The generation gap between me and ppl of my own age

"Stop saying 15 year olds with weird interests are cringe, they're 15" this is true however you should also stop saying adults with weird interests are cringe because who gives a shit

To wit:

I want to share some wisdom from my high school art teacher.

In my AP Art class, there was a girl who was just starting to experiment with mixed media. At this point she was still playing around, trying to decide what direction she wanted to go with her portfolio. So one critique day, she brought in an abstract canvas with some rhinestone highlights and painted and real peacock feathers. She loved sparkles and peacock feathers so she thought she’d try introducing them a *little*. And after everyone had given some input, the teacher gave her his advice, VERY roughly paraphrased here:

“So here’s the thing… I do not like this style. These are just elements that do not speak to me personally, but I see that you like them, and you’re doing interesting things with them.

“My biggest critique is, I only merely *dislike* this piece. I want you to make me HATE it. Go crazy with the things that you like. Don’t hold back trying to make it palatable to people like me. Because I am NEVER going to like it. And if the audience does not like it, it should drive them crazy seeing how much YOU love it.”

Her portfolio was chock full of neon colors and glitter and rhinestones and splashes of peacock feathers and it was a delight. Our teacher despised every piece lol, but she got great marks and I think even won some awards. And more importantly, she was happy and proud of the results. Because she didn’t limit herself by trying to appeal to people who were never going to enjoy what she enjoyed.

Takeaway here: be as cringe as you want. Don’t limit yourself based on other ppl’s tastes. They’re not you, and you are incredible 💕

#‘el pastel promedio tiene tres leches’ es en realidad un error estadístico. El pastel promedio tiene 0 leches. Leches Georg#quien vive en una cueva y absorbe 10.000 leches al día#es un valor atípico qeu no debería haberse contado (via @deathbycoldopen)

Lecherous

Honestly I think the problems people have with pandas comes down mostly to phrasing and semantics.

What I mean by this is people have run with the flippant and funny "this animal is literally too stupid to breed and they basically have to be coerced!" Instead of the more nuanced "this animal has adapted to a very specific environment that isn't easily replicated in a concrete building and doesn't easily breed in captivity."

Or they go with "haha pandas are so dumb they have to be shown how to mate, it's like they don't even care" instead of "wow, obviously we're missing large pieces of how panda social structures are supposed to work and more research is needed."

Having a very strict diet, needing a certain amount of range and territory, and having very specific parameters for breeding is very common across a LOT of different animals. Passenger pigeons went extinct partially because they wouldn't brood if they didn't feel secure in a large group. Devil's Hole Pupfish spawn when there's a seismic event that triggers it. Salmon have to thrown themselves bodily up a river to breed in a specific spot and will kill themselves doing so. There are species of millipede that die in captivity because they only eat decaying wood from specific plants and nobody is sure what those plants even are yet. There are countless animals whose breeding activities range from oddly specific all the way to actively fatal.

The fact that a panda doesn't easily make babies like a domestic sheep in a captive setting doesn't make them stupid or useless or even really that much of an outlier. We can't even get most species of bats to reliably do well in captivity and nobody is laughing about how stupid and useless bats are.

Yes, the money and politics surrounding the ownership of captive pandas is incredibly stupid and convoluted. But that wasn't exactly the pandas' idea.

I guess I'm a little salty because I get really peeved by this idea that "Haha! We destroyed and fragmented this animal's habitat and then put it in a cage and tried to force it to breed and it's not succeeding, what a stupid useless animal for doing so poorly!"

I love contemplating how actually scary this is. Nothing in horror movies affects me anymore but I get the most wonderful chills from the idea of these beautiful, haunting, mindless things just hovering in this murky water like a minefield for anyone foolish enough to go swimming or unlucky enough to fall in. How it’s still not as bad as being a fish small enough for them to paralyze and consume. How they regularly paralyze and consume fish but evolved before anything like a fish ever existed. A fish is such a complex creature that can see and think and navigate and be afraid but sometimes it touches these brainless, boneless, ghostly things that were just already there, millions of years sooner, and it dies and it never understands why that is. The thing that killed it and ate it doesn’t know either, it doesn’t know anything. It doesn’t have enough of a brain to even realize it has killed and eaten something. Some of its cells simply fired little harpoons into the cells of the other thing, and squirted deadly chemicals into them, and hauled up the paralyzed body to digest it. It’s a spider’s web without a spider but it still fills things with venom and eats them. :)

196 post from April 17th 2022

Thank you Wayback machine

I did not think about the wayback machine, of course that would work

we don’t talk abt how stressful buying new glasses frames is. ur shopping for your whole personality there. life on the line. do or die. all for two pieces of glass and some sticks

There’s a spell to small your dick but not to unsmall it???

What do you think this is? Marvel? Actions have consequences

certified iconic post

You know, when I was a kid I decided that one of the reasons adults believed such strange and incorrect things all the time is that they thought in categories. They saw a tree, you know, and thought "that's a tree" and then concluded that it was green and had leaves and so on because trees are green and have leaves and so on, instead of seeing it and going "that's a a҈⃥l̔̊̕j҉⃥⃪⃤゙゚゙̐f҉҈҈̒̒k⃣̙︠̑̐̓̓͜h҈҈⃤⃤s⃥⃤", and then concluding that they should call it a tree because of its various characteristics. And I still think the reason many people are wrong about things is because they think in categories. Things are just things.

Platonism has done immesurable but hopefully not irreversible damage to human cognition.

I'm so sorry but everytime I see someone use the word "romanticize" "fetishize" etc. for trivial fandom related stuff this tweet appears in my head

Ken's purpose was to be Barbie's trophy husband. He barely had any good clothes or shoes to wear.

*boyfriend. trophy boyfriend. occasional fiancé. but barbie was designed to stand alone. she's had a credit card in her own name since before women could have credit cards in their own names.

All this! Ken was so unnecessary to the Barbie experience that most girls I knew had a bunch of Barbies and like 1 or 2 Kens.

And Mattel knew this because any time they'd make a Barbie group of friends there was usually a 2-1 girl/guy ratio, and the guys were not key to the narrative included with the dolls.

But the idea that he didn't have good clothes? BAYBEE, are you serious? He was designed to wear things that complimented Barbie. My boy's wardrobe had to be on point or he wasn't invited to the party.

Mans even got a tattoo to match hers when she decided to rebel a little.

some purples

i think it’s really amazing how total strangers who have nothing in common but their shared love of a work of fiction will come together across distances and dedicate their time and energy working collaboratively to build an extensive, richly detailed fanon that completely fucking sucks

you guys are so committed to being bad at interpreting things you’ll just straight up decide this post means the opposite of what i wrote and reblog it anyway

it’s horrific. awful way to die. either you’re trapped with no chance of being found, air running out, everyone around you suffocating, or the hull is broken and you get turned to jelly by the crushing ocean depths. ik they’re billionaires so it’s very contentious for me. generally i prefer no one dies horrifically. like just as a fellow human being on earth. but i dont think the ultra rich ever extend that mindset to others. climate refugees. and just everything. it feels like something a greek god would do to punish them. it has a certain swagful je ne sais quoi if removed from the human suffering which billionaires have to do philosophically to maintain their positions. very haunting. the hubris of it all. old jalopy metal tube steered by a mad catz controller. to go look at the titanic. which is nothing but a rusted out metal wreck full of fish and silt. btw. the grandiosity of it is completely unrecognizable. one has to wonder what compels ppl to even look at it in the first place. like the prestige of seeing some filthy grown over shell? crazy thing to die for. very textually rich… bad way to die as a human being. great way to die as a narrative about human greed and folly i guess. good job. mission accomplished?

and here i was, thinking tumblr became the new twitter

i know there is this common mindset, that all rich people are assholes, but for gods sake, they are still human. so thank you person who reblogged this with the tags. you restored my faith in humanity at least a little bit on this hell site.

Cloud Owls

am i doing it right?

You are, we are so proud of you, putting this up on the big tumblr fridge

I have so many questions

What kind of spa has hot pockets? Why are their walls so thin? Where can I find one of these spas with hot pockets? 

How did he know that they had them? How did he know which wall to break to get to where they were kept?

Tumblr tip sheet for twitter refugees

i’ve seen a lot of different advice posts but none that had what i consider all the key advice in one spot, so here we are. long post ahead.

-

1. your dash can be put into reverse chronological order and it is a BETTER experience if you do that

Go to your settings -> Dashboard -> Preference

Turn “Best Stuff First” OFF

2. you can (and likely should!) turn off algorithmic content

Under the same menu. Settings -> Dashboard -> Preferences

There are two algorithms on tumblr.

One is “In your orbit” and I fucking hate it. i want to see the content that I like, not that some random person i follow likes. if i wanted to see that content on my dash, i’d follow the people who put it there.

The other is “based on your likes” and it is hilariously bad because if you like a post for something you don’t normally like or follow (e.g., when I watched a new movie and liked one post about it), you’ll suddenly get a dozen posts about that thing and only that thing.

I keep it on because it’s hilariously bad, but i honestly recommend turning it off. it routinely recommends shit to me that i hate and i have to keep telling it that i am “not interested in this post” for things tagged with my nOTP, but until / unless i filter that ship tag out entirely, i will keep being serviced those

3. filtering / blacklisting is your friend

this is true on every platform, not just tumblr. i’m sure veteran twitter users are well-versed in it, but just as a reminder. you will be expected to filter your own content/dash here on tumblr, and if you complain about seeing something that was properly tagged, you will be rightly mocked as a clown.

Settings -> Account -> Content You See

you can filter both tags and post content. There’s a completely innocuous post i absolutely hate that does rounds and is never tagged, and i almost unfollowed a mutual for how much i hate that post and them reblogging it so much. but i typed a specific sentence from that post into the “filtered post content” options and BOOM - haven’t seen it since. glorious.

4. content controls are your friend

under the same “Content You See” menu. You are automatically opted OUT of seeing this stuff, so you MUST opt in to see mature content.

you’ll want to determine your own preferences, but i prefer to see all of the mature content types that may be hit with a community label.

5. long posts are (probably) your friend

tumblr cuts posts over a few lines if you have this turned off, and it’s really annoying and really truncates your experience of the website. THIS is itself a long post!

part of the quintessential tumblr experience is being annoyed by the “do you love the color of the sky” post.

seriously, this isn’t twitter. we aren’t here for 280 character bite-sized posts. i 10/10 recommend keeping long posts on.

Settings -> Dashboard -> Interface

6. blog-specific settings

there is also a menu for additional settings (including updating the appearance etc) for each blog you have (your main, and any sideblogs).

this is near the end of your options under Settings -> Blog Settings (click the individual blog to update)

under your blog settings you can…

- enable your custom theme (which you should! this is turned off for new users but personalizing your page is part of the experience)

- decide if you want people to know what posts you’re liking and who you’re following. i do NOT, so these are off. internet privacy is allowed on tumblr, and don’t let anyone bully you into thinking you need to make everything public for their supervision. consume all the problematic content your little gremlin content desires and tell people to fuck off if they take issue with that.

- determine if and how others can interact with your blog!! there some settings about asks, messaging, tipping (if you’re here to make $$), whether people can even SEE your blog, if it’s searchable, etc. tumblr gives power and control back to the users! use that power!

here, you can specifically set your “Ask” preferences to on or off, and to accept or NOT accept asks from anonymous users / logged out users.

if you’re here to interact with friends or just vibe, or don’t reblog a lot of asks games or encourage anon inbox messages, and/or especially if you’re getting harasment and don’t want to deal with shitty users, it is okay to turn off anons, and i ENCOURAGE you to do so.

i keep it on for my fandom sideblogs and off for my main and this makes me happy. do what makes you happy.

7. etiquette and interface

- change your icon so no one thinks you’re a bot

- reblog posts so your account isn’t empty. also, with  algorithmic content turned off by most users, YOU are the algorithm, and interaction on this website is strongly encouraged. making or reblogging posts part of the experience and sort of the whole point

- reblog tagging: individual preferences apply. instead of adding a comment on a reblog, users will often add their thoughts in a tag, if they aren’t specifically looking to engage in a dialogue or add on to the post itself. other users can then decide to copy their tags (often with “prev” for “previous” appended) or even copy/paste them into a comment on their reblog, which is your tags “passing peer review”. people also tag to index posts so their blog is more searchable, and to include trigger warnings and content warnings related to a post. you can also choose to not tag anything. it’s your blog, do what you want.

- tags are how people find new content. if you make a new post and want people to find it, they will be searching the tag related to that content, so tag it accordingly. people can also follow tags and get notifications when new posts are made into that tag.

- do not censor words! this isn’t tiktok or twitter. we say ‘fuck’ and ‘kill’ here. if you write “unalive” or censor swears or triggers, people’s content filters do not work, and you will have undermined their ability to curate their content, moderate their experience, and avoid triggers. don’t do that. just spell out the whole goddamn word, please.

- you can make sideblogs under a single account! this means you have your main, which you interact (like, reply, and follow) from, but which can be used to have a space for all your posts and reblogs on a given topic (fandom, hobby, fixation, whatever). you can also direct message to/from a sideblog and accept asks etc.

- if you use tumblr in your browser, there is an add-on called XKIT. this used to be a tumblr user staple and allowed for a lot of functionality that tumblr didn’t used to have. tumblr has since very much upped their game, but it can still be worth using XKIT if you’re regularly in a browser and not on the app. for example, it includes some ad-blocking capabilities. I use “New Xkit” and have a few personalized settings with it.

- posts go around forever on this site and new memes crop up every day, retreat, and then resurge out of the blue randomly. this makes for tumblr-wide in-jokes that circulate for years, like “do you love the color of the sky” and the “color theory children’s hospital” post. if you don’t get these, you can ask and i’m sure tumblr will deliver, but you can also wait around and follow more people and these will turn up eventually.

- your dash is what you make it. your interaction is what you make it. you have control, you are not at the mercy of algorithms and advertisers if you don’t want to be. paying for ad-free browsing is an option. they even give you the option to toggled your ad settings within ad-free browsing. seriously - you. have. the. control.

this is something that we love about tumblr and one of the things that makes it our hellsite (affectionate) instead of our hellsite (derogatory). if you’re finding your experience to be negative but still want to stick around, i encourage you to block accounts or content that makes you unhappy or anxious, to follow the accounts that bring you joy, and to adjust your settings into whatever makes you happiest and least stressed out.

Tumblr tips for twitter Reddit refugees

With some additional reminders to:

3. Decide if and how you want to engage with PvP mode.

Tumblr is fun in that, a bit like Reddit, you can gift things to other users, including dashboard crabs or horse. You can also get blue or rainbow cjeckmakes for yourself (these do nothing, they were introduced to dunk on twitter and we ate that shit up), and you can gift those checks to other users as well. This can be part of tumblr’s sort of PvP mode of cursing other users with fun nonsense.

Within that you can also blaze another user’s posts. I think (?) they can refuse it (much like users can decide to or not to display their checkmarks) but you can also turn that off in your settings if you don’t want to give others that power