#userpoirott

[mylovingshadows]

EVA GREEN as ALISON ROWDY in LIAISON S01E01.

[poirott]

I apologize for the off topic ask, but could you shed some light on the #bbelcher tag for me?

I keep running into it, and it seems to be all over the place and on (seemingly) unrelated gifs. It’s such a mystery to me, and it’s a little thing I know, but... it’s just frustrating not knowing, you know?

Again, sorry for the off topic ask, but you are such a nice and tumblr-savvy person, I thought I’d ask here first.

Hi there, anon! Don’t apologize for asking, it’s a good question to ask! Anyone would be curious about a tag that keeps popping up a lot in people’s posts. The tagging on posts, especially gif sets, can be confusing if you don’t know the context or what the tags themselves mean. I didn’t understand what it was all about at first either and it drove me bonkers but it’s really simple! :)

‘bbelcher’ is the personal tag of the popular movie/tv/actors/pop culture related blog @bob-belcher. It’s run by several gif makers (admin + fellow members) who are tracking this tag so that other gif makers can use it on their posts and get noticed and reblogged by said blog. bob-belcher’s reblog gives exposure to all sorts of great gif sets that may not have gotten noticed as much if the gif makers only used common tags like “name of movie/series”, “name of character”, “name of ship/pairing”, etc. bob-belcher helps them get some exposure and circulation via their large following.

You might have noticed other similar tags on posts, such as ‘cinemapix’, ‘doyouevenfilm’, 'fyeahmovies’, ‘tvseriessource’, ‘marvelheroes’, ‘magicfolk’, ‘thestarwarsdaily’, and so on. They’re usernames of blogs akin to bob-belcher. ‘Magicfolk’ is for Harry Potter stuff, ‘marvelheroes’ for Marvel projects and actors. The blogs all state somewhere in their intro which particular tag they’re tracking. And the bigger the fandom, the more likely it is such “member blogs” exist in it.

Some blogs track more common gif/edit tags like ‘tvedit’, ‘filmedit’, ‘marveledit’, ‘perioddramaedit’, while others have decided on a personal tag related to their username, that’s why there’s ‘bbelcher’ for @bob-belcher, ‘userstream’ for @stream (a tv/movie blog), and ‘chewbieblog’ for @chewbacca (also tv/movie). Spelling it a bit differently or using a variation on the name prevents tumblr from confusing the tags ‘chewbacca’ the Star Wars character name and 'chewbacca' the username. There are a lot of tags along the lines of ‘userPERSONALNAME’ and they often refer to a person’s main blog. To give an example, in line with the naming trend, I could have named my own tracked tag ‘userpoirott’ or 'userNICKNAME’ or similar for people to tag it in their posts they wanted me to see/reblog, but 'poirott’ works just as fine as a tag name and it doesn’t get mixed up with any common tags like ‘poirot’ the fictional character. :)

It took me ages to realize chewbacca (and others like it) isn’t just one person! The common thing about these big name blogs is that they’re run by more than one individual. Bob-belcher has 20+ and chewbacca 50+! Staff members are listed on each blog. Their job is to check the tracked tag(s) frequently and queue the posts for reblogging, it’s why it may take a few days for your gif set to get picked up, depending on how busy their queue is. They have a system and certain rules all members must follow.

They also create their own gif sets exclusively for the blog, on top of gif sets for their main/personal blogs or even sideblogs. The way they join these big blogs is by appying for a staff member position. I know some gif makers who are members at several big name blogs because they’re passionate about giffing and make a lot of gif sets across fandoms. :) By reblogging gif sets via the member blogs they’re supporting fellow gif makers, new and smaller fandoms, as well as vintage tv/films and everything inbetween. I’ve lost count how many great tv shows, films and gif makers I’ve been exposed to thanks to reblogs.

Sorry for the length! I hope this explains the topic of tagging. Have a nice evening! <3