#tumblr be like I see you’re not engaging with our algorithm what if I fucking make you

[kittyhalk]

Girl help there’s another unfamiliar blog on my dashboard and idk if someone I followed changed their url and icon or if tumblr just auto followed a random fucking blog again

[darklydeliciousdesires]

Hey! I love your work, and I think you get everything down to Alfie’s language to the fucking t! It’s so fucking good when I can literally hear him in my head while I’m reading! Sidenote—please don’t cut my head off, because I’m *genuinely* trying to understand. I’ve followed you for awhile and I’ve noticed you engaging in the discourse about readers and reblogs, likes, etc., so I thought maybe you would be a good person to try to help me understand why some writers seem to be so upset by some readers liking instead of reblogging. Again, I’m not trying to attack anyone, I promise, but even as a writer myself, I struggle to grasp why it matters so much. Like, of course, comments and/or reblogs with comments make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside! It makes my day hearing that someone has loved a thing I’ve put my time and effort into creating, but likes are called “likes” for a reason—to let someone know you liked what they posted. In my head, getting them is another way for people to let me know they enjoyed what I put out. I’m not saying that anyone is, but to me, it comes off a little entitled when people get upset at readers for not explicitly praising their work with comments and such. Yes, the site is free and we’re not getting paid to write fanfics, but nobody owes anyone anything. When I write a thing and post it, I don’t feel like readers are then obligated to give me feedback because putting it online is a decision that *I* made. If they take the time to comment on it, that’s fucking wonderful, but that doesn’t mean that people who don’t do that are in the wrong for using the like button as their way of telling writers “Hey, I like this!” if they’re uncomfortable interacting or don’t have anything specific in mind to say. I’ve seen people talk about just copy/pasting a comment, but I don’t get how having 100 comments that all say “I like this fic!” or whatever is any different than using the button that’s meant to indicate “I like this fic!”. If somebody’s going to say something about my work, I would rather it be because they genuinely wanted to comment, not because they feel obligated to do so. I really hope this doesn’t come off as rude and I’m so sorry if it does. I’m just confused because both interactions mean the same thing—the only difference is that some people are more comfortable sharing their thoughts in depth or socializing online. I don’t know, it sorta feels like some are trying to police what other people do/don’t do with their blogs when we’re all here for the same reason—to fuck around and fuck our favorite characters. (Or daydream about it, unfortunately lmao)

Okay, I will try and explain it for you, nonie.

The reason why we are frustrated over the lack of reblogs is very simple, and if you’ve been following me for a while I’m surprised that you haven’t noted the reason by now.

Essentially, it keeps the fandoms going. It spreads posts around, it gives them visibility since half the time, the tags don’t work (it’s hit and miss at best!) and the algorithms on this site are virtually nonexistent, so having our work shared is a vitally helpful way for us to reach more people.

This isn’t Instagram. The reblog button is there to be used as that’s the very ethos of the tumblr experience; you see something that you enjoy, you like it, you share it. You seem to be forgetting that and solely focusing on commentary, but let’s get to that, shall we?

You’re absolutely right, nobody is obligated to comment, but come on. It’s a tiny exertion of effort to reward an author. It’s interaction, it can help people feel like what they wrote is valued beyond the bare minimum. It’s a tiny expression of gratitude in a world were fast consumption of “content” is now the norm. It also helps people - new writers especially - feel like they’re not shouting into a void. It all also ties in the the community of fandoms, which seems to be dying because of this quick consumption trend.

If you are fine with none of the above happening, with no sense of community in your respective fandom, with people not offering comments - or the more important reblogs - great! But people aren’t wrong for wanting a little more from our audiences, especially when that little more takes seconds to participate in.

I hope that clears things up for you.

[midnightrowboat]

looking into a bedroom window

i left tumblr after the great porn exodus of however many years ago. the modern day burning of the library of alexandria if your literature was black and white gifs of aesthetically attractive men pumping and fucking. oh how i loved to read... 

and of course, it was far more than that too. it was a knife in the back of fandoms and immeasurable pain of hundreds of hours of effort and art gone in the blink of an eye.

but it also seemed like a good time as any to close the chapter on that era of my life. i had been offered an out from what had grown into an addiction, so all these years later it’s almost comical that i’m back here now with the flames of twitter in the background.

twitter was never a replacement for tumblr for me. first of all, as a porn sourcing algorithm it absolutely sucks. twitterporn is entirely populated by onlyfans accounts self-promoting. there are no artful gif collections, no aesthetically organized softcore image sets. it’s just mirror selfies with a “went to the gym who wants to do cardio winkeyface” caption slapped on and a follow up link to 5% off their onlyfans, this month only.

actually, i was on twitter from when it began. back when it was a static page you had to manually refresh, back before you could see likes. you would just say things into a void, and wonder if it meant anything to anyone else.

but as long as i’ve been on twitter, it’s never meant much to me. it helps me keep up with the news, in that twisted warped way it does, and it helps me keep up with a select group of friends. it also holds me hostage for more hours a week than i’d like to admit. if i’m going to sell my soul to a feed, i’d rather it be one like tumblr. one with a little more intention, a little more space to breathe.

there was a specific niche on tumblr that i’d like to find my way back to, which was the “depressed blogger who sometimes included nudes.” i’m not really seeking depressing content anymore, and despite how it sounds, i’m not really seeking nudes either. but i liked the way it felt like you could be a body and a mind. you could vilify yourself and be the vitality too. ...or something like that...

i remember when i first got on tumblr back in 2009 or so, my feed was so, so barren. and it took years of searching, and stumbling before it become something engaging and interesting. how do i find those people again?

is it possible that people are still offering these intimate, vulnerable windows into their lives after all this time? the kind where the blinds are open, curtains swept to the side, where they’re naked in bed and you’re standing on the street half looking, half hiding your face, thinking to yourself, “do they know that I can see them?” haven’t they learned better? all this time and experience on our sides and still doomed to make the same mistakes?

_

okay it’s december, and christmas is around the corner, and i haven’t even wrapped my little head around thanksgiving having come and gone. my skin has been acting crazy lately, and i’ve been dating a boy for a few months who told me he loves me and i said it back and it’s nice, but it doesn’t feel how i thought it would feel. 

more on that later, maybe.

for now, this is just a Hello World from my sunday night to another. i’m drawing open my window, but outside is just blackness. 

_

COLLEGE RADIO: “No Scrubs” by TLC

[oldmagpie]

number 2: engagement

I will deal with tumblr writing and engagement in a future post, that mess of angry rats that it is. Let’s talk about the bigger fish first, Archive Of Our Own.

I have some fantastic news for you all. Readers aren’t getting paid to read, right? Remember that from the last post? But guess what, writers aren’t getting paid to write, either! So how well a fic does... quite literally does not change your life in the slightest. You don’t get more money, or more publisher offers, or more awards. You just don’t, which is why writing because you just want to has to underscore all the other things always.

What about in fandom though??? It must have some effect on that!!! Well, no, not really. See, on AO3 there’s no algorithm to change how many people see your fic based on your engagement. That responsibility falls to tags, timing, and tags again. Yeah I said tags twice. They’re important, I’ll cover them at some point separately. Admittedly yes, there are ways to game the system a bit, to make sure you’re seen as much as possible, or increase your likelihood of engagement, but why? Really, truly, why? What do you actually benefit from the constant focus on making your stuff get bigger numbers? Are you improving your writing? Are you making more friends (which you might be, and if that’s the goal then maybe just have a think about quality over quantity and whether you actually want friends or just fans)? Are you cripplingly insecure and the only positive serotonin in your life comes from a 1000+ hits total? Which soon becomes 2000+, 5000+, and goes on and on forever until you’re never satisfied. 

But I want to become a Big Name In Fandom and be successful ugh you suck... Becoming a Big Name just ups the stakes on all of this, it never actually rewards you. The ‘success’ you are chasing is like being a popular kid. It won’t help you in your day to day life, it won’t make you money, it won’t make you a better person. It adds stress, and gives you a marker to never be able to fall under for fear of feeling unsuccessful. Which isn’t a thing. You can’t fail at fandom, but you also can’t win.

Engagement is addictive. Serotonin is addictive. Dopamine rushes are addictive. And if you live off it, pretty soon what gave you that rush isn’t enough anymore. And guess what, you fucked yourself. Because you can’t physically force people to engage, only optimise the conditions for them to choose to do so, and when your happiness is tied to the whims of hundreds or thousands of other individuals out there in the world living their own messy, unique lives, engaging or not engaging for any million number of tiny reasons on a given day, then you’re going to find yourself unhappy a whole lot, just by sheer statistical probability. What’s the betting slogan? When the fun stops, stop. When you aren’t being delighted by the fact that a single whole individual read your story, and perhaps even kudosed, and perhaps even commented, then have a break, have a kitkat, put the stats remover skin on and get over it. 

[letoscrawls]

Hiiiii

I hope you're doing well!

I would like to ask if u have and advise about starting and art account on insta. I have a small one here on tumblr but people say insta is better for art accs. So I just create an account and start posting? Or do I promote myself in some way, maybe taking dtiys and other challenges?

Thanks in advance:D

Hi! thank you so much for checking on me! :) 

okay, i get this question quite often and i wish i could give you solid advice, but the problem with instagram right now is its algorithm. when i started my account it wasn’t that fucked up, so i don’t really know how it is for new artists who have just started their accounts now! but i can tell you that it really affected every artist, even the bigger ones, so please keep that in mind. if you “fail” to reach your audience it’s not your fault, instagram is literally sabotaging artists and i don’t know for how long it’ll be “the best platform for art”. so just to warn all of you, i don’t want you to compromise your mental health for a social platform that makes money out of our stress and insecurities, i’ll try to share what i think could work because sharing art can be really rewarding and shouldn’t be an ordeal so i’d be happy to help somehow!!!!!

so this is the “algorithm tricks” part: 

when i first opened ig, i remember my stories were viewed by at least 100 people for the first two days even though i had less than 10 followers, so i think that’s instagram way to encourage you to keep posting, so my first advice would be to post your art in the stories too, at least for the first week or something?? now, i know the algorithm is currently promoting reels, so if you’re skilled with those go for it! make videos of your creating process and stuff like that. it’s important to inform your followers when you make a new post bc the chances of it being noticed are higher, you have to do the work bc ig won’t show that post to most of your audience (did i mention that i hate whoever made this algorithm?? yes??) i’m not really sure about this but i think ig prefers the reels you make with their set of editing tools instead of just uploading a pre saved video (i think it’s their way to sabotage those who post their tiktoks), i’ve never tried them so i don’t really know what they’re like, but i’m pretty sure tiktok is way better. i read somewhere that IGTV aren’t ig big thing anymore, so i don’t think you’d get much engagement from them. in general i’d say to always promote your posts in your stories and to wait at least an hour before editing a post bc i think you’ll lose engagement if you edit it right after posting (i know, it’s so stupid).

the use of hashtags is the only thing that i approve, because it’s an helpful tool made by social media before it got so bad and they really help you to reach more people (that’s like their purpose, i just wish there weren’t dozens of other stupid rules to follow in order to be noticed besides hashtags). so using tags like “art”, “artists on instagram” and “daily art” along with tags related to the pic you posted (like the name of the character or the fandom etc) is really helpful, just don’t use unrelated tags bc it’s annoying and idk how convenient it is :P the last thing is promoting your posts by using the sponsored feature; i never used that because i’d rather eat a slug than give money to instagram, but if you have the possibility and you are okay with that then you could try!

now for the “artsy” part

artists have found many ways to bypass the algorithm and keep the community alive over the years, challenges are probably the best way to do so! dtiys are awesome, not only they help you get more recognition, but they also make artists incredibly happy! i should host one very soon myself, i’m looking for a pose and an outfit to draw one of my ocs in, hopefully you’ll see it soon! i cannot explain how happy it makes me to see people draw a character of mine, and it’s great to see them in so many different styles, so i highly recommend dtiys! usually the artists who host them post the entries in their stories too, so yeah, you should definitely try those! there are other challenges like art vs artist, memes etc, it’s incredible how creative the community is despite all! and lastly, draw fan art! contributing to a fandom with your art is so cool, personally i prefer it over original content most of the time, i feel the need to share my point of view and to let out all the idiotic thoughts i have when i consume some kind of media so i’m really biased, but every artist is different, so don’t force yourself to do something if you don’t feel like doing it! drawing something you don’t particularly enjoy because you want to get recognition is gonna make you burnout REALLY BAD, trust me, i personally think that passion>effort, so never forget to put your enjoyment first!!!! 

okay this took me a while and i hope it was helpful! good luck!!! i definitely forgot something dskfjhis

[jacksothereye]

For the screenshot artists out there concerned about engagement - I would like to offer the perspective that this happens to people who write and draw, too. OC content in particular is incredibly hard to find traction for. This isn't about devaluing the time it takes for screenshots - you can absolutely track how a good screen of a canon NPC can take off, vs a good screen of a character people aren't familiar with. This is how the internet is. Strangers don't care about the time you spent on anything. They are looking for things that resonate with them as they engage in the endless scroll.

I have played the tumblr game of engagement before. If you are looking for thoughtful interactions with your followers/following — you have to network. You have to start being the engagement you wanna see. You gotta reach out and tell people what they are doing is good. You gotta ask about people's characters. You need to show people that you are more than a mysterious unreachable presence on the internet just posting things up in your own think tank.

And the result of this? It's not going to be guaranteed follows. It's not a catch all win to hundreds of notes. What it is, is a way to connect to the people in your community. And if you can find even a couple people willing to talk to you about your characters, art, etc - you have just found something more fulfilling than a Like, or a Reblog.

In most cases, Likes and Reblogs mean someone looked at your content for a few seconds, and then forgot about it. Try to recall everything you Liked today. Yesterday. Last week. Do you remember everything? The drawing that you saved to your phone because you *did* wanna remember it - did you tell the artist you did that? Do we see what we're getting at here?

We're here because we're really passionate about some media, folks. If you're gonna be spending hours on taking screenshots, you need to make sure that it's how you wanted to spend your time and that you had fun doing it - because at the end of the day, you can't give strangers the power to validate your art. Yes it feels good when it's recognized. But in the way that Likes are fleeting, so is that sense of validation. It is never going to feel like enough, and that is never going to go away unless you find a way to not let it carry so much power.

I like this tiny screenshot community I'm in. I don't have it in me to network much anymore, but I'm also lucky to have a couple close friends who we can talk about our work/characters with. That's where I get my creative fulfillment, because Being Seen just doesn't hit as nice as being in a conversation.

It always feels like that is something that everyone is just on the cusp of doing on tumblr. I get that, it's hard to put yourself out there. I'm just saying that in this endless game of "hey guys please look at my OC content!“ you have the choice of soldering on and hoping the algorithm is kind, soldiering on and damn the Notes all to hell, orrrr be the engagement you want to see and try to foster/create a more open environment where those more meaningful interactions can happen.

The beauty of the choice, is there is no correct one in an objective sense. You gotta do what you gotta do so at the end of the day you can feel happy with your work. And while I am but a stranger on the internet, this is my personal wish for you. I want you all to be happy with what you are doing. I want y'all to be nerdy as fuck about your characters. I want to see you keep making content. I want your characters and your creative skills to fucking flourish.

Keep creating, keep screening, keep writing, keep drawing. Do it for your stories. Do it for your characters. Do it because it's going to be amazing to look back on one day and live through the little narratives you left yourself. You are doing good work, y'all, and there's no amount of likes that can make that more or less true.

[hrmphfft]

controversial opinion time I guess but

hey gang? hey, gang. gang, hey. blaming your fans for them not reblogging your content enough (and saying that they’re Directly Responsible For Tumblr Dying) is an extremely passive aggressive, mean thing to do, and also completely ignores so many other reasons as to why engagement has changed on this site and posts don't circulate like they used to.

for one thing, whenever I see these posts, I rarely see the ops acknowledge the HUGE HIT to tumblr's userbase following the 2018 policy change/implementation of tumblr's terrible content filtering algorithm. tumblr lost roughly 1/3 of its engagement (https://mashable.com/article/tumblr-lost-a-third-of-its-users-after-porn-ban/) and countless content creators with it. some of them migrated to twitter and other sites, some of them seem to have straight-up vanished into thin air, and countless others lost their biggest or main userbase with barely any time to shift gears to something else. that's a huge, website-shaking change! but so often in these 'reblogs vs. likes' posts I don't see anyone acknowledging that and it makes me really upset!

you can't talk about the ways tumblr has undoubtedly changed these last few years and NOT address the nsfw ban! it's completely unfair to your fanbases to shift the blame of the biggest displacement of users the site has ever experienced on...the users who had no say in the policy change and reacted accordingly when the site started softbanning everyone, and filtering all sorts of tags from the search function (including important sfw ones, lest we forget The Entire Furry Fandom on tumblr discovering that basic-ass tags like #furry and #anthro were being blocked when the ban rolled around), and making uploading anything vaguely beige-colored a dice roll. tumblr still hasn't recovered from that, and unfortunately probably never will, not without some hail mary of policy changes and overhauls.

I've seen some pretty ageist shit regarding content engagement as well that tries to paint younger users as just Not Getting how tumblr functions vs. other social media sites like instagram and twitter, and on top of that just showcasing a really uncomfortable disconnect/animosity towards new users whose only crime is being younger than op and also more experienced with other social media platforms, it also is just. it's really unkind? it's super rude? how can you call your followers too clueless to know how reblogging works and then expect them to support your content via reblogging and not feel like you're insulting them until they give you the result you want?

moreover, lots of young/new tumblr users get the gist of tumblr's controls and get it very quickly! technology literacy is becoming more and more a part of everyday life for everyone, and if you really think that a teenager can't understand that reblogging puts a thing on their follower's dashboards, one of the main functionalities of the site (and also very similar to twitter, one of tumblr's main competitors), I really don't know what to say. sometimes people just straight-up don't want to reblog stuff to their blogs, and that's okay.

there's also a tendency to ignore the ways that blogging on tumblr has changed as its userbase has became more well-versed in its functions and, frankly, a portion of the userbase has grown up on this site. when I first started blogging on here, I was 17, I didn't use tags, I commented unrelated (and frankly sometimes really regrettably rude) replies directly onto artist's posts, and I basically just reblogged whatever I vaguely liked, and a lot of things I didn't totally get but thought Looked Cool/Funny so I reblogged anyways.

and that's fine, that's pretty par for the course of being young on the internet and doing whatever you want and having a good time (barring the rudeness, being respectful to people is the ideal), but as time went on my interests changed, my time spent online changed (I went from highschool to college to a full-time job that limits my time on social media), and I began engaging with tumblr's content differently. I made sideblogs for interests and content themes I didn't want on my main blog, I started liking stuff and then going back through my likes to reblog posts later, and generally speaking my number of posts a day dropped and I stopped being able to catch up on my dashboard every single day. and I'm sure my experience isn't unique for some other people on here.

a lot of the tumblr users I've known for a while just don't have the same level of intensity in fandoms like we did years back, not because of any malice or selfish, content-hogging intent, but because our priorities have changed. I definitely miss a lot of things about years past on tumblr when fandoms were booming and new Big Name Creators were cropping up all the time, and to be fair that's still happening on parts of the site if you know where to look! it's just different now. time has passed. people have changed!

that isn't to be defeatist and say that we can't show up for content we enjoy and reblog it, but instead that people can feel differently about stuff they used to adore, and be more particular about one thing or another they reblog, and straight-up miss stuff that they would have really liked but just didn't catch up on for a myriad of reasons. and that's also okay. engagement on tumblr is really, really tied up in personal preferences, and sometimes it feels like it does that more than most other social media sites. this is kind of the wild west of internet presences and everyone operates differently on here as a result.

and probably the most touchy point of all: no one is obligated to give you validation on the internet. no one. not even if they've read all of your fanfics you've worked really fucking hard on for forever and a day, or your comics that you've spent months, years, a lifetime researching and creating, or your beautifully, painstakingly timed and masked fan videos. they can absolutely consume any of these, and more, and they're still not obligated to reblog your work or promote you. it's not fair, yes, and it's completely understandable and super relatable to want recognition for the work you've done and the ways you've brightened other people's lives, but online most of your fans are still total strangers to you, and trying to control the behavior of total strangers because you’re owed their acknowledgement isn’t a healthy mindset to have.

and you can say that any fan of yours stops being a fan after they drop you for you lashing out at them for not unquestioningly giving you space on their blogs like you're owed, but being upset at being accused of bad behavior for what amounts to not wanting to reblog something this time around and changing your opinions based off of that is also a very understandable thing to do.

and that isn't because of any sort of innate cruelty, or pointed attack towards you. it's just because there is always a disconnect between the creator and the creation, and some people will never bridge that gap and engage with you more, or build a parasocial relationship with you, or seek out ways to support you. and plenty of others will do the exact opposite! it's a total dice roll because you're dealing with a lot more people than you realize scrolling past your content, and every person is different, and some of them don't fully understand how reblogs help a creator, and some of them do but just don't want that content on their feed, and none of them are inherently bad people for that.

I'm not saying creators have to be perfectly kind and civil and praise their fans all the time, but when you engage with your followers like it's a battle where you have to keep devising new ways to get them to share your content, it just comes across as super disingenuous, and people cop to that very fast. 

it also, frankly, can make longtime fans who reblog your work regularly feel like their interest doesn't matter, and wasn't good enough, and that then it really is their fault that other people (other STRANGERS ON THE INTERNET) don't engage with your content the way you wanted them to. you don't owe them perfection, but that doesn't mean it isn't still an unkind thing to do.

so like. what can we do about this?

asking users to reblog your work is totally fine and can help! calls to action work more than nothing at all. it's possible to be respectful when asking people to reblog your work without also guilt-tripping them with "likes < reblogs" banners and passive aggressive tags/comments. generally speaking guilt is a really shitty motivational tool, and tends to breed more resentment than actual outcomes people want. like this post for example! I wouldn't have sat down and typed this all out if I didn't resent the hell out of being told I'm, personally, the reason tumblr is demonstrably not an ideal website for building a fanbase anymore. if I had that much power over this website I would have given the whole thing to the xkit team years ago and reveled in a functional website instead.

changing the way you post content might help! every site has its ideal posting days, times, and reasons for why some are ideal for one site and not another. doing a little research (https://sproutsocial.com/insights/best-times-to-post-on-social-media/) will yield some potentially helpful tips and tricks that might result in a post reaching more people. utilizing tumblr's search function is also important, and understanding the limits of the tag function (ie. only the first 5 tags of a post are used for tag searches) can help change one's habits to something a little more effective. this is why I tend to leave my tag babbling until after the main fandom/category tags on my posts, so that tumblr's jankass search has a better shot, haha

broadening your online presence can definitely help! this is by far the most terrifying option since it involves branching out onto other social media platforms, some of which really don't lend themselves to whatever fandom/content one produces, so like the other two above it's only a suggestion.

I keep coming back to twitter and instagram, but that's mainly because they're the two other powerhouses of social media right now, though admittedly they only really cater towards visual media (and mainly imagery, not longer video pieces), and they have their own weird quirks to learn and jank to deal with. but given how precarious tumblr's status has become in some ways, trying to build a presence on multiple sites means that you reach more people across the internet, and also means that if tumblr does yet another website-shattering policy change, your eggs aren't all in one basket.

of course these options aren't foolproof, and won't work for everyone in some cases or not at all for others, but my main point in all this is this: tumblr has irrevocably changed, its userbase has changed, and we are limited in the ways we can directly influence it, but there are still options. I'm by far not a social media expert, but then again none of the posts I've seen so far were made by social media experts either, so I honestly don't feel too bad for throwing my hat into the ring while we're all thrashing about in confusion

y'all aren't wrong that things have changed, but I'm begging you to have some compassion and to try not to turn the relationship between creators and consumers of content into a battleground, especially when a lot of the influences on these changes are things entirely outside of any of our's direct control.

also because it makes y'all sound exactly like this: