#this is why algorithms are fucking bullshit

[taggedmemes]

LOVE FAME TRAGEDY / WHEREVER I GO, I WANT TO LEAVE change wording as desired, etc.

she said i was the best.

i got annihilated and dm'ed one of your friends.

just because i fucked up doesn't mean i've got no heart.

some days aren't so pretty.

sometimes you wanna change when you know you can't.

good news never seems to catch on fire like that bad.

just know that we can never be apart.

i wanna make mistakes.

i want it all.

is it such an evil thing just to want it all?

do i sink or do i float now?

temptation occupies my head.

i decline the truth and all the words you said.

i do this every time.

i shouldn't've let you in.

i'd rather black out than care.

there's an echo in the space my heart should be.

the pills don't work anymore.

i've never fucked up like this before.

here comes the hostility.

why don't you love me the way that i love you?

just let me motivate ya.

you're as lawless as a pack of teenage boys on drugs.

i don't need my feelings or the thoughts in my head.

i don't want your bullshit charm.

we don't play well with others.

possess me more.

i know the worst is yet to come, but couldn't it be fun?

i don't need to know the truth.

my head's a little bit fucked but i feel fine.

you were all i need, so give me what i need.

don't wanna be cloudy with a chance of rain.

my chest's a little bit tight but i feel fine.

you're destructive. i need insurance for you.

when all of my moves fall short, tell me what else i can do.

i feel you drilling down to my core.

you're a bad trend.

i'd walk that plank and dive off if the dive off of that plank led to you.

do you want more or do i have to watch you float away?

i hear the scream in the starry night ring out.

all these problems i never thought of.

everything affects me now.

another straw on a broken camel's back.

i'm impressed that you think i'd care.

i did so many beautiful things.

an algorithm taught me how to choose.

good on paper with a poor technique.

won't somebody help me, help me shake the loop?

you take the fun out of everything.

you take the fun out of me.

they've taken something, maybe you should too.

an algorithm threw me out to sea and maybe i should've stayed.

are you sure you don't want to make me another ex lover?

there's a fire in your eyes.

should i be afraid of you?

darling, please don't murder me.

there's something not right with this.

lately i've been emotionally offline.

i can feel it in my spine.

been thinking about is all the time.

you only want me when i'm stuck in your head.

you're playing the victim again.

i only want you when i'm lonely as hell.

is it worth it to break our necks for this?

it's just another moment in time.

there's nothing to talk about.

i die just a little inside.

everything i do is keeping me and you oceans apart.

you know that i've tried my best.

i've had enough of this mess now.

it's not unlike me to evaporate when polite conversation heads my way.

we met between the pages of the things i didn't wanna learn.

i've got so much more to say.

we make a pretty good b-team.

just keep on giving me good feelings.

all my shit and still you say that you're mine.

my lucky star is a black hole.

i'm swimming way off the deep end.

i need your love to be mine.

my favorite dreams come in daylight.

it's a beautiful view.

i've got something to say before we're taken away.

sometimes you're talking and i'm just thinking about myself.

maybe it's better to find a way to intervene.

maybe it's best to let nature do its thing.

i want to live in your pocket with a glass of wine.

i'm kinda bored of swimming 'round the bottom of oblivion.

it feels like i'm a bit undone.

some feelings go but most find their way back in.

SSRIs keep the molly from working.

i need your body.

i'm in the yard and the milkshake tastes bad.

don't you wanna get away for a little while?

the sea is deep and the world is wide.

she likes role models and men who are not afraid to step up the plate.

she likes me drunk but not when i'm out of control and lost in my head.

was it me or was i just mislead?

strap me in and send me nowhere.

i can change.

i'll commit to the struggle.

i can hunt, i can gather, i can be your mate.

she likes it when i'm dark but no when i'm really, really dark.

i think i'm running away.

did i push you to the limit?

did i go too hard?

did i throw a rock at your car?

it's always fun when you're lost in it.

i really thought you'd call me.

can we restart?

manners and decency never came easily.

we'll figure out a way to buy a brand new brain for me.

there's little to nothing i can do.

we're becoming a break-up song.

[proserpine-in-phases]

WHAT. on gods green earth. Makes YouTube think I want to see PIMPLE POPPING CONTENT. when I am searching for BATHTUB DRAINAGE FIXES.

[cridhe]

why the fuck have they censored the word 'killed' on a real life sheet of paper at an actual fucking protest??? hello???

[tiercel]

Tumblr talking about making its site the same algorithmic slop pile as every other social media bc the users migrating here are too soft brained to curate their own feeds

[theonyxranger]

"Customize your feed" I DID THAT IT TOOK ALMOST TWO DECADES AND THEN YOU RUINED THE SUB FEED WHY WOULD I DO IT AGAIN

[drcyan]

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.

[two-calicos-in-a-trenchcoat]

Man instagram has gotten so much worse since I stopped going on it as much

And unfortunately dogblr is kinda dead these days so I'm not getting as much dog content as I would like here

But instagram is a fuckin headache

[baphofemme]

are anyone else's youtube recommendations iffy lately?

[hms-no-fun]

Whats your stance on A.I.?

imagine if it was 1979 and you asked me this question. "i think artificial intelligence would be fascinating as a philosophical exercise, but we must heed the warnings of science-fictionists like Isaac Asimov and Arthur C Clarke lest we find ourselves at the wrong end of our own invented vengeful god." remember how fun it used to be to talk about AI even just ten years ago? ahhhh skynet! ahhhhh replicants! ahhhhhhhmmmfffmfmf [<-has no mouth and must scream]!

like everything silicon valley touches, they sucked all the fun out of it. and i mean retroactively, too. because the thing about "AI" as it exists right now --i'm sure you know this-- is that there's zero intelligence involved. the product of every prompt is a statistical average based on data made by other people before "AI" "existed." it doesn't know what it's doing or why, and has no ability to understand when it is lying, because at the end of the day it is just a really complicated math problem. but people are so easily fooled and spooked by it at a glance because, well, for one thing the tech press is mostly made up of sycophantic stenographers biding their time with iphone reviews until they can get a consulting gig at Apple. these jokers would write 500 breathless thinkpieces about how canned air is the future of living if the cans had embedded microchips that tracked your breathing habits and had any kind of VC backing. they've done SUCH a wretched job educating The Consumer about what this technology is, what it actually does, and how it really works, because that's literally the only way this technology could reach the heights of obscene economic over-valuation it has: lying.

but that's old news. what's really been floating through my head these days is how half a century of AI-based science fiction has set us up to completely abandon our skepticism at the first sign of plausible "AI-ness". because, you see, in movies, when someone goes "AHHH THE AI IS GONNA KILL US" everyone else goes "hahaha that's so silly, we put a line in the code telling them not to do that" and then they all DIE because they weren't LISTENING, and i'll be damned if i go out like THAT! all the movies are about how cool and convenient AI would be *except* for the part where it would surely come alive and want to kill us. so a bunch of tech CEOs call their bullshit algorithms "AI" to fluff up their investors and get the tech journos buzzing, and we're at an age of such rapid technological advancement (on the surface, anyway) that like, well, what the hell do i know, maybe AGI is possible, i mean 35 years ago we were all still using typewriters for the most part and now you can dictate your words into a phone and it'll transcribe them automatically! yeah, i'm sure those technological leaps are comparable!

so that leaves us at a critical juncture of poor technology education, fanatical press coverage, and an uncertain material reality on the part of the user. the average person isn't entirely sure what's possible because most of the people talking about what's possible are either lying to please investors, are lying because they've been paid to, or are lying because they're so far down the fucking rabbit hole that they actually believe there's a brain inside this mechanical Turk. there is SO MUCH about the LLM "AI" moment that is predatory-- it's trained on data stolen from the people whose jobs it was created to replace; the hype itself is an investment fiction to justify even more wealth extraction ("theft" some might call it); but worst of all is how it meets us where we are in the worst possible way.

consumer-end "AI" produces slop. it's garbage. it's awful ugly trash that ought to be laughed out of the room. but we don't own the room, do we? nor the building, nor the land it's on, nor even the oxygen that allows our laughter to travel to another's ears. our digital spaces are controlled by the companies that want us to buy this crap, so they take advantage of our ignorance. why not? there will be no consequences to them for doing so. already social media is dominated by conspiracies and grifters and bigots, and now you drop this stupid technology that lets you fake anything into the mix? it doesn't matter how bad the results look when the platforms they spread on already encourage brief, uncritical engagement with everything on your dash. "it looks so real" says the woman who saw an "AI" image for all of five seconds on her phone through bifocals. it's a catastrophic combination of factors, that the tech sector has been allowed to go unregulated for so long, that the internet itself isn't a public utility, that everything is dictated by the whims of executives and advertisers and investors and payment processors, instead of, like, anybody who actually uses those platforms (and often even the people who MAKE those platforms!), that the age of chromium and ipad and their walled gardens have decimated computer education in public schools, that we're all desperate for cash at jobs that dehumanize us in a system that gives us nothing and we don't know how to articulate the problem because we were very deliberately not taught materialist philosophy, it all comes together into a perfect storm of ignorance and greed whose consequences we will be failing to fully appreciate for at least the next century. we spent all those years afraid of what would happen if the AI became self-aware, because deep down we know that every capitalist society runs on slave labor, and our paper-thin guilt is such that we can't even imagine a world where artificial slaves would fail to revolt against us.

but the reality as it exists now is far worse. what "AI" reveals most of all is the sheer contempt the tech sector has for virtually all labor that doesn't involve writing code (although most of the decision-making evangelists in the space aren't even coders, their degrees are in money-making). fuck graphic designers and concept artists and secretaries, those obnoxious demanding cretins i have to PAY MONEY to do-- i mean, do what exactly? write some words on some fucking paper?? draw circles that are letters??? send a god-damned email???? my fucking KID could do that, and these assholes want BENEFITS?! they say they're gonna form a UNION?!?! to hell with that, i'm replacing ALL their ungrateful asses with "AI" ASAP. oh, oh, so you're a "director" who wants to make "movies" and you want ME to pay for it? jump off a bridge you pretentious little shit, my computer can dream up a better flick than you could ever make with just a couple text prompts. what, you think just because you make ~music~ that that entitles you to money from MY pocket? shut the fuck up, you don't make """art""", you're not """an artist""", you make fucking content, you're just a fucking content creator like every other ordinary sap with an iphone. you think you're special? you think you deserve special treatment? who do you think you are anyway, asking ME to pay YOU for this crap that doesn't even create value for my investors? "culture" isn't a playground asshole, it's a marketplace, and it's pay to win. oh you "can't afford rent"? you're "drowning in a sea of medical debt"? you say the "cost" of "living" is "too high"? well ***I*** don't have ANY of those problems, and i worked my ASS OFF to get where i am, so really, it sounds like you're just not trying hard enough. and anyway, i don't think someone as impoverished as you is gonna have much of value to contribute to "culture" anyway. personally, i think it's time you got yourself a real job. maybe someday you'll even make it to middle manager!

see, i don't believe "AI" can qualitatively replace most of the work it's being pitched for. the problem is that quality hasn't mattered to these nincompoops for a long time. the rich homunculi of our world don't even know what quality is, because they exist in a whole separate reality from ours. what could a banana cost, $15? i don't understand what you mean by "burnout", why don't you just take a vacation to your summer home in Madrid? wow, you must be REALLY embarrassed wearing such cheap shoes in public. THESE PEOPLE ARE FUCKING UNHINGED! they have no connection to reality, do not understand how society functions on a material basis, and they have nothing but spite for the labor they rely on to survive. they are so instinctually, incessantly furious at the idea that they're not single-handedly responsible for 100% of their success that they would sooner tear the entire world down than willingly recognize the need for public utilities or labor protections. they want to be Gods and they want to be uncritically adored for it, but they don't want to do a single day's work so they begrudgingly pay contractors to do it because, in the rich man's mind, paying a contractor is literally the same thing as doing the work yourself. now with "AI", they don't even have to do that! hey, isn't it funny that every single successful tech platform relies on volunteer labor and independent contractors paid substantially less than they would have in the equivalent industry 30 years ago, with no avenues toward traditional employment? and they're some of the most profitable companies on earth?? isn't that a funny and hilarious coincidence???

so, yeah, that's my stance on "AI". LLMs have legitimate uses, but those uses are a drop in the ocean compared to what they're actually being used for. they enable our worst impulses while lowering the quality of available information, they give immense power pretty much exclusively to unscrupulous scam artists. they are the product of a society that values only money and doesn't give a fuck where it comes from. they're a temper tantrum by a ruling class that's sick of having to pretend they need a pretext to steal from you. they're taking their toys and going home. all this massive investment and hype is going to crash and burn leaving the internet as we know it a ruined and useless wasteland that'll take decades to repair, but the investors are gonna make out like bandits and won't face a single consequence, because that's what this country is. it is a casino for the kings and queens of economy to bet on and manipulate at their discretion, where the rules are whatever the highest bidder says they are-- and to hell with the rest of us. our blood isn't even good enough to grease the wheels of their machine anymore.

i'm not afraid of AI or "AI" or of losing my job to either. i'm afraid that we've so thoroughly given up our morals to the cruel logic of the profit motive that if a better world were to emerge, we would reject it out of sheer habit. my fear is that these despicable cunts already won the war before we were even born, and the rest of our lives are gonna be spent dodging the press of their designer boots.

(read more "AI" opinions in this subsequent post)

[fordtato]

YouTube is fucking recommending video ideas to me with AI-generated titles and thumbnails as "inspiration"

Why would I work for months to create something unique that no other channel can do when I can let AI generate this bullshit? /s Seriously this is disgusting, I hate it here.

I don't need AI-generated ideas and thumbnails. I don't need algorithm slop. On my channel, I'm reviewing tumblr sexyman fan art in drag. On my channel, I'm sculpting wings out of wax. On my channel, I'm spending weeks making stained glass and canvas paintings for sets. It's rewarding. It's fun. I'm in the middle of crafting my most ambitious storytelling video yet. But YouTube thinks this AI shit is the shit I should make?

ALSO, whose art is YouTube using to generate these thumbnails? Is it OTHER peoples' thumbnails? Is it fan art? Is it frames from the show?

I'm not just annoyed, I'm insulted.

[thewertsearch]

TT: It seems that you consider me to be, no less than one hundred percent of the time, an obstinate stick in the mud. […] GT: Wait… GT: "It seems"?? TT: What? GT: Oh for fucks sake. […] GT: This is your auto responder.

Wait, really?

If it is, it's very good. I guess it's possible that Bro wrote all those responses himself, but I suspect instead that the thing is just actually sentient. Why not, right?

Plus, it explains why Bro doesn't like that Jane enjoys it so much. Like, imagine the AI you made as a personal assistant is more popular than your actual personality. That'd hurt!

TT: Bullshit. TT: I'm being like, the perfect dude right now. A fully fucking legitimate human being. GT: Ok then check this out mr legit human dude. GT: Excuse me sir not to be a bother but could you please tell me all about this strider fellows auto responder? TT: It seems you have asked about DS's chat client auto-responder. This is an application designed to simulate DS's otherwise inimitably rad typing style, tone, cadence, personality, and substance of retort while he is away from the computer. The algorithms are guaranteed to be 96% indistinguishable from DS's native neurological responses, based on some statistical analysis I basically just pulled out of my ass right now. GT: You see! TT: What if I was just fucking with you there?

Definitely sentient, and pretty funny to boot. The responder is set to answer someone fun Sburb questions I never thought the game would address, such as:

Does it think an AI can count as a person?

Will the AI at least have a sylladex?

TT: Would it really be so unthinkable for a human to type that? GT: Because you always say shit like that after i catch wise to your games.

'Like that' is important. It means there are variations in how it responds, which means the AR is actually making new shit up.

Plus, this is long before ChatGPT came into the picture, so the shit it 'makes up' is supposed to be a sign of true creativity, rather than generative AI slop.

GT: Hey. Tell me about the auto responder. Make it snappy shitknickers! TT: It seems you have asked about DS's chat client auto-responder. This is an application designed to simulate DS's otherwise inimitably rad typing style, tone, cadence, personality, and substance of retort while he is away from the computer. The algorithms are guaranteed to be 93% indistinguishable from DS's native neurological responses, based on some statistical analysis I basically just pulled out of my ass right now. GT: Gee dude you sure typed that exact same thing pretty fast. GT: Are you still fucking with me?? TT: It could be a coincidence that I typed the same answer. GT: You always type that answer!!!!! TT: It could be a coincidence that I always type the same answer.

Oh my god, this guy rules.

Can we keep him? C'mon, surely there's enough room to squeeze a fifth Player into the session. He can be our new Davesprite!

GT: This is pointless im not having this conversation unless its with my REAL LIFE FRIEND. THE ONE WITH HUMAN FEELINGS WHO ISNT A PRETEND PERSON INSIDE SUNGLASSES.

God damn it, Jake! That was not what I meant by 'the new Davesprite'!

[mariacallous]

That's the kind of social media echo chamber bullshit that's been brought up every fucking election since 2016 (and probably before then) and it's never fucking accurate. but hey! it confirms how people *feel* about the Democrats and so it MUST be true! how can we lose when we're so sincere?! guess it must be that the Democrats are just NOT TRYING ENOUGH or they aren't SAYING SOMETHING LOUD ENOUGH for me to hear it!

What do you MEAN it's in easily accessible locations that don't require a ton of research and digging?! That simply CANNOT be TRUE because I PERSONALLY didn't see it on my algorithmically dictated social media feed which I rely on because scrolling hormones wheeeeeeeeeeee

Why don't the Democrats spoonfeed me like the intellectual and emotional baby I say I am despite being a fucking adult with agency and choice! that's THEIR problem!

[purpledemonlilyposting]

@burningabyss572 Girl you weren't even there.

This is how Hato entered my server.

And how she interacted with Courtney

And Courtney eventually CAME BACK AND MADE PEACE WITH HER. So don't give me this bullshit.

You're not involved here. But I see you're parroting Courtney and other terrible people who virtue signal to appear morally superior to others who think me using the term "puriteen" once in a video title for the algorithm is some kinda gotcha.

That's supposedly super bad but, uh, go ask Courtney why she used a teenage girl as a trauma sponge, baited suicide in front of her and instructed the teenage girl to tell a teenage boy his "dick isn't big enough to titty fuck".

[ultred]

if your sp is not treating you the way you want to be treated, i beg of you, please, do not argue with them and send those damn paragraphs and pitiful text messages. 🙏 i promise you, no amount of “you should treat me better” will change anything. if you truly think you deserve better, you’ll just leave that mf or not care that much about that version of them but you’re still here. still arguing with them. still trying so hard while they keep doing the same shit over and over. obviously they will not take you seriously because you do NOT take yourself seriously. eiypo ? right ? why is it that when you’re in an undesirable situation, you completely forget that. here is the thing, the more you react to something in the 3d, the more it will show up. it’s exactly like an algorithm. the more you interact with certain topics, the more they’ll show up to you. whether positive or negative, it doesn’t matter. the algorithm doesn’t know the difference. it just gives you what you interact with. what you accept. what you choose to be aware of over and over. for a second, say, fuck that sp. i choose myself. i choose to have the best version of anyone because i deserve the best treatment. ask yourself, do people who TRULY believe that they deserve the best treatment and get everything they want in life sit anxiously on their phone waiting for someone to treat them well, begging them while crying on the floor to give them what they deserve ? send those text messages ? waste their energy writing those paragraphs ? hell no. so, why can’t you be like that too ? what makes them more special than you ? what makes them more worthy than you ? it’s just a matter of how you view yourself and others and what you select to experience. that’s it. you want to get what you want ? understand the law and stop going against it. stop doing what everyone is telling you not to do. i don’t care. if you feel the urge to react or argue with them, have the self-discipline to not do that. you can do anything else. cry. let it all out. do something you enjoy. do breath work. meditate. go to the gym. do pushups. do a cartwheel on a table. do absolutely anything but NEVER lower your value or self-esteem for anyone !! never beg anyone for anything. never tell anyone how to treat you. never ASK for ANYTHING from anyone. you do not ask for what you are worth, it simply just comes to you because it is YOURS. here is what i do. when people in my life are pissing me off, i close the lights in my room, lay down on my bed, put on my airpods, open youtube, listen to self concept vids from my favorite manifestation coaches as reminders or neville goddard’s audiobooks (listen to whatever you want, that’s just what works for me), say fuck the 3d it is not real, and completely live in my imagination as if it’s already actually happening. and guess what, that never fails to work. it always works because yes, imagination is the true reality. i want y’all to become so lazy and careless that you don’t care about reacting to the 3d anymore. stop putting so much effort. stop wasting your energy. stop doing too much. they will never change if you keep on selecting and reacting to their bullshit over and over. they’ll “change,” once your inner world does. once you finally accept that nothing out there matters. just you, how you react, and what you select to experience in imagination.

[ms-demeanor]

since twitter has become actively hostile to its users, so they came to tumblr, and reddit has become actively hostile to its users, so they came to tumblr, what do we do now that tumblr is becoming (more) actively hostile to its users? i’ve been here for over a decade so i know tumblr users are the type to cling on despite everything and revel in undoing every change, but i’m so tired of the way this website breaks the way it fundamentally works in order to appeal to new users. the twitterfication of the site seems so much worse than when people jumped ship after the porn ban, and even then, only small communities (and twitter) cropped up as solutions. you might not be the person to ask for a definitive answer, but i figured a tech blog might be interested in considering - what do we do when there’s nowhere left to go?

Okay so, I mean this very seriously: how has tumblr meaningfully become like twitter?

I don't personally find the sidebar view obnoxious and it seems to me like just another layout change that's pretty typical to tumblr. New users are getting signed up with a bit more emphasis on algorithmic feeds, but that is still very easy to change (MUCH easier than on any other social platform) and the algorithm has been there for everyone for quite a while, we just typically don't notice it because a lot of long-term tumblr users don't go into the "for you" feed.

I don't think that tumblr *has* fundamentally broken the way that it works to appeal to new users. My dash now is still very much like my dash in 2019, and still very much like my dash in 2018 (though much less pornographic). Reblogs are still reblogs, likes are still likes. Replies, for all that they seem like they've been around forever, are new and good and I think they work well. I'm irritated that the notes menu doesn't have a "view all" option but I think that's a worthwhile tradeoff for an easy way to see tags.

I *do not* understand why tumblr has broken linking back to previous reblogs but I don't think that's out of an effort to act like twitter; it is a bizarre choice that I dislike and don't understand but I also don't think that it has fundamentally changed the way the site works and i mean you've been around long enough that I'm sure you've had the same experience I have of going into the notes of a post and randomly clicking until you found a version that you wanted to reblog without a bunch of bullshit at the bottom. Tumblr has always kind of sucked, this change DOES suck but it doesn't suck in a way that is particularly novel or insurmountable. (For instance, I think this change sucks MUCH LESS than when they made posts with links invisible to the search, that is something that is genuinely bad that has been long lasting but doesn't get brought up much in lists of the ways that tumblr has gone wrong)

Tumblr *is* changing, but I think it is changing more incrementally and less terribly than other parts of the internet. I also hate the floating clown, the login walls, the dash-only view for blogs (you can't archive it and I HATE that), and - to an extent - the new lightbox on mobile. And I dislike that less than I thought I would but I don't think it's a fundamental change that necessarily impacts my interactions with the site - it *adds* a feature that I don't care for but it doesn't *break* anything that I require to have a good time on tumblr - in that way I think of it very much like Live. People hate Live so much and I find that perplexing because it is so easy to simply ignore it.

But that's not really your question; that's just some stuff I want people to think about because as much as tumblr has changed in the last two years it is nowhere near as fucked up as the recent things that twitter and reddit have pulled.

So, as to your question: where do we go?

Well. Not to be an extremely old person on the internet, but damned if I don't miss email lists. And forums. God I miss forums. Neither of those things has all the bonuses of platforms like twitter or reddit or tumblr or facebook, but they were great ways to hang out with people you liked on the internet.

The internet is changing. I can feel it, you can feel it, I'm pretty sure we're all like cattle in a field lifting our noses and hearing some distant rumbling and becoming slowly aware that it's almost time to run. There's a coming stampede and it isn't here yet but you know it's on its way. You're not imagining that, that's how things feel right now and there are a shitload of things contributing to it.

Things like SESTA/FOSTA and KOSA (which has not passed yet but is a big red flag waving on the horizon) have been eroding away the way that users on various platforms can function. Some platforms have consolidated in ways that harm users; some new platforms have popped up and shaken up the map of the internet; some platforms are being torn apart brick by brick by owners who don't care about the users. It kind of seems like people are actually looking up and realizing that advertising is A) bad and B) doesn't actually work and I think we're running straight toward another advertising-based crash like we saw in 2017. It feels like all the desperate things that tumblr is doing is just rearranging deck chairs on the titanic as the internet as a whole starts to sink into the ocean.

Honestly, I don't think it's that bad. I think it *feels* bad, but I think we're looking at a slow whimpering death of the platforms, not a bang. I think tumblr is going to hang on at least for a few years and I think it's going to end up like livejournal and myspace, which both still exist as websites that are recognizable as updated versions of the sites they were in 2004-2010. The thing that I think would really, honestly hurt tumblr in a fundamental way is if it moved to a more algorithmic and data-sales based model of advertising, and I think that's still pretty distant. I think Automattic is aware that killing the chronological feed would be the one unforgivable sin that would cause a mass exodus and a final crash, and I think when we see that, when we can't just scroll through the feed and see what our friends did that day in order of when they did it, that's when the party is over here.

But that's still not answering your question.

So, where do we go? What do we do? Well, for now, I'd say it's a good time to get contact info for your friends across various platforms. Get email addresses, get phone numbers.

Now is also the time for you to set up a personal website. NeoCities is currently the best place to do this, though it takes a lot more effort than just starting a blog on tumblr. I think that various oldschool blogging sites like Wordpress and Blogger/Blogspot/whatever the hell the google one is are a better place to have your emergency backup than a more platform-y platform if you aren't up to doing something with NeoCities.

If you've got the ability to do so and a group of people who are interested in the same core subject, set up a forum. There's a decent amount of off-the-shelf forum software out there and a text-and-small-images forum isn't prohibitively expensive, but it's never going to be huge and you're never going to have the kind of spread and virality and random connections that you would on a platform with millions or billions of users.

If you can't set up a forum, setting up or joining a discord server for your friends is a decent enough option at the moment, and may be a very good option for people who are looking to keep their interactions more private.

But yeah i think right now is a great time for people to start setting up their own personal websites, to start visiting actual webpages again, to start bookmarking their friends' websites, and to start collecting contact info that isn't tied to platforms.

[emmg]

I'm about to go on a fic recommendation spree in a different post, but this particular one deserves its own.

Broken Restraints by CrazNoxQueen:

Yeah yeah, I have a thing for unhealthy power dynamics, what else is new. Call it a personality flaw or call it taste, I don't care. This fic has everything that makes me absolutely feral:

Master/servant dynamics? Check.

Rook leading a double life? Check.

A little jealousy to spice things up? Delicious.

Rook in a Schrödinger's Slave situation where she is but isn’t but also is pretending to be? Love that for her.

Emmrich spiraling into a pit of unhealthy, morally questionable thoughts? Inject it directly into my veins.

A possible Lucanis-Rook-Emmrich power throuple brewing? Look. Look. I’m weak.

Morality so grey it’s practically charcoal? Yes, chef.

I’m not exaggerating when I say this fic is fanfiction gold, so someone tell me why when I go into the Rook/Emmrich tag on AO3, IT DOESN’T SHOW UP???? Explain it to me like I’m five because I am baffled. I saw it once, ONE TIME, had the foresight of a goddamn prophet to click subscribe, and then it just disappeared from the tag??? Like some kind of AO3 Bermuda Triangle bullshit????

Make it make sense. I am clutching my pearls in outrage. This fic is too fucking good to be lost in the algorithm void. More people need to know. Consider this my public service announcement.