shout over the OP and in this it’s the encouraged way?

Meanwhile, liking a post without a reblog is bad because… I guess because all it does is tweak my algorithm but not boost the post? I guess I’m unclear how liking is bad.

Also, following just about anybody is okay? Seems like I’m gonna have to spend some time curating what I see.

I’ll be perfectly honest I’m currently paranoid that I’m a 2-followed account and therefore am Totally Invisible even when I put things on tags, so I don’t want to make a Bad Post and get totally blacklisted