#also my current blog theme is not displaying the readmore >.>

[songder-bot]

hi there! I'm relatively new(ish) to tumblr and was looking to make my own "bot" via a long queue, and was wondering if you could give me any tips? I'm not super familiar with the queue system, so any advice you can give me would be good! Thank you!

hello, anon!! welcome to tumblr!

(interloper)

it's an honor to be your tutorial npc :D i will do my best to walk you through the "bot"-making process/queue system!

first of all: this is how many posts are currently in this blog's queue.

[ID: Screenshot showing "Queue: 924". End ID.]

this is a kind of insane amount. i believe i started this bot with....700 posts in the queue? and then just kinda kept adding on more? a lot will depend on how often you want your bot to post. at the current number of posts in my queue and the current schedule of 4 posts a day, it could run for 231 more days without running out of quotes! if i bumped it down to twice a day, it could run for over a year!

what i'd probably recommend doing is adding posts in batches of, like, 20 at a time, and keeping the post amount low until you get up to a number where you feel okay just letting it run for a while without adding anything new. then just put new stuff in whenever you want!

but how do you do the "adding stuff in" part? great question! this is the part where we segway into the mechanics of the queue! this is also the part where i put a readmore because hoo BOY this got long. i am prone to overexplaining lmao

tl;dr: find the queue, make the posts, set times for posting and amount of posts per day, use mass tag editor to do tags, and shuffle queue!

the queue is one of tumblr's most special functions, imo. it will automatically put out a certain amount of posts every day between certain hours-- basically like scheduling tweets, except that the site schedules them for you! some people on tumblr actually queue basically every post they see rather than reblog it-- i call them "queuetuals" :P

Step 1: find the queue

so! first you go to your blog controls, where you can view posts and follower counts from, and then look down. under "drafts" is a section called "queue". hit that, it'll take you here.

[ID: The Tumblr "queue" page. Up at the top is a text box that reads "The queue lets you stagger posts over a period of hours or days. It's an easy way to keep your blog active and consistent. Automatically publish a queued post (dropbox with 4 selected) times a day between (dropbox with 12 am selected) and (dropbox with 12 am selected) Timezone: US/Eastern (change) Note: This timezone only affects the queue schedule, as well as timestamps on custom themes. The publish times on posts below are displayed in your local timezone." It then shows a Shuffle Queue button and the icon of this blog next to the icons and text for making text, photo, quote, link, chat audio, and video posts. End ID.]

FUN FACT: hitting the text (or whatever kind of post it is you want to make) button from here will automatically set the button that usually says "post now" to "add to queue" instead. i found this out like halfway into making all these posts and it was so helpful to not have to make the switch manually every time. i now pass this knowledge on to you, my protege. use it in good faith. okay where were we

Step 2: make the posts

right. okay . so you hit button you make post you hit other button (make sure it does say "add to queue") and it will automatically be put in your queue!

[ID: A drafted post from songder-bot reading "i'd like to take you through a wasteland i like to call my home!", with no tags and the post button set to "add to queue". End ID.]

now just do that like 100 more times and you're set :) (highly recommend, if you're going to be making a text bot like this, writing all the stuff you want to put in down in a text file so you can just copypaste over. i write new lyrics like the above in manually, but i was copypasting for my first couple big chunks)

you can also see up there the places to adjust when and how often your "bot" posts! i have it set to between 12 and 12 so it just posts day-round, but if you want to set it to only post while you're awake or only while you're asleep, that's cool (i did do that for a bit)

from this screen down you'll be able to see what's coming up next in the queue and at what times it'll post!

Step 3: tags and shuffling!

while i was insane enough to manually input over 700 posts in a few days, i was not insane enough to tag them all individually. for that, i used the Mass Post Editor!

found at the very bottom of the list that posts, followers, queue, etc. is on is a little item called Mass Post Editor. this is one of tumblr's other most helpful functions and i truly cannot recommend it enough.

so once i've gotten all the lyrics from a song that i want to get in there, i go in to MPE. up at the top it says "published, draft, queued". go to queued, i select all the quotes from the song i just put in:

[ID: A screenshot of the Mass Post Editor with several posts selected. End ID.]

i go up top, i select "add tags", and i add the tags i want for those posts! boom! mass tagging: SOLVED.

i will add here that the reason my tags are stuff like "lyric - green day" rather than just "green day" is because i don't want these posts to go directly into the main tag. especially if the bot posts often, it'd be pretty spammy and kind of annoying for people trying to look at posts about green day to have to keep seeing random green day lyrics instead. tag etiquette is important!

and the last tip i will give (i promise) is this: remember that screenshot from earlier and the shuffle queue button? whenever you add in new posts to your bot, especially if they're all from the same song or book or something, make sure to hit the shuffle queue! queueing something automatically puts it at the end of the queue, and shuffling ensures that your new posts are equally distributed and can come up whenever!

hope this was helpful!!! i love explaining stuff but also get very very wordy at times, so if you need a tl;dr version or further explanation of something let me know! oh-- and if you're gonna do quotes, lyrics, art, or anything at all, always credit the original creators!

[silver-and-ivory]

I simply do not believe that you can, in fact, continue to listen to black people, or indeed ascribe any value to them at all, while also defending your right to be afraid of them as a generic group. You -will- discount what they say, regardless of whether or not it should be discounted. And like, your entire justification for this, besides someone abusing you, is that other people feeling bad makes you feel bad, and how dare they. That you're proud of this is amazing.

(cont) But I dunno, you clearly can’t and shouldn’t engage with racial issues because of your scrupulosity. What’s astounding, though, is that you take that same scrupulosity and wear it like a badge of integrity and superiority. And it’s perfect for you, since because your racism is a product of your scrupulosity, nobody can criticize you, because that would be unfair.

Hey, anon.

If I’m interpreting your message correctly, you’re mainly concerned by me because you think that I am proud of hating black people, and the other issues - not believing I can listen to black people, saying I don’t value black people, etc. - are all linked to this. You would be okay if I treated my scrupulosity as something that I needed to work on, but you *aren’t* okay with it because you think I’ve given up on trying to help blacks.

You have a very valid point here, and it’s one that I hadn’t necessarily thought of. Thank you for explaining!

However, I think there has also been a miscommunication. (link to whole post)

Here’s what’s going on with me being proud of being a “bad racist”:

I’m proud that I was able to look at myself clearly and admit, Yes, this is how you feel when you see black people, and it’s how you’ve felt for a while.

I’m proud that I am finally able to separate “actually a legitimately bad person who is very harmfully racist” from “just someone who my abuser thinks is a racist”.

I’m proud that I don’t have to constantly worry about what other people will think of me, and that I’ve finally thought my way out of sj.

I’m proud that I’ve confronted what I feared most (being a racist).

I’m proud that I was able to recognize my emotions in general- the dissociation and guilt/shame associated with Her, the intense self-loathing I had begun to develop, the anxiety caused by constant self-criticism, and yes, the secret fear of black people. I spent a long time ignoring them and denying that they exist - this might be something to do with alexythmia, or maybe just certain thought complexes associated with sj.

Of course, to someone looking in this would look at lot like “lol I hate black people”, especially, when, um, I literally said something like “lol I hate black people”.

My intention behind this was to say, “So, ex-friend, I’m someone you would call a racist. I’m someone you would accuse of hating black people. But I don’t actually endorsedly hate black people, obviously, and I’m done adhering to your standards for who I should be. I’m illustrating this by showing how absurd it is that you might think I endorsedly hate black people. Also, I do legitimately unendorsedly hate black people and you’re the reason why.”

So yeah, anon, sorry about 1) any unclarity there or 2) any negative effects it’s had on you.

However: I have repeatedly stated that I believe that people should have their own spaces where they can say things like “fuck white people” and “die cis scum”, preferably tagged for things like “racism cw” and “cisphobia cw”. This is because I believe in the concept of safe spaces for competing access needs. The same holds true here.

So I’m not sorry for being honest about my emotions, or for confronting my fears.

Do you know what it means for an emotion to be unendorsed vs endorsed? Because I think a lot of your upsetness stems from there-

Unendorsed is when you feel or think something, but you actually know it’s completely wrong. Like, if you really like ice cream you might think, “There is literally no one in the entire universe who doesn’t love ice cream exactly as much as I do.” And then you would realize, “Well, actually, that’s completely untrue and I shouldn’t assume that everyone else is exactly like me.” But you can also realize that this thought has legitimate roots - that you really like ice cream and associate it with your grandmother - and you can also listen to it without judging yourself.

Endorsed is when you feel or think something, and upon further consideration you’re like Holy shit I’m completely correct. Like, if you care lots about ~becoming immortal~ you might think “Death is the worst thing ever and we need to put it at the top of our list of Stuff To Cure.” And then you would think back on this and realize “Yep, death is definitely the worst thing ever.”

My hatred of black people is unendorsed, but I’ve investigated it and realized it’s a pattern-matching defense mechanism in reaction to having been abused, or at least severely mistreated. I wish, anon, that you would stop dismissing my experiences with abuse as minor. They were not. They aren’t an excuse or a logical reason for hating black people, but they are significant and they are an emotional reason. I am not perfectly logical; I am affected by pattern-matching and bias just as much as anyone else.

I have clearly stated that I don’t endorsedly blame black people as as whole for this, and I have no idea where you would have gotten that interpretation.

If you’d give a woman abused by a man some leeway with her misandry, then you ought to do the same for me. (Also, note that I use this framing because I think you, anon, will be most compelled by it, not because I’m ignoring the degree to which women abuse men, which is comparable in scope to male-on-female abuse.)

I however do endorse my hatred of Her, and I endorse pride in my ability to recognize my emotions and dictate my own morality.

Ultimately, it was extremely important to me to be able to admit to and reclaim and to be proud of this pain; and to recognize the fear and hatred while also committing eventually eliminating my own antiblack racism. And that brings me to the next point, which is that-

I think at the root we agree on something quite important: we both want to have an end result of me not (unendorsedly) hating black people anymore.

I don’t know what to do, but I’ve gotten some suggestions, mostly along the lines of “find black people who aren’t extremely into sj and who are generally kinder people, and become friends with them”. This is a good idea, since it would decrease my threat assessment when I see black people so that my emotions are more in step with reality. Kind of like exposure therapy.

I could also try to establish thought patterns that automatically appear whenever I start on a fear/guilt/shame spiral. I’m going to try to do that sometime soon.

I also disagree with your statements about what I can or should not do.

I am in fact able to value black people, as you can see with my willingness to do things for black people like “calling members of Congress about police brutality” and “donating money to some kind of cause” and “donating money to AMF”. If I did not abstractly value black people I would not care about their civil rights and lives.

You’re correct that my fear of blacks could create a bias against listening to them. However, now that I recognize this bias, I can try to correct against it by e.g. seeking out black perspectives for reading and consideration. For example, right now I’m reading Sister Outsider, by Audre Lorde, and I’m not only passively listening but also trying to engage with and evaluate her arguments. (It is a very interesting book.)

Again, I want to become stronger! Tsuyoku naritai. I want to be able to stretch myself and to become less scared of black people. I want to be able to take risks on my own terms, and to take care of myself while doing so. (This is relevant to e.g. the dignity of risk and the ability to set your own boundaries.)

I want to help social justice, real social justice. And I think that I could handle it /if/ it was safe- again, it’s like exposure therapy, a controlled environment with people I trust, who deserve my trust. Unfortunately, there is a certain dearth of communities like this that I can access right now.

Finally, you say that I think that no one can criticize me for my racism because it’s due to scrupulosity.

In some sense, this is in fact true. I do not support criticizing people for talking about their unendorsed emotions/feelings. If you want to vent about my unendorsed feelings, I would suggest that you do it in a space that is not my blog. If you want to eliminate my emotional racism, then you ought to find an actually effective way. Ignoring and guilting myself for it didn’t work in the past. Meeting more black people who aren’t abusive, however, might, as would removing myself from situations with Her.

In another sense, however, I am happy to engage with criticism if it is logically sound and moderately polite, as I am doing now. That doesn’t mean I won’t dismiss it, but it’s also not like you’re not allowed to or like I’m being unkind to you for criticizing me.

In yet another sense, I welcome criticism of my endorsed racism. I just don’t think that I’ve been endorsedly racist lately?

Not sure if you had something else in mind.

Anyway, thanks a lot, anon. I mean this sincerely- I appreciate your effort and your goodwill towards me. :)