✨HIIIIIII newcomers from Twitter✨
So, on Twitter I've seen a screenshot of a tumblr post with a whole list of rules that are - I'm sorry for using crude words but - bullshit, for the most part. So I was thinking, hey. Why not make a "how does tumblr works" with actually useful stuff in it. A non exhaustive list though, cause I haven't all night.
Introducing myself quickly first: I'm Keagan, I'm on Tumblr since 2012 (Twitter user since 2013), I have seen the best and the worst, I've been there for the first mishapocalypse, the great Sherlock s4 depression, and I was here when dicks and boobs where roaming the website freely and when the anti-boobs bot flagged everyone randomly. I took a sort of sabbatical after 2017 bc of the Sherlock depression, and the fandom kinda falling apart, and also bc I have a irl life that started to get interesting around that time, but I still came back regularly from time to time until now.
I know how this goddamn website works and I know why we call it the blue hellsite. I've been here since the dawn of ti- no, lol, i'm joking. :')
I started off as an aesthetic blog, then it quickly turned into a social justice/aesthetic/spn fandom blog, and this blog you see this post in is my fandom side blog, the one that saw the birth of my Sherlock obsession and the beginning of my fanartist/fanfic writer carreer. This hellsite saw my queer awakening. It saw me bloom and gain in confidence and self love. It taught me love, patience, pain, and the absurd.
So. Now that's done, let's go. Those are random things in no particular order.
In case you worry about Tumblr being very different than Twitter: yes it is different but surprisingly it's actually not that different.
Any of the following points, you will figure out easily anyway by yourself, Tumblr is actually pretty simple to understand and use, and you'll catch on quickly on the little things that makes it Tumblr, the "etiquette" and all.
For the most part: you can do whatever the fuck you want, no one cares (except dumb people I guess). But do we truly need to remind people not to be assholes with others ? Don't be rude. Duh
- One thing that Tumblr post I was talking about got right is: likes don't matter in terms of visibility, reblogs are more important. Likes are a comment more than a booster. So if you want to boost a posts' visibility, esp art and fics : reblog it.
- On the other hand you won't gain much visibility if you don't get people to reblog you, and honestly while existing here is pretty easy, you'll still have better chances at being visible if you reach people. I'm on a lot of SM and here is still the easiest though so don't worry.
- You can definitely scream into the void, like, it was made for it, this is shitpost paradise
- You can add dumb & insignificant comments to posts like "omg same" or "this is so true" - literally no one cares.
- And no one cares how you call your mutuals, moots, oomfies, pals, friendz, besties, mutts, - no one.
- We do use tone indicators here too. And there's plenty room to write the full words so it's not an obligation but a suggestion from me: sometimes it's less confusing to just say "i'm half joking" than /hs.
- But you can shorten words as you like, it doesn't matter. If twitter got you used to shorten words do shorten words, no worries.
- Your Tumblr experience is closely tied to who you choose to follow or block - you can curate your dashboard/timeline just like you do on Twitter, this is pretty similar. You can and should protect yourself from unsafe people anywhere. That's basic internet safety. Don't overthink this please, if someone is making you feel unsafe and bad, it is your place: block people.
The moderation here is not that bad but not ideal. So please use all the ways you need to make this place safe for you, and don't hesitate to call for people's help. This is a social media based on community. Don't let people trick you into thinking you are wrong for blocking people - or for calling unsafe people out. We have always done that here. We protect and support each other, ok? Good.
- You can follow hashtags, pretty much like on Instagram. In my opinion it's not always working well but you can.
- You can't bookmark posts, you'll have to put in your drafts the stuff you want to check later. And you'll likely forget them there so tell them goodbye as you go.
Eheh 🥲 (good thing i don't know how many tweets i have saved for later 😂)
You can make yourself a "read later" tag too. A tag that you're likely never gonna check either 🥹 Not so different than the Twitter bookmarks, you see.
- When you sign in, you create your main blog. The main blog - consider it like your account if you like - is linked to your profile, if you delete the main blog you delete your profile. You can create as many side blogs (side accounts) as you like (without using another email) and you can delete them without deleting your main account.
Sadly you still can't switch main blog and side blog to link your profile to a side blog, which I have been screaming for since this side blog became my main blog years ago 🥲🤌 this is my own "make tweets editable" cry
- If you're not familiar with blogs and how to personalise them, don't worry, there's a lot of themes you can choose that are simple to use, and the hardest thing you'll have to do is choose colors you like. If it looks hard, there is a ton of resources to help you, and most people will help you if you ask them (I will, honestly don't hesitate to hit the ask button).
Note that you do not have to touch it actually, it's just like your living room, some like it carefully decorated, others leave it at its most basic form, still usable. There is no obligation whatsoever. It's fun though.
If you like coding, you can edit the blog's code or make your own theme, which is pretty cool, I've learned some html modifying mine.
- You can ask stuff, anonymously or not, hitting the ask button on people's blogs. They will answer by a post, they can make it public. There is also a private direct messaging thingy.
- Tags work similarly than Twitter, meaning if you click on "#spn" you will see all things tagged spn - simple. There is some sorts of trends though it's not exactly the same as Twitter obviously.
But they are different in the sense that they serve also for organisational purpose: they are used to identify what's in the post, so that you can navigate blogs more easily. It's more like labelling your Tupperwares so you find them easily in your kitchen, you know what I mean ? The tags are also labels. The tagging system is also important when you set your blog up. You can put tags in the post but that's useless, the tag section is there for it.
- You can check on my blog (on web not app) to visualise it: you can add tabs and pages to your blogs: for example, let's say you want people to find your fanfics easy: you tag all your fanfic posts "fanfic"; on web, when you click then on the tag from your blog, you will have an url with "tagged/fanfic" at the end, you take that and when you create a new page on your blog (it's well explained how to do that in the settings), you use that url to create your tab. Sounds a bit complicated, just said like that, maybe but I promise it's simple. So you see the tagging system is useful to organise your blog.
You can also make pages to add information, like you would do with a carrd or a pinned tweet, you see. (You can pin a post here too). You can make it an "about me" page, or a list of your main tags, etc, whatever you like.
- Side note about tags: if you click a tag from your dashboard, you'll see all posts linked to this tag. If you click the tag from your blog, you will see all the posts you have reblogged or written - the ones that are present on your blog.
- You can communicate stuff in the tags, it's a whole extra expression space. Typically people use it to add comments they don't want people to reblog, personnal additions, remarks, rants, jokes, etc... There is no rule about not commenting whatever you like on posts but that extra space is often used for all kind of reasons.
The only thing is that back then the op wasn't notified for tags, it was pretty much a silent thing betweet you and your followers, now you can see all of them in the post's notes and notifications. So beware what you say, obviously don't be rude, and don't be alarmed if people answer to your tags, it's not so silent and discreet anymore. I kinda like reading people's tags on my posts but I prefered when mine weren't visible by everyone, to be honest lol
There is a character limit on tags, you can't actually add essays but you can write a lot (trust me). And as the comma and quotation marks "activates" the tag and separates them you can't write commas and quotation marks in the tags - I personally replace them with - or ; and ' when needed. It's something to get used to.
- Again on tags: typically, you put trigger warnings in the tags (though you'll see often posts starting with the tw, you can add both, just add them I guess), you can specify "personal" and "don't reblog" to warn people you'd like a cup of tea /i . And, not everyone does it but personally I appreciate when people tag the spoilers and specific themes, shows, characters or ships, so I can hide the posts marked with that tag.
- When tags are blocked you can still see the masked post show up in your dash, with its tags visible, which honestly is perfect bc you often get context in case you want to block words in certain contexts and not others, and if you block stuff momentarily (like spoilers) - you can still save the post to read it later without having to do it with your eyes closed.
- About discourse : of course there's discourse here, there's call out posts too, there's shit and obnoxious people just like everywhere else, don't come here with the idea that it's a heavenly place where everything is pretty and safe from all things annoying. There's discourse here too. There's bullying here too. About all sorts of subjects. (I've seen the queer slur discourse here like DAYS ago). There's shitty people here too. That's internet, contrary to what a certain post said, that's unescapable. And sure that's annoying but that's a fact of life - now you can shield yourself as much as possible by blocking people but honestly don't expect your experience to be way way different than Twitter in that aspect. Maybe less right wing old dudes bc Tumblr doesn't host the same démographic, though there was a nazi problem for a while, I don't know if they're still here tbqh, but that's overall not much much better, let's be honest.
- On your left, old time resident mr Neil Gaiman - but he answers "wait and see" to everything. /j
- Speaking of celebs, there isn't as many on Tumblr (it's said some have secret blogs but shhh 🤫), but there is often ask & answer events that are announced at the top of the dash.
- You won't be penalised for using certain words (even die or dead, the "unalive" wave doesn't crash on this shore), and you can put links if you like, even cashapp, kofi, paypal, etc, there's virtually nothing that will make you invisible in people's dashboards.
The only way you'll get shadowbanned here is if the Tumblr bots think you're a bot or a porn blog. Learn more here.
- But until recently, sorry there's a but, since the great "no tits" debacle, there's a bot that flagged your nuddity posts and it was so hilariously flawed omg (it flagged fucking DUNES I will never forget ahah) - anyway when they flag your post they hide it and you can make an appeal if needed, but honestly I don't think as much problem occured with it since a long while, that thing improved with time and the good thing is you can post artistic tits again! o/ yay
- There's virtually no character limit - there is one, but you'll need to write a long time until you hit it lol (I did once).
- Therefore : threads don't mean the same here. Here threads are successions of multiple people's comments. It makes for some interesting (and often hilarious) participative posts. Because there is no need here to cut your text into small posts, unless you are writing your memoirs or some shit. Look how much I've written already. 🫲Twitter could never. And if posts are long, you can add a "read more" button so it doesn't mean you have to scroll through gigantic blocs of text in your dash. and in the settings you can make long posts look shorter in your dash automatically.
- Related: threads aren't the same, you can't reblog/retweet a post that's in the middle of a thread. I mean, on Twitter you can RT the 1st tweet of the thread, or the 3rd, RT a reply easily - and in your TL only this one tweet appears - you can't really do that here. First of all here there is comments (or captions) and replies, those are not the same. If you want to reblog someone's comment to a post, you'll have to reblog it from their blogs - doable but honestly a bit tedious. And you will always reblog the last answer and all the ones that comes before. You reblog whole conversations, see.
So when you scroll through dash, you WILL experience mini heart attacks when seeing the 1st lines of some posts until you see the arguments that are closer to your moral standards - meaning you'll often see posts that are "shitty comment" then ten replies until you see the ones that says "wtf, it's shitty" - you need to endure the whole thing until you see stuff you agree with ahah, trust me this is FUN
- Here you don't livetweet, you liveblog. Otherwise it's the same. I'm sad I can't do both at the same time but it's equally fun on twitter and tumblr, especially for ESC.
- Like Tumblr said on Twitter: if you scroll your dash long enough you will have seen all of your friends posts. Yes.
- You can make your experience a lot better with the New XKit extension. Explaining it would take a whole ass post of its own so I'm not going to do that here but they have an account here where they explain everything, give updates and answer questions. I can only suggest to give it a look once you're familiar with how Tumblr works without it and with what doesn't work well.
- You can edit posts. You can schedule posts. Take it in 😌
You can edit them and actually - WOW - civilisation hasn't collapsed and bad people still can be held accountable for their shitty comments! Like on Facebook and Instagram too. Let it happen on Twitter, let it be the one good thing that'll happen amidst that awful chaos.
There's a twist though: you can edit your post, sure, but if someone reblogged the post before you could edit it, there will be two versions of your post in the wild. It can be a little bit frustrating. One way to avoid that: let your big and important posts sit in the drafts for a while so you can fix it before publishing it. An advice I never seem to follow.😬
- You can also change text size, font, put it in bold, italic, colour, you can make it gradiant like in Skyblog's most glorious hours, etc, and yes you can put alt text on pictures. You can add links or pictures in the middle of a post - I mean those are blog posts, so 🤷♀️
- The app is shit though ☆(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ* (to be fair not as much as a few years back, honestly, but still, not ideal)(I'm using the app 🥲)
- And you can't translate posts easily, which tbh I think is a big flaw
- Tumblr is flawed but fun and it can be better, the updates are always shit, but it has well intentions and a nice staff.
I guess there's a lot of other stuff to say but honestly we've covered the main things to know and more. All the "rules" and "etiquette" you will learn as you go, Tumblr is no rocket science, it's simple and fun, it's a meme goldmine, great community experience. There's not real rules, you can use that site however you want, no one cares, nothing is serious, have fun, don't let people gatekeep this place with bs rules, build your space as you like, make it look like you. Welcome 👋
