#really is it more or less impolite to call these people “tools” or “npcs”

[tropylium]

…actually I don't think it's "bare reblogs" that's an issue, it's "posts that are asserted and do not involve discussion". already people who will sometimes reblog discussion chains read as more trustworthy; and then people who write reams of personal posts but never post public responses to what has been said to them also have a similar air of unpleasant uncommunicativeness; even if I were to agree with what they say!

the latter type of people usually will put out at least indirect vagueblogged responses though; so still the most annoying experience of trying to interact on social media are the people who will reblog discourse™ seemingly from a consistent viewpoint, but seem to make no effort themselves to understand or stand behind it, almost as if it was being posted "just in case". I've tried engaging with some ex-mutuals doing this in the past and it's infuriating to get nothing else than something like "oh I don't agree with most of it actually but I think it's coming from a good place". pure tool behavior

and there are of course many ways to get burnt about discourse, or to have high base-level humility about it, that would result in not wanting to push your own views, that's not a problem per se; but still I'd expect that to lead people to simply engage less, make their own posts instead of posting them in direct response, or simply not engage with a topic if they don't like discussion; not to pretend that constantly reblogging some given topic is "not engaging"

there is even a well-known special case of this, viz. the principle "don't constantly put bigotry on people's dashes just to argue with it"; but the general version seems to elude common recognition

properties of a good tumblog as I like them

minimum 50% aesthetics

of which maximum 50% pictures / videos of humans

nonzero % music

more sourced content than reposts

at least some content tagged for reference

maximum 30% text posts

of which maximum 50% bare reblogs (tag commentary counts as not bare)

maximum 1% posts that order you to do anything

absolutely no posts telling who can / cannot / should / must engage with them