#potential removal of duplicate reblogs

[babytreepiig]

sick and tired of tumblr rearranging the furniture in the house (pushing updates that no one (generally speaking) wants to see)

[lover-of-skellies]

Sans Fight Night - Round 5

Fight location: an empty AU. Think classic undertale, but completely empty. There's no one around, and our contestants can go ham without any consequences

Contestant 1: Fresh

Strengths: Has no emotions (therefore he can't possibly lose control of them), speed and teleportation, potentially makes portals, can sort of conjure up physical items to fight with, great at being a distraction, can still use skeleton magic, even if his body is destroyed, he'll survive (provided he finds a new host fast), highly unpredictable and hard to read, can fight from pretty much any distance

Weaknesses: Doesn't appear to take many things seriously, is vulnerable as soon as he (the parasite) is removed from the host body

Contestant 2: Epic

Strengths: Magic/teleportation, more intelligent than he appears at times, speed, can appear as clones/duplicates/copies, and I saw someone say that he functions like a Looney Tunes character. Normal logic simply Does Not Apply to him

Weaknesses: N/A

Note: My knowledge here is very limited. I've seen maybe a few pages of the Epictale comic and that was AGES ago, so I don't really remember it. Aside from that, the only other depiction of him I've seen was in Underverse, and even then, I don't remember much of what he did there

As always, propaganda is welcome and encouraged! If you have some information that you think could help one of these guys win (or lose), feel free to reblog this post and include it!

*EPIC PROPAGANDA HERE

[timeflow]

could just be me, but it feels like the way that the staff account clarified that the dashboard wasn't going back after making it sound like it was was done intentionally so that we would feel less bad about the other features in the post that actively clash with what people currently want. yes yes it's all well and good that the chronological dashboard isn't going anywhere, but what about the part about sending emails when push notifications are turned off? or the part about potentially removing duplicate reblogs from your dashboard? (actually, depending on implementation, the entire section about reblogs/replies sounds concerning to me.) the way that everyone immediately decided everything was fine feels almost like a planned thing to distract us from the rest of the post is what I'm saying

[bonesandblood-sunandmoon]

Tumblr has been working on implementing a Communities feature here, and they've gotten to a Closed Beta stage. There's more details in this post, but basically, some people will be getting emails with information about filling out a form if they're interested in a community and ideas will be selectively approved and created. There will be a community member cap while in Closed Beta, and taking part in feedback will probably be inevitable.

I'm honestly not sure if there's an underlying reason for who gets sent emails or if I was randomly chosen, but I have the opportunity to fill out a potential community form. Someone would have to approve it, and at this stage, allowing duplicates or communities that are very nearly duplicated with minor differences will probably be unlikely. Considering the tag spamming in Jumblr, I thought it might be a good idea to suggest some sort of Jewish themed Community.

If anyone else has gotten an email about creating a Community and has had this idea, I would absolutely like a response about it. (I have no idea if this is a 'first come, first serve' sort of thing, but I'd rather not make a duplicate suggestion.)

There is a note in the email that not every suggestion will be approved, and they're looking for a spread of different types of Communities. However, it also can't hurt to at least put forward the suggestion.

I haven't looked at the form in great detail yet, but it will probably ask for a name, description, community guidelines, and if the Community will be public or private.

Name: I'm not 100% sold on using 'Jumblr', 'Jewish', or 'Judaism' since those are so broad and general. However, if enough people like using 'Jumblr' or something that does seem personally broad, it's still on the table for consideration.

Description: A space for Jewish Tumblrites...? (Jews of Tumblr?) To be determined, really. (Should it be a space also open to gentile allies? Probably see the private vs public section.)

Community guidelines: Some will be the usual matters of what posts will not be allowed, how to tag for certain topics, and what conduct could lead to being removed from the comm. Specific guidelines to this comm are definitely where I'd appreciate some degree of input, though.

For example, it's entirely possible that someone interested in joining this potential Jewish themed Community will want to avoid examples of antisemitism. Does this look like a guideline about not posting antisemitic anon hate or reblogging conversations with antisemitic responses in the reblog chain into the Community? Does this look like needing to use a specific tag so other community members can blacklist or use Tumblr's filtering feature? What if someone wants to talk about antisemitism they've recently faced?

The Israel-Hamas war. Do the community members want a space free from news updates? Or would a guideline about not showing gory imagery or videos, but allowing text only updates, be alright? (Do community members want a space free from larger I/P discussions? Or as long it's tagged for filtering purposes, do they want to be able to talk about I/P without having trolls and random antisemites wander into the replies/reblogs?)

Zionism. I don't want this to be another space where people face the 'are you a Good Jew or a Bad Jew' sort of questioning. However, does this look like a statement in the description welcoming everyone including Zionists, or does there need to be a guideline about talking about anti-/non-/Zionism within the Community?

Other: I don't know what the community member cap will be in the beginning, so I have no idea whether there'll be a need for mods immediately or not. The only language I'm comfortable doing any modding in is English, so at the very least, I'd probably need someone who knows Hebrew at some point.

Public or private: I like the idea of a public community that's not dissimilar to the Jumblr tag, but you know, I'm not sure about how comfortable community members will be with a public community given the compilation of blocklists based on interacting with a particular post/user.

From the Communities Help page:

Public communities can be seen and visited by non-members, logged in or logged out. However, only the feed of posts in each community tab, and the About page, are accessible. Non-members cannot view the member list, see who reacted with what, or see community comments. Non-members with an invite can see everything a member can see, but cannot interact with anything until they accept the invitation. Private communities cannot be seen or visited by non-members at all. The existence of a private community is not hidden, however, if someone has the URL (they’ll see a message like “this is a private community”). Non-members with an invite can see everything a member can see, but cannot interact with anything until they accept the invitation.

-

Not directly related but notable enough to mention: I can easily imagine that some people will not be enthusiastic that I'm volunteering for this effort. This is the main associated with a conversion sideblog, but I have not felt comfortable with revealing my sideblog, especially after October 7th. However, I don't think a Tumblr Community can be associated with a secondary account, so I can't really change that my not-really-Jewish-looking account is the one associated with this idea. If someone likes this idea but still would rather have someone else try to implement it, I guess we'll cross that bridge if we get there in the response to this.

[arialerendeair]

You know, I really appreciate the reblogging spree going on with Dreamling Week because there are a lot of older posts that I’d never seen before because I joined the fandom late. I say “old” despite it being less than a year lol but you get what I mean. It’s nice to see what I had missed, that I might never have seen otherwise.

That's precisely why I'm doing it!

A whole bunch of people have never seen the origin posts that led to dozens of fic ideas, or memes that were old and relevant at the very start of fandom!

Dreamling is one of the first (and ONLY) times I was in a ship at the very fucking beginning, and I had the spoons to make sure I tagged everything - and now we're all enjoying the benefit of it!

I'm up to... I think November 26th in my reblog spree, and eventually, I'll catch all the way back up again, with everything queued for all of your viewing pleasure!

It was about 900 posts total, and removing some duplicates (though not all), my fic chapter posts (I'm planning a Fic Masterpost instead), I think it's about 700 or so Dreamling posts that are hitting my queue, and then another 150 or so from @softest-punk that I threw back into circulation!

If any authors or artists out there have a Dreamling Fic/Art Masterpost that they want me to reblog, send me a message on Tumblr and I'll get that set to reblog too! (I'll try to make sure those get reblogged to the Sadman Blog too - so everyone gets some visibility!)

If I have time (cries, so many things to do), I want to make a few rec posts as well, just haven't had a chance yet, it's on my list to potentially do this week!

Hope you are having an amazing week!!

[vergess]

Things in the staff post that tumblr users have spent years begging for, but somehow are now evil:

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

Explore the feasibility of removing duplicate reblogs within a user’s Following feed. 

Make it easier for users to follow the various conversation paths within a reblog thread. 

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.

Address the issue of notifications getting too noisy; throttle, collapse or mute notifications where necessary.  

provide APIs and services to unblock core product initiatives and launch new features coming out of Labs.

I cannot for my life figure out where people are getting all the apocalyptic nonsense.

Hell, half of these fucking complaints are looped back around to tumblr live, a service not even mentioned in the post.

And for FUCK'S SAKES.

THE CHRONOLOGICAL FEED IS SO IMPORTANT THAT OTHER FEEDS ARE BEING CHRONOLOGIZED, THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF THE FUCKING!!!!! TAKEAWAY!!!! THAT SO MANY PEOPLE HAVE?????

[aeide-thea]

my feelings abt the latest @​staff post, point by point:

their efforts to convert visitors into new users mostly don't affect our experience, although they do make our blogs less accessible to the public which like. i don't love on principle but ultimately can shrug off, bc really i'm here for my mutuals'/followers' reactions to the things i post, not for the consumption of strangers who don't provide any feedback?

the bit about wanting to make sure they're "presenting fresh and relevant content tailored to the user’s diverse interests during each session" is concerning to me, because (while the language there is so vague that it requires some interpretive guesswork, which of course might be wrong) i can't help thinking, does that mean that if they run out of content to serve me which was posted by users i actually follow, they'll start supplementing with content recommended by the "algorithmic ranking capabilities" they're looking to improve, like a bad netflix search? very yikes if so.

i actually do agree with them that "the current way that conversations work on Tumblr across replies and reblogs is confusing." the point about "[e]xplor[ing] the feasibility of removing duplicate reblogs within a user’s Following feed" does concern me a little, but i'm hoping they realize that reblogs of the same post with eg different tag commentary aren't in fact duplicates. and frankly the idea of reply sections that aren't just one giant undifferentiated bin, such that someone @​s you in the notes of a popular post and you then literally can't find their message because it's gotten buried, sounds potentially good to me!

the creator-related points seem—maybe okay, maybe less okay? like, "[g]et[ting] creators’ new content in front of people who are interested in it" seems potentially positive, depending on how they define 'interested'—i'm open to finding out what they mean by that. but if it's an algorithm thing you can't opt out of, which the comment about "the outdated decision to only show content from followed blogs on the main dashboard feed ('Following')" would rather seem to suggest… that definitely concerns me.

the bit about "patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr" is totally fine, imo. all they're actually talking about in that section is (1) push notifications and (2) emails, and (1) while i personally like getting notified when mutuals post, you can turn notifications off if you don't like that, and (2) emails can always be filtered on the receiving end, if nothing else. so that's ignorable.

ultimately i think like. i definitely get the sense that they're looking to move towards a more algorithmic approach, which does concern me, but i feel like whether that's bearable depends on (1) whether they let existing users, at least, opt out, and (2) how intrusive it is? like, i've periodically looked at the 'for you' tab on purpose! it's just that ime it isn't very good! but like, a 'for you' tab that was more successfully interesting to me, and still cordoned-off rather than integrated into the main feed necessarily, could be a positive, potentially. on the other hand, if they want to go full-twitter? that would probably be unlivable. so we'll see, i guess! trying not to borrow trouble too far in advance.

[discordhelp]

hello, tags! @discordhelp is back at it again with a long overdue gif pack server template! we apologize for the major delay in getting this out, but we hope this is still relevant and will be useful to the gif makers in our community. this template features a general regulation category, as well as categories based on gif pack size and alphabetized names. further explanation on these and the channels within them can be found under the cut! and of course, you can duplicate, add, and remove categories and channels to fit your server’s needs.

disclaimer: this server is heavily inspired by @bosvcr‘s gif pack directory tutorial, which we highly suggest you check out for a more detailed explanation on how to set one up yourself!

you can access the template here or in the source link, while features & usage suggestions are below the cut! please like or reblog this post if you plan on using the template. our inbox is always open if you have any questions or need help with anything we make.

ROLES: this template comes with two standard roles, admin and member. in order to best utilize the member role, we suggest using a bot that enables reaction roles, such as zira, carl bot, atlas, dyno, etc. all of these are considered moderator bots, allowing you to control your server however much you need to, whether that involves welcoming people into the server with a message that directs guests to your guidelines, setting a notification for whenever someone leaves your server, warning a member if a rule has been broken, banning a member from certain activity with an optional time limit, and so much more. definitely play around with these bots to get a feel for them and see which one you think fits your server best!

SERVER LAYOUT & PERMISSIONS: before continuing onto the actual layout, i wanted to go over the preset permissions i’ve built into the server. you will notice a small lock (🔒) in the righthand corner of most hashtags / channels within each category. these are private channels that can only be seen by admins and members ( apart from admin corner, which can only be seen by admins, and welcome & guidelines, which can be seen by everyone ). if you choose to opt out of using one of the moderator bots listed above, you can easily assign everyone who joins your server the member role once they’ve read and reacted to your server guidelines. of course, this means you have to track each reaction, whereas a bot automatically does that for you, but if you don’t mind that amount of control, then it’s totally doable! having these private channels grants you permission to manage your server more easily, creating a safer space for you content!

now onto the layout —

admin corner: a place for you to test announcement layouts, but also a place you can house tumblr asks with this very useful webhook. this is also somewhere you can send yourself a notification for whenever someone leaves your server.

welcome: a channel where guests arrive in! if you’re using a moderator bot, you can use this channel to send welcome messages and redirect guests to your guidelines.

READ BEFORE CONTINUING

guidelines: here you can post your server rules, which can include how to request / suggest gif packs, how / where to commission ( if this is something you do! ), and other rules that may apply.

announcements: you can use this space for announcement posts, whether you’re informing your members of an upcoming hiatus or letting them know when a new gif pack will be released. use this however you see fit!

commissions: this channel is a place for rules and steps on how to commission upcoming packs! if you already have a commission page on your main blog, you can just copy and paste that info into here.

requests: this can be renamed to suggestions, but i imagine this channel to be utilized by your members, in which they can send suggestions of potential faceclaims to be giffed. you can place a rule stating suggestions are open only when you ask for them or the rule can state that members can suggest a faceclaim once a week — but really, however you feel this channel is best manageable is up to you!

to-do: you can split your to-do list up between commissions and side projects, but ultimately this is just meant for members to peep on what you’re working on / getting ready to work on next!

askbox: this channel is for members who may have questions that might not be already answered in your guidelines or anywhere else in the server. if you think it’s necessary, i suggest you add a bot that enables anonymous messages, such as confessions bot, confessions, or voltaire.

directory: this channel is definitely optional, but if you wanted to be extra organized, this is a space where you can post a server directory! if you’re familiar with discord, you know there’s an option to link back to a specific channel by typing # and the channel name. that is just the first step to creating a potential directory, but however you want to set it up is to your discretion!

BY GIF PACK SIZE: i’m not a gif maker myself, and so i’m not sure if this is even a valuable addition to this server, but i figured it wouldn’t hurt to throw this option in here. under this category, you can link your gif packs by size! whether you want to alphabetize these gif packs / faceclaims within each respective channel is up to you, but i also understand if you want to opt out of this category altogether.

ALPHABETICAL ORDER: now onto what your members will be waiting for! i have split up these categories so that there are three letters each ( i.e. A-C, used for faceclaims starting with A-C ), keeping in mind that categories are only allowed 50 channels before hitting channel limit. so if you’re someone who gifs a lot, i would suggest splitting these categories up by one letter each, just in case you don’t hit that limit. otherwise, the world is your oyster when it comes to organizing and posting your gif packs!

again, feel free to play around with this layout, and pick and choose what works for you and what doesn’t! i hope this is a good starting ground for creators who are looking into using discord as a housing platform, so please let us know if this has been any help to you! and happy content creating!

[ibroughtthisonmyselfpixels]

Post-Final Poll Facts and Statistics SoS

I figured there was no point in doing my usual thing where I give stats on the polls’ progress at the halfway point and then again after the last, since there were only going to be five polls in the whole process due to the nature of the project. So I decided to just save this all up for one big shot here - not as indepth as it could be or right before the killer reveal for a change, because it’s not a full MMBC and we still have a Lorelei elimination to go, but it should be enough to sate me. I hope this doesn’t bother you.

(Note: as with all previous instances, I have removed the shading of the murderer as red so as not to give their identity away before the true finale.)  

In total, there have been 148 votes across five polls - 41, 31, 28, 19, 29. This averages out at 29.6 votes per poll. Limerence’s voting average was 20.1, while Chambers’ was 13.8.

I theorize the increased voting average is due to a mix of there being, again, fewer polls overall, and all of those polls being open for one week, rather than two-to-four days / until the next play-day as in previous incarnations. I will say that the last poll got two reblogs per day as opposed to my usual one, which led to more votes for it; that may become my standard practice for polls from now on.

The most votes I received in any poll for this project is 41 for the very first, excluding an anonymous comment-vote used to break a tie. More people were on the site back then, you see. The mode is the last poll, which has almost exactly the voting average of votes.

Cornelia received the most votes of the dead prior to her death, with 30 votes, or 20.3% - before her corresponding poll, she had 30%. Of the Sims who are still alive, Percy has the most with 54, or 36.5%.

Percy’s also the one who’s received the most votes in an individual poll, gaining seventeen votes during the Lilith poll (58.6% of that poll). The second most has been a count of thirteen votes for Cornelia in the Catherine poll (41.9%).

Percy and Cornelia tie at the most accused, twice each. Catherine has only been accused once.

Percy’s been the most suspected too, three times before her outright accusation. She is the only one still alive to never be unsuspected.

On account of the format of the project, no one who has been eligible for voting - so excluding Lorelei’s contestants and Scott - has zero votes in their final total, or ever received zero votes in any poll at any point; ergo no one has gone completely without suspicion. However, the Sim with the fewest votes of the dead is Katya, with 5 votes (6.9% pre-death / 3.4% overall), and the least-voted who is still alive is Felicity, with 28 / 18.9%.

Felicity has been most frequently unsuspected, thrice. She is the only one still alive to never be accused.

In fairness, though, Lilith and Katya had never been accused either, at two and one unsuspected boosts each respectively... although Lilith did tie with Percy and Catherine in the first poll so could’ve theoretically been if it had come to a commentless tiebreak.

Again, by way of format, all of Lyra’s side has been immune at least once. But in terms of individual “sole” immunities, Percy garnered the most before that aspect was shut down in Episode 18, with two. Toby got the most on Lorelei’s side, with two.

If we count group immunities as one each and bonus interactions as .5 of an immunity, Percy got the most (again, prior to Episode 20) with 7 (group, none, none, automatic group, sole, bonus + group, bonus + group, sole, none), while Eden Lee got 7 on Lorelei’s end (none, bonus + group, group, none, group, none, sole, bonus + automatic group, group).

Toby deserves honorable mention for the latter, though: his immunity pattern was similar to Percy’s before he died - none, group, group, sole, bonus + group, sole, none.

By sheer coincidence - and it’s VERY important to be clear that it’s by sheer coincidence - Toby was third in the challenge ordering / positioning lists for Episodes 8, 10 and 12. He was also fifth in the same for Episodes 2 and 4, but the latter didn’t make that clear cus he and Kira somehow managed to swap places. Episode 6 was just a large group shuffle from one end of the room to the other that was separated into two groups in the same order retroactively for poll-order purposes, and Toby ended up in fifth place on that truncated list too.

Incidentally, he was second on the ordering in Episode 14; I think the breaking of the two patterns is what led to his downfall IMO. /TEASING

The most common traits for contestants across both sectors, at project’s beginning, were Friendly and Perfectionist at four apiece. Lyra had three of each, so they were most common for her side too. Catherine was the first lost Friendly Sim, and Lilith the most recent; Katya, the first lost Perfectionist, and Cornelia the most recent. I won’t say ‘last’ because we still have the potential - ignoring that I’ve played ahead - to lose Eden Lee, a Friendly, or Lavandar, a Perfectionist. (As part of a final two, Percy is locked in.)

In fact, Scott and Felicity are the only two Sims on Lyra’s side without Friendly, Perfectionist, or both.

Lorelei’s side’s repeated traits (for none have been used more than twice for her) were Absent-Minded, Animal Lover, Flirty, Light Sleeper, and Over-Emotional; both Light Sleepers, a Flirt and an Absent-Minded Sim have been lost. Lavandar is the last Absent-Minded; Kira, the last Flirty; but at least one Animal Lover and at least one Over-Emotional Sim is guaranteed to make it into Lorelei’s final two.

We also began with four deaf Sims in total - Cornelia, Eden Lee, Lilith, Scott. Of them, only Eden Lee remains; Scott was the first deaf person lost. Depression ties with deafness as the most prominent disability among the core cast (Katya, Catherine, Percy and Eden Lee, who overlaps between the two); they go ahead of autism and pre-project PTSD.

Irritatingly, I had to duplicate a ghost coloring between Catherine and Lilith - the nature of the murder, the people around it and the people potentially doing it meant that I had to make it ‘quick and dirty’, meaning I couldn’t kill zer any other way; hence, like Chambers, we have two starvation ghosts. Otherwise, all deaths and ghosts are unique within the project.

Scott shares a ghost color with Sunflower and June; Catherine and Lilith, to Emmy, Gregory, Harrison and Nora; Katya, to Alexis; Toby, to Dub and Cinnamon; Cornelia, to Poppy. Fire and electrocution have not been used.

Lilith died with a higher relationship to Lyra than Virgo did to Amelia when he died, at 42.69 points; ze’s the only Sim in my MMBC roster to die friends with their bacheloret.

In terms of high relationships in general, Lyra has been less volatile than Lorelei. From 2 to 7, then 11 to 19, Felicity has remained at the top of Lyra’s leaderboard fairly consistently, only giving over to Katya for a few episodes before she died. Lorelei’s closest contestant has bounced between four Sims over the project. Ginerva was closest to her for the shortest amount of time, only one episode; Eden Lee lasted the longest closest at eight episodes; but Lavandar is the closest to her right now.

We’ll see, of course, how long this lasts.

[aurelianatlas]

| Rules |

A simple referential for potential members to read over for understand any restrictions we may have. For now the list is kept relatively short and changes could later be made, all adjustment updates will be listed in the Discord Server for existing members.

| Essentially we’re pretty easy going,  but it’s good to get down in an easy to understand guideline. 

There is no inclusion or emphasis on rules about god-modding and meta-gaming, those are very general restrictions within the roleplay community and are rarely accepted.  ____________________________   F A Q ________________________________________

- — Exclusiveness and Interaction — -

‣ This group is not [ EXCLUSIVE ]  Though We do establish that everyone in the group is included in each other’s ‘Main’ Verses.

‣ Sideblogs are A-ok! and you can apply for multiple roles if you can maintain them. You do not have to have a blog prior to joining, if accepted by a Moderator you can make the character blog after the fact. :>

‣ Interactions outside of the group are not restricted, you are free to establish threads from multi-verses, AU’s, Essentially whatever the hell you’d like. However we do maintain a “main” verse when referencing one another.             ‧ Every person’s comfort with interaction outside of the group varies.           ‧ Please make sure to read everyone’s individuals rules for permissions on this.

‣Duplicates are welcome to interact ! So long as you’re friendly. No one likes competitions in this. However we will not be accepting Duplicates of a Character into our Group. Feel free to bother with us though! :> ‣OCs are welcome to apply as well. Whether Pre-Established as a Golden Kamuy or or simply an OC with a Verse for GK. If you’d like to be included you can still apply and we can review adding you to the character hub.

- — Personal Blogs — -

‣ Personals are allowed to follow and send questions to the group blog as well as any of the accounts that list in their rules that they are comfortable with personals following.

‣Please do not reblog threads. Art we’re cool with but Threads, no pls. 

- — Activity — -

‣ No quota for activity to stay within the group.           ‧ However, without a  pre-discussed notice for a hiatus, blogs will be dropped from the group after 2 months of  radio silence if you’re holding a canon role.

‣Mods are active in PST timezones. {Usually after 9 PM.}

- — Mature Content Warning — -

‣ Minors prohibited from joining the group. A majority of the content traverses content not suitable for those under 18. 

‣ A majority of the source content includes a lot of violent and NSFW themes. They should be tagged accordingly.           ‧ We recognize that the source material contains some social issues, do not assume that these are things we condone-- anything uncomfortable will be cleverly evaded or tagged. 

- — Grounds for Instant Removal — -

‣ Consistent passive aggressive and negative OOC posts.

‣ Involvement in OOC drama + excessive amounts of callouts.            ‧ Issues with other members should be redirected to the mods-- we opt for solutions here.

‣ Any discriminatory or hateful speech grounded in poor taste. And lastly a big warning:

- ———  WE ARE NOT SPOILER FREE ——— -

[makingscipub]

Poo and puns: Recent representations of faecal microbiota transplants in English language news media

This post, by Carmen McLeod, Brigitte Nerlich and Rusi Jaspal, has recently been published on the Microbiology Society Blog. We reblog it here with permission.

***

Bacteria, germs, poo…these are words that normally don’t evoke images of health and happiness. The relationship between humans and bacteria is often understood as a combative one. Bacteria are an enemy that must be fought and we have been fighting them for many years. We have been fighting them in the toilets, we have been fighting them in the kitchens and we have been fighting them in hospitals. All the while bacteria have been mounting a resistance to the weaponry – such as antibiotics – we use to fight them. And so, the fight goes on.

This is still a dominant picture of bacteria. But things are changing. Bacteria have had an image make-over since the advent of probiotics and ‘good bacteria’. This more positive view has grown alongside the development of the new research field of microbiomics, which studies all the microorganisms of a given community (a ‘microbiota’) together. But of course, there are still ‘bad bacteria’ around. One of them is Clostridium difficile (or C. diff for short). This bacterium can infect the bowel and lead to serious diarrhoea. It especially affects people (mainly the elderly) who have been treated with antibiotics in hospital settings.

Here is where ‘poo’ comes in, or rather faecal microbiota transplants (FMT). This is the process of transferring stool from a healthy donor, who has a healthy gut microbiome containing good bacteria, to a recipient with a dysfunctional intestinal flora (containing bad bacteria), in order to repopulate their gut microbiome.

FMT has been used in one form or another for a long time, but has only recently made its appearance in official health care settings, especially in the treatment of otherwise intractable cases of C. diff.

Clinicians and scientists are starting to talk about FMT to journalists; journalists and science writers are picking up these stories and patients too are relating their experiences to the media. For our research, we wanted to find out more about this, get a feeling for what conversations people are having about FMT and whether this is changing the ways in which we understand the relationship between humans and bacteria.

To do this, we investigated how English-language newspapers represented FMT between 2003, when the phrase first appeared in English-language news, and 2017. From what we can ascertain, both science and the media began to follow the FMT story more closely from 2013 onwards.

In order to generate a data set of news articles on FMT, we searched for ‘fa(e)cal microbial’, ‘microbiota transplant’ and ‘stool transplant’ on the Nexis® UK news database. ‘Fa(e)cal transplant’ generated an amount suitable for qualitative analysis: 1609 articles – 1547 with duplicates removed. We then focused on ‘newspapers only’, which meant excluding trade publications, websites, magazines etc. This left 612 articles and after duplicates were removed, the remaining overall data consisted of 504 articles [December 24, 2017 search].

We studied these articles using qualitative thematic analysis, paying particular attention to certain forms of language; namely puns, wordplay, metaphor and argument structure, salient topics and events, key actors, and emerging patterns within the data, which clustered especially around the three aspects of FMT: faeces, bacteria/microbes and transplants/donation. We also examined broader themes associated with health and the gut microbiome, in order to uncover emerging social representations.

Our findings show that print media focused in particular on creating novel, mainly hopeful, social representations of faeces through wordplay and punning, side-lining issues of risk and fear. There was, of course, also hype, and future research should pay attention to evolving ‘GutHype’. In our media sample we saw controversy emerging around FMT and obesity. For example, one headline proclaimed “Bowel hope turns to crap” (Sydney MX, Australia, 06/02/2015). Autism featured as one of many hyped-up diseases that FMT is supposed to cure. One article asked “Are gut microbes really a panacea, or just overhyped?” (The Guardian, 2017), and another, in The Globe and Mail, talked about “Poo and woo woo” in a “post-truth” world.

The ‘gut reaction’ to the process of FMT is likely to be one of disgust. Throughout our corpus, this gut reaction was highlighted but also counteracted through various rhetorical strategies, namely punning, strategic use of numbers/science, contrastive storytelling, and the use of ‘but’. For example, a seminal 2013 study on FMT which triggered media attention was reported in Scientific American under the title “The S••t hits the fan!!”. The work of an FMT pioneer Australian doctor, Thomas Borody, attracted a lot of attention and reporters pointed out that his scientific papers include “such titles as Flora Power and Toying with Human Motions. But he is also deadly serious”. Another example of what we call the ‘but strategy’ is the: “The procedure is, of course, messy and odoriferous, but it’s also simplicity itself.”

We also identified changing metaphorical framings of microbes and bacteria from ‘enemies’ to ‘friends’ (“microbial miracle workers”). Additionally, readers are familiarised with FMT through the depiction of the process as being both mundane (“you can now liquidise your partner’s poo in a blender and insert it into your body at home”) and highly medicalised (“pills you pop in the mouth and swallow”).

We argue that emerging media representations have the potential to background the yuck factor and shape more positive social representations of FMT, paving the way for FMT to become a more socially acceptable procedure. Future research can build on this baseline study in order to study how social representations circulate in the wider media and public sphere, online as well as offline, and how they may change over time and differ between countries, as research into FMT progresses.

Further Reading:

Hodgetts T, Grenyer R, Greenhough B, McLeod C, Dwyer A et al. The Microbiome and its Publics. EMBO Reports 2018;19:e45786. McLeod C, Nerlich B, Jaspal R. Fecal microbiota transplants: Emerging social representations in the English-language print media. New Genetics and Society 2019; 38/3, 331-351.Nerlich B, Koteyko N. Balancing food risks and food benefits: the coverage of probiotics in the UK national press. Sociological research online 2008;13:1–14.

Dr McLeod presented her data at the Microbiology Society Focused Meeting Anaerobe 2019: Changing perceptions of anaerobic bacteria; from pathogen to the normal microbiota and back

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