#tumblr in a nutshell

[actual-changeling]

A small 'this is how you use tumblr' for the people that haven't been here very long. These are in no particular order, and if you have any questions, feel free to ask them!

Since I probably did not mention a lot of things, you are welcome to add to this post with your own advice.

a) Reblog posts. if you like it, reblog it. even if you have zero followers and ESPECIALLY if it's art or writing of any kind. We will see the reblog in our notifications and that alone brings joy. One reblog can start a chain and push the post onto many people's dashes.

b) Tumblr is not a very functional website, if you want to survive without losing your mind, there are two things you need: xkit rewritten and dashboard unfucker. Play around with the settings until it is to your liking. Additionally, change to firefox if you haven't already and install ublock origin to get rid of ads, tracking etc.

c) If you go to your settings (account! not blog) you can find this under dashboard at the bottom. Turn off at the very least 'best stuff first' since that will fuck up your dash and not give you posts in chronological order.

The rest are a perfonal preference but it will keep your dash tidy and easy to control if you turn them off, too.

d) Apropos settings—get a profile picture, a header, write something human in your bio, anything. Otherwise people will assume you are a bot and block you on sight.

e) Blocking! Do it generously and whenever you want, this is how you keep whatever remains of your sanity. It's not a lethal offense, it is (usually) not even seen as rude or anything along those lines. You block people and they block you and everyone is happy.

f) Under account settings you will find this:

Just like with blocking, use both options to your heart's content.

g) Tumblr is not like other social media platforms, spam liking & reblogging and going three years deep into someone's account is NORMAL and encouraged. You can search a blog by post type, tags, or even go to the archive and scroll through the posts there.

h) Lastly—interaction. We already went over reblogging (I mean it, REBLOG), but there are also replies and asks. If you add something to someone else's post please behave like a kind human being and don't be an asshole; based on my experience, that's easier said than done. On top of that, the tags are ALSO used for communication, go unhinged, ramble, leave your thoughts, or simply use them for organisational purposes. Everyone loves a good insane tag wall.

An open inbox (either anonymously or with your blog attached) is to be used! Please send people asks if they have them active, use it like DMs or a comment section, use it to recommend something, ask questions, participate in an ask or prompt game—we love asks here.

(We do not like harassment in our inboxes, same rules as above.)

[just-a-donut-who-reads]

[answrs]

okay! easier to look at results by age instead of word imo. so uh, take-two (sorry)

IF YOU USE MORE THAN ONE - choose the one you say more of the time than the others. even if it's just 51% to 49% of the time.

(I could only choose three names and these are the most popular I've seen, don't @ me. not sure if 25 was the age to split it at - if age is even the way to divide it versus first internet platform you started with or whatever - but I suppose the poll results will tell. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯)

[withlovefromolympus]

[transgirl-from196]

blog mix up :/

so to spin you a yarn dear reader… the other day i set up a side blog and was just kinda playing around with the feature bc i thought it was neat. intending to maybe post the type of stuff i wouldn’t want to on my main account. for example stuff that was more sexual/erotic (read: porn lol). u know, pretty standard thing to do

and well i just had the amazing (read: terrible) realisation that i did not fully understand how this feature worked. and it turns out everything ive been posting for the last few days has actually been going to that blog instead. yay :)))

that’s not exactly terrible, but it is mildly annoying lol. and to make matters worse, SOMEHOW the only posts that i did put here were ones i intended for the other blog because they were private. yeahhh not good. so to summarise: everything just ended up completely the opposite way round. it was only like 2 posts tho which ive now deleted, so thankfully i noticed sooner rather than later i guess?

idk what the point of this post is (really just to vent tbh lol) and i know its not really that big a problem. but yeah if anyone noticed ive been posting weird, well now u know why

[cluster-ayyy]

[captainthunderbear]

Welcome to Tumblr.

[alloycow]

UGHHHH

Why doesn't Tumblr has a specific button that both blocks and reports a profile called 'eww human lady'??!!

[tonberrykins]

Hey tumblr staff. This update sucks balls.

[happypeachsludgeflower]

Mom: you don’t get in tumblr to be popular. You get on tumblr to loose yourself… and maybe find yourself, but mostly loose yourself. In a trash can. That’s on fire.

[answrs]

curse you hank green for making me think about hybridization with a "donkeys and dragons are the same species in shrek" video while I may or may not be running a fever. my ramble below:

they aren't necessarily the same species, just two species able to hybridize. the offspring appear to be a mix of traits from both parents and there is no confirmation that any of them are able to breed themselves, or if they're sterile hybrids. (though, tbf, that's not all-encompassing either. in a microscopic chance a normally sterile hybrid like a mule has been seen to be fertile. alternatively, wolf-coyote "coywolf" offspring are perfectly fertile as well as hybrids to the point their breeding causes issues in conservation, and the same holds true of "beefalo" - domestic cows and american bison hybrids)

i was going to add that this suggests donkeys are likely descended from a winged ancestor animal like pegasus, otherwise they'd be so far removed from each other on the evolutionary tree at the split of four and six limbed vertebrates. this might suggest donkey is a form of pegasi that have lost their evolutionary need for wings and the trait has become vestigial if not gone almost entirely, much like whales and dolphins wrt what used to be their ancestors' hind limbs.

.....but then i remembered the sturgeon and paddlefish(?) hybrids that are so far removed from each other but somehow developed into an entire hybrid with a 70% rate of survival and throw my hands up with a big I_GUESS.jpg

[fluoritegalaxy]

[silverloreley]

Friendly reminder to all the new kids and the migrants from Twitter that here on Tumblr having an empty blog (no reblogs nor original posts), with a starter generic icon and nothing in the description (or worse, you have a link in the description) identifies you as a bot and it can and will make you blocked by regular users, me in particular.

[excessivepyromania]

Now for sale on Amazon: Tumblr User

[i-am-iron-man-3000]

vanilla extract

[tiny-and-witchy]

I just picture couples that have met on tumblr trying to explain how they’ve met to other people:

-“we’ve met on tumblr”

+”is it like tinder?”

-“no it’s not a dating app!”

+”what do you do on tumblr then?”

-”you make blogs about the things you like, like tv shows, movies, celebrities”

—“although there are a lot of naked celebrity fanarts”

+”well…”

-“IT’S NOT A DATING APP!!!!”