#tumblr's based on your likes algorithm isn't based on anything actually

[pyreflydust]

You blacklist an entire franchise and then people don't tag their posts about that franchise and then Tumblr is like hmm we think you might like this rant about the fanon interpretation of a character you forget exists 90% of your life because you have less than no interest in the movies or other media they were in

[ckret2]

Your goldilocks cipher stuff gives me an unreal amount of dopamine (maybe i just like bill a lot idk) do you have any fun tidbits and details about the au that wouldn’t be too spoilery?

Thank you!! Here's a bunch of random trivia:

The (English) name of Bill's language's written script is Plaintext. Like, y'know, plaintext:

In cryptography, plaintext usually means unencrypted information pending input into cryptographic algorithms, usually encryption algorithms. This usually refers to data that is transmitted or stored unencrypted.

Which is ironic, since Bill's the ONLY person to whom the text is unencrypted. But then, from his perspective, it's the only "unencrypted" text he ever actually sees—all the languages he uses in day-to-day life are foreign languages to him.

In the Bill Cipher AMA, somebody asks Bill what he thinks about all the fangirls he has, and Bill says they should all go to the Nevada desert and assemble a throne to wait for him. In fic, I've decided it'd be funny to give him a women-only cult in Nevada. The leader of the cult is named Mary and the underling most often referenced is Sue, because—and I say this with love and affection—if "fangirl who's put in a fic so she can meet her favorite tumblr sexyman" ISN'T a textbook Mary Sue, I don't know what is.

Bill really likes monster trucks. He's convinced himself that he'd be a TERRIFIC monster truck driver, because he can see the future, so obviously he'd know how to avoid any car crashes. He's probably wrong about this. It's a more physically taxing job than you'd think, and a human body is more easily taxed than he's used to.

Current favorite human food is nachos with sprinkles on top. Gotta be triangular nachos. If the chips are circular or rectangular it will legit depress him. Also plain old cheese is boring, give it some texture, it's gotta have peppers hot enough to kill a toddler.

Sometimes Bill talks to Waddles as if he's speaking to the Temporarily Genius Waddles and expects him to understand what Bill's saying.

If Bill's watching a show/movie and doesn't want to spoil the ending for himself he has to fight NOT to glance into the future to see what happens. Imagine if every time you read a comic book, all of the pages automatically separated and spread out across the table so you could see every page at once, and you had to keep resisting the urge to glance at the last page to see what happens. That's what trying not to glance forward is like for Bill.

Nobody's commented on this yet, so idk if anyone's caught it, but in chapter 2:

He carefully positioned himself directly in front of the trio, glancing down at the floor as if looking for the right mark to step on,

and in chapter 3:

Mabel considered his feet thoughtfully before spray painting an X where she estimated he’d been standing before.

“You got lucky—” he cast a dirty look at the X spray painted on the ground, “—but luck changes.”

In chapter 2 Bill saw the X on the floor in the future, and assumed he was going to leave it for himself so he'd know where he should stand for his big dramatic moment—which means he deliberately planted himself RIGHT on the mark where the twins were set up to tackle. (Even though he can see into the future, his time vision is pretty near-sighted.)

Bill NEARLY invaded the M Dimension mentioned in Journal 3—he was playing "muse" to a whole bunch of scientists and governmental types who were all collaborating, everybody liked him, nobody suspected anything, they were thrilled by the idea of opening up interdimensional travel to his totally-harmless-and-not-at-all-nightmarish realm so their muse could visit... the only reason he hasn't already conquered the M Dimension is because everything there, even the laws of physics, are based on the letter M, and for the life of him he couldn't find a way to adapt the portal blueprints to work there. The math's impossible.

Bill's the only member of the Henchmaniacs who's unable to leave the Nightmare Realm. (As in, physically can't leave. Legally, most of them are pretty trapped there for lack of another safe place to go; but like they could leave if they chose to.) Sometimes he sends his Henchmaniacs on errands for him to other dimensions; and sometimes they go on day trips outside the Nightmare Realm without him. When they leave he tends to sulk and insist he isn't sulking.

Nobody in the shack knows about Ford's embarrassing neck tattoo. (And it was REALLY hard keeping that secret on a boat.) Nobody, that is, except for Bill, who spent last summer stalking everyone in the shack and who can see through walls, seeing through a turtleneck is nothing. Someday he's gonna start casually humming All Star and strike terror into Ford's heart.

There's a handful of human languages Bill can't speak because the speakers cursed him to be unable to speak them. I don't know which languages yet, I'd probably need to do a lot of digging to find languages about which there's already "demons/monsters/etc can't speak/understand this language" folklore I can slap on him. But it's a joke I'm prepared to use if I find a language that fits.

Bill thinks it's weird that humans want their hands and hair to smell like food, but then don't even want to eat them. What's the point of strawberry-scented shampoo???

[wildbearadactyl]

So in light of Tumblr's "Core Product Strategy"

(Yes, this is a copy and paste from a post I made with a reblog, but it's under a cut and I want this to be seen by as many people as possible.) None of the Tumblr experience is confusing, and claiming it's confusing is disingenuous. There is a clear and obvious search function, everyone knows how a tag works in the modern era, and no one wants to see anything out of chronological order. Just because your programmers can't code a working search function doesn't mean it's confusing, it means your team is incompetent. The strength of Tumblr is the ability to curate your experience, there is a reason the community has given extreme backlash any time this has been compromised even to the slightest degree. Remove this, and Tumblr is no longer unique and loses its draw. People like Tumblr because there is not a content algorithm shoving things down their throats at all times. For anyone looking to abandon ship in light of this shitty, online homogenization shit: Reminder that Pillowfort still very much exists, and despite the rocky beginning (People forget that no site just starts out in its final state); is maturing as a platform. Pillowfort also allows adult/SW content, and allows easy filtering of it. Getting an invitation link isn't hard, either, they're spread pretty liberally by the user base on their Twitter. Of course, there is also Neocities, my preference, given it allows an authentic old-web experience complete with web rings if you desire. Anyone who's coded a layout will feel right at home there, and of course it creates the opportunity to learn how to code in HTML/CSS if one desires, though there is plenty of premade stuff if you don't want to go that route. Here is my site for example. The whole point of Neocities is to make your own little space on the web, and it has functionality that allows you to follow other sites as well, or in short a feed you can curate yourself.

If a site makes shitty decisions, don't stay out of comfort or familiarity, move on to prove you won't stand for it. Sites wind up being de facto and running the web when people complain but don't actually make a stand and leave.

[butch-reidentified]

I know frequently the “anti terf” people lie about this straight up but sometimes they don’t. Here’s an example where clearly there are links between “disagree with trans ideology due to feminism” < - > “like anything “transphobic” because edgy” < - > “disagree with trans ideology due to trad/mra racist alt right views”

https://www.tumblr.com/ladiablesse/729815657616736257/the-fact-that-this-post-of-all-things-ended-up-on

As fucking typical the right wing n word saying bullshit starts right after https://www.tumblr.com/americanette reblogs it

She doesn’t say it but she does say some mra bullshit about how the real sadness here is men aren’t protecting women as they rightly should 🙄

Then within the next hour here come

https://costcohotdogandsoda.tumblr.com/

(Also with Bible verse in bio)

Saying “average n*gger behavior.”

And https://www.tumblr.com/anew-jackson

Saying ““black men are inherently violent”

radfem 🫱����‍🫲🏻 radright”

Where op is still off base is the majority of the notes on her post are actually radfems or adjacent and none of them at all lead to right wing blogs picking it up

Plus of course some people just don’t look at who follows them and of course there are right wing assholes who deliberately try to pick off anyone with the slightest disagreement with the main leftist view.

I can’t blog about issues to do with Palestine for example without a bunch of antisemites following me and trying to convince me to be antisemitic about it. That doesn’t prove my views about Palestine are inherently antisemitic — they very much aren’t. Same for how radfems/gc end up being with attracting a lot of right wing actually-transphobic (and sexist and racist and homophobic) attention.

But please people if you are at all connected to blogs like americanette that shit seriously — taking time to disengage our arguments and discussion in all spaces online and off from the right wing will do more for us than the next 10 gc memes you bother to make and post. Don’t lie, you’ve got the time.

This also isn’t like working with your normie right leaning cousin on abortion because she agrees with you about that. You aren’t making connections here you are being made a patsy to keep you alienated from the left and to keep more women on the left from joining us in an actually revolutionary feminist movement. Right wing people online absolutely know the more they get you to openly connect with them the more they can use that to keep young women in particular away from listening to you about feminism.

Hypothetical you btw I am sending this to a few different blogs because I bothered writing it and don’t have a rf blog to put it on yet. I’m pretty new. Not as a reader but as someone agreeing. I know this works because it worked to keep me away from learning more about rf for a long time. Not the rumor of racism and FAR right wing connections being ignored or celebrated but seeing the evidence. It was actually seeing americanette suggested as a blog within moments of following rf blogs that put me off for another few months. Was there going to be another issue I was forced to sit through racist attacks from “my own” side over?? Seems to be yes but maybe it’s getting better.

so i'm not 100% following here bc i can't see the link at the beginning but i think i got the gist.

the op blocked me so i cannot click the first link but this is an earlier version of the post in question

first: yes racism is a problem among radfems (i've yet to encounter any mixed race environment where it isn't a problem), but i will say i see a bit more effort to combat it here than in most online spaces i've been around. not that that's a high bar, lbh.

tumblr recommendeds should not be trusted, though, and they don't necessarily mean much. the algorithms aren't exactly unbiased. and keep in mind sock accounts to vilify radfems are very real and present, as are troll accounts. i don't know who any of the people you linked to are tho so i can't speak on that, and 2 have me blocked or maybe i blocked them ages ago and don't remember. i do typically block right wing blogs on sight,so it's possible. also it seems some of the stuff you linked to was maybe deleted?

i will say unequivocally that being intentionally "transphobic" in an edgy way is not productive and should not be supported in radfem spaces. we are here to criticize and analyze, not to be outright cruel for the sake of being cruel. many people seem to forget this.

i do not personally know any women here who engages with right wing blogs, even in argument. i'm sure they exist, but not in my sphere - though i don't actually spend very much time online. i think most folks ik on here just block and move on.

as a side note, i used to look at who follows me etc but i have like 3500 followers now bc i've been here a long time and make original posts pretty often, so it is no longer realistic to monitor who's following me - i really don't have THAT kind of time or energy. but if i see someone reblogging from me who's shit, i block. i have no idea what the typical follower count is on radblr but generally speaking, i think people should only be held so responsible for who follows them. making an effort is important, but i don't think it's reasonable to expect everyone to be online enough to thoroughly check all their followers.

as for this^ this stuff is said deliberately to get a reaction from radfems and/or to discredit us. unless a radfem im blocked by or have blocked said so in the notes, i didn't see anything implying "black men are inherently violent." this kind of post is usually making shit up to antagonize radfems or misrepresent radical feminism as an ideology. this is not to say there's no radfem who believes wildly racist bullshit like that - in fact, i'm confident there are, since they're everywhere. it's just not at all a staple of radfems like this implies.

but yes, bottom line, radblr is far from immune to racism, but isn't the worst i've seen either, and things like "recommendeds" or shitty people reblogging from radfems should be taken with a grain of salt as neither of those inherently indicates an endorsement from the rad blog connected to the incident, if that makes sense. my brain is mush rn after driving 4 hours.

[mountmortar]

since everyone is talking about other platforms i do want to throw in my two cents about dreamwidth (since not many people are mentioning it as much as bluesky, pillowfort, cohost, etc. and i genuinely love it over there) and say that:

1. it IS, fundamentally, a slower experience than your average social media. if you're someone who already entirely curates your dash here and prefers to (for example) really only see your mutuals' posts when you open up tumblr and not be constantly bombarded by the for-you page or blazed posts, you'd do well on there.

2. things on there ARE mainly text-based. if you want to include an image in your post, you have to link to it from an external source or upload your image to your account and link it from there (there's a 500MB limit for free accounts and 1.5-3GB limit for paid accounts). to the average social media user this may seem insane, but remember that text hosting is cheaper than image hosting and dreamwidth is funded by user donations and the like (and has been doing so since 2009!). ultimately, if you're someone who likes to hop online and read/write about your blorbos, your life, or anything else, dreamwidth may be better suited for you than if you're someone who gets online solely to post art and nothing else. not to say it's impossible to be an artist on there! image hosting services exist for a reason, after all. but it isn't tumblr or twitter or the like.

3. your experience on there is ENTIRELY what you make of it. this one is really important to get across because the amount of people i've seen be like "yeah i went on dreamwidth and posted for a bit but it was so boring with no engagement so i left. it's dead there" is incredibly funny to me. dreamwidth has no algorithm, no "recommended journals" section, no "for you" page, nothing like that. if you just get on there and post and log off then it's literally like if you went on here and marked all your posts as private and then wondered why nobody was engaging with them. you have to actually put effort in to talk to people if you want them to talk to you. that's why there are communities!!!

community that already exists for your fandom hasn't been posted in since 2010? make a new one! there are specific communities dedicated solely to promoting other communities that SO many people on dreamwidth are subscribed to that SOMEONE'S gonna see it and be interested. there are even communities dedicated for people to introduce themselves and find friends, including one that's literally called "addme_fandom" that gets you connected with other people in your fandom! subscribe to their posts (aka "follow" them) and leave nice comments on things you like! that's engagement! but fundamentally YOU have to go out and do all these things. on there, nobody is going to find you unless you make yourself known, and if you don't make yourself known? then yeah, it's "completely dead" over there.

TL;DR: dreamwidth is a slower-paced blogging platform that's mainly text-based and users have to actually talk to each other in order to engage with each other. if you're someone who posts writing in any form and who's getting irritated with modern social media (even if you're someone who just likes posting about your blorbo or complaining at length about things) then you may like it there! but if you don't reach out to people, they're not going to reach out to you, so don't expect anybody to know you're even there if you stay in your own little corner.

[firespirited]

Yesterday I had an ultrasound scan of my salivary glands (wrt long term swollen tongue with ridges loss of taste and thick saliva) . It came out clear. Next step is a panoramic teeth x-ray. But after the post car ride migraine took me out, I had an odd moment of pain clarity if that makes any sense. I made a bunch of decisions weighing up the cost- benefits of various stuff. It just sort of clicked into a logical sense like when you understand the spoons metaphor but for multiple factors intersecting with energy. It was a horrid 16 hours rager of a headache and insomnia but I guess something shook loose. Funny how that happens.

Once i could use screens again, I continued the momentum and did a kon mari of youtube and instagram subs.

Anything not actually sparking joy/enjoying the actual person instead of fomo... unfollowed. I much prefer the tumblr dollblr vibe and the commentary channels were either critiquing media I just can't get around to watching any time soon or discourse I find a little silly (drama pays the rent but I hate rewarding the algorithms that pay for drama).

I've really enjoyed interactions over the past few months with folks here and it puts things into perspective. This is fun, it sparks joy, I can be useful and the rest is sinking work into an attention economy that my type of energy and output isn't made for. I've also been working painfully for over 7 months and while I can't take a break and vacations are for well people, I do need to cut myself some slack in other areas.

To Do lists become a weight around your neck if they were put together in a different time with different constraints. Even, if that was last week. You end up focusing on what you can't do instead of shelving that To Do list and making a new one that fits the current state of affairs. Or in this case, multiple lists: daily, physio goals, hobby projects, destash...

❇️ I'm going to do some hobby stuff at the end of the month even if it costs me because that's a thing just for me and not chores. The head bundle didn't sell (the buyer is a regular question asker who's interested then doesn't actually buy) so I've removed all those reroots and will be sending them out to be rehomed this autumn (energy permitting). I haven't been spending money on the hobby and doing ok with very occasional treats.

Next up:

❇️ Map routes to walk that avoid the tiger mosquito danger zones - there's a stagnating stream close to the phone library. Keep to set times due to the heat wave.

❇️ Delete TV, films and documentaries that aren't actually fun-fun or seem to rehash stuff I already know. I went ahead and got paperbacks of bell hooks just to have in hand. Felt extravagant but she's essential.

❇️ Schedule medical appointments after the heatwave is over. Factor in the post car-ride migraine to weekly chores.

❇️ Stop beating myself up for being 'negative', it's ok to be annoyed and angry. However, recognizing patterns of things that are not worth engaging with when you're overtired and sore is also a good habit. Writing this stuff down helps to remember.

Discourse is the mind killer, Explaining capitalism or Barbie is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will NOT face the discourses. I will permit it to pass over me by aggressively muting or scrolling past. And when it has gone past I will NOT turn the inner eye to say that very pertinent take even if the other person is completely off base.

[kodicraft]

You know what, the more I read responses to that one post staff made, the more I feel like they're right.

Sooo many people just hear "algorithm" and their eyes go red and their brain just lobotomizes itself

And equally most people who say that "the onboarding isn't actually that difficult/the site isn't that hard to learn" have just been here for long enough to have learned the ropes. I recently created a second account from scratch and the onboarding was fucking terrible.

The analytics staff has are probably correct, at least far more than the people screaming at the top of their lungs with no data to back anything up. The most "data" I can see is a poll asking people how they order their dash. As we all know polls are a very reliable metric and deep analytics tools are just silly execs who don't understand that clearly polls work perfectly fine to understand the intricate behavior of your user base.

I personally believe that turning the site more like other websites is not a solution that will pay off, that Tumblr needs to set itself apart from other sites if it wants to build a loyal userbase, but when the user base is so unprofitable and even actively jeopardizing to your business (see: Tumblr monetization discourse) I can definitely see the appeal of improving the growth of the user base over user retention, and that's clearly what they're focusing on.

Maybe if people were less actively hostile towards attempts to monetize the site they wouldn't feel this way, or maybe if the website's business model worked better for monetizing a loyal user base they would focus more on improving the experience of current regular users over that of new users, but currently it's difficult to blame them for their priorities.

I am a regular user of the site, I want Tumblr to invest in improving my experience as a loyal user and I want my regular usage to be something that Tumblr can benefit from. That's currently not the case, and staff is as aware of it as I am.

[baronvontribble]

are people really using the lying hallucinating machine to: -weigh in on decisions about what is and isn't humanly edible -give coherent and true summaries of literally anything -GIVE YOU ANSWERS TO ANY SERIOUS QUESTIONS?? -FOLLOW BASIC MATHEMATICAL PRINCIPLES OF REALITY EFFECTIVELY???

take it from the person who loves writing about robots: chatGPT is fucking dumb. it works based on repetition, SEO, memetics, and feedback, none of which promote accuracy. it is the worst way to search any info you could possibly want. not only does it lie and just make shit up to make you happy, it bases those lies on aggregate sources that are boosted not by any method of actual verification, but by SEO.

what's SEO? well that's Search Engine Optimization, baby. strap in we're gonna do an example.

think about tumblr bots, alright? now, why do we block a tumblr bot? because they're annoying? no, we block them because they use their like-spamming to add search engine legitimacy to their scammy links in their bios. essentially, because of the way tumblr links to every user that ever likes or reblogs or interacts with a post on every post's individual linked page, every single one of those links is telling google's search engine that THIS scammer's page is totally legit. this boosts its algorithmic potential and makes it so that it appears higher up on search results than its scammy competitors.

but andy, you think, why are you going into a description of tumblr bots? well, reader, it's because this same principle also applies to viral posts. and what goes viral on tumblr? really funny trolling, lies, and people being generally obtuse and digging their own graves. tumblr is the town square and our algorithm is each other's interest; we delight in pointing at the latest pair of squeaky clown shoes being worn, and will drag the wearer out for everyone to see.

this. is bad. when you are an AI 'search' tool based on repetition, memetics, and SEO. because you were never taught to separate 'viral' from 'real'.

a search tool based on virality will tell you to eat a tide pod because they're a secret kind of candy. a search tool based on virality will tell you poinsettias and lilies are great to keep around your cats, and that you should put garlic in their food. a search tool based on virality will tell you that the best way to figure out whether bread is done is to stick your dick in it.

(it should go without saying but i'm going to say it anyway: DO NOT DO THESE THINGS BY THE WAY. YOU WILL DIE AND BE IN HORRIBLE PAIN AND SO WILL YOUR CAT.)

remember this rule, kids, and remember it well: a lie will go around the world twice while the truth is still getting its pants on. while it's fun to dunk and debunk, dunking and debunking doesn't reach the same eyeballs as the original thought, and by the time you're done you have five new ones to dunk on and debunk. and AI 'search' tools will never be able to distinguish the truth from the lie by design.

because here's the nastiest part of all: AI 'search' tools' results are then fed by the way people engage with the results. If the insane result goes viral, it doesn't get corrected, it gets reinforced. engagement, ragebait, corrections, all of these don't bring attention to a problem, they tell the AI it's done a good job making something that people engage with, and it will keep right on lying.

you can't if-then your way out of every lie it spits out because it's like trying to keep a lawnmower from making grass cuttings one blade of grass at a time. it's what it's designed to do. it's baked into the concept because people didn't think that their fun new toy needed to be able to tell the truth, and didn't realize what that would mean when it was asked serious questions. they just wanted it to earn more clicks, more eyes, more engagement, so that they could use that to farm more data that they can sell.

when you can't see what product being sold is, you are the product.

AI 'search' tools are genuinely dangerous, genuinely harmful to discourse, and genuinely something you should be critical of. even beyond their environmental impacts, intellectual property violations, worker's rights violations, this shit is bad, and its cousins in image and longer form text generation are worse.

we cannot allow our critical thinking skills to be eroded by these things. fight them. fight them at every turn. do not allow them into your spaces and do not allow them into your life. complacency is how they get their foot in the door to normalization, and normalization of this kind of shit is another nail in the world's coffin. i'm not kidding. it should be enough for you people that it's a theft-based hallucinatory lie machine but apparently it's not so here we are.

thank you for reading. now if you'll all excuse me, i'm going to go chug something caffeinated and deep-clean the microwave

[no1noman]

Alright, new pinned post

So I'm making this as an egotistical introduction to myself and my interests. I like games a ton, I'm taking a college course on marketing and advertising, enjoy art and animation (although I don't do either), and I'm using this blog to vent thoughts I would rather keep off of my other social medias (mainly because Tumblr is pretty dead and doesn't algorithm what you say into stranger's faces as much)

If you want to know some of my favourite games;

Plants vs Zombies. I'm obsessed with this whole franchise and have played basically anything they've released internationally. I mainly play PvZ Heroes, which is a game I DO NOT recommend playing at this moment (or any moment, really? Unless you're willing to do morally grey things [I.e. hacking in resources, which takes a 10 minute YouTube tutorial to complete]) due to an ongoing and likely unending hacking crisis. It's also really hard to get into unless you have someone explaining everything to you, mainly because the base game does nothing to teach new players anything beyond some of the basic game mechanics and arguably does more to feed new players misinformation. There's also a lot of bugs, balancing issues, a severe lack of features (including there being no report button), and lots of other issues. Regardless, I have a lot of fun with this game and it has a iron grip on me

Skullgirls, which isn't a game I suck at and don't actually play often, but have put dozens of hours into regardless. The art style is what initially hooked me in, as well as its mostly-female cast and the intriguing story. What got me to stay was the amazing gameplay, one of the best tutorials I've played for a fighting game (although it's also quite flawed nowadays due to its difficulty at some points), and a very in-depth training mode. Favourite characters are Filia (I love playing as her and she has a neat design), Peacock (not as fun to play, but still very fun and her design absolutely rocks), and Painwheel (she's too hard for me to play, but is otherwise my #1 favourite character thanks to her design and story alone)

Rayman Legends, which is probably weird to have for a favourite game, but is one of the best platformers I've played and overall a very fun and replayable game. Other games like Celeste, Cuphead, and Super Meat Boy (the third of which I still need to play 😭) are probably better, especially in the case of Celeste having a very good story. I think what Rayman brings to the table is its triple A quality, having a ton of polish, lots of levels, plenty of game modes, and overall does a lot of things games with a smaller budget couldn't imagine doing without spending over a decade of time

Slay the Spire and Dicey Dungeons, which are both really great dungeon-crawler deck-building rougelites (StS is technically a rouge-like, but it takes such little time to unlock stuff and what you do unlock are cards and relics; not things like permanent stat buffs that simply make your next run stronger). Slay the Spire is pretty much the grandfather of deck builder rougelites, but has aged immaculately despite that title. Meanwhile, Dicey Dungeons plays with the formula by having you roll dice instead of drawing cards, and those dice are used to activate your cards like mana would. Dicey Dungeons is a much simpler experience than Slay the Spire, but I wouldn't say it's better for that and Slay the Spire is a more worthwhile experience

Some other games I think are cool are;

Drone Head, which I've been playing a lot of as of recently. It's an arcade platformer made for a game jam about a small robot jumping everywhere to collect weapon cubes, which change the weapon of your attack mode. It's super cute, very addicting, and overall a lot of fun: https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/800211

Tetris, which is maybe the only game on this list that you recognize besides Plants vs Zombies (or you live under a rock). While I wouldn't say I'm good at the game, I've noticed that the average person isn't close to my skill level, so saying I'm bad at the game would also be a lie. I typically just play Jstris's practice mode, but I've also done 1v1s on Tetris Effect and played the battle royal modes of Tetris 99 and Tetr.io (which kicked my ass)

Peggle, which I feel like people don't talk about. It's a crime considering both Peggle games are fun and well-made games. Peggle 1 is a masterpiece and ironically has much more content, while Peggle 2 has its own unique charms and, in my opinion, a more fun PvP mode. I also regularly listen to Peggle 2's soundtrack, with some of my favourites being Jimmy's theme, Bjorn's scntfc remix, and the pvp lobby music titled "Eau de Bjorn". Most fascinating part of the soundtrack is that each character's theme is a classical piece remixed to be a soundtrack that transforms as the level progresses, which is really cool and makes the game stand out a lot more. Peggle Blast was a mistake

Toontown Corporate Clash, which I admittedly haven't touched in months, but is still a game I would recommend people play. If you don't know, Toontown Online was a game released by Disney way back in 2003 and was promptly shut down 10 years after. However, fans of the game would begin to create private servers of the game modded to their preferences, and one of them happens to be Corporate Clash: A heavy rework to the game's combat and progression. It's so good that playing solo is quite rewarding, but like any MMO, is more fun with friends (which I lack 🙃)

I'll continue updating and adding to this post over time, but those are a lot of the games that have my attention rn

Not sure what else to add to this post, honestly. I guess I could also talk about what non-gaming media I'm into or actually talk about my own life, but that's stuff I may add later since idrc to talk about that stuff right now

[avaantares]

I wrote a long response to a blue-checkmark drama post, but between the time I clicked "reblog" and the time I finished typing, OP apparently turned off reblogs for that post. So GUESS WHAT, y'all get my diatribe anyway. (Sorry; I know most of you aren't the problem. But I did actual math, so I don't want it to go to waste.)

---

The old axiom still applies:

If social media is free to use, it's because YOU are the product.

What that means, for the adage-averse, is this: Sites and services that appear to be fully free to users (Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Google, et al.) are collecting your personal data and selling it to advertisers to pay for the (in some cases) hundreds of millions of dollars it costs to run such sites.

Tumblr doesn't do this. Tumblr hasn't done it, despite a monthly deficit of literally millions of dollars, which is why it's repeatedly been sold at a massive loss to new owners.

To give you actual numbers: Yahoo! acquired Tumblr in 2010 at a cost of $1.1 billion. After taking enormous losses, they later sold it to Verizon for an undisclosed amount. After trying (and failing) for two years to make the site pay for itself, Verizon sold it to Automattic (its current owners) for just $3 million. [Source]

For those who don't math, that means Tumblr's market value dropped by $1,097,000,000 in just nine years, or (averaged out) devalued by approximately $10 million per month. In short, nobody is looking at this as a worthwhile investment to hang onto long-term.

So why didn't it make money for its various owners, despite promising user statistics and a then-unheard-of initial sale price to Yahoo? Precisely because it wasn't leveraging your data to offset its running costs. The algorithm-free advertising format simply isn't viable for a site this big, which requires massive amounts of data storage and bandwidth (all those multimedia options you love cost a fortune on the back end). While there is a modicum of value for companies to hold a loss-generating property for tax purposes (which is pretty much what Verizon did with the site during its ownership), there is a finite period to reap those tax benefits. More relevant to us, if the site's only purpose is to show a loss on paper, there's little incentive for the owner to improve the service or keep its user base happy. We, the users, get thrown under the bus.

So how did Tumblr, under Automattic, try to run as a free site that didn't harvest user data? Tumblr served ads to try to generate revenue. But users complained about the ads. So Tumblr offered ad-free subscriptions at a very reasonable introductory rate of $3.33/month. But users complained about the subscriptions ("It's always been free! Other sites are free! Capitalism is evil!") and refused to pay. So Tumblr offered post-Blazing and tipping and physical merchandise and a variety of other optional features, most recently dashboard horse games and parody blue checkmarks, and instead of seeing these as a desperate attempt to stop the site from hemorrhaging money opportunity to support their online community, users just keep screaming about the moral failings of corporations that charge money for literally anything and insist that "we must keep this site unprofitable at all costs!"

Guys. Sites like this cost millions of dollars -- sometimes tens of millions -- to maintain each month. With the influx of new users from Twitter and elsewhere, that number is only going to increase as server load and bandwidth increase. And because of its history of losing value on a jaw-dropping scale, there will not be another company waiting to take ownership if Automattic decides to stop throwing money into the blue fires of this hellsite. If Tumblr is unprofitable for long enough, it will shut down. Period.

So either chill the $%#@*& out about the blue checkmarks or whatever, or pony up the monthly subscription fee yourself to help support the site. At the very least, stop attacking those who choose to give something back in exchange for the service they receive. Because they're the only reason this site has lasted as long as it has.

[cyle]

if i was going to make a new tumblr in 2022, i'd build:

a content schema -- what format the posts are gonna be in, a shared json schema; opengraph is closest to a shared one today.

a transmit protocol -- it's called rss!!!! but if you don't want pull, you could adapter anything, you could make a real time ephemeral XMPP version of this and have snapchat.

a renderer -- this is up to the client!! how do you wanna show this data you've received? reverse-chron, "the algorithm", short or long posts, are all decisions you can make on your end, however someone wants to build it against the given adapters. (the real question is whether the content schema dictates the renderer. the real question is whether the algorithm is yours or centralized.)

but really, what the average person cares about is the way to access this new tumblr conveniently, which is just an app that conforms to these protocols, as tumblr itself does today:

NPF is our content schema, a way of publishing posts in an open source format

the transmit protocol for tumblr is currently proprietary (our API) but it's actually mirrored as each blogs' RSS feed

the renderer is literally the tumblr apps: a specific way of displaying that content schema and surfacing interaction controls, which itself just create new things to transmit; you could define this however you want. (we literally built NPF so anyone could build their own renderer.......)

but this is crazy simple talk, right? the real hard talk comes in on:

governance of this federated network -- or maybe this is just a new web of trust?

how to make money -- though you can even make money on email with substack, you can make money via RSS with podcasting... maybe making money isn't that hard if you wanna put forth the effort for a payment portal. the transmit protocol needs a "membership" state per consumer, but it probably needed that anyway.

content moderation -- who stops someone if the majority of people use a push-based framework (which is most of them today)

discoverability -- how do you get found if you want to be? this is the opposite end of content moderation.

i'm glossing over a lot, and i feel like this is a rehash of what could've happened in ~2005 if facebook hadn't happened. i've been thinking about this a lot. still needs more thought.

[wolfjackle]

This is how you turn off the algorithm (android app version, though Apple is similar).

Go to your account and click Account Settings.

Then go to Dashboard Preferences.

And turn off "Best Stuff First."

I find that "Stuff based on your likes" and "Stuff in your orbit" kept showing me things I didn't care about so I turned them off. Ymmv.

You can follow specific tags by the search function. So, like, once every 10 posts or so, I'll see something based on a tag I followed and not a person. It is usually unobtrusive, imo.

Colorized tags: if you tag a post with "gay" or "queer" or "lgbt+" or "asexual" etc, the tag will have the colors of the corresponding pride flag. This is a year-round feature not limited to pride month.

Show timestamps: highly recommend doing this. People will reblog old posts. This includes old news posts. So if you don't pay attention, you might think something happened recently when it's really from 4+ years ago.

Snooze Tumblr Live: that's that weird short form video thing. It has to be re-snoozed every 7 days. The company that runs it isn't allowed to operate in Europe and steals your data and no actual tumblr user uses the feature so there's not even anything good there.

obligatory welcome guide for redditors

A lot of the guides I've seen don't actually seem to understand how reddit works in comparison to tumblr so

your blog is basically your own small subreddit. some people curate this heavily to fit a theme, like a sub, most people don't

reblogs are culturally equivilant to upvotes but functionally equvilant to crossposting

there is an algorithm. it sucks and nobody uses it. turn it off in settings. everything is generally chronological

likes are functionally equivilant to saving a post

you've probably already seen this but change your icon and put something in your bio or people WILL assume you're a bot. personal info not required

generally, anything you would put as a comment on a thread should go in the tags or the replies of a post. only add comments in reblogs if you want it to become part of the base post

tags are mostly equivilant to flairs, used for organization and commentary

your dashboard is an aggregation of everyone you follow

there is an r/all equivilant(trending page) but it sucks and nobody uses it

our search also sucks. your best bet is using tumblr.com/tagged/[TAG] and not /search

there are no mods

by extension, reporting something doesn't put it in front of the mods, it sends it to staff, who may or may not do anything(usually they don't)

there is no karma, there are no karma limits. anyone can reblog anything, comment/reply to anything, or post in any tag

"reposting"(reblogging) old content doesn't matter. people can and will reblog the same post multiple times, including in a row

CAVEAT. reposting someones art(NOT reblogging, making a new post) is a dick move. i know this is commonplace on fandom subs but its not necessary here. everything you post should be [OC] unless you are reblogging. or posting shitty memes

we have our own sitelore, you'll pick it up

(though im not opposed to bringing some over from reddit)

our app also sucks. we do not have third party apps and any that claim to be are scams. sorry

for desktop, most people use the XKit Rewritten extension for QoL improvements and to revert shitty aesthetic updates, much like old.reddit

we have no idea where the porn rules are at either. add a mature content flag to anything you'd get fired for looking at at work, that's about it

finally, from the bottom of my heart, fuck u/spez

[mdccanon]

question: how would you cast a trans character in a show who comes out during the show? from what I’ve heard, most trans people don’t like cis people playing trans people. however, a trans person probably wouldn’t like playing their birth gender in the episodes before they came out, it might give them dysphoria. and recasting them would ruin the immersion. idk the internet’s reaction to the Loki show had me thinking.

The queer community's reaction to a casting is based entirely on if they like the actor and if it fits into the hidden, specific algorithm of wish-fulfillment representation they want to see.

The very concept of "queerbaiting" is audience members saying they would gladly accept cis straight actors playing as queer characters IF it ends with queer couples on screen... Until the exact moment TV shows or movies announce, loudly, that they are purposefully writing a queer character. Then, suddenly, the same people are asking for representation in the actors. See the double standard?

Mark Hamill is a completely average straight white dude, but according to Tumblr, Luke Skywalker is the paragon of twinks. A03 is FULL of fanfiction re-imagining popular characters as trans. Do THOSE fans stop imagining the cis actors and VAs as the cast of their characters?

So, with that being said, representation matters, and acknowledging the difference between sex and gender matters. Sex is sex is sex. Can a cis woman play as a trans man? Well, that's an interesting question. In a story that is about the transition and is about transgenderism, how far can an actor go? Because 80% of this issue is about medication, not about the mentality. If every actor had to have every mentality of every character they played, then how far does that little rabbit trail go?

After all, what would it mean for an actually trans person? Should they STOP taking their medication in order to play the full transition? Or for playing flashbacks? How are those to be written, by the way? Does this stigma against cis people playing trans including playing them as children? Why can't a teenaged girl who looks like the trans man play him when he presented as a teenaged girl?

Dysphoria doesn't factor as much to me because I don't think trans actors are that mentally fragile. An actor thinks about their own dead parents to cry on command. An actor imagines how they would kill their co-star. An actor lives in a prison for a few weeks to prepare for a role that doesn't even have scenes that take place in a prison--they just wanted to get into the headspace. (So much of the extra weight we put on actors comes from a political-social agenda and not really understanding acting. People recognize how acting works for anything that isn't political -- we just want to control what cis straight white people do, and fear hurting any intersectional person. We insist that black people can play in Shakespeare plays just fine -- and on a larger note, 21st century people can pretend to be 15th and 3rd century people -- we say that women can play roles usually written for men with little re-writing, we accept every twisted and horrible and depraved idea with voyeristic glee at seeing two people do horrible things to each other...)

There is no mysticism behind trangenderism. It isn't mysterious or magical. It's pills, wigs, clothes, make-up, pitches of voice, and a balancing deep-seated feelings of imposter syndrome with self-reassurances that you are enough. It's using gender stereotypes while also deny gender stereotypes and re-inventing and reimagining gender stereotypes, and then getting into Internet arguments with non-binary people who think wearing sweatshirts all the time makes them equal. XD

So! To actually answer your question....

I would cast an actor based based entirely on how much the story hinged on showing their transition and the subsequent dysphoria mattered to the PLOT, because that makes the most sense to me as far as immersion for literally any other transformation that has ever existed in fiction, ever. It is absolutely stupid for a handsome actor to be cast as an "nerd" by putting some glasses on them and then dramatically taking them off and tussling their hair. Likewise, Ebenezer Scrooge spends 90% of the story being the version of himself you don't want him to be so that the transformation matters. So, it seems more sensible to me for a story ABOUT a transformation to feature a person who actually looks like they haven't had a transformation yet. You don't cast a kind-looking old man to be Scrooge.

In a story that isn't about the transformation, Hollywood has no excuse not to hire a trans person so that they can give the limited role the most authenticity they can provide. An actor transitioned during The Chilling Tales of Sabrina. Which was great. But there wasn't anything profound about Theo's story that couldn't have been played by a cis actress. The story wasn't about his transition, but in an already tone-deaf story, it was good that a trans person was there to add some authenticity to something... Too bad they couldn't help the rest of the show's anti-masculinity and toxic feminism~!

Oh, and as far as Loki.... That's such a funny thing to watch Tumblr be upset about... In a material understanding of the universe, there is no such thing as a "black, crocodile, and female" Loki because having different DNA means you are a different person, period. Tumblr has to simultaneously buy into a spiritual belief that a person is the same person even if they physically aren't ("OMG, he's kissing himself") but then complain that those variations of DNA should match their very particular hiccups about DNA, namely, that they want to see the magical version of estrogen pills. XD

Here's a question: some people justify all this with the very politically incorrect assertion that you can't prove a character is bisexual if they only kiss girls. But that still doesn't even make sense, because if Tumblr is going to insist that a lesbian should date trans women, than even if Sylvie was presented as a trans woman, wouldn't that still be Loki being shown only as straight? XD

Even if Sylvie wasn't shown to be physically female, I'm not entirely sure what Tumblr's ask was on this one. Since when has gender and sex been so completely confused that a shapeshifter is also a trans person? Loki will kill and transform into a man to take his place as husband to the fair and sweet Sigyn, but when he transforms into a female horse to distract the stallion of an enemy, that gets lumped into the same definition as a person who doesn't want to be the sex their DNA says they should be? Do those two things match?

[cyle]

Greetings, first off, than you for your awesome posts, tumblr info-related and not.

I came across a post where a user said their dashboard was missing posts by other users they follow; they said that when they reached out to support, support indicated it was normal and by design - the dash is all chronological (if set as such), but not necessarily every single post is included from who you follow. They recommended to use the notification feature to not miss a post.

Is this accurate and can you talk a little bit about this? As someone who follows a lot of blogs, I don’t want to sift through notifications to look at a chronological timeline, or avoid missing anything. I’m wondering what’s the situation with it.

Thank you!

i'm right there with you on not wanting to miss anything. i'm pretty religious about keeping up with literally every post on my dashboard.

i think it's technically true that this can happen, but it's by far an extremely rare event. one that i don't know if we can even detect in our logs. i wouldn't be surprised if it's a one in a million event. in tech we call this an "edge case".

the cases where a post could be "missing" from the dashboard are varied and some of them are a consequence of architecture decisions, but for each of those decisions there are many more fallbacks and safety nets to make sure you don't miss a post. there are a lot of variables to consider here under the hood, because trying to load every post from all of the blogs you follow (potentially many thousands) is no small feat.

off the top of my head, i can think of maybe this happening because they have "Best stuff first" enabled, which uses a series of algorithms to re-sort the dashboard feed in a way that may make it seem like a post gets "missed", when really it's just not where you'd expect it to be if you were expecting a purely reverse-chronological timeline. it's probably there, though, if you keep scrolling.

another way i think this could happen is if you're using some third party API client to read your dashboard feed and you're using one of the old-but-still-supported time-based pagination techniques to go page-by-page. in that case, it's possible to miss a post entirely if it was published literally at the same second as another post and it's on a page boundary. but that should never happen if you're using tumblr.com or one of our apps or our standard dashboard pagination strategy, which is by post ID.

another possibility is that you can see that post in a different view, and the date you're seeing is actually the user-set "back date", which is not the same as the publish date, making it seem like it should've been at a certain time in your dashboard, but it wouldn't be. we only use that user-set "back date" for your blog view, not the dashboard. that can be pretty confusing if you're trying to debug it yourself.

in the end: it depends on the specific circumstance of their issue, what post was thought to be missed, etc. this isn't even accounting for possibilities like the post got deleted or the blog was temporarily suspended during the time you thought you should see it, or they blocked you, or lots of other possibilities that make it difficult to figure this out.

but in general, 99.9999% of the time, you should never miss a post on your dashboard if you keep scrolling back and back and back to where you last left off in your previous session. even if you have "Best stuff first" enabled, we don't reshuffle the posts you already saw last time.

[writing-with-olive]

Although I've rebelled against the idea in the past, the recent decline in tumblr's sense of uniqueness and spirit makes me wonder how much of the "social media is bad for mental health" thing is actually true. Not because of "screens bad" or the "well it wasn't too long ago that we didn't have all this technology stuff" or anything like that, but especially with the removal profile pics of whoever reblogged the thing to put on your dashboard, it feels so lonely. In one fell swoop it went from a bustling city center, full of people just doing their wacky little thing, sharing and enjoying what their passions were to... echos. Profile pictures were people's faces, you could notice patterns in what people were enjoying, start to get a sense for other people's personalities as you moved on past. Take that away and people's urls at the top become less an expression of self and more like a claim of ownership. "This is here because x person put it here. you're welcome."

The world, what with it's hellbent drive towards capitalistic ideals and ruthless efficiency seems to have forgotten that one of the core traits of all humans, no matter what part of the world they hail from, is story. is community. is collective identities and the ability to share experiences with one another. Finding joy isn't efficient; it's roundabout and it involves taking time and truly experiencing life. But since the people who have the most to gain from an efficient, ruthless, selfish system rather than a joyous one also have the means of convincing the rest of the population that the key to joy is material success rather than real community, the general population buys into that. Community building becomes networking. Stories become content. Editorial after editorial is written, explaining to people how to game The System, whatever that abstracted term actually means, for their own personal advantage.

Social media formed with the purpose of using the internet to communicate. Suddenly, the barrier of space no longer mattered, because you could share your interests with people far far from you who enjoyed the same thing. You could build community. But now, every time a change gets made that removes a piece of uniqueness, it stops feeling like that virtual town square and more and more like a single chair, placed at the end of a conveyor belt, where you sit alone waiting to be served. An unoffensive interface, an algorithm meant to direct stuff to you that it's pretty sure you'll like, makes it too difficult to stand up from that chair and find somewhere else to be. Although we are isolated, we still want the same emotional thrills that came with real interaction, so we gravitate toward anything that is inflammatory or shocking or exciting. It's a substitute, but it works well enough. Not only that, but if we as creatives put out something that goes big, sometimes we do get a sense of validation again. People comment or engage and suddenly, for that brief moment, we feel connected again. So we are taught to push harder and harder to make more so that we can become the center of attention again, to get that rush. It's addicting because like it or not, we, as humans, are dependent on connection. We start to believe that our worth is tied to what we create because it becomes clear that only the people who can really contribute (whatever "really" means) get the attention they need. So, without realizing it, it can be very easy to slip into the mindset that being big, sacrificing our time and wellbeing to the demand of others, means getting that validation, that community. We reach for those editorials about gaming The System.

When we (the general we now, not just creatives) are in an ecosystem where we are served up content based on what we spent more time interacting with, our skills regarding navigating community atrophy. We become so accustomed to being at the center that it can be shocking when we try to look for community, real community not the simulated stuff, and find that we are not the center but rather just one person of many. Negotiating differences in opinion, or even interest, while once deeply stimulating and fulfilling, can become overwhelmingly challenging. This can cause people to lash out in a burst of self-righteousness, demanding the world cater to their sensibilities. Or it can cause people to retreat back to the algorithms that have become comfortable, if unfulfilling. This, coupled with the fact that the more power any given person develops within this system, the more incentive they have to keep it the way it is-- letting go feels like it would be more isolating-- means that we end up in a vicious cycle we all play a part in.

There is a reason solitary confinement is considered inhumane. Humans aren't supposed to be alone. It tends to make us lose our sanity.

Killing modernization is going to take active effort. Find communities where you can distinguish at least a few different people, so that you don't have to rely on haphazard substitutes. Frequent your local library or look up community groups in your area. Branch out into other non-mainstream online spaces. If you have a community you adore on a platform that has decided to go the route of Sleek and Soulless, see if they're interested in also communicating and sharing their creations in another space so that you aren't dependent on a platform that no longer cares for you.

It'll be work, but it's important. Modernization needs to fucking die.

i am actually so fucking sick and tired of the tiktok/twitterification of websites. i am so sick of everything needing to be compressed or squeaky clean or "modernized". i am so fucking sick of every website that had a unique, creative spin or twist, violently throwing any sort of identifiers or creative minds they once had in favor of becoming another twitter. in favor of becoming another tiktok. modernization needs to fucking die.

[inqorporeal]

@tam-shade-song tags are useful for three things: finding the post later in your own blog (tumblr's post search function isn't awesome, but there's no way to search your Likes at all), warning people who might have a tag blocked (everything from phobias to NOTPs and also stuff like, say, "food" when people are practising a fasting holiday, or "long post" so a genuinely massive thread like the Hat Thread isn't cluttering people's dashes when 20 people they follow reblog it. It's impotant to note that "spiders" and "spiders tw" are better warnings than "tw spiders", because of the way tagging prioritizes the word order), and adding it to the tags that some people follow on their own dashes.

Tagging appropriately starts with the general subject (art, poll post, dogs, funny, reference, psa... stuff like that) and then gets specific (trees, tumblr culture, bassett hound, pranks, research tips, taxes) and then you can add your thoughts and reactions like a stage whisper to your followers. The first 20 or so tags are searchable. Sometimes people (myself included) put an entire post in the tags because they want to say something but feel it would detract from the actual thread itself.

But you dont have to have anything to say to reblog something. Sometimes I see a post that I know one follower in particular will like, and reblog it specifically to put something nice on their dash. Tumblr is an intensely social socmed site. Nobody goes searching through your Likes (the majority of longtime users have never unlocked our Likes lists, because for us it's more like giving the reblogger and the OP a thumbs up of approval) because the dash feed is based on people's reblogs. Even the For You list requires reblogs -- the algorithm uses your Likes to curate it, but it's not pulling from anyone's Likes list the way the blue bird site does.

All actual engagement on tumblr requires reblogs.

What does a Tumblr "Like" mean to you?

I'm just very personally curious. I'd love some sweet reblog action to get a good sample size, Eddie! P-p-p-p-please!

Thanks for your insight, pals!