#that interface tho

[disease]

omg... this app is the cutest thing i've ever seen

Poolsuite.FM: "the super-summer music player"

[nights-at-crystarium]

As a twitter/tumblr user since 2010-2011, I believe I have sufficient grounds to say that currently we as a community are living through the scariest, shittiest time yet. This post isn’t trying to fearmonger, no I’m not leaving tumblr until it literally keels over, but I suggest that we don’t put all our eggs in one basket.

If twitter/tumblr stay usable, great! In the worse scenario, you’d have kept posting on a new platform and stayed ahead of the curve.

This post shares my personal experience with three potential “new”* fandom places, and is aimed to help fellow content creators. I’m an artist fully depending on internet to survive, my reasoning may not apply to you if you’re a hobbyist. Do your own research, it’s always healthy. * Pillowfort and mastodon have been around for 5+ years, bluesky is ~2 years old.

Discovering new people to follow kinda sucks on all three platforms, twitter and tumblr are eons ahead, but, given the recent chaos and uncertainty, I’m willing to be patient, keep posting on those, and feel safer than I would’ve otherwise been. More baskets good, one basket bad.

All three have poor visual customization, don’t expect custom tumblr themes.

This list starts with the least popular, but most human and easy to join, and what I personally trust the most. All three allow nsfw if labeled properly.

✦ Pillowfort is a barebones tumblr. Intuitive, cozy, but currently very, very small. Be patient with its clunkiness or lack of some features, it’s made by an AO3-like team. I’d personally love if the fandom crowd managed to redirect its attention to it instead of the sus bluesky.

Joining: is free, invite-only, but the waitlist is nearly instant.

Lurk around on their official tumblr: @/pillowfort-social

✦ Mastodon, for me personally, is impossible to explain directly. I’ll use several comparisons.

- Discord but all servers can interact. You’re still on a server curated by some human(s) that might tell you what you can and can’t post, BUT, if you don’t like that server’s policy, you can move to a new one while keeping your followers. - Email, users A and B may be registered on different domains, still they can talk. It’s a weird comparison, but fediverse (please I’m not explaining THAT but it’s a good thing) in general looks like another email story: unlike big sites that come and go, it might stand the test of time. - Someone compared mastodon’s structure to xiv’s dc and servers, if you look at its domain names that way, it might be easier to understand.

Depending on user, mastodon may feel gatekeepy/snowflakey. I haven’t spent enough time on there to form a proper opinion yet, but a warning’s due.

An actually good and hopeful thing about mastodon AND tumblr: the two might start interacting in future. Ever lamented that your fav asian artists don’t use tumblr? If they use misskey, or any other place on the fediverse, it might be possible to follow them directly from tumblr in future, and vice versa.

Joining: is free, however some servers close for new members sometimes, and have human moderators reviewing your request.

✦ Bluesky is a twitter without Musk: today’s average internet user reads this, drops everything and already looks to register there. It’s still sus, but people flock to it like crazy. Most likely to become the next big fandom place in my eyes, even if I’m not happy about that.

I personally have no good feelings about bluesky. Same as twitter, which I hated even before the 2018 tumblr exodus, yet the crowd decided to make it The New Fandom Place, and, grudgingly, I had to give up and also join them in 2022. During the year I haven’t stopped despising twitter, yet, I can’t deny that it helped me survive. I estimate half of my patrons, and, hell, even tumblr audience, comes from twitter. So, if bluesky ends up being the next hot shit, I’ll have to keep up because internet pays for my living.

Joining: is free but hell, invite-only, the waitlist is a lie, your best chance to join is a direct invite.

This’s all I’ve got to say for now. If you have a correction or an addition, replies/reblogs are welcome!

Screenshots of the current interfaces under the cut, you may spy on my profiles o/

Pillowfort

Mastodon.art

Bluesky

[getbreaded]

Working on a low fidelity prototype for my Human-Computer Interaction class and it's the silliest I've ever felt during this degree.

I've also cleaned my room, had some ice cream and I plan on studying for a test I have next week. Busy busy 🐝

Hope everyone is doing well!

[quarterprioritymidnight]

also i redid the patches on my bbx jacket btw if you even care

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

For anyone annoyed by the Tumblr changes, if you're on desktop I would recommend using XKit Rewritten (and New XKit for any other odd changes you'd like to try out, including even older aspects of Tumblr). It's the older version of Rewritten but most of the extensions on it are still supported/do work). I can't guarantee they'll definitely make a fix for it/a direct fix for this particular UI change, but it's possible that they might since they usually make extensions that allow you to essentially revert changes made to the UI. Other various UI extensions (such as old ones from Tumblr's past UIs that the extensions basically just revert you to) may also help fix up your UI.

As you might expect these extensions need to be on to work/revert the appearance of the UI (so if you turn them off you'll revert to the current state of Tumblr), but while they are on you can curate your UI to look how you want it. This goes for both New XKit and XKit Rewritten. I use both and I couldn't live without them lol. You can get some big oldies of Tumblr's, like classic search on Rewritten or the Tweaks extension (full of various UI tweaks) on New XKit (including the old shade of blue Tumblr used a long time ago that I never stopped using!).

Unfortunately I don't know of any solution for mobile if it affects mobile at any point (or if it already has), but whenever you're on desktop, I would definitely recommend both these versions of XKit. I have so many extensions from them that I often don't even realize when there are UI changes (remember how Tumblr added themes for your dashboard? I didn't even notice for the longest time because I've had New XKit on the whole time) because Tumblr's default coding is overwritten by the extensions I have on.

[zvaigzdelasas]

Geopolitics app is starting to come along pretty nicely - working on standardizing the interface of each widget & preparing it so you can easily customize where the data comes from & what widgets are shown...so like a customizable (& resizeable/rearrangeable) dashboard for whatever specific purpose you want

[realmforged]

how long has it been......? what if i made a return? after many moons

[hobbitunderthemountain]

does anyone here still use the nano website

if u do pls add me I like having friends over there

https://nanowrimo.org/participants/ladypendragons

[wtfcl0ud]

WHERE IS MR BEAR WHERE IS MR BEAR SCREAMING CRYING THROWING UP BANGING MY HEAD ON A WALL WHERE IS MR BEAR

[silverhorse123]

[striving-artist]

Tumblr users are less okay with change than I, a woman who once had a break down in the grocery store and had to leave without buying anything because they flipped the contents of a couple aisles, am.

[hamartia-grander]

Mutuals I got my sister's old phone to replace my old ass shit phone but her phone ended up being worse than mine anyways bc we all have handmedowns so I had to switch back to my old shit phone, all this to say that I am missing messages from people/there are discrepancies in the data transferred so if I missed something just lemme know <3

Oh also I have WhatsApp now so if mutuals (only) want my number lemme know that too

[sevicia]

I wanted to make a cleaner summary of last week's classes and also review the classes I have this week since the material is already uploaded beforehand but I was feeling so horrible throughout the day that when I sat down I was just gonna look at the ones for tomorrow but I think I'm just gonna go to bed because I just gave my little numbers game a few tries and not even the joy of tribial elementary school-level math games is bringing my brain cells and/or full sentience back

[glassamphibians]

pro: got approved for an arc im really excited about

con: the only way i can read it is on computer which is my least favorite way of doing anything ever

[ontologicalmoki]

Made a payment through my bank last night and immediately got a notification that just said “we’ve canceled your secure payment.”

i could not figure out why! It didn’t say! (Also it was 12:50 at night and I had wine and my bedtime is 9:30) and there’s a little “reply” button on the message so I hit it. I don’t really know what portal this reply button goes through.

anyway all I wrote in the box was “why?”

my roommate said “wait like that’s all you wrote?”

“what else would I write?”

“I don’t know, an address?”

“it’s an automated system! I don’t know who I’m addressing! It just pops up a little text box”

she was probably right.

anyway I got an email from my bank this morning.

“Hello, [Moki].

We appreciate the time you took to send this message.”

[5 paragraphs of information and a formal email signature]

anyway I got roasted for my lack of email etiquette by my banker.

[thirdsonofeve]

I still think it's funny that I got to introduce my irl friend to ao3 bc she got mad that the nun in the conjuring series didn't get laid like that's literally why ao3 exicts