#the weird site for weirdos

[flootzavut]

This is really good! New user tumblr culture explainer!

actual guide for new tumblr users, from Twitter or otherwise

yeah so I decided to do one of these. I'm just someone who has been here since 2007 and wants to help people who are new to the site and have no idea what's happening. Twitter seems to be in its death throes as I write this, and while the posts about driving down the property values are funny, I'd like to actually try and help out.

many people have made posts that are like "get an icon and post something or else people will think you're a bot" so I'll just assume you've seen one of those already. I want to focus more on the things you need to know to acclimate to tumblr culture. so:

general tips:

like things if you want to like things. people will tell you liking doesn't do anything, that only reblogs do stuff, but that's not quite true. only reblogs will get the people who follow you to see it on their dashboard (circulating the post further through the tumblr ecosystem), but likes will let the OP know you liked it, let the person who reblogged it onto your dash know you liked it, and probably do something complicated involving the "based on your likes" algorithm but I really don't know how that works. also, the like will stick around, so if you see the post reblogged from someone else much later, your little heart will still be highlighted in red.

you can control a lot about what you see on your dashboard from the settings page! on desktop, go into settings - account and settings - dashboard to change things. most people turn off "best stuff first" and just use the chronological feed, but you do you, new user. I personally hate endless scroll, so I turned that off, but I love timestamps, so I turned those on. for bonus fun, go into settings - labs and there are extra tabs you can add to your dash.

but what about turning off anonymous asks? on desktop, this setting, weirdly, is in the "Edit appearance" page for your blog. you can also turn replies off there, allow only people you follow to message you, and hide your blog from search results. there are a lot of random settings in there, so make sure to take a look. (app results may vary.)

you might notice that one of the settings is for filtered tags and filtered post content. this is why it's important not to censor things here that might be triggering for some folks - because someone out there has "rape" filtered, and if you go around saying "r*pe," that's not going to be caught in their filter. also, at this time there are no word police who will come after you for saying "kill" or "die," so you don't need to use euphemisms like "unalive" on tumblr. you can also swear as much as you want.

blaze: tumblr blaze is a relatively new feature where you can pay actual money to have your post forced onto random people's dashboards. beware, if you use this for something people don't want to see, you will get mocked. if you use it to show everyone your cat, you're probably fine.

there are two basic uses for #tags: organizational (putting your post into a category, like tagging it with the name of the fandom it's relevant to) and editorial (adding extra commentary that you don't want to add in the post itself). a lot of people will use both, a lot of people will use neither. when people like your editorial tags enough, they'll copy or screenshot them and add them to the body of the post. this is known as "passing peer review" and is a compliment.

memes and inside jokes You Should Know:

do you love the colour of the sky? is an extremely long image post (showing all the colors a sky could possibly be) that takes a long time to scroll past, and back in the olden days (2012) it was ubiquitous on tumblr. these days you can shorten long posts automatically using your dashboard settings (see above), or use the "j" keyboard shortcut to go directly to the next post if you're on desktop, but we still remember it fondly and refer to it constantly because nothing dies here, especially not memes.

the color theory children's hospital post is another one of those things you'll see a million references to if you're on here for any length of time.

you cannot kill me in a way that matters is a post that you might have seen in screenshots elsewhere online, but it started here! other memes that originated on tumblr: spiders georg, me an intellectual, graphic design is my passion, etc.

blorbo from my shows is a phrase used to refer to your latest favorite character. it started as a joke, but tumblr has a way of taking jokes and making them a thing, so now it's a thing. see also poor little meow meow.

tumblr holidays: anything people on tumblr can make into a holiday or anniversary, we will. most of them you'll see as they happen, and they're often self-explanatory, but you should probably read up on November 5 2020 if you don't know about it already.

horse plinko: tumblr loves this one for some reason.

I like your shoelaces / thanks, I stole them from the president: this was supposedly the "secret code" to identify a tumblr user in real life. (you can buy shoelaces directly from tumblr now, but that's a recent development.)

then perish: speaking of the president, if you see Obama's eyes with a very orange tint, this is the meme it's referencing.

ball-shaving ads: ads from the personal grooming company Manscaped were/are(?) ubiquitous on tumblr, to the point that some have theorized that tumblr was deliberately saturating people's dash with the ads so that they'd be more likely to pay for ad-free browsing. and one of the ads for ad-free reads "shave off ads from your dashboard," so like, they might be onto something.

world heritage posts: there are various tumblrs that compile the best of tumblr, anything that's particularly iconic or has become a meme. there are even heritage post blogs for specific fandoms.

tumblr history:

there are three basic eras of tumblr history:

classic tumblr era 2007-2013: David Karp started tumblr in 2007, and it grew in popularity and weirdness for many years. porn was allowed: the original tumblr adult content policy read "sure, go nuts, show nuts, whatever."

Yahoo/Verizon era 2013-2019: Yahoo famously bought tumblr in 2013 for $1 billion. ads started showing up on tumblr in 2012, so this is also around when tumblr started to monetize. Yahoo was eventually bought by Verizon, and in December 2018, they announced they were banning porn, which sucked. everyone predicted the death of tumblr, but it limped on, with about a 30% decrease in traffic. (source for that statistic)

Automattic era 2019-present: in 2019, Automattic bought tumblr from Yahoo for like $3 million or something. Automattic owns WordPress, and they seem to understand tumblr's userbase better than the Yahoo folks did. they've recently instituted a more nuanced adult content policy, but because of Apple's strict policy for what gets included in the App Store, credit card processors refusing to process payments for porn, and other restrictions, tumblr can't go back to being the porn-allowed free-for-all it once was. see this post for a full explanation of why.

various April Fool's jokes have included Coppy (2015), Mishapocalypse (2013), and most recently, the button that makes crabs. expect April 1st to be extra chaotic on tumblr.

Tumbeasts - the tumblr version of the Twitter Fail Whale, designed by Matthew Inman of the Oatmeal. not sure if they're extinct now, or if the site just doesn't go down like it used to.

Dashcon - tumblr tried to have a convention once. it didn't go well. the photo with the sad ball pit is used as shorthand to reference the disaster that was Dashcon.

SuperWhoLock is a name for the fandom crossover between Supernatural, Doctor Who, and Sherlock, which were all juggernauts on tumblr at one time. the fandom supposedly "died off" after 2014, but see above re: nothing dies here.

female presenting nipples - when tumblr introduced the Porn Ban in 2018, they used this phrase in the community guidelines. they've since updated their nudity policy, but the phrase will live forever, because come on, tumblr is a website full of queer and/or trans folks. if you think you're getting away with a weasel phrase like "female presenting nipples" without being mocked all over the website, you're extremely wrong.

John Green: an author who used to be on tumblr, back when you could edit someone else's tumblr post when you reblogged it. his text posts were regularly edited to make it look like he had said things he didn't. someone edited one of his posts to be about how much he loves a certain sex act, which was probably not THE reason they removed the ability to edit others' posts, but like, it didn't help. John Green was eventually harassed so much he left tumblr. opinions are divided on whether this was hilarious or sad. (something I discovered while researching for this post: the author of the Your Fave Is Problematic tumblr [which was part of the wave of anti-John Green content] wrote a confessional New York Times article in 2021. pull quote: "I just wanted to see someone face consequences; no one who'd hurt me ever had.")

XKit: used to be THE browser extension for tumblr. it was made by "the xkit guy," who seems to have been harassed off the site in 2015. the extension was replaced by New XKit, which worked for a while. these days a lot of XKit's features have been either rendered obsolete by tumblr adding them to its settings, or broken by tumblr interface updates, and the new hotness is XKit Rewritten. want to block a specific post from ever appearing on your dash, see who your mutuals are, stop seeing notifications on one specific post (great feature for if you accidentally go viral)? install it and play around with the settings. there are accessibility features too!

...and now I've made it look like people regularly get harassed off tumblr. WELCOME, NEW USER, TO THE HELLSITE! but for real, part of why I put this post together was so if someone starts in on tumblr Discourse and mentions people who have been harassed off the site, you can nod wisely and go "ah, yes, I have heard tell of this." just to give you some kind of context for things.

anyway, I'm always happy to Explain The Joke, provided it's a joke that I get, so if you see something that looks like a tumblr in-joke and want context, my ask box is open. just don't ask me about Homestuck. I know nothing about Homestuck and at this point I'm not sure I want to.

in conclusion, new user: go forth, be weird, become a part of the culture. I hope this guide has helped!

[ghostlyfurball]

making a questionable ihnmaims fancast by casting cole sprouse as ted

[thissying]

Max on Father's Day and Penelope, GP Canada, 2023

[lettersiarrange]

Has time always moved this fast? I'm genuinely asking. In 200 years we went from Bridgerton to AI. The everyday lives of people in each of these eras feel like universes apart. I'm no historian, but it seems like the everyday lives of people between 1500 and 1700 weren't that different.

Have humans throughout time immemorial reflected on life 30 years ago, 100 years ago and commented on how vastly different it was? It feels like we're running at a breakneck pace in the modern era. The It Gets Better project was founded in 2010 because gay people were so universally ostracized that lgbt teen suicide rates were off the charts. And while we're still pretty far from full LGBT equality, openly having a problem with gay people existing is a pretty fringe opinion now that's fairly universally frowned upon, even in the southern US.

I'm pretty sure the first time a woman wore pants in congress was in the 90s.

Culturally, technologically, resource-wise, it feels like every 5 years we leap 5 decades forward. Is it just our own preoccupation with the era we live in that makes this moment feel so significant? Or are we actually moving as quickly as it feels?

I know people have always laughed at the grandpa's who complain "when I was your age...", but has the gap ever been this wide? Or is there truly something special about now.

[sketchy-tour]

Fun fact about me. When I was staring at and studying the art Partycoffin/Clown did of Wally to get an idea on how I wanted to draw him, I made a specific mental note that Wally's hair looked like "A weird squishy alien creature just sitting on his head."

And that's what I kept in mind literally any time I've drawn him.

[tariah23]

How come whenever some ppl make polls on here, it’s always some shit like “sexiest female character 🥴?” And the options are a mix of adult women and minors…….

[unproduciblesmackdown]

omgg lol [guy who won't stop going "more like scapeGOATED" voice] now hold! on!! lmao [same guy just saw encanto voice] Hold on!!!

[yellows-secret-blog]

Ok is official

This is an Arthur Lester appreciation blog if u don't like him unfollow, reblog to show appreciation too s2

[syrips]

fun fact if you love to encourage others to be cringe be free, but then shame them when they properly censor their stuff, they provide warnings/disclaimers about the stuff they do/say, while you tout yourself as being inclusive,

you are in fact, not be cringe be free

pushing someone away after portraying yourself as a supportive, open, and inclusive person, and then kicking them out of your space when they feel vulnerable/safe enough to express what they have always been, is not only disrespectful, but extremely harmful.

please stop being a hypocrite and do better, or correct the way youre portraying yourself. you are not as welcoming, inviting, and kind as you believe. sorry, but it's just manipulative at worst, and neglectful at best, to advertise yourself as such

[pentaghast]

would it be weird if i started commenting on mutuals posts about ppl they dont like "want me to kill them for you boss"

[slutty-wizard-council]

I think it's okay if you're weird about it. Wizards can live in congregations and reinforce each other's proclivities, or alone and just spiral into depravity on their own, but either way you know what? It's fine. Well, as long as it's slutty. Read a book sideways? Nope. Read a book sideways with a cursed buttplug of gingerfresh? YUP

[vicsmusehub]

I don't think I'll ever forgive either the art community on deviant or the tumblr rpc for making me feel like my characters, specifically my fem characters, were "mary-sues," or "overpowered" or boring. Especially as a black person.

[cithaerons]

like i guess i can think of some works where fan works based off them would almost necessarily have to involve sex with kids and “shipping” adults and kids and while i would not inherently object to the core work or the fan works (with “shipping” i guess i’m confused about what the term even means so i may or may not object) it just does seem really bizarre to me that such a work would have a “fandom” where people respond with smutty content and AUs and “shipping” etc? like i’m imagining a fandom for like nabokov’s lolita here, or something like that. like it’s certainly a work that merits artistic response but maybe not in that… form? maybe this comes down to my confusion with fandom and fanfic in general, which (while i do appreciate secondhand) i have never entirely understood sksksksk.

[nihilism-and-dad-jokes]

I KNOWW. I personally? Hate literature and fanfiction about incest or pseudo-incest, I have siblings of my own and even the suggestion of it for fictional siblings makes me genuinely gag. HOWEVER does that mean there is something morally wrong with someone for exploring it in fiction? Fuck no!

It's fiction! None of these people are real! Shipping is like the grown up equivalent of making your stuffed animals kiss and have very dramatic romantic problems! This is like being mad that someone's imaginary friends are doing something you personally don't like!

It's such a hysterical thing to get mad over. I can't take them seriously, it's too ridiculous. It makes me picture an old fashioned white suburban couple from the 50s clutching their pearls and saying "my word!!" about something really unimportant like a teen wearing black lipstick or something.

i’m not like an incest shipper (although like yeah me and 10k other people shipped wincest in 2013) but the more i see people absolutely losing their minds over the concept of fictional incest the more i laugh like come the fuck on now like this trope is quite literally hundreds of years old and we’re acting like it was invented by fanfiction writers. “richard siken condones incest” “ethel cain condones incest” you mean the artists who write about the rotten and the wretched and the unhealthy and the abusive enjoy digging into fictional relationships that are just that. have you lost your goddamned minds. do you ever read anything except for steven universe fanfiction. like could you handle a 12th grade english lit module on the god of small things.

[dukeofankh]

If your vision for the deradicalization of right-wing men begins and ends with "other men telling them that that's gross and to stop it" then I'm sorry, you do not understand how masculinity works.

"Men who hold patriarchal status" and "men who are feminists" are two groups who overlap less than you want them to. I'm sorry. That's not solely because men are so happy with patriarchal status that they don't want to risk it by policing misogyny/queerphobia/racism, It's because being misogynistic, queerphobic, and racist, end expressing other forms of toxic masculinity(and often abusively so) are part of how people establish and maintain patriarchal status. The men who have the ability to stop this via nothing but peer pressure are the very people who are doing it. That's by design. And engaging in feminist intervention is, in and of itself, usually the abrupt end of that status and its associated power to persuade misogynistic men.

Like, I have worked in blue collar jobs as a notably queer person. It was pretty much a constant deluge of verbal abuse. In my experience, most blue collar work environments are exploitative, abusive, and bigoted, and very gleefully so. On the occasions I have spoken up about someone saying something that was super fucking out of line (asking me which of the girls walking by was hottest. We were installing a portable classroom at a middle school), believe it or not, they completely failed to be shamed! Because nobody else on the crew gave a fuck. *I* was the weird one. They ghosted me. A full blown company ghosted me. I suddenly didn't have a job anymore because they just straightforwardly stopped telling me where the next job site was.

Like, this doesn't mean that it's your job to do it, but this vision you have of these big groups of men where everyone is on the fence and there is precisely one shit stirrer who can be shut down by a brave feminist man who can single handedly set the example for all these other guys...you are high. You are describing an "everybody clapped" level absurd scenario. Most of these truly virulent misogynistic guys either have zero friends, because, you know, our society is atomized to fuck, or they are in a group where the feminist guy is actually the weirdo who can be shut down and ostracized much, much easier than the misogynists, because there is no such thing as a man misogynists respect who stands up for women.

You might be saying "well, we're talking about longstanding personal relationships, actually. Like, they need to have to want to spend time with you and then, as a side effect, you can mind control them out of being a threat to us."

Problem with that being:

1: Many feminist men also have no friends, see the atomized society above.

2: Feminist men already stopped hanging out with men who make rape jokes because why the fuck would we want to spend time with them.

3: That isn't just because we respect women so hard. We are in many cases talking about men who are also deeply queerphobic, heirarchical, violent and abusive to other men. What initially drew me to feminism and women was a lack of heirarchical squabbling and constant bullying, and the ability to be openly queer. A lot of men who came to feminism did so because they knew that the patriarchy was not a place they would find success or acceptance. These are not the men who are gonna be able to change right wing minds.

4. Men do not view themselves as a monolith. There is no universal brotherhood of men. The actual meaning of the term "Fragile masculinity" is that men are constantly expected to prove that they are deserving of the status of being a member of their own gender. There are large swathes of men--including most of the men who you'd look to as examples of good, feminist men who you want to undertake this project--who are considered failed men, sissies, f****ts, soyboys, ect. They are. Not. Going. To. Convince. These. Men. Of. Jack. Shit. Much less successfully *shame* them. Jesus.

I know all of this sucks. I know it would be cool to be able to just point at a group and have them be responsible for the work. But nah. It's gonna have to be a societal project, one that will probably outlast all of us. Sorry. The thing you want these men to do is, absolutely, the morally correct thing to do. But presuming that it would be effective is, and once again I am so sorry about this, just ignorance of how these social groups function.