today’s ao3 experience
Very Brief Guide to [tumblr], for Reddit refugees
Shit You Must Do Right Fucking Now:
- Change your profile picture, blog header, and title to something other than the defaults. Do it right now. You will be mistaken for a bot otherwise, and blocked.
- Go into Settings -> Dashboard, scroll down to Preferences, and turn off the options in the picture. This will get rid of most of the algorithmic stuff.
- Turn off Tumblr Live. You have to snooze it once every 7 days for some stupid reason. It's hosted through another company and will steal your data if you use it.
- Go to your blog settings (under the little person menu) and turn off these two settings:
- Turn off infinite scroll (lags the site) and turn on timestamps on posts, in the same menu as Preferences.
Basic Features of the Site:
- Reblogs drive the entire site. If you'd upvote something on Reddit, you'd reblog it on Tumblr. You can add text, images, or tags to a reblog, but you're not required to.
- The dashboard is the equivalent to your Reddit feed, and contains the posts of all the people you follow, with the newest at the top
- You can send an ask to someone, and it'll appear in their askbox for them to answer. You can receive them too, or turn off the settings if you don't want.
- Tags aren't actually used for finding stuff (search function is dogshit), but are more for categorizing. People also talk in tags. Because Tumblr is weird, you can't use quotation marks (") or commas in them without fucking it up
- You can filter both tags and phrases under Account Settings; doing this will put a filter over a post that contains them, which you'll have to click through to see the post itself. Useful for avoiding hate speech or blocking out annoying stuff
- You can make polls in posts. Here's one now.
- Likes are useless. They literally do fuck-all except send a notification to the OP.
Stuff Tumblr Does That Other Sites Don't:
- Very old posts (I'm talking from like 2012) often circulate on this site. There's no such thing as a post being "too old" to reblog
- Blocking is highly encouraged; you can block someone for any reason. Even for just being annoying.
- If you and someone else are following each other, you are mutuals. Mutuals are fucking awesome and are treasured like friends. Mutuals are a thing on other sites but Tumblr treats em differently.
- You can screenshot someone's tags if you like them and add them to a reblog. This is called "peer review"
- Sometimes someone will find a blog and go through it and like/reblog a bunch of posts. This is totally fine and not "creepy" like it is seen as on other sites.
- Tumblr jokes often rely on Continuing The Bit and a "yes, and?" attitude. Goncharov is probably the best example of this.
- We are fucking infested with bots. They will either have totally blank profiles or be filled with porn. Block and report on sight.
- Censorship is pretty lax here. I can say "I want to brutally stab Elon Musk to death and watch him bleed out in front of a crowd" and nobody gives a shit.
General Etiquette:
- Don't try to do epic clapbacks here, you'll probably just get laughed at or blocked. If someone is bugging you or spouting bigoted bullshit, block them.
- Reblog art!!! Artists often struggle to gain traction on here; reblogging will give them a boost.
- Not every reblog needs a comment or tag in it
- You can go all out with tagging your stuff to organize it, or you can just leave it all blank. Someone might ask "hey, can you tag these posts as [x]?" and you can decide if you want to do that or not. It's generally polite to oblige, but "no" is still reasonable.
- Avoid discourse like the plague. Filter it, block people who start it, scroll past it when you see it. Just don't get involved in it. Ever.
- Don't put fandom tags or jokes on someone's posts about serious matters or personal shit
- You're responsible for curating your own dashboard; if you complain about constantly seeing stuff you don't like, that's probably on you. Don't be afraid to unfollow.
- Follower count doesn't matter much here and you don't have to make yours known if you don't want to.
- Reblog, don't repost. Reblogging keeps the credit and doesn't "steal" engagement like Twitter retweets.
- If someone likes something a LOT, they might reblog it like 30 times in a row. This is normal
- Having a post blow up is actually kinda a bad thing, since it floods your notifications. There's a sort of in-joke about how having a big post is awful and people jokingly try to stop their own posts from blowing up, often in vain.
Tips:
- Get XKit Rewritten if you're on desktop, it's a really helpful extension
- In the little drop-down menu next to the 'Post now' button you can either save a draft, schedule a post, or add it to your queue. The queue lets you post things in order at a certain interval, which you can change. It's good for spreading stuff out over time.
- You can use Shift+R to quickly reblog stuff and Shift+Q to queue!
- Filter your notifications under Activity - you can also see some neat graphs
- Find each other! If you want your old Reddit communities to stick together, seek out other refugees and follow them.
Have fun on [tumblr], everyone!
“Likes are useless. They literally do fuck-all except send a notification to the OP”
It also sends one to the person you reblogged from telling them you like what they are posting. I love getting likes - it’s getting a good grade in tumblr, which is something etc. etc.
Likes are definitely not useless. They let me know someone interacted with my post in probably a positive way, and they let me know people read it and wanted me to know they read it. It feels nice to get a like. Likes also make up a list of blogs I might potentially be interested in following.
Because I see this in the notes: no, it is not rude to like without reblogging. Anyone who says that deserves neither a like nor a reblog.
You don’t have to reblog anything you don’t feel like reblogging, and you will NOT be responsible for an artist’s suffering or the ‚death of creativity on tumblr’ as some people like to dramatically call it.
Your tumblr is YOUR PERSONAL SPACE. Your blog. You put what you want on it and only what you want. You are not beholden to anyone else on this website to boost their content. You are not hurting anyone by ‚only liking’.
For the record, NBs/transmascs who feel like this includes them are welcome to respond (I am also NB/transmasc).
I'm just curious about how common it is for one's caregivers to lose their collective shit about someone else's haircut because they are wedded to traditionally gendered hairstyles. (I suppose knowing the age demographics of respondents might also be useful info to add in the tags.)
#my first time having short hair was because i had a huge fucking breakdown and chopped my hair off w a pocketknife#and my mom was VERY concerned for my mental health as a result#i was going to surprise her but my qpp warned her and my mom said that it was a good thing they did#because she would have been utterly devastated otherwise#my mom's fine about me having short hair now though#and in fact she's the one who kinda pressured me into cutting it into a really short fully masc hairstyle#polls
the r/curatedtumblr -> tumblr migration is so funny to me. it's like going to the zoo and enjoying it so much you climb into the enclosure to live with the monkeys
this reply evokes such an incredible image in the mind’s eye
gotta say, i do not like how lately i've been seeing posts from people who use a person having colorfully dyed hair as a sort of shorthand for "leftist who is actually secretly an asshole." like people making comments like "the girl with blue hair and perfect eyeliner wings is also the one who won't give up their seat for a disabled person on the bus". like we already have to deal with the right-wing fascists using "blue hair and pronouns" as a shorthand for "leftist (trans) person who is insufferable and oversensitive", can we please not turn brightly colored hair into a caricature in leftist circles as well. having brightly dyed hair is not some magic symbol of "person who claims to be a leftist but is actually secretly an asshole". it is a morally neutral trait. and while i'm not discounting anyone's experience with someone with brightly dyed hair who treated them badly, i think that turning it into some kind of shorthand for "asshole" is just going to ultimately hurt us more than it's going to help.
#sye's babbles#like. i love having blue hair. i don't feel right without it.#and i am kinda getting uncomfortable with the level of vitriol that is being aimed at ppl with brightly dyed hair#from BOTH sides of the political spectrum#just because you had one fucking person with pink hair treat you badly does not mean everyone w bright hair will#it's obviously not comparable to axes of oppression since its a personal choice to style your hair like that and all#but also like. it just feels like two steps below being an asshole to someone who is gnc#because having brightly dyed hair IS a non-conformist hairstyle#it's treated as improper and unprofessional#and shitting on people for not conforming is always going to make you look like a conformist assimilationist douche.#please for the love of god begging EVERYONE to be normal about brightly dyed hair.
sloppy trans ppl kissing?
I agree
hello trans friends and allies! the Tennessee Senate has passed bill SB 1440, which will hinder trans people’s ability to change their legal names and gender markers. this will go into effect July 1, 2023 which is in less than a month.
what you can do right now is visit https://www.inclusiontn.org/tnncp and access free emergency name change services from legal professionals. if you don’t need these services, you can also donate to help cover the costs.
please please spread the word and share to your friends in TN as we only have until the end of this month!
sylvus and cenryx still continue to have a lot of really funny parallelisms between them but a really funny one i realized recently is that sylvus would feel absolutely terrible killing insects/spiders and will usually just move them if they're in his space, but has absolutely no compunctions killing people who have pissed him off or hurt him; meanwhile cenryx feels absolutely zero hesitation crushing and killing any bug/spider that invades his space, but would only kill a person if he absolutely had to save his own life (or the life of someone he cared about).
I was at Wallmart today and I found this
I’m gonna color everything in this like a Sanrio poster
I’m gonna color
everything in this like a
Sanrio poster
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
Please add which year and age you were when you joined in the tags!
based on the actual books, not the movie adaptations :]
#misery terrifies me on so many goddamn levels#as a writer. just the idea of going thru what paul goes thru is horrifying#also uh. the fact that the book paul wrote while being held captive by annie#was lauded as the best thing he'd ever written#just added to the horror on so many goddamn levels#but honestly this is a poll asking for favorite not scariest#and my actual FAVORITE story he wrote was a short story called chattery teeth#cant even explain why i liked it so much#it was just a fun and evocative story.#polls
what charaxter archetypes do you keep writing into your characters that surely say nothing about your mental state. i keep making little guys who have trouble viewing themselves as a full person and instead just fixate on the role they expect others to expect them to play.
#my D&D PCs lately have all been like#guys with ridiculously high charisma scores (18-20)#who nonetheless were socially ostracized by their peers#esp as children#who then grow up believing theyre weird and unlikable on a fundamental level#and thus learn to use their insane bonkers charisma to lie all the time or intimidate people#which. definitely says a lot about me.#reblog bait
"do you seriously think you're above the rules" the stupid ones yeah
if you want me to follow the rules you have to make sure they're not stupid. this isn't a difficult concept to grasp.
Why is “barely legal” pornography always about age? I think they should experiment with teetering on other types of illegality. For example, they could film just outside of a restricted military area.
human beings stole fire from the gods so they could stop waiting for random lightning strikes to spark their prehistoric blunts and spliffs
the most noble sacrifice that was forgotten by time and history was when Grugg brought the Mammoth Joint to the top of the mountain during a lightning storm. Grugg was predictably evaporated but her selfless act smoked out the entire clan for months
(third person objective is when the narrator doesn't know the emotions/perspective of any characters, third person limited is when the narrator only shares one person's person's perspective, and third person omniscient is when the narrator knows all the characters' perspectives)
far from prudish but just got blazed porn of someone's pussy spread out so hard and up close like it's a map of the polish-lithuanian commonwealth and I'm king and grand duke sigismund II augustus inspecting his lands to plot defense against the swedes