#why does this post have a different reblog ui????

[semiotomatics]

for real tho, the thing that i feel like ppl arent realizing/talking abt, at least the thing for me, is that it was never about the website. like, do i like tumblr? sure, it mostly does what i want in a familiar, vaguely-easy-to-use way. but thats only bc ive been here 13 years and have the internet version of toxoplasmosis keeping me docile and trusting of capitalist corporations. tumblr could Site Of Theseus itself into a completely different beast and id still be coming back day after day.

its not the site that keeps me coming back, its the people. and i dont just mean my friends, or my Beloved Mutuals™, or my favourite blogs i follow. i mean the whole community. every person who posts in a tag i follow, or makes a poll i vote in, or shares their beautiful artwork. every random user who makes a post that ends up going viral. everyone who makes and reblogs Destiel News Alerts. everyone who logs on and agrees to Commit To The Bit until the bitter end. thats why i love this hellsite so much.

thats also why, when ppl ask "where are you going next?", i really dont have an answer for them. i want to say "wherever my friends go", but theres no telling where thatll be. i might be able to find some, or most of, or maybe even all of my mutuals/friends on some other site, but theres no guarantee that im going to find this community. that's what im going to miss when this site dies. not the UI, or the branding, or the crabs. not tumblr.com. im going to miss us.

[tokinanpa]

Long Rant Pt. 2: This Time It's Personal

on my post about tech literacy and Linux:

I'm not going to directly reblog this post or mention who made it, seeing as they clearly aren't interested in talking about this further, but I wanted to put my thoughts on it somewhere because there's a few things about this take that I find fascinating.

first, I feel the need to clarify: my intention here wasn't to shame people who find Linux confusing, nor was it to say it's their fault that they bounced off of it. good UI is designed with an audience in mind, and the audience of something like a Linux distro can be tough to pinpoint. my point was that the dominance of Windows and its design have skewed people's general ideas of what simple UX means, and that Linux being different doesn't mean it's more complicated.

when the topic of UX comes up, people often say "simple" when what they really mean is "familiar". an end user will tolerate quite a lot of inconvenience if they're accustomed to the process (and very little if they aren't). this is why the lack of a GUI package manager is such a sticking point for a lot of people: many Linux distros don't ship with one pre-installed due to a (somewhat valid imo) belief that it's not an essential feature, and a lot of new users are unfamiliar with the alternative.

so, with that in mind: the OP is comparing the UX of installing Wine in Debian with that of using an installation wizard in Windows. let's walk through the steps needed to use both of these methods. (we'll assume that the user is already familiar with how both of these installation methods work; after all, it would be unfair to consider Windows's method better just because more people were taught how to use it!)

let's start with Debian:

determine which packages to install (either by using apt's search command or by looking it up)

open the command line

type/paste in the command

say "yes" to any confirmation prompts

installation complete!

Debian's apt isn't the best package manager there is, but it's good enough, and this is a pretty standard process.

as for Windows:

determine what website the installation wizard is hosted on

download the installation wizard

run the installation wizard with admin privileges

skip past the introduction/welcome screen

choose the directory where the program will go (why is this a choice?)

set a bunch of extra configure options before the build starts

decide whether to add the program to the Start Menu (why is this a choice???)

installation complete! ... as long as you don't forget to check or uncheck the "run this program immediately" box on the last page, or you'll have that to deal with that now

oh and you should probably also get rid of that installer that's collecting dust in your downloads folder now

I think it's pretty clear why this system is bad, but I'll elaborate anyways: instead of taking advantage of the one thing that computers are good at and automating the process, installation wizards force YOU to do everything. the user has to find and download the installer themselves, they have to devote their attention to every banal setting that the installer offers, and they have to clean up the mess afterwards.

I honestly wouldn't even disagree with the claim that some aspects of Linux are unsuited for casual tech consumers. despite having now written at least a good thousand words on the subject, I don't actually care all that much about whether people decide to adopt Linux. but the idea that apt is a downgrade from this??? it baffles me. this isn't even the first time I've heard it, either.

I haven't even mentioned the issues outside of the UI:

development - programmers now have to maintain an installer program separate from the stuff that actually matters

inconsistency - what an installer looks like, where you find it, what it does, how you handle the installation after? none of it is standardized

security - you're literally running unvetted code you got off the internet and it just asked you for full access to your computer what the fuck

wow I wrote a lot more than I thought I would. thanks for reading this whole thing if you made it here, I guess? I don't expect many people to do that

[if-confessions]

I don't get why WIPs without demos get so much hype... it feels weird when there are so many good playable WIPs that get less attention

Hi Anon,

I think it comes down to a few reasons:

Luck

Marketing

Expectations of the readers

As much as we would love to believe a piece of work should get attention based on its worth alone, it's not really the case in reality. Like you said, there are many WiPs without demo that get a lot of attention, while other projects with a working demo/game who barely get anything. This is a generalisation, there are completed games and demos that are widely popular, as well as WiPs without demo who get no traction.

So first, there is plain Luck. Luck in regards to who ends up seeing the post, who reblogs the post, whether it checks the boxes of whatever is trendy in the moment (genre/tropes/customisation/etc), whether followers are actively engaging with the post and blog (replies/reblogs/asks), etc...

You know: right time in the right place.

You can't really plan for that, even if you researched all the trends, where to promote your project, who to send your project to, etc... Still might not be enough.

What can help mitigate this is using marketing to your advantage, with actions such as:

teasing a new project to get some hype with for example: teaser posters, countdown to the intro post/demo, character reveal, lore reveal, UI teaser, quotes from the demo, playlists, etc...

having a compelling intro post, with a good hook at the start, a synopsis that gives just enough to get the reader interested, having nice design in the graphics, including relevant links (demo, forum, tags, etc...), including what the game will feature (or what it already has), tagging the post properly (#interactive fiction, the genres, customisations, type of game, the system, etc...)....

submitting your intro post to directories, or promoting on different platform

continuing to be active on the blog after the intro post/demo drops with snippets, answering asks, and pretty much again what was in the first point....

Does this seem like a lot? Because yeah... it is. And it's not always feasible to do all of this. It requires careful planning, and skills, and knowledge. (I can draw to save my life for example...) And it can be very very frustrating to having done all of that and get little interaction (and the luck part comes back into play here).

And finally, reader expectations (I am not sure whether it is the right word...).

Hype can be a double-edged sword. The more you have, the higher the chance the end result might not match the hype expectations (I would loooove to know how hyped project continued in terms of interaction after a demo drop).

When you don't have a demo, people can only learn about the way you write or the character or the story from what you publish on your blog. As much as snippets can give you an idea, it's still not the actual thing. So you can't really disappoint people just yet.

Until it is set in stone by a demo, Reader's imagination can run wild (and even to the opposite direction of what the author intends).

There was that ask a year or two ago sent to an author, complaining about the amount of snippets they had written or asks answered, when there was no working demo yet. The reply of the author was suuuuch a good one, but I can't find it ;-;

[worrywrite]

I think the failure of this entire approach is stated in this passage: "the default position should always be that the user does not know how to navigate the application."

This assumes that the app is not the problem, per se, but the following points contradict or do not solve the problem introduced.

See, if a user does not have the literacy to navigate and engage on a platform then they will be less likely to want to use the platform regardless of their literacy on its use. Whereas a user that has the platform/tech literacy to use the platform will enjoy it. You don't make the platform for the lowest common denominator, because then you get a really bland platform. You make a platform the best experience for the average user. And that's a big appeal and why I've always come back to Tumblr. I've been able to understand how, mechanically, the platform works (though the social mechanics of it often allude me), and so I've been able to make the most out of the features and mechanics of it. But if you simplified the platform and made it easier to use for everyone (people with less tech literacy) I would enjoy it less because my experience would be cut down; I would be able to engage with the platform less because the platform would be too simple for me, the average current user.

Is the average user changing over time. Probably. And that's sad. But I think part of the problem with that is that younger users have less tech literacy overall because platforms continue to simplify the way that they can be interacted with. Tumblr can attempt to follow that pattern, but I think it will lose a lot of legacy users that drive popular content in the process. And I think that those big legacy users represent more brand identity for the platform than anything else.

In order to solve the problems the platform currently faces, I suggest leaning into the exist platform identity that exists outside of it's user base. Get rid of live. Improve SEO so that Tumblr becomes a higher average rank across all engines when searching content generally online. Add better methods of distinguishing content on the platform (like a core tagging system where you have to have at least two-four tags that define the principle categories of a given post and these have distinct colors or a separate distinguishing space on the UI). Consider ditching or severely altering the comment system so that comments attach to specific versions of a post rather than the post generally or where you can adjust whether the comment is general to to a specific reblogger on the reblog chain. Preserve and strengthen the custom blog creation side of the platform; we have options for making individual blogs really cool, and I think we should focus on that side of the platform more. Gut the vestigial features that are lingering from old failed changes (like dragging the post button around, or the various buttons that post different things when all types of posts can be made from essentially the same screen).

Tumblr’s Core Product Strategy

Here at Tumblr, we’ve been working hard on reorganizing how we work in a bid to gain more users. A larger user base means a more sustainable company, and means we get to stick around and do this thing with you all a bit longer. What follows is the strategy we're using to accomplish the goal of user growth. The @labs group has published a bit already, but this is bigger. We’re publishing it publicly for the first time, in an effort to work more transparently with all of you in the Tumblr community. This strategy provides guidance amid limited resources, allowing our teams to focus on specific key areas to ensure Tumblr’s future.

The Diagnosis

In order for Tumblr to grow, we need to fix the core experience that makes Tumblr a useful place for users. The underlying problem is that Tumblr is not easy to use. Historically, we have expected users to curate their feeds and lean into curating their experience. But this expectation introduces friction to the user experience and only serves a small portion of our audience. 

Tumblr’s competitive advantage lies in its unique content and vibrant communities. As the forerunner of internet culture, Tumblr encompasses a wide range of interests, such as entertainment, art, gaming, fandom, fashion, and music. People come to Tumblr to immerse themselves in this culture, making it essential for us to ensure a seamless connection between people and content. 

To guarantee Tumblr’s continued success, we’ve got to prioritize fostering that seamless connection between people and content. This involves attracting and retaining new users and creators, nurturing their growth, and encouraging frequent engagement with the platform.

Our Guiding Principles

To enhance Tumblr’s usability, we must address these core guiding principles.

Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Retain and grow our creator base.

Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Improve the platform’s performance, stability, and quality.

Below is a deep dive into each of these principles.

Principle 1: Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Tumblr has a “top of the funnel” issue in converting non-users into engaged logged-in users. We also have not invested in industry standard SEO practices to ensure a robust top of the funnel. The referral traffic that we do get from external sources is dispersed across different pages with inconsistent user experiences, which results in a missed opportunity to convert these users into regular Tumblr users. For example, users from search engines often land on pages within the blog network and blog view—where there isn’t much of a reason to sign up. 

We need to experiment with logged-out tumblr.com to ensure we are capturing the highest potential conversion rate for visitors into sign-ups and log-ins. We might want to explore showing the potential future user the full breadth of content that Tumblr has to offer on our logged-out pages. We want people to be able to easily understand the potential behind Tumblr without having to navigate multiple tabs and pages to figure it out. Our current logged-out explore page does very little to help users understand “what is Tumblr.” which is a missed opportunity to get people excited about joining the site.

Actions & Next Steps

Improving Tumblr’s search engine optimization (SEO) practices to be in line with industry standards.

Experiment with logged out tumblr.com to achieve the highest conversion rate for sign-ups and log-ins, explore ways for visitors to “get” Tumblr and entice them to sign up.

Principle 2: Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

We need to ensure the highest quality user experience by presenting fresh and relevant content tailored to the user’s diverse interests during each session. If the user has a bad content experience, the fault lies with the product.

The default position should always be that the user does not know how to navigate the application. Additionally, we need to ensure that when people search for content related to their interests, it is easily accessible without any confusing limitations or unexpected roadblocks in their journey.

Being a 15-year-old brand is tough because the brand carries the baggage of a person’s preconceived impressions of Tumblr. On average, a user only sees 25 posts per session, so the first 25 posts have to convey the value of Tumblr: it is a vibrant community with lots of untapped potential. We never want to leave the user believing that Tumblr is a place that is stale and not relevant. 

Actions & Next Steps

Deliver great content each time the app is opened.

Make it easier for users to understand where the vibrant communities on Tumblr are. 

Improve our algorithmic ranking capabilities across all feeds. 

Principle 3: Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Part of Tumblr’s charm lies in its capacity to showcase the evolution of conversations and the clever remarks found within reblog chains and replies. Engaging in these discussions should be enjoyable and effortless.

Unfortunately, the current way that conversations work on Tumblr across replies and reblogs is confusing for new users. The limitations around engaging with individual reblogs, replies only applying to the original post, and the inability to easily follow threaded conversations make it difficult for users to join the conversation.

Actions & Next Steps

Address the confusion within replies and reblogs.

Improve the conversational posting features around replies and reblogs. 

Allow engagements on individual replies and reblogs.

Make it easier for users to follow the various conversation paths within a reblog thread. 

Remove clutter in the conversation by collapsing reblog threads. 

Explore the feasibility of removing duplicate reblogs within a user’s Following feed. 

Principle 4: Retain and grow our creator base.

Creators are essential to the Tumblr community. However, we haven’t always had a consistent and coordinated effort around retaining, nurturing, and growing our creator base.  

Being a new creator on Tumblr can be intimidating, with a high likelihood of leaving or disappointment upon sharing creations without receiving engagement or feedback. We need to ensure that we have the expected creator tools and foster the rewarding feedback loops that keep creators around and enable them to thrive.

The lack of feedback stems from the outdated decision to only show content from followed blogs on the main dashboard feed (“Following”), perpetuating a cycle where popular blogs continue to gain more visibility at the expense of helping new creators. To address this, we need to prioritize supporting and nurturing the growth of new creators on the platform.

It is also imperative that creators, like everyone on Tumblr, feel safe and in control of their experience. Whether it be an ask from the community or engagement on a post, being successful on Tumblr should never feel like a punishing experience.

Actions & Next Steps

Get creators’ new content in front of people who are interested in it. 

Improve the feedback loop for creators, incentivizing them to continue posting.

Build mechanisms to protect creators from being spammed by notifications when they go viral.

Expand ways to co-create content, such as by adding the capability to embed Tumblr links in posts.

Principle 5: Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Push notifications and emails are essential tools to increase user engagement, improve user retention, and facilitate content discovery. Our strategy of reaching out to you, the user, should be well-coordinated across product, commercial, and marketing teams.

Our messaging strategy needs to be personalized and adapt to a user’s shifting interests. Our messages should keep users in the know on the latest activity in their community, as well as keeping Tumblr top of mind as the place to go for witty takes and remixes of the latest shows and real-life events.  

Most importantly, our messages should be thoughtful and should never come across as spammy.  

Actions & Next Steps

Conduct an audit of our messaging strategy.

Address the issue of notifications getting too noisy; throttle, collapse or mute notifications where necessary.  

Identify opportunities for personalization within our email messages. 

Test what the right daily push notification limit is. 

Send emails when a user has push notifications switched off.

Principle 6: Performance, stability and quality.

The stability and performance of our mobile apps have declined. There is a large backlog of production issues, with more bugs created than resolved over the last 300 days. If this continues, roughly one new unresolved production issue will be created every two days. Apps and backend systems that work well and don't crash are the foundation of a great Tumblr experience. Improving performance, stability, and quality will help us achieve sustainable operations for Tumblr.

Improve performance and stability: deliver crash-free, responsive, and fast-loading apps on Android, iOS, and web.

Improve quality: deliver the highest quality Tumblr experience to our users. 

Move faster: provide APIs and services to unblock core product initiatives and launch new features coming out of Labs.

Conclusion

Our mission has always been to empower the world’s creators. We are wholly committed to ensuring Tumblr evolves in a way that supports our current users while improving areas that attract new creators, artists, and users. You deserve a digital home that works for you. You deserve the best tools and features to connect with your communities on a platform that prioritizes the easy discoverability of high-quality content. This is an invigorating time for Tumblr, and we couldn’t be more excited about our current strategy.

[loumauve]

@staff please fix whatever is causing the content beneath links and videos and photos to be deleted upon saving a reblog

it all looks fine while I'm adding tags and editing stuff but as soon as I click post or save draft it gets saved as missing big chunks of the original post:

I can assure you when I'm clicking on reblog I actually wish to reblog the entire content of the post. what else would even be the point otherwise.

the only difference between how I reblogged these posts is that for the first I had tumblr open in a big enough window that the ui changed to the regular desktop one and in the other I had it open in a slightly smaller window that gives me the little three lines for the menu in the top left. that's the only difference, so why is the latter so bugged since your latest update?

sometimes even when I highlight text the editing window doesn't show up. sometimes it does after holding the left mouse button for a while sometimes it doesn't. trying to move text by highlighting it and then dragging it to the new place no longer works.

sometimes when I use a line break (enter), the menu to add photos etc (with your terrible new icons) doesn't even come up.

just all around there have been so many issues with the recent update, but the missing content from other people's posts might be the worst so far. (made worse by the fact that unless you review a reblogged post right after, you might not even notice that a huge chunk of it is missing)

Please, for the love of god, fix this.

EDIT: WHAT THE FUCK IS THE POINT OF ADDING TWO PHOTOS INTO THE SAME ROW IF YOU CUT OFF HALF OF ONE JUST BECAUSE IT'S LONGER WTF??

[dramallamadingdang]

I haven't had a whole lot of time for fiddling with Sims games this week, what with migrating, settling in, catching up with friends here, and...Well, skiing/snowboarding. Lots of skiing/snowboarding. No apologies. :)

I'm doing a couple of rest days now, though, so I have been fiddling with the NVIDIA stuff a little bit, doing some research, some testing, and fiddling with settings a bit. So this is a post combining notes, some pics, a reply to @sims-influence​ that was too long to do as a reply on the post itself, and a reply to an anon. It's long, so I'm cutting the whole thing, but if you're interested in this topic in general, it might be worth a read.

1) At the suggestion of @twofingerswhiskey​, I switched the Ambient Occlusion compatibilty to "Left for Dead 2" instead of "Counterstrike: Source". I'm not noticing any huge differences in shadow rendering except that this seems to have solved the issue I had with faint shadows because I have normal shadows back now.

2) You definitely need SimNopke's Shadow Fix mod or else you will have the black rectangles under Sims when they are indoors, even if you turn shadows entirely off. Which, incidentally, you can do. In fact, you can turn off (or rather, set to "low," since there is no "off" setting) almost all of the game's native graphics settings. (The exception: Reflections. Leave that turned on, especially if you use a water shader mod.) With these NVIDIA settings applied, the graphics are mostly being controlled through the video card rather than the game. My graphics options now look like this:

And my game -- which includes Dreadpirate's less-blue-at-night radiance lighting plus Almighty Hat's "World Lit By Fire" tweak -- looks like this:

3) I don't want to reblog my huge-long initial post about this, but regarding a reblog of it that @sims-influence​ made of it: I'm glad to hear that these settings improve the appearance of Bodyshop as well. I rarely use Bodyshop, so I'm not sure I would have even thought to apply the NVIDIA settings to it! You might try some different compatibility settings assigned to Bodyshop, if you still want the better shadow rendering that ambient occlusion offers. One of them might make a difference.

(As an aside but in a similar vein, I have noticed similar weird "shadowing" in TS3's CAS with the ambient occlusion settings on, but it only happens when entering and exiting CAS, not when actively making a Sim in it, so it's not a big deal to me.  Which is good because of course TS3 doesn't have a separate Sim-making application like TS2 does, so if you turn off AO in TS3, you turn it off in the whole game. In TS3 there is also a small issue where the shadows of objects sort of bleed through the UI. It’s weird-looking, but doesn’t interfere with using the UI. I’m going to change the AO compatibility setting for TS3, too, so we'll see if that makes a difference there.)

Unfortunately, I have no answer for you about the post-effects mod. I don't use it and am not fond of how the game looks with those effects applied, so I'm not going to be the person who will resolve that issue, if it can be resolved. All I can suggest is to experiment with the settings and maybe you'll come up with a combination that will work. But at the very least, I would think that the anti-aliasing (which seeks to make images smoother-edged and crisp) is going to conflict with, for instance, the depth-of-field effect that that mod includes, since the whole point of depth-of-field is to selectively blur the image. Those two things, at least, would seem to me to be fundamentally incompatible, but as I am not an expert on this subject, I could very well be wrong about that.

4) Finally, a nonnie:

Do you mean that the changes just don't "stick" in the program when you click "Apply Changes" or that the changes "stick" but you aren't seeing any difference in your game? I have no idea what would cause the first issue, so I'm assuming the latter...

First of all, what video card do you have? If it's older/less powerful, it's possible that it is not capable of rendering at the level you're asking it to do. You might try using some less-strong settings. If you're playing on a laptop, are you certain that the game is actually using the dedicated video card and not an integrated graphics chip instead? Obviously if the game isn't using the dedicated graphics card, then these settings will have no effect. If you've got a good-enough card and you are certain that the game is using it, are you certain that you changed the settings for the right game? If you are certain, you might try using the NVIDIA Control Panel instead of the Profile Inspector to make the settings changes.

I did this in one of my user accounts because for some reason the settings weren't applying to the game set-up in that one user account. I think that for whatever reason it wasn't affecting the right .EXE that starts up the game, but I have no idea why when it worked just fine in other user accounts. I couldn't figure out how to add a functional new profile in the Profile Inspector, so I just decided to do it via the Control Panel for that one user account.

You access the Control Panel by right-clicking on an empty space on your desktop and choosing NVIDIA Control Panel and then when the panel comes up choose "Manage 3D settings" and then choose the "Program Settings" tab. Assuming that you are using the UC or have all EPs/SPs installed via disk, you'll want to make a new profile by clicking the "Add" button, clicking "The Sims 2 EP9" on the list that comes up, and then "Add Selected Program." Then you go through the various settings that the Control Panel offers, which isn't as many settings as the Profile Inspector, but you can set the major ones you need to make the game look very nice.

[adhdreid]

the worst thing tumblr does is have entirely different coding and UI for posts reblogged on mobile vs posts reblogged on a computer, particularly when it comes to tagging- which then makes it impossible for you to edit the tags of a non-mobile post

like

why is this a thing

[absentlyabbie]

well, this thing absolutely exploded in the last 24 hours. i've been reading all of the comments and tags and replies, and there's so many good and relevant points i wanted to try and amass responses in a single reblog.

(apologies in advance, this is gonna be so fucking long.)

very clearly, computer and digital skills education does still exist in k-12 schooling, but with staggering inconsistency and patchiness. some of the folks in the age cohort addressed here were boggled to hear of this, because they themselves learned/were taught in school. but many have also confirmed that they never were and don't know these things even now, or had only glancing introduction a long time ago and then never again. -

this absolutely contributes further to the anxiety, defensiveness, and sense of shame/embarrassment these younger students feel when confronted with needing skills no one ever helped them obtain, and it's too frequently made worse by the response of adults in education and the professional sphere dismissing them instantly as stupid, willfully ignorant, and not worth their time. -

(to the one person who reblogged to turn their nose up in the air and pour scorn down on their purported peers for "being stupid" and "lacking initiative" because you did figure it out all on your own, so why can't they... i'm not going to address you directly, but damn, kid, do i hope to high hell you learn compassion, empathy, and the ability to take in the perspective of people who aren't exactly like you, making the exact same choices you have. you need to learn to take a macro view on the multiple, complex, systemic factors that contribute to issues like this and create these gaps between you and others in your age group.) -

because this is a complex, multifaceted matter, with numerous levels of shit rolling downhill onto the younger folks being discussed in this post. it's our broken education system, it's ageism, it's suffocating economic stratification and the gap in resources from neighborhood to neighborhood and family to family, and so much more. -

but the schools are a massive part of the problem. an entrenched lack of resource and lack of funding, a lack of care, a calcified reluctance to incorporate the new into rigid formal structures. it's everything from the teachers paid too damn little and given too little time, to the classes that get cut the second there's a wobble in funding (or a threat to a higher administrator's next raise), to the portion of school faculty and administration who are older and themselves never learned even half of this, and so either don't see the point in teaching the kids, or absolutely do assume they should know already. -

it's also the predatory encroachment of corporations like fucking google into this sector of public education, because they have a self-interest in training up the new generations on only their technology, their UI, their systems and platforms and apps and tools (and harvesting their data from birth to death). so these desperately underfunded, overstretched schools see google so graciously offering a donation of 300 chromebooks as a fucking godsend, but that's not actually half-close to being a computer like students will need to learn to use, so they still miss out on the needed skills. -

the learning and teaching of these skills drop off in such a sharp generational divide, so damn quickly in a short span of years, because of how fast technology has moved, how poorly schools have kept up with that evolutionary pace, and how vastly different the technology and internet of now is from the technology and internet of the 80s, the 90s, and even the early 2000s. those of us who learned then had to explore, had to fuck around and find out with open curiosity. kids now are actively discouraged from it, for both good reasons and bad (bad: the big corps do not want kids to figure out how to do anything necessary on any platform from any manufacturer or producer, they want them neatly and placidly siloed in their own paywalled gardens; good: kids have had to learn a certain amount of "don't fuck around and find out" because the internet has become so utterly hostile to anyone but advertisers and data harvesters.) -

to this same end, while i completely understand those who frown at this post and want to insist the kids aren't the problem (and they're not, what they've been provided and not provided is), and that they shouldn't NEED to learn these things, but instead should be "met where they are" with ever-simpler and more intuitively navigable interfaces and systems... that's part of the problem, even though it's also part of the solution. it's a thing that SHOULD happen, but not to exclusion of teaching these necessary, more complex and technical, more independent digital skills. some of the difficulty these younger students are facing with the "just figure it out" of it all is that they have been fed to constantly simplifying, streamlined to hell and back, all-intuition-no-investigation systems and interfaces that they've been hamstrung, their ability to explore and rise to the challenge of a question mark curtailed. they've been trained to believe that if they can't just immediately figure it out from the surface of the user interface presented to them it must not be possible, or must be so ridiculously complex it's overwhelming. there has GOT to be a place where these solutions meet in the middle. -

yes, sure, some of these kids "don't want to learn", will greet attempted instruction with apathy, disinterest, with eye-rolling and immediate amnesia. that's no goddamn excuse to give up on them and leave them behind. they're fucking teenagers, they're YOUNG, that attitude is part of the organism. and just because SOME will resist or make no real attempt to retain the teaching of these skills, that's nowhere near a good enough reason to just not bother teaching any of them.

gonna end with something this post, the responses to it, and discussion it's raised have made me desperately and increasingly wish existed and i couldn't find when i went looking:

i wish to FUCK there was something like a series of youtube videos or tiktoks made by the kind of people who can engage with these younger students, in a format that doesn't condescend to them or treat them with kid gloves but also doesn't assume they already have a certain level of skill at the beginning, addressing one by one the different themes/issues that have been neglected for them.

something direct and straight up and made interesting but let-me-level-with-you that covered in one video "here's how to use a desktop computer from components (keyboard, mouse, monitor, cpu) to operating system (creating, saving, locating files, all the different types and what you might need to do with them)" and "here's how email actually works, how to include a document in one, how to save a draft, how to copy other recipients, and more" and on and on.

if i was that person (i am definitely not), i'd be all over it, because the need is there and it is GROWING. until we can fix those bigger factors noted above, this is how we meet these younger students where they actually are.

no matter what, leaving them all on their own, ass in the wind just ain't fucking it.

seriously, though. i work in higher education, and part of my job is students sending me transcripts. you'd think the ones who have the least idea how to actually do that would be the older ones, and while sure, they definitely struggle with it, i see it most with the younger students. the teens to early 20s crowd.

very, astonishingly often, they don't know how to work with .pdf documents. i get garbage phone screenshots, sometimes inserted into an excel or word file for who knows what reason, but most often it's just a raw .jpg or other image file.

they definitely either don't know how to use a scanner, don't have access to one, or don't even know where they might go for that (staples and other office supply stores sometimes still have these services, but public libraries always have your back, kids.) so when they have a paper transcript and need to send me a copy electronically, it's just terrible photos at bad angles full of thumbs and text-obscuring shadows.

mind bogglingly frequently, i get cell phone photos of computer screens. they don't know how to take a screenshot on a computer. they don't know the function of the Print Screen button on the keyboard. they don't know how to right click a web page, hit "print", and choose "save as PDF" to produce a full and unbroken capture of the entirety of a webpage.

sometimes they'll just copy the text of a transcript and paste it right into the message of an email. that's if they figure out the difference between the body text portion of the email and the subject line, because quite frankly they often don't.

these are people who in most cases have done at least some college work already, but they have absolutely no clue how to utilize the attachment function in an email, and for some reason they don't consider they could google very quickly for instructions or even videos.

i am not taking a shit on gen z/gen alpha here, i'm really not.

what i am is aghast that they've been so massively failed on so many levels. the education system assumed they were "native" to technology and needed to be taught nothing. their parents assumed the same, or assumed the schools would teach them, or don't know how themselves and are too intimidated to figure it out and teach their kids these skills at home.

they spend hours a day on instagram and tiktok and youtube and etc, so they surely know (this is ridiculous to assume!!!) how to draft a formal email and format the text and what part goes where and what all those damn little symbols means, right? SURELY they're already familiar with every file type under the sun and know how to make use of whatever's salient in a pinch, right???

THEY MUST CERTAINLY know, innately, as one knows how to inhale, how to type in business formatting and formal communication style, how to present themselves in a way that gets them taken seriously by formal institutions, how to appear and be competent in basic/standard digital skills. SURELY. Of course. RIGHT!!!!

it's MADDENING, it's insane, and it's frustrating from the receiving end, but even more frustrating knowing they're stumbling blind out there in the digital spaces of grown-up matters, being dismissed, being considered less intelligent, being talked down to, because every adult and system responsible for them just

ASSUMED they should "just know" or "just figure out" these important things no one ever bothered to teach them, or half the time even introduce the concepts of before asking them to do it, on the spot, with high educational or professional stakes.

kids shouldn't have to supplement their own education like this and get sneered and scoffed at if they don't.

[nyerus]

A Beginner’s Guide to Anime Merchandise

Hey guys! So a few of my friends have asked me where I get all my YoI merch and I figured I’d make a post so anyone who’s kinda new to buying anime merch in general knows where to start.

This isn’t too comprehensive and meant to be a just quick-start guide of sorts, but if anyone has things they’d like to add to this, please feel free.

 The Basics

There are some great websites dedicated to procuring anime goods from Japan for folks outside of the country and work like any other online shop basically. Some are better than others in various aspects and I’ll cover the most well-known/used ones.

AmiAmi: This one is first because it has a wide range of goods available from basically every anime, and also because it often has steep discounts on most items. They’re pretty fast to add new things as well—usually within a day of it being announced. It’s easy to use and has the option of monthly shipments, in which every purchase you’ve made for a specific month is consolidated into one big package. This saves big on shipping, if you’re willing to be patient. This also means that you will receive an invoice for that month’s full order rather than paying per-item/order individually—which can be either good or bad depending on the $$$$, haha! Apart from flexibility in shipping methods, it has an easy-to-understand points system (100yen=1point). The main downside to AmiAmi is that sometimes it doesn’t have certain items, and there seems to be no real rhyme or rhythm to that. Thankfully it’s only a few items.

CDJapan: I mainly use this as an alternative to AmiAmi, especially in regards to wanting those aforementioned certain items. However, it’s quite similar to AmiAmi in terms of providing decent discounts (though often not as steep as AmiAmi) and also has a similar point system.

*NOTE: neither AmiAmi nor CDJapan ship certain goods out of Japan such as the Yuri!!! on Ice dvds/blu-rays and soundtracks. (You can blame Avex for that.)

Mandarake: This site is a geared more towards secondhand goods and doujinshi but you can also find some amazing deals on new items if you’re willing to be very patient and thoroughly look. Their search system (and UI in general) isn’t great and leaves much to be desired, but usually gets the job done when you know what you’re looking for. (It may help if you search in Japanese.) They have multiple shopfronts you can buy from so you may wish to check that all your items are coming from the same one to save on shipping. Mandarake’s packaging is excellent, however, and others should take notes!!! One minor warning would also be that they no longer seem to accept Debit Cards, even through paypal, so you may wish to arrange another method of payment.

AitaiKuji: This site is great for getting limited edition items that you usually can’t find in other stores, such as the Yuri!!! on Museum goods or collaboration goods. It has a nice UI and it’s easy to find the items you’re searching for. However, AitaiKuji’s customer service is notorious for being slow to respond and also their shipping rates tend to be somewhat exorbitant, especially for the lackluster quality of packing. Their markups aren’t too bad on most items, but the shipping rates are what’ll get ya. However, AitaiKuji is one of the only places to get individuals items that normally come in a set OR to get opened blind packs. I usually only use them as a last resort, when I can’t get certain goods elsewhere and I don’t feel like hunting in auctions.

YesAsia: While this site doesn’t have a wide range of items available, it DOES offer free international shipping on certain orders! Additionally, it does sell the dvd/blu-rays and soundtracks outside of Japan. (The site overall is quite good for buying music/movies/etc from Asia.) However it has heavy markups on certain items, so you may want to price-check with other sites.

Yamnillion: I’ve never used this tictail-based service before and it’s not a full-fledged company I don’t think, but if you’re really desperate for a certain individual item from a set and don’t mind paying a premium for it + shipping, this is an option. However they have a very limited range of items and they seem to run out of stock quite fast, so you’ll have to be quick!

 Using Proxies

Besides the English sites provided above, there is another option for people hunting for either very specific things/limited edition goods/out-of-print items OR hunting for the best deals: Japanese sites. Yahoo Japan Auctions, Otamart, and other such sites (including Amazon Japan and Rakuten!) can be a great place to snag merch you really want and can’t find elsewhere. However, to use these sites you run into the basic problem of a language barrier. Additionally, most of these places do not ship outside of Japan anyway. So there’s where a proxy service comes in. There are two different types of proxy services that exist (many current services function as both, though!):

ones that act as a mail-forwarding service

ones that actually buy the items for you

The first type of proxies still have the problem of you having to navigate a site in a foreign language and manage to buy the desired item and input the proxy’s address, etc. This is probably really overwhelming to people like me who have little understanding of Japanese! Hence why it would be more prudent to use the second type of proxy and let them act as your middleman. Using a proxy seems daunting at first, but it’s really not too bad once you jump into it.

*NOTE: Some proxies don’t deal with R-18+ goods so if you are looking for certain items, do your research!

Because I don’t have too much experience with proxies, I can’t really give any reviews on them (though I’m sure you can use a little google-fu for that), but here are the ones I know people have used before successfully:

ZenMarket: This is the only proxy site I’ve used thus far, and so far so good. Speedy customer service, easy-to-use interface, and also seems to have fairly low fees.

Buyee: Fees are a little higher, but has a more polished look and is a little faster than ZenMarket from what I hear.

WhiteRabbitExpress: Probably the most popular one I’ve heard of so far, however the fees are higher.

BuySmartJapan: This has a partnership with Toranoana, a famous Japanese doujinshi store where basically everyone and their mothers get their sweet, sweet doujin from. (Though you can use any proxy for that, really.) But it’s also great for buying general goods as well.

FromJapan: This has a partnership with Otamart, which is like a flea market for otakus. Again, you can use it for more than just this purpose.

Jpn-Depot: This proxy is simple to use and has low fees, but seems to work better as mail forwarding service. Their buying service seems to be sort of lacking from what friends have said.

*NOTE: When using these sites, if they offer an in-built search function, it’s better to search in Japanese rather than English. Additionally, keep in mind that some sellers (i.e. from Yahoo Japan Auctions and Otamart) may not wish to deal with proxies, for whatever reason.

 Special Mentions

MyFigureCollection is a great way to keep track of all the official merch you’ve bought. You can also search user listings for an item you’re looking for and with some luck, someone might have it for sale! Also they have a list of partnered sites that essentially serves as a list of alternate shops, though I would encourage price-checking from most of these places (like Play-Asia and GoodsRepublic to name a few), lest you heavily overpay.

I would avoid searching on eBay not only because things on there tend to be super overpriced, but mostly because you will run into many bootlegs/counterfeit items. And sometimes it can be hard to tell whether or not what you’re buying is a fake. A good bet is to buy from sellers not based in China. I’ve bought a few things from Japan and USA-based sellers which were genuine, but I almost bought a few fakes from China before I realized.

Buyfags.moe (a product of 4chan’s /jp/ board) is actually an amazing guide on buying anime goods. Their full guide covers everything from explaining various shipping methods to helping you recognize bootlegs. They have an extensive list of shops/proxies/etc to check out. If you have the time, I highly suggest taking a look!!! 

Fan Merch

Most of my YOI stuff is actually fan merch. Doujins, zines, prints, keychains, etc. However the problem with fan merch is that it is usually very limited and ephemeral. An artist will put up PO’s for an item and once that order is closed, it’s closed for good. You can get lucky and snag it during a second run or something, but many things are one-and-done. The main exception here are Japanese doujinshi—most of which get put on Mandarake and Toranoana (the latter of which will require a proxy to use) for a long sale period or until they run out of stock.

I haven’t been really reblogging much fan merch on here apart from the occasional zine I’ve been personally interested in. For those looking specifically for YOI doujins and zines, my friend @moonphantoma runs an incredibly organized and up-to-date blog here. (Be warned: dangerous to your wallet!)

The best way to know about other fan merch is to follow artists on tumblr/twitter. You can also peruse sites like tictail*, storenvy, etsy, and even kickstarter and see if you find something you’re interested in!

*As for tictail, make sure to use an artist’s storefront instead of going to their store via tictail’s “marketplace” because they will charge the artist a nasty fee for it. :( You can find guides on how to spot/avoid this, but I’ll make it easy by saying you should always buy from a URL that looks like “storename.tictail.com” and not “tictail.com/storename.” You’ll have to manually change the URL yourself, because tictail is tricky….

Good merch hunting, and sorry to anyone’s wallets that I might have hurt!

[narcolepticprince]

ooc;

Thought about whether or not to post, but I feel like it would make me feel better if I did.

Angsty stuff I wrote earlier that I really needed to let out below the cut. Feel free to ignore, especially if you’re enjoying A New Empire. You might not want to read it. |’3

I’ll be drowning my emotions in leftover sea salt ice cream and Terraria. Replies on Friday/Saturday. (Got a visitor on Thursday) If you’ve got Steam, let me know so that I can add you~

TL;DR at the bottom.

First off, this is not a post telling you to uninstall or not support the A New Empire. You’re free to do whatever you want. This is just me complaining, and me just letting out why I plan on not supporting the game, even though it’s FFXV and I’d pretty much drop money at the drop of a hat for FFXV.

A New Empire came out and Sharky/Cera ( @captaindrautos ) tells me to download it and join their guild. I do. While I’m playing it, I was like, “Bro, I’m trying to play this game as a player, but my mind keeps reverting to a game developer/designer mind, this UI is horrible, there better be sounds in those buttons I see there because there is no visual response, wtf are all of these icons doing on one page…etc etc etc” I was playing without sound, because I was at my workplace on break and didn’t want to bother the people who were still working. My dev mind was just going off. Brave Exvius was an amazing skin with additions over Brave Frontier, why was this a shitty skin, y’know?

Then all of a sudden, Sharky goes “Ew”. At first I think it’s a joking response to my previous comment. My plan was to name my character “Noctoooooooo” or some shit because it sounded like Ignis/Gladio/Prompto/Regis screaming his name and telling him to get back this instant, a prince shouldn’t be doing those dangerous things, etc.

Me: Ew? Sharky: [name I don’t recognize because I pronounced it weird in my head] worked on this game. Me: Who? Sharky: [my ex’s actual name]. Me: ………….

Sharky posted a guild call on Facebook for A New Empire and my ex commented, “Enjoy the game, we worked hard on it!”

I felt this sense of dread grip my chest, and I’m pretty sure my mind stopped working for like 3 seconds after I read those words and confirmed them myself. I was getting pretty much flashbacks, and not the pretty kind, but I suppressed at the time them because I was at work.

My ex was emotionally and mentally abusive to me, and all my friends seemed to realize it except for me. It took me six months after our breakup to unfollow him from Facebook. It took me another 5-6 to realize the extent of his abuse. Not only was he preventing me from growing as a person, but he turned into a whole different person when we started living together.

He had anger issues. He never hit me, but he would punch walls and furniture and slam doors whenever he was “in a mood”. He broke my 360 controller and a few of my belongings in his rage, but paid me back for them. During my times of depression, if he was frustrated with my behavior (I wanted him to leave me alone, but he kept being in my face, and if you’ve ever seen someone clinically depressed, you know that they need mutual understanding, support, AND/OR space when they ask), I remember that he would often either threaten to leave the lease (rent was like $2200 and I had a monthly income far below that at the time), leave me, or he would hit himself over and over and make me feel guilty because I was the cause of him getting so enraged that he started hitting himself. He made me feel like I was physically abusing him with my behavior, even though he was the one hitting himself. He would make me feel like shit if I didn’t want to hold his hand every time we went out, even after I told him that I personally hate doing PDA and he agreed not to do it all the time, he did it all the fucking time. There were a lot of things that he did that, months later, I realized was abuse.

As we lived together, his small “quirks” that were just quirks to me before became annoyances. Irritations. Before we moved in together, I was considering marrying this guy. Now I saw his true colors, as he became comfortable with me. I always had to be happy. I always had to be perfectly sane. I wasn’t allowed to be depressed, or if I was depressed, I was only allowed to be depressed for a day or two. I wasn’t allowed to have clinical depression.

Which brings me to A New Empire.

I love mobile games, and I am an indie developer myself. I am the type that is willing to drop $100 on microtransactions a month if the game gives me a good time. I have the income to do that. As a developer, I know how much it costs to run those servers and keep up with regular updates to the game. I understand.

It is not my ex’s fault that he got to work on A New Empire. But A New Empire, even though it has a shitty UI and is an obvious clone, is part of the FFXV universe, a universe that I do love. FFXV helped me out of some rough patches. The fact that my ex had a hand in creating this excuse of a mobile game in one of my favorite universes and franchises turns me off completely.

I will not be supporting A New Empire. At least not monetarily. Because I am not comfortable supporting my abuser.

I will probably play because it is in my habit to play mobile games. Then after a while, I will just...stop. Since the company that makes this also made two other generic mobile games, and A New Empire is literally just a FFXV reskin of those two mobile games. Sharky realized this when I brought up that my ex’s company was in charge of [very well-known notorious game 1] and [very well-known notorious game 2 that is a clone of 1]. If you know what I’m talking about, you can probably tell what company it is, their ads ALWAYS pop up in mobile games/apps that have ads enabled.

I cannot fathom giving support to my ex. I don’t like throwing around the word trigger, but he is my trigger. I actively avoid him as much as I can nowadays, because he makes me upset. I bawled my eyes out in the bathroom stall today because as soon as I was alone, the flashbacks hit me hard, one after the other, of his abuse. Of how stunted he made me. Of how shitty he made me feel in that relationship, and how he always made me feel like something was always wrong with me. I can go on and on about what he did to me. I didn’t even write the worst part of what he did to me, and it makes me shudder because at the time, I didn’t realize that it was also a form of abuse.

You, reader, of course, are free to do whatever you want. Spend money on the app, play the app, post screenshots, whatever. This is just my rant. I really needed to get this off of my chest, because as soon as I found out that he worked on the game, a flurry of emotions spilled out. It will be some time before I can look at the game again without the flashbacks hitting me like they did today. For now, I think I’m going to delete it off of my phone until I feel better. If it does turn out that there is “story” in the mobile game that adds more richness to the FFXV verse, I might pick it up sooner. Otherwise, I mean, it’s just going to be a generic mobile game reskin to me. Why do you think Square Enix didn’t showcase nor mention this at E3? Especially in their FFXV Universe E3 trailer/segment?

I may or may not delete this later. I ask that out of respect, you do not reblog this. Writing this out and posting has helped me deal with my emotions and thoughts immensely. T-T But if you’ve read this far...thank you, and please send hugs to Nocto, because seeing Nocto get hugs makes me feel warm inside.

TL;DR: My mentally and emotionally abusive ex worked on A New Empire, and I will not be supporting the app monetarily nor play anytime soonish, because I get flashbacks of his abuse. Send Nocto hugs.

[kaoarika]

As noted earlier (https://kaoarika.tumblr.com/post/653238787672096768/so-i-have-been-looking-back-at-my-likes-from-the)  today, I did the same thing (except this time I opened the main page on dashboard first, hence the number was already updated when I opened that liked posts page) and the number greatly decreased by the time I already liked another 12 posts.

So, what’s happening? I’m thinking that maaaaaaaybe there’s a chance that after the UI changes from the past year, and me being on this site over the past 12 years is already catching me up with lots of already lost posts that maybe the system either recognize THEY exist, but OP is not found for obvious reasons and they are already on that “maybe you liked this, but the original post is nowhere to be found... unless a reblog does exist.. if not, well, tough luck”. I don’t think this is quite “quick”, and that the system is just playing catch up.

I think years ago (around the time I was doing some liked posts clean up, way before the adult content purge) I commented that I could believe that the system might recognize posts I did like in the past (especially my early years on Tumblr), as it was easier to type a random number on top of the URL bar to take you to a close page to a random specific liked posts page... now this is practically impossible and you have to maybe create a random hexadecimal (?) number to take you to an specific date and time where you liked some random post... which is why I haven’t done it in ever.

I recognize that 12 years is a long time to have a HUGE stack of liked posts (especially done in my first 6 years of the site), since it’s already over 150k (according to tumblr numbers... which I do believe - I remember thinking it was over 140k around Dec. 2018, as well) nowadays and I’m not going to look up to EVERYONE of them again. However, I also believe that what I described in the above paragraph was possible. A number kept registered, but the posts do not exist anymore... unless they still got reblogged and those users are still around.

But, if it was like that, maybe the numbers decreasing would be higher. There’s some ppl that I used to follow (for example) who deactivated their accounts along the way, ages ago. I’m pretty sure the same applies to blogs I used to like their content in the different tags of fandoms I used to visit back in the day and they may have decided to turn a new leaf. But also, logically the system doesn’t easily recognize the lost posts... unless another user liked them and reblogged them and the post still technically exists somewhere, but the one post (op or either a reblog) that I liked specifically doesn’t exist anymore (stuff about dead urls and etc.)

I do believe that sometimes users decide to throw their accounts out of the window a few days or months after they joined as it has happened before (either straight delete it or “deactivating”/suspending it for a while). So, I don’t think this is entirely impossible to think about either. And... well... being blocked by users or the other way around, I guess? also may influence it? It’s just... ahhh... I dunno, it still baffles me.

Again, it’s not like I will go through EACH one of those pages to see posts that I could reblog (I’m only doing this from the last few months because of the drafts issue I mentioned earlier this year) and I simply accept that lots of those are lost to time. But, also... I dunno, I guess.

(Related: for some reason, instead of having 20 posts in the dashboard’s paginated likes pages, they are 22 posts... while in drafts, like I also talked about before, there seems to be some glitch that there’s a post missing between post 20 and the next page’s first post???)

[jadeserpentcladinashenglories]

As a user affected by this change, I’d like to ask a more specific question: What need do you believe this change addresses? You mention that this isn’t how it works everywhere else. Accepting for the sake of argument that this is true, this is not actually a reason in itself to alter this functionality - different websites have different use cases, and the UI for each website differs as a result, because the user interface is designed to facilitate those use cases. You imply that the reason for this change is that the current setup is impacting new users negatively. However,  you do not actually state what difficulties it is presenting to new users, nor how this change is intended to address those difficulties. As it has functioned, if you are interacting with a post, you can readily reach the version of that post (including tags) hosted on any particular blog, and if you then wish to explore that blog further, you can make one more click and happily scroll along. On the other hand, with this change, if you wish to view that particular version of a post you must first go to the person’s full blog and then scroll through until you find it (potentially quite a daunting task if the content you are engaging with is relatively old) or scroll through the entire notes until you reach the desired iteration of that post (decidedly nontrivial if the post has more than a few hundred notes, particularly if someone reblogged it multiple times). Given that, I struggle to understand how the previous functionality would present any significant barrier not retained or worsened, and as such, I would appreciate some additional clarity on the topic of both why you feel that it does and why you feel this is the most appropriate solution. 

Removing the ability to go directly to a specific reblog is a disastrously bad change! I can no longer engage with it when someone reblogs a post referencing the previous reblog's tags, which is, if you somehow missed it, a very common way people interact with each other on tumblr. I also often end up following new people because my mutuals regularly reblogged from them and they have interesting tag commentary; if I can't click through and look at their tags anymore, I'm not going to naturally find new people to interact with, which seems like the kind of thing that tumblr should want to incentivize rather than actively prevent?

I'm aware that this was not your decision personally, in the sense that you were apparently unaware of it at first, but it's a very bad decision, it makes my user experience of the site much worse, and I am going to use multiple avenues available to me to register a complaint about it in order to emphasize this badness!

Whatever this change is supposed to achieve, do something else to achieve it that doesn't remove the ability to actually look at specific posts.

a lot of changes we make won’t be well received by people who have survived the kinda insane ways this site works as-is. that’s the price we have to pay to help make tumblr a growing platform.

i’m sorry, it sucks, i don’t like it either, i’m also someone who’s been using this site for over 10 years and i’m used to the way it’s been working for most of that time. it’s a challenge for me to accept that tumblr isn’t actually working right now for the vast majority of people, who aren’t as vocal as we are.

please do send in feedback, but try to understand that most of what you’re describing is behavior you learned the hard way, and we can’t keep tumblr around if “the way to effectively use tumblr” is learned the hard way.

[iceewater]

all of this is very true, and like many said the bundle of sparkles at the top right allow you to change the tweet shown from recommended (the Poo Poo that twitters algorithm tries to show you) to latest (the stuff you actually want to see from people you actually follow) latest (from my experience) also removes things like recommendations based on your likes, category recommendations, etc and again in twitters defense you can also block (prevents content from a user from coming to you and prevents the user from seeing your content) and mute (prevents content from a user coming to you, but the user can see see and interact with your content) people. you can also mute certain words and notifications the main problem for me is that twitter likes to switch Latest off now and then whenever i come back to it, and it feels... really claustrophobic at times. UI and the tools you’re given to post and interacting with posts play into this

UI

UI is the one that plays a lesser role, since both twitter and tumblr’s current ui’s are similar (compactly designed as if they were for mobile), and their feeds are around in the middle. however, with adblock on tumblr feels a LOT more free for me. twitter’s feed is sandwiched inbetween the menu bar and trend + follow rec. bar.

POSTING AND INTERACTION TOOLS

since tumblr was (and still does) primarly lean into blogging compared to IMS (im not sure how to describe it outside of that honestly, if someone has a better way to describe how tumblr and twitter handle posts please do), it has a lot more tools for posting, editing, and interacting with posts. you can give your text different sizes and markups, you can post photos and videos in their entirety, you can attach links to text, you can blockquote, etc etc the biggest difference for me is the text limit. tumblr has a much, MUCH, bigger text limit than twitter; 500,000 characters, and you can have 140 characters for each tags, the limit for total tags being around 20 (iirc). this equates to around  502,800 (or hell there might not even be a character limit, i mostly got this stuff from google and its from an outdated staff post. but its definitely LARGE) twitter only has 280.

its part of the reason why i think i’m able to see and have more intelligent discussions than on twitter. theres dumb people on both sites but i’m able to like, actually have a verbose conservation with people on here. i very much so think twitters character limit is part of the reason why a lot of arguments on twitter are so, so horrible i want to clarify this is why i, personally prefer to use tumblr more actively compared to twitter. use whatever social media you like, be aware on how to curate your OWN online experience and not let the algorithms of big tech companies decide for you to prevent full-blown echo-chambers, etc etc yadda yadda  (also final note i really like how most meaningful and visible interactions are done via reblogs. a TON better than having to scroll through twitter’s comments which both have the appeal and mental IQ of youtube comments)

idk how ppl find twitter ‘more bearable’ than tumblr. i log onto tumblr and i see posts from the same handful of ppl i’ve come to expect, displayed in chronological order. then i log onto twitter and it’s like “here’s a seemingly random collection of posts arranged in order of how angry we think they’ll make u! also, every celebrity and major world leader is on here trying to earn their master’s degree from Clown University”

[powdermelonkeg]

It’s a bit of a status-quo problem at this point—something that has been around for such a long time that only the really old members of Tumblr remember when it wasn’t a thing.

Basically, the amount of likes you get on a post can really vastly outstrip your reblogs.

For example, here are the stats of my most popular post:

That’s over an 11k difference between the two, but it’s a large enough post that it doesn’t really make too much of a difference in the long run.

Then is from a post I made yesterday that my friends thought was funny enough to share around.

The difference is a lot steeper here, about one reblog for every three likes. Not ideal, but not bad.

Now, here’s the stats of a piece of artwork I spent 8 hours making, that I already had a fan base for, and that I put my heart and soul into.

One of those reblogs is mine, by the way.

NOW is when it starts to get kind of painful—one reblog for every nine likes, and interaction stops. The art community, in particular, struggles with the likes-vs-reblogs difference.

I follow a LOT of blogs, so that my dash is always at 99+ and I never run out of things to look at. And almost every day, I see a post about artists asking for reblogs—please reblog, it gives my work traction so I can continue working on my art, I need the commission money/I’m getting really discouraged here, likes are pretty but don’t help.

@sterling-jay has a good post on the details of it here: 1 2 3

But what I mean by “steadily declining” is that it wasn’t always this way. Believe it or not, in the earlier days of Tumblr, reblogs far outstripped likes! And back then, the art community thrived.

There isn’t an exact reason for why the two stats flipped. The most prevalent theory, currently, is that it’s a holdover from Twitter; while likes here don’t do anything, likes on Twitter—which have a near identical button—DO afford an artist more views. It makes an entire page on your profile for people to scroll through like a dashboard, and they can see which celebrities have also liked it. Likes on Twitter essentially equal reblogging without tags.

So, that brings us back to this post. Because I follow so many people, I also see whatever general outrage there is whenever Tumblr staff does/doesn’t change something. Currently, people despise the new UI, with the buttons spaced out and the comments no longer being in the same tab as reblogs, so I thought “hey, two birds with one stone, right?” More compact and useful UI, with reblogs prioritized.

Hey @staff or @support, whoever handles these.

You know that bot problem that’s been happening? The one that’s impossible to deal with, apparently, since it keeps springing up every two weeks like a raccoon you fed once? The one where new accounts keep popping up, liking popular posts, then trying to link them to what’s almost definitely stolen p*rn to steal credit card details?

That one?

Here’s your solution.

Step 1: Set up an algorithm which checks if the header picture of an account created within the past…let’s say week, matches identically with a certain number of other accounts within the last two weeks. If hotmark42069 created on Friday has the same header as sexylucas8675309 and 20 other accounts from last Tuesday, the algorithm proceeds to step 2.

Step 2: Have the algorithm check if hotmark42069 has either zero posts or one post. If hotmark has zero posts, proceed to step 4. If hotmark has one post, proceed to step 3.

Step 3: Have the algorithm check the other blogs with the matching header to see if the text post has an 85% match with the text content of the other blogs’ first post. If yes, proceed to step 4.

Step 4: Have a bot send a captcha to that blog (and all others that match it) and give them 48 hours to respond to it. Attach an accompanying email so those that the algorithm mistakenly identifies get notified. If the blog does not answer the captcha correctly, proceed to step 5.

Step 5: Suspend their account until personally contacted to fix the issue.

If you’re worried about new accounts being automatically flagged for default headers, you can set the algorithm to activate three days after account activation, or as soon as the “customize” button is hit. If the former, set a timer for 259200 seconds. If the latter, hitting the “save changes” button sets the “check header” value to 1.

You guys can have this one. It’s on me. Go wild.

[nostalgebraist]

This is a bad change. It's the worst thing that has happened to the UI in years.

It makes the user experience worse, decreases the value of years of existing tumblr content, and has no significant upsides.

The downsides include:

1. A huge fraction of all conversations that have ever happened on tumblr are mangled to the point of illegibility in this view.

This is because people frequently use replies to respond to text added in reblogs. This is a near-universal social convention that goes back many years. Since we can no longer see replies and reblogs together in a single ordered list, it's impossible to pair up each reply with the version of the post it was aimed at.

You've effectively taken a large amount of the user-generated content on your platform, torn in into pieces, jumbled up the pieces, put them in two separate piles, and then asked the user to piece these conversations back together every time they read them. (And you can only look at one pile at once, and have to click on a button every time you want to look at the other one.)

2. You used to be able to see all the notes with a single click. Now, it takes four clicks: one to open notes, two to navigate through the different tabs, and a final click to navigate between two of the different reblog "filters", since none of the filters capture all the reblogs at once.

None of this adds anything to the experience, it's just needless tedium.

3. Every single one of the layout choices is counter-intuitive. Why is the reply tab the default one, when replies are the least-used type of note? Why is there an "Other reblogs" filter, when there could just be a view showing all reblogs at once? (Why would anyone want to see the specific reblogs without commentary or tags, and only those ones?) Why does the the reblog filter setting persist as you view the notes of different posts? (Several times now, I've nearly missed a reblog because I didn't notice the filter was already set to "Other reblogs" on entry.)

EDIT: removed the point #4 that used to be here, as I realized I had confused two different types of buttons. It's bad that the buttons at the bottom of every post are so far apart, but it's not a problem with the notes view specifically.

New Notes View

Howdy buds,

We’ve redesigned the notes view on all platforms (that’s iOS, Android, and web), and we’re planning to roll it out to all of you by February 7.

Some of you might have already noticed these changes. That’s because, as with any change we make, we’ve been A/B testing it since November 2021, so you may have come into contact with these updates already.

What does this look like?

This is a redesign of the reply, reblog, and like screens on mobile and web. We’ve updated the notes design and created a new tab for each note type. We’ve also added new filters to the reblog tab, which allow you to filter by your basic reblogs or by reblogs with comments. And we’ve introduced an option to sort replies by oldest or newest.

What does this mean for you?

Well, we know how y’all feel about change. But first and foremost, this is something many of you have been asking for, for a very long time. For those of you who remain unconvinced, these changes will give you much easier insight into interactions on your posts—from trusty followers and dusky strangers alike.

Questions? Catch us on @wip or Support, and keep an eye out for more changes on the aptly named @changes.