scrumpbumpist

[scrumpbumpist]

another study piece that i turned into a cotl artwork :)

(I totally didn’t draw this just so I could make it my phone background lmao)

[scrumpbumpist]

As queer rights inevitably come under fire, there is something I need all of you to keep on mind:

Homophobes do not believe in queer identity.

Learn this. Understand it. They are going to say a lot of things about us that will not make any sense unless you understand this.

To the current right wing, cisgender and heterosexual isn't just the default the way we talk about on tumblr. It's the only option. They believe "everyone" is cishet, and anyone who presents otherwise is doing so for nefarious reasons. Internal experience is insubstantial and therefore doesn’t not exist. To understand how homophobic people see us, I think it's important to note the recent claims that being trans doesn't exist. That it's an ideology.

To put it simply, they very literally are not seeing things as they are. To them, being cisgender and heterosexual is not just the default, but the true state of humanity. Anyone who denies either of these is making a choice.

To them, being a gay man is not about being attracted to other men, about loving other men, or anything like that. To them, being gay is having sex with men. It is not an identity. It is an action you take. And because attraction to men doesn't exists, and this is solely a choice that you're making, what is stopping you from choosing more vulnerable targets? Like, you know, children?

We know that's false. We know that's fake. But that's the ideology, that it is a perversion you've chosen and you are then vulnerable to other perversions. Your internal experience doesn't matter to them. Your lived experience of never developing crushes on girls, on waiting and waiting for it to finally happen before realizing you actually have a crush on a guy, potentially dealing with guilt or self hatred for that - none of that matters because it's not material. You have sex with men. That's all they hear. In their minds, you are a heterosexual man who is acting out a fetish.

In the same vein, being transgender is inconceivable to them. They do not believe in internal experiences, they do not believe in lived experiences, they do not believe in knowing yourself. To them, being queer is not something you are, it's something you do. That's why they make up reasons why a trans person would want to be trans. They say "well, transwomen are just predators who want access to women's spaces/cheat at sports" or "transmen just want to escape misogyny and gain male privilege" or "nonbinary people just want to be special" because they do not care about your experiences.

They don't believe gender dysphoria exists. Or if they do, they believe it is a delusion that will go away if they misgender you enough. They believe you cannot know yourself and identity does not exist.

To them, someone wakes up one day and decides to transition the same way they decide to get dinner. It doesn't matter if that person spent years hating themselves, not looking in the mirror, avoiding showering so they won't have to look at or touch their own body. Internal experience doesn't exist in this conversation! The decision comes out of nowhere to them, and must have some immediate tangible motivation. It cannot simply be that they are happier this way - to make sense to conservatives it has to serve a utility purpose.

This is what they believe about you. This is what they'll be saying on the news. This is what they'll be spreading through propaganda. This is what they'll be trying to write into law. I am not saying this to hurt you. I am included in this. We are going to be called delusional. We are going to be called liars. We are going to be accused of being perverted freaks trying to corrupt, steal, or rape children. You have to understand this, because you can't fight back until you do.

[scrumpbumpist]

Hey, I know the shit with the TikTok ban is blatant propaganda and all, but maybe we should also be concerned about Trump trying to end birthright citizenship and also withdraw from the Paris accords? Maybe the environmental damage he's promising to do and the fact that he’s attempted to federally define sex as binary as well as reinstate the death penalty???

Our attention should be here. It's going to be a long 4 years. Everyone, pick an area to attack or defend, and focus on it.

(I'm not shaming anyone for focusing on TikTok because we're on a social media website right now, but you guys have to be aware of other stuff. I'm not seeing anyone talking about this and I want to make sure people know!)

[scrumpbumpist]

The problem is that it's a no-win. If Sarah McBride makes this An Issue and fights, then she's giving the GOP another opportunity to campaign on "Democratic wokeness gone amok - and in the Halls of Congress!!!!!!!" and also really double-down and ramp up the offense and harassment. And also not make any impact and spend more time on this than on legislating.

If she goes the route she's going, she gets criticized for weakness and also has to put up with an incredibly and horribly toxic and hostile (possibly violent) environment politically and personally, and still empowers the haters and bigots.

My hope/inclination is to think that the Dem Caucus can come up with a way to help resolve this or deal with this and that they don't back away from her or only offer perfunctory support.

[scrumpbumpist]

Wanna know something funny? It wouldn't even be out of place for them to exist in the same place where Scooby and the gang are because in episode 14 of Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated, there are a bunch of other groups of mystery-solving teenagers with mascots/sidekicks! (They're characters from the other Hanna-Barbera mystery shows!)

(Granted, this episode is mostly just a dream, but the competition itself isn't part of the dream, and I choose to believe Jabberjaw is real in this universe.)

I realize that a lot of people who read/write DPxDC have never seen Danny Phantom (and sometimes never seen/read DC stuff) and are just basing their fics off of what they've read in other fics, but because of that I feel like there are a bunch of things that you could be taking advantage of that you aren't, because you're limiting your scope to the Bat-fam and Gotham.

LIke, you know who else is in the DC Universe? The Mystery Gang. So maybe Danny joins up with 4 teenagers and a talking dog to look into a potential haunting while also hiding that he's way spookier than whatever they're investigating.

It's not like they're defenseless or even unused to Gotham insanity.

[scrumpbumpist]

Danny is a coffee shop owner in Gotham and is repeatedly attacked by the GIW. Danny can (mostly) handle his own but he’s in the Bats’ city.

The help is greatly appreciated. The vigilantes have incorporated his small business into their patrol path. They even stop in to grab some coffee or a pastry. He thought he’d get to know this cities heroes as Phantom but instead they become friends with Fenton

[scrumpbumpist]

I realize that a lot of people who read/write DPxDC have never seen Danny Phantom (and sometimes never seen/read DC stuff) and are just basing their fics off of what they've read in other fics, but because of that I feel like there are a bunch of things that you could be taking advantage of that you aren't, because you're limiting your scope to the Bat-fam and Gotham.

LIke, you know who else is in the DC Universe? The Mystery Gang. So maybe Danny joins up with 4 teenagers and a talking dog to look into a potential haunting while also hiding that he's way spookier than whatever they're investigating.

It's not like they're defenseless or even unused to Gotham insanity.

[scrumpbumpist]

PSA For People Coming To Fallout 76 from Watching The Fallout Show

High-level players don't want to grief you. We aren't going to attack you. We're emoting for you to come to where we are because we're trying to drop you a bunch of free shit.

FO76's community is friendly and generous. High level players giving things to lower levels is so common that the devs added donation boxes!

Please don't run away from the weirdo moon-jumping towards you in a mascot costume! They are here to help! We are all from the same vault!

[scrumpbumpist]

Congratulations! Now the Desktop Dash is an inferior copy of Twitter!

If I wanted to use Twitter I would be on Twitter. I'm on Tumblr because I want to be on Tumblr. If you try to make it Facebook or Twitter, I will no longer want to be Tumblr. Put it back.

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.

[scrumpbumpist]

Users being able to curate their entire experience with no algorithms is the biggest draw your website has.

Do not go around inventing problems to solve instead of fixing the ones you already know are present.

Trying to become more like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Tiktok will kill you. It is not viable and it is unprofitable. Leave things as they are.

You literally have the ability to win by default.

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.

[scrumpbumpist]

Tbh, I've been like. Worried about Ao3 getting banned or attacked by the American right. Because books in libraries are one thing - that's physical things they can catch their kids re as ding, that they can hold up and condemn. But fanfiction? It's a damn sight gayer, and fandom is very openly queer. How many queer people discovered themselves here? How many freely express themselves here?

There is currently a push to suppress and silence anything and everything queer. And part of me keeps saying, Ao3 is just a hobby website. It's not that big. It's important to me but that doesn't make it a huge target to them. This has to just be an irrational fear based on fanfiction being a comfort for me. And I haven't wanted to say anything because I don't want anyone getting ideas and bringing fandom culture into the broader culture war.

And yet, here's a right wing group claiming they took Ao3 down specifically because it's full of queer fiction. Whether or not they're telling the truth (the AO3 team seems to doubt them and I have to assume they have some reason for that), I really don't want news of this getting around. I want this to fly under the radar. I don't want AO3 becoming a target for some weirdo with an unhappy wife and an audience full of disenfranchised white cishet men they've brainwashed. I want us to have at least one thing that feels safe and secure while half the US government is trying to kill us to score points with the terrorists they radicalized. Just one. Please.

[scrumpbumpist]

I feel like people aren't understanding that the Tiktok ban and other laws targeting the internet usage of children are also queer bans

It is an attempt to stop children from being able to access online information and resources relating to queerness and any number of progressive ideas. They want to prevent kids from knowing about being gay, being trans, and being accepting of those things.

How many of us realized we were queer because of the content we could access? How many of us finally found a name for feelings we had always had by sheer coincidence while just vibing on the internet? They want to prevent that discovery.

Remember, they see being queer as "confusion/delusion/perversion", not as something that naturally exists. So they are trying to eliminate the "cause".