*and are on tumblr, this will not be an indication of age of fanfic writers overall, of course
I broke up the 20s as I, in my experience, feel there is a greater distinction between these age groups
please pick the age you are now, not what you will be
there is no “I want to see answers” option as I don’t want junk data
please reblog!
The very best email in the universe is [AO3] Comment on ________
AITA for using mind control on the entire planet?
I (16M) have a wide array of psychic powers (I really hope this is anonymous) and I've used them for various purposes during my life. I've never told anyone about these powers except for my parents and.... a few acquaintances. My abilities include telekinesis, bilocation, levitation, telepathy, creating an infinite amount of Russian nesting dolls, etc. I could literally be the ruler of the world with these powers but I hide them because I hate attention and stuff, so normally I wouldn't do something as impactful as this.
My mom (37F) has always told me to use my powers for good, but honestly I just use them to make life easier for myself. For example, using my telepathy to avoid the annoying kids at my school. That's where the mind control comes in.
I was born with blinding hot pink hair. It looks like I put Barbie in a blender with all the pink highlighters in the world and shampooed with it. So in order to avoid drawing attention to myself, I used my mind control along with various other powers to alter human genetics so that I wouldn't be the only one with brightly colored hair. This is just one thing I've used my mind control for -- along with controlling people's minds to make them ignore the fact that they should be four years older than they are because for the past four years I've been rewinding time on earth by a year every year until I get strong enough to stop this volcano from erupting and wiping out my entire country.
Anyways, my parents found out and they aren't too happy I've been using mind control. In my opinion, they should be glad I'm not out partying like other kids my age. AITA?
(I rlly hope someone hasn't done this yet 😭)
i'm curious to know the ratio of writers to readers on ao3 so here's a poll. when i say writer, i mean people who have published works on ao3, doesn't matter if it's once, or if it was ages ago, or if it's a regular occurrence. when i say reader, i mean people who have never published a work on ao3. the reader vote still counts if you don't have an account on ao3. if you're a writer who is also an active reader, please still click on the "writer" option!
please do boost this so it reaches a larger sample space!
huh, not what i expected
so embarrassing when i forget im checking someone's blog and i start scrolling through and liking and reblogging shit as if it's just my dash. it feels like wandering into someone else's apartment and not noticing and making myself lunch
reblog if i can wander into your apartment (blog) and make myself lunch (like and reblog as if it's my dash)
“oh they’re not taking away chronological dashboard, well everything’s okay then” they also said in the post they’re making reblogs collapsed (like comments on twitter) so you won’t see the full conversation in a post. they also won’t get rid of tumblr live despite it being an annoying and cancerous data-miner that isn’t legal in much of the world. they won’t even let you opt out of tumblr live for more than seven days. they implemented a terrible photo viewer that mimics tiktok and makes it so you can’t zoom in on images. they took away the ability to view prev tags. they’re making it so you have to sign in with your email to view almost any thing on tumblr. they’ve already made it so you have to sign in to send asks, even on anon. they’re slowly phasing out custom blog themes.
the things that make tumblr at all usable and favored by us– the older web blog features, the anonymity– that is still being taken away. it HAS been being taken away for some time now. i am urging you people to reveiwbomb the tumblr app. force them to acknowledge that users do not like these changes.
Good news! You can let Tumblr Staff know what you think about every version of Tumblr in a way that they might listen to! Here is a long survey from a blog associated with Staff and here is a short survey from the same blog. The blog, although full of surveys, does not allow reblogs. However, I took the long survey and later they improved one thing I complained about, so there is a chance more people complaining about changes could halt their enshittification. I cannot retake the surveys, so I must ask you all to send feedback where I cannot.
Pasting these links all at the end too for ease of access:
Long Survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/2V3MQTP
Short Survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/HS5LP3W
Staff’s 2x Secret Userbase Research Blog (with unrebloggable posts): https://www.tumblr.com/benevolenthellsite
i fuckin love a survey I tell you what
Hey. Why isn’t the moon landing a national holiday in the US. Isn’t that fucked up? Does anyone else think that’s absurd?
It was a huge milestone of scientific and technological advancement. (Plus, at the time, politically significant). Humanity went to space! We set foot on a celestial body that was not earth for the first time in human history! That’s a big deal! I’ve never thought about it before but now that I have, it’s ridiculous to me that that’s not part of our everyday lives and the public consciousness anymore. Why don’t we have a public holiday and a family barbecue about it. Why have I never seen the original broadcast of the moon landing? It should be all over the news every year!
It’s July 20th. That’s the day of the moon landing. Next year is going to be the 54th anniversary. I’m ordering astronaut shaped cookie cutters on Etsy and I’m going to have a goddamn potluck. You’re all invited.
Hey. Hey. Tumblr. Ides of March ppl. We can do this
Ok the Irene fight was amazing and the reveal she was a dragon was great and all but like.
It's kinda implied her 'element' is enchantment.
Near-all of Erza's swords are enchanted.
Imagine if Erza tried to stab and Irene just went c h o m p-
@ fic readers who write play by play comments that highlight your favorite passages and why you like them, please know you are the best humans to exist and please don’t stop what you’re doing
Breaking tumblr protocol to ask — does this apply even if it’s a really popular fic that already has hundreds of comments?
absolutely yes
In 2022, Common Crawl scrapped Ao3 to train AI. In December of the same year, Ao3 added code to stop it from happening again. However, as they explain, "Putting systems in place that attempt to block all scraping would be difficult or impossible without also blocking legitimate uses of the site." This means that individual scrapers can still collect data, even on a large scale, although they're working to find a solution to this. They're also, at the moment, not banning AI-generated works.
In the meantime, they recommend restricting works to registered users only. However, and as they know, this isn't an ideal or ultimate solution.
First, because it would add a barrier to legitimate users who want to access the site without an account for different reasons.
Second, because real registered users who think they're entitled to your work can still steal it and feed it to AI for personal use, which is something people are already bragging about.
And third, because bots can still create accounts for mass scraping--in fact, there's a concerning wave of obvious bot comments happening right now, and speculation is that it's related to making AI tools come off as legitimate traffic.
Personally, I'm very concerned and considering restricting my works. But I also hate that we're being put in this position, I don't think it's fair to me or my readers, and I'm reluctant of gatekeeping my fic from legitimate readers.
So I wanted to see where other writers stand right now, and I also wanted to show readers who might be considering stealing fic with AI "because it was abandoned" or whatever your shitty excuse is the damage that you're contributing to. Fandom is not a market. You're not entitled to our work, even if it's abandoned.
I might hate myself for this later, but please reblog for a larger sample size!! You're welcome to add alternative solutions, thoughts, etc., but if you add any obnoxious comments about how stealing people's art with AI is good, actually, and fandom creators are meanies, I will break into your house and bite you.
I haven’t, nor will I, restrict any of my works. That said, training AI to write by using people’s fics is an absolute dick move. If you can’t write a story on your own, don’t write. If you can’t train AI using your own art or writing skill, don’t do it. Simple as that.
Stop pretending a bot is in any shape or form creative— it’s just glorified theft.
Gee, Tumblr would probably really hate it if you shared and spread this damning article … To the surprise of absolutely none of Tumblr’s LGBTQ users, it turns out the independent NYC human rights agency Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) found that Tumblr’s ham-fisted adult content ban in December 2018 disproportionately targeted LGBTQ users. The CCHR’s investigation revealed Tumbler’s moderation algorithms is demonstrably biased against queer content. As part of the settlement, Tumblr was obligated to review their prejudicial anti-gay moderation policies. Even more mortifyingly, they’ve also had to hire an expert on sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) issues and provide unconscious bias training to their moderators. I frankly doubt Tumblr has learned a thing from this humbling experience. Just recently the Tumblr algorithm flagged three ancient posts of mine as violating their terms. All three “offenders” were vintage homoerotic beefcake images (softcore by modern standards) roughly 50 – 65-years-old by Bruce of Los Angeles, Bob Mizer and Tom of Finland. (These are of course pioneering queer artists who routinely faced censorship and imprisonment in the fifties and sixties. Plus ca change!). They've been visible on my page - corrupting viewers - for years at this point. I appealed all three immediately. Only the Tom of Finland one was approved. The other two are now hidden. So, they haven't learned much. Apparently, Tumblr – who loves to declare how hip, youthful, inclusive and progressive their values are - wants to restore trust with their queer users. I’d recommend we remember their hypocrisy when Pride rolls around and Tumblr splashes rainbow flags everywhere and attempts to pink wash their image.
In honour of Pride Month, this is worth a reblog! Don’t buy into Tumblr’s hypocritical “pink washing.”
The above examples have been provided with the authors' permission to demonstrate what these look like.
Basic rundown:
Please spread the word about this so authors can filter comments and report them accordingly
There has been some speculation about why this is happening at all, and the best guess is that this is a feature that AI-training story-scraping tools are implementing to try and make their browsing traffic look legitimate
what fresh hell is this?
Well, this is a new one. Haven’t seen this yet, but we’ll see…
tumblr mobile has steadily become near unusable these past few updates. not just from a user experience perspective (which is important enough in itself) but also from an accessibility perspective.
examples include the new way the image viewer works (if you can call it "working"), the tumblr live button replacing the profile button, and that newly created blogs will be forced to have their main dashboard tab be the 'for you' page.
to protest against these usability issues, and inspired by the recent reddit blackout, i propose a 48 hour blackout (where you don't use tumblr at all). preferably of both mobile and web (since web has problems too) but mobile is the focus here.
[edit: a 'blackout' is when you don't log in, or interact with the site at all, for [x] amount of time.]
this marks the end of pride month (for the "queerest place on the internet") and the start of disability month (since accessibility is a massive issue here).
tumblr office is in San Francisco, USA, so the times and dates will be calculated using their time zone (PDT).
i can't afford to blaze this post so please spread it around as much as possible! protests only work if significant numbers show up!
edit 2: plain text version of this post
