#tumblr where we still have chronological dashboard

[notemily]

actual guide for new tumblr users, from Twitter or otherwise

yeah so I decided to do one of these. I'm just someone who has been here since 2007 and wants to help people who are new to the site and have no idea what's happening. Twitter seems to be in its death throes as I write this, and while the posts about driving down the property values are funny, I'd like to actually try and help out.

many people have made posts that are like "get an icon and post something or else people will think you're a bot" so I'll just assume you've seen one of those already. I want to focus more on the things you need to know to acclimate to tumblr culture. so:

general tips:

like things if you want to like things. people will tell you liking doesn't do anything, that only reblogs do stuff, but that's not quite true. only reblogs will get the people who follow you to see it on their dashboard (circulating the post further through the tumblr ecosystem), but likes will let the OP know you liked it, let the person who reblogged it onto your dash know you liked it, and probably do something complicated involving the "based on your likes" algorithm but I really don't know how that works. also, the like will stick around, so if you see the post reblogged from someone else much later, your little heart will still be highlighted in red.

you can control a lot about what you see on your dashboard from the settings page! on desktop, go into settings - account and settings - dashboard to change things. most people turn off "best stuff first" and just use the chronological feed, but you do you, new user. I personally hate endless scroll, so I turned that off, but I love timestamps, so I turned those on. for bonus fun, go into settings - labs and there are extra tabs you can add to your dash.

but what about turning off anonymous asks? on desktop, this setting, weirdly, is in the "Edit appearance" page for your blog. you can also turn replies off there, allow only people you follow to message you, and hide your blog from search results. there are a lot of random settings in there, so make sure to take a look. (app results may vary.)

you might notice that one of the settings is for filtered tags and filtered post content. this is why it's important not to censor things here that might be triggering for some folks - because someone out there has "rape" filtered, and if you go around saying "r*pe," that's not going to be caught in their filter. also, at this time there are no word police who will come after you for saying "kill" or "die," so you don't need to use euphemisms like "unalive" on tumblr. you can also swear as much as you want.

blaze: tumblr blaze is a relatively new feature where you can pay actual money to have your post forced onto random people's dashboards. beware, if you use this for something people don't want to see, you will get mocked. if you use it to show everyone your cat, you're probably fine.

there are two basic uses for #tags: organizational (putting your post into a category, like tagging it with the name of the fandom it's relevant to) and editorial (adding extra commentary that you don't want to add in the post itself). a lot of people will use both, a lot of people will use neither. when people like your editorial tags enough, they'll copy or screenshot them and add them to the body of the post. this is known as "passing peer review" and is a compliment.

memes and inside jokes You Should Know:

do you love the colour of the sky? is an extremely long image post (showing all the colors a sky could possibly be) that takes a long time to scroll past, and back in the olden days (2012) it was ubiquitous on tumblr. these days you can shorten long posts automatically using your dashboard settings (see above), or use the "j" keyboard shortcut to go directly to the next post if you're on desktop, but we still remember it fondly and refer to it constantly because nothing dies here, especially not memes.

the color theory children's hospital post is another one of those things you'll see a million references to if you're on here for any length of time.

you cannot kill me in a way that matters is a post that you might have seen in screenshots elsewhere online, but it started here! other memes that originated on tumblr: spiders georg, me an intellectual, graphic design is my passion, etc.

blorbo from my shows is a phrase used to refer to your latest favorite character. it started as a joke, but tumblr has a way of taking jokes and making them a thing, so now it's a thing. see also poor little meow meow.

tumblr holidays: anything people on tumblr can make into a holiday or anniversary, we will. most of them you'll see as they happen, and they're often self-explanatory, but you should probably read up on November 5 2020 if you don't know about it already.

horse plinko: tumblr loves this one for some reason.

I like your shoelaces / thanks, I stole them from the president: this was supposedly the "secret code" to identify a tumblr user in real life. (you can buy shoelaces directly from tumblr now, but that's a recent development.)

then perish: speaking of the president, if you see Obama's eyes with a very orange tint, this is the meme it's referencing.

ball-shaving ads: ads from the personal grooming company Manscaped were/are(?) ubiquitous on tumblr, to the point that some have theorized that tumblr was deliberately saturating people's dash with the ads so that they'd be more likely to pay for ad-free browsing. and one of the ads for ad-free reads "shave off ads from your dashboard," so like, they might be onto something.

world heritage posts: there are various tumblrs that compile the best of tumblr, anything that's particularly iconic or has become a meme. there are even heritage post blogs for specific fandoms.

tumblr history:

there are three basic eras of tumblr history:

classic tumblr era 2007-2013: David Karp started tumblr in 2007, and it grew in popularity and weirdness for many years. porn was allowed: the original tumblr adult content policy read "sure, go nuts, show nuts, whatever."

Yahoo/Verizon era 2013-2019: Yahoo famously bought tumblr in 2013 for $1 billion. ads started showing up on tumblr in 2012, so this is also around when tumblr started to monetize. Yahoo was eventually bought by Verizon, and in December 2018, they announced they were banning porn, which sucked. everyone predicted the death of tumblr, but it limped on, with about a 30% decrease in traffic. (source for that statistic)

Automattic era 2019-present: in 2019, Automattic bought tumblr from Yahoo for like $3 million or something. Automattic owns WordPress, and they seem to understand tumblr's userbase better than the Yahoo folks did. they've recently instituted a more nuanced adult content policy, but because of Apple's strict policy for what gets included in the App Store, credit card processors refusing to process payments for porn, and other restrictions, tumblr can't go back to being the porn-allowed free-for-all it once was. see this post for a full explanation of why.

various April Fool's jokes have included Coppy (2015), Mishapocalypse (2013), and most recently, the button that makes crabs. expect April 1st to be extra chaotic on tumblr.

Tumbeasts - the tumblr version of the Twitter Fail Whale, designed by Matthew Inman of the Oatmeal. not sure if they're extinct now, or if the site just doesn't go down like it used to.

Dashcon - tumblr tried to have a convention once. it didn't go well. the photo with the sad ball pit is used as shorthand to reference the disaster that was Dashcon.

SuperWhoLock is a name for the fandom crossover between Supernatural, Doctor Who, and Sherlock, which were all juggernauts on tumblr at one time. the fandom supposedly "died off" after 2014, but see above re: nothing dies here.

female presenting nipples - when tumblr introduced the Porn Ban in 2018, they used this phrase in the community guidelines. they've since updated their nudity policy, but the phrase will live forever, because come on, tumblr is a website full of queer and/or trans folks. if you think you're getting away with a weasel phrase like "female presenting nipples" without being mocked all over the website, you're extremely wrong.

John Green: an author who used to be on tumblr, back when you could edit someone else's tumblr post when you reblogged it. his text posts were regularly edited to make it look like he had said things he didn't. someone edited one of his posts to be about how much he loves a certain sex act, which was probably not THE reason they removed the ability to edit others' posts, but like, it didn't help. John Green was eventually harassed so much he left tumblr. opinions are divided on whether this was hilarious or sad. (something I discovered while researching for this post: the author of the Your Fave Is Problematic tumblr [which was part of the wave of anti-John Green content] wrote a confessional New York Times article in 2021. pull quote: "I just wanted to see someone face consequences; no one who'd hurt me ever had.")

XKit: used to be THE browser extension for tumblr. it was made by "the xkit guy," who seems to have been harassed off the site in 2015. the extension was replaced by New XKit, which worked for a while. these days a lot of XKit's features have been either rendered obsolete by tumblr adding them to its settings, or broken by tumblr interface updates, and the new hotness is XKit Rewritten. want to block a specific post from ever appearing on your dash, see who your mutuals are, stop seeing notifications on one specific post (great feature for if you accidentally go viral)? install it and play around with the settings. there are accessibility features too!

...and now I've made it look like people regularly get harassed off tumblr. WELCOME, NEW USER, TO THE HELLSITE! but for real, part of why I put this post together was so if someone starts in on tumblr Discourse and mentions people who have been harassed off the site, you can nod wisely and go "ah, yes, I have heard tell of this." just to give you some kind of context for things.

anyway, I'm always happy to Explain The Joke, provided it's a joke that I get, so if you see something that looks like a tumblr in-joke and want context, my ask box is open. just don't ask me about Homestuck. I know nothing about Homestuck and at this point I'm not sure I want to.

in conclusion, new user: go forth, be weird, become a part of the culture. I hope this guide has helped!

[viviennewestwouldnt]

14 years of Tumblr

I was 14 years old, still in school, and discovering who I was and what I wanted to be. I joined Tumblr in 2010 back when it was a very different website. When we were just in the beginning of Web 2.0 and the internet still had the shiny glow of potential and frequently went down and had little to no features.

Tumblr was a place that I met new and interesting people from all over the world. I remember coming home from school every day and logging on, scrolling through my dashboard all the way down to where I had left it (remember chronological feeds? and ones that didn't have update every second?); sometimes when I refreshed the page, nothing new would appear for hours. I remember only being able to post one photo at a time, and when that finally changed and you could post multiple photos, everyone being ecstatic over it. I remember how much porn was on Tumblr, and how Tumblr became known for having the best porn. I remember how shitty the Tumblr video player was. And the mobile website.

The internet was still slow then, it was still largely curated by people and not bots or algorithms, there weren't ads everywhere, and it wasn't serious. Tumblr was a place of silliness and everyone was silly together. It was a microcosm of trendiness and if you used it, you became associated with a group of people that were different. Different from those who used Facebook or Twitter. I remember the 'aesthetics' and when 'aesthetic' was first used to describe something visually pleasing and 'alternative'. I remember 'soft grunge'.

I remember reblogging, what were the first memes, over and over again. I remember how cool GIFs were back when people were obsessed about how you pronounced GIF. I remember when Vine took over the internet and my dashboard.

I remember finding a community of queer people where I didn't know any in real life. I remember speaking to people from all over the world. I remember sending them messages to their inboxes until we would both hit the daily limit (remember that?). I remember the different times of the day that Tumblr would change that was synchronised to the timezones of who I followed. I remember staying up way past my bedtime and going to school the next day on three hours of sleep. I remember using TinyChat and entering the world of group webcamming before it became a work tool. I remember writing to my first penpal. I remember meeting people from the Internet in real life for the first time. I remember going to my first Tumblr Meetup. I remember lying to my parents about it. I remember meeting my first boyfriend. And my second.

I remember getting 'anons' and all the drama associated with 'anons'. I remember sending horrible anonymous messages to people. I remember bullying people. I remember being bullied and receiving horrible messages. I remember when the internet finally 'got real' to me and it wasn't just a playground anymore.

I remember all the iterations of my blog: my obsession with Iceland, meme posts, fashion. I meticulously edited my blog's theme over and over to get it right and best represent me at the time. I remember staying up all night for weeks at a time watching runway shows live as they happened and then immediately blogging about them. I remember the passionate conversations I would have with my mutuals about something we had just saw. I remember when my blog had only 500 followers, being obsessed with my follower count, and seeing it as a validation of who I was and what I was putting out into the world. I remember hitting 40,000 posts and being proud of that achievement. I remember being terrified of the idea that someone from school would find my Tumblr.

Tumblr was such a defining period of my life. I grew up using Tumblr and it grew with me. The people I followed grew up too. I stopped using it regularly after high school because Tumblr no longer seemed to be what it once was to me. While I don't use it anymore, I have left my blog intact as it was. It's a relic of a different time and when I was a different person.

The internet is a very different place; it's not even a place anymore, it's everywhere. Rather than coming home and racing to my computer to log on, I want to turn my computer off and read a book or go for a walk. The internet is scary now and not silly.

Still, I think fondly on the years I spent here and what they mean to me. I am now 27 and thankful for that time.

[lacefuneral]

OK I know that the big meme is to try and scare Twitter users from joining but Twitter is a super toxic place and I have some friends who have fled here so. (done by voice-to-text, there may be typos)

Open Tumblr on desktop to do this because not all of these options are available on mobile. You'll be able to find all of them in your settings.

make sure you set your dashboard to chronological

turn off the ability to see other peoples likes (for reasons explained in the next bullet points)

disable your likes as being visible & disable  the blogs you're following from being visible

The reason for the previous bullet points  is that the Tumblr like is not the same as other social media - it is used as a bookmark button.  Often times people will bookmark content to look at it later (videos, long textposts, etc.) but it is not an endorsement of the content.  Information on this website is much more dense than it is on Twitter which is more bite sized, so not everyone will have read the texts or watched the videos of posts they "liked." People can and they will use your likes against you. and just like Twitter, if you happen to be following someone and that person says something the people don't agree with, if you are following that person you can get pulled into the situation even if you know nothing about it.   so for this reason pretty much all of Tumblr has unanimously agreed to have their likes and follow blogs  hidden to prevent unnecessary infighting. 

 Choosing not to see other peoples likes on your dashboard follows the same principle and it is one of respect for your fellow user

The above may seem deeply weird to Twitter users but we have far less drama on this website. It is significantly more peaceful because we have decided to curate the community in this way.  You don't necessarily have to hide your likes or your follows, but that's the reason why we as a community do that.  It used to get as bad as it gets on Twitter, but it doesn't anymore. We have learned to live in harmony here. fighting still occurs certainly but not nearly to the same extent.

make sure that you  set the toggle that enables you to see content that is filtered on iOS. This is entirely safe for work content  that was filtered out by mistake but Tumblr hast to keep in place to appease Apple or some thing like that but it does hide lot of content and prevents users from communicating with one another.

 If you are 18 or older make sure to input your birthday to prove your age and have "mature content"  set so that it either appears on your dashboard as normal or that it appears blurred.  A lot of content is mistakenly marked as mature as a form of censorship even if it is not graphic in the slightest. I have seen text posts that use the word "fuck" that have been marked mature

YOU CANNOT POST PORN HERE. YOU WILL GET BANNED. if you post something that isn't porn and it gets flagged, you can usually appeal it. but if it is actual porn (irl or illustrated), you're in hot water. do not tag posts as "NSFW" or "NSFT" (not safe for tumblr, an alternative many porn blogs used). invent a different acronym for reblogging dirty jokes, or you may get shadow banned. i use NSFM, personally.

 That said,  you're technically able to say whatever you want on this website within reason. It's not like Twitter where if you say you want to  guillotine the rich you get suspended or something.  But do be aware that like Twitter, all text  can be picked up by Tumblr search.  So if you type something like " I want Stede bonnet to crush my  head with his thighs like a watermelon"  there is a chance that other users will see that post if they look in the stede bonnet tag. (hi all!)

most celebrities do not use this website so you're able to talk about them without censoring their names. Just be aware  that fans of that celebrity may see your post.

 likewise do be careful if you're talking about groups that perpetuate transphobia, because those groups do use Tumblr  just like they use Twitter. if T*RFs reblog or comment on your posts, block and ignore. do not platform them by arguing. you put your followers (and accounts you follow) at risk when you engage them. you also reenforce their held beliefs that trans people are aggressive. it isn't up to you to deradicalize them. you can report people for bigotry on this website but most of the time the reports don't actually do anything. So your best friend is the block button.

The difference between commenting in the tags, commenting in the replies,  and commenting directly on the post is thus: 

commenting on the tags is the equivalent to sitting in a room with thousands of people and commenting to those at your table. Other people might overhear you,  but the message is intended for those at the table, your friends.

 Commenting in the replies is the equivalent to standing up  and walking over to  the person who just gave a speech.  It is intended for them.  Other people can overhear it and they definitely will - which means that some people might stand up and walk over to you and start talking to you. Especially if you say something really rude.

 Commenting in the reblogs is the equivalent of standing on top of the table and shouting to the entire room.  you don't do this unless you feel like you're contributing to the post in a comedic fashion or you're adding information that others may find helpful. Otherwise, you look like a clown.  Also by commenting on a post, as with the replies, you are opening yourself up to a response from anyone else in the room. So if you're rude on someone's post, or you're spreading misinformation,  people are going to want to have a word with you.  You don't get to use the response "this is my blog and I say what I want" - because you've made the decision to go on to someone else's post.

 Now with every form of communication, the OP of the post will be able to read everything. So if you're writing in your tags  and you start trauma dumping or writing lurid sexual fantasies or otherwise being a weirdo, the OP of the post may block you.  the OP  (or anyone) may also choose to highlight your tags  or otherwise respond to them depending on what is said.  Sometimes someone will write something very funny or very thoughtful, and that's usually why.  They want others to see the contribution.

 There is also the notion of "prev tags."  culturally, this is a relatively new development and a lot of people were mad about it at first.  But the purpose of prev tags is  to nod in agreement at the metaphorical table.  You're keeping the conversation amongst you and your friends.  Whereas screenshotting  someone's tags and adding them directly into the post is the equivalent of shouting "HEY GUESS WHAT THEY SAID!" so it's entirely contextual. prev tags is also used as a meme.  For example someone may say something deeply absurd.  And so people will blog that post and say "prev tags" in a chain, encouraging people to follow that chain to the inevitable conclusion. A funny example I saw recorded in video form, was a text post that said  something about white haired anime boys.  And there was a chain of like 20 people encouraging you to work your way through the reblog. And the punchline was "Santa Claus."

although there is an option now to automatically shorten posts, it is considered proper etiquette to tag long posts as such. this post will be one.

when you reblog  a post and you tag it, there are three primary things you are doing.  One is to comment on it, one is to apply any categorization you wish so that you can find the post again, and one is to add filter tags for your followers who don't want to see that type of post. The last one is normally reserved for triggers -  things like blood or violence or flashing images.  People have different policies on this, but most users are willing to tag their posts if you ask them to.  So if you were deathly afraid of frogs, you could ask someone to tag frogs for you.

and yeah Tumblr filtering actually works. If you block a tag, you will get a pop-up that obscures the content if someone blocked a post with that tag or keyword in it,  giving you the option of whether or not to engage.  But if you are looking in Tumblr search, those posts will be screened out automatically so you won't even see the pop-up.  I think it's because Tumblr assumes that when you follow a blog you're following someone you trust, whereas Tumblr search is the wild west and it's full of strangers -  so they're like "nope we are not showing you your triggers at all."

as for the second use case, you don't need to reblog a post  and add  1 million categorization tags.  Because other people aren't going to see your reblog  in the Tumblr search. so you're wasting your time if you're like "#ofmd #our flag means death #our flag means death stede #ofmd stede #ofmd stede bonnet #our flag means death stede bonnet" -  you look silly. this only works  if it is the original post.  Also because of the way that Tumblr works most of those tags a redundant because if you so much as mention a keyword in your post it's probably going to end up in the tag

do not tag an original post with unrelated hashtags.  You will clog up the tags and people will hate you. 

 it is recommended that you have anon asks disabled  because a lot of people use them to be cruel. But a lot of people leave them open for people who are too shy to talk to them otherwise.  There are also a lot of ask games that circulate which makes use of anon.  Like having your friends give you compliments, but you don't know who they are. so it's a personal decision and you can change it any time.  But if people are being cruel to you, don't let them. It is OK to close anon asks.

while twitter makes  great use of alt text, it is much more common on this website to write image/audio descriptions, which are pasted directly into the body of the post. Either in the original post itself, or in the replies. If someone transcribes your post for you, the etiquette is to thank them, copy their transcript,  paste it onto your original post, and add a credit for the person who transcribed it. A lot of people volunteer their time doing this for people who otherwise do not have the spoons to do it themselves.

always tag flashing images and flashing videos. Do not tag with "epilepsy" -  that prevents  epileptic users from communicating with one another,  because their tag  is full of content that can hurt them. it doesn't eliminate the problem entirely, but it's part of a cultural shift to make those spaces  safer in the future.

art theft is bad. Always credit  and link to original sources.

 The asks from people asking you to boost their fundraiser are scams. they are always scams. People on this website do not solicit one another in this way even if they need help.

if you like a post,  you should reblog it.  That allows your followers to see it and gives the post more reach. The likes  as I said before, function as a bookmark. They are also used to show emotional support to a friend.

 Tumblr has recently introduced the concept of unrebloggable posts.  You can make a post unrebloggable from the get-go or  you can edit it later. you can also make it so that the original post remains rebloggable, but an individual reblog of it  cannot be shared. So for example, I could make a shit post that takes off and people enjoy. And let's say someone was rude to me in response to the shit post. I could reblog my own post, say " don't be an asshole" - and then make it so that the "don't be an asshole" edition is not shareable, but leave the original shitpost to be shared. some people may choose to make their original  post and unshareable  if they are receiving too many notifications, they are being harassed, the original post had misinformation,  or simply for fun. Some people have started a sort of "you can only reblog this post  until x  date" game.

Tumblr has a feature known as the read more.  Read more is actually a lot more complex than most people realize. The read more allows you to hide  a long string of text under it, sparing people on your dashboard from having to scroll a long time.  But a read more  is not a drop-down button. It is a redirect link that takes you to the original post. And because of this, if the original post is edited, you will always see the most up-to-date version under the read more.  This makes it an excellent format for news posts with developing stories.  But because of this set up, if the original post is deleted or the blog is deactivated/banned, the information underneath is lost forever. it is important to be aware of that. Even if you reblog that post,  whatever is underneath is entirely determined by whether or not the original post can still be accessed. So if you want some thing to be archived, do not put it under or read more. If your blog gets wrongfully deleted, that information is gone and cannot be recovered unless you have cache  on the way back machine.

do not use a default profile picture and do not have a blank blog (blog with no reblogs).  You will scare the user base and they will block you on site.  The first thing you should do upon joining Tumblr is immediately changing your icon and then finding a or two to reblog.  This tells people that you are a human being, and not a bot. 

you can have sideblogs on this website. In fact there is no limit to how many blogs you can own. The only limit is how many sideblogs  you are permitted to make per day. Side blogs allow you to organize content by fandom or theme.  However the side blog will always be tied to your main blog.  You cannot delete your main blog and keep your sideblogs, you cannot select a sideblog to be your new main.  And when you send someone an ask,  comment in the reply section of a post, or click like on a post, it will display as your main blog.  So total anonymity is not possible.  You can, however, send and reply to DM using your sideblog,  as well as answer asks directed towards the sideblog,  and reblog a post (and comment in the comment section + tags)  as that blog. 

URL hoarding is when someone makes the decision to save a username by making a blank sideblog so other people cannot use it. this is considered kind of an asshole move, especially if you have a lot of URLs hoarded,  but I think most users have at least one or two that they have saved for a rainy day.  I know for a while I had a lot that were Spock themed. you are able to change your user name, but that releases it into the wild. So some people will hoard their previous usernames  to prevent identity theft (as well as to redirect to their most current username if people are looking for them.) This is a different thing, but some people view them as being the same.

 Tumblr does not use "OOMF" or "moots" -  we usually just say the entire word of followers and mutuals. Some people might be confused if you use Twitter terminology here

i think that covers most of it. no i will not put this under a readmore. thank you.

[heresiae]

being of this lovely hellsite since 2007 I saw all the evolutions and... we hate them all, everytime. but, of the three biggest changes (comments, chat and reblog structure), the only one that we embraced better is the chat (it's not like I use it much, but maybe other do?). comments are ok, but it allow people to make a comments instead of actively participating in the conversation through reblogs. I mean, they're ok in post where a reblog might be too much, but with some people they're just... meh. and yes, sometimes the branch reblog structure is missed, but we're used to the new one.

I also remember when using tumblr without x-kit was, indeed, an hellish experience. not like today, when if you don't have it you can still manage around, it was literally impossible to have a not "I'm going to kill this site" experience without it.

so, I have to be honest, after the communication the they will not get rid of the chronological navigation, the most anxious point, for me, is the conversation one.

people: it is working right now. it's working for everyone that had used tumblr for more that two weeks. not only it's not difficult @staff, but it's also the very way that distinguish us from other socials.

if we preferred other ways of communicating, we wouldn't have stuck with it during all the 16 years of mayhem till today. we LOVE how we're communicating right now and trust me, as a UX designer, completely eliminating the learning curve on a social platform it's impossible. you do have some ux problems, but not on the dashboard. it's mostly in the menu and every time you wan to change some settings that is not completely intuitive (also, you're search DO need a much better way to work).

honestly, the only thing you should do on your list, it the last one: FIX THE DAMN APP.

I discover new tumblrs and creators regularly, because my mutual do and reblog them and they probably do the same, etc. it's a chain and it's working. when I'm feeling adventurous, I follow a tag, or search for something.

creators are very well loved and supported here. the creative community is not only very active but prone to teach stuff to us civilians. now, if you're able to put more creators in my dash (since I can't afford to pay for the free-from-ads anymore) that's ok, but DON'T PUSH IT.

please, don't make us more like the others? we are not becoming a refuge from other social for nothing. don't change things too much.

[hollowfaith]

[ indigo ]  when did you first start writing / roleplaying?

[ plum ]  are you more of a dialogue or a description writer?

[ mulberry ]  what tips would you give someone with writer's block?

[ coral ]  give a shoutout to one of your favorite blogs.

🐝  *  ―  𝑪𝑶𝑳𝑶𝑼𝑹𝑭𝑼𝑳 𝑰𝑵𝑻𝑬𝑹𝑽𝑰𝑬𝑾. ( send one or more of these to get to know the person behind the blog a little better. )

(these are going to get long so i'll put a readmore to spare the dashboard lol)

[ indigo ]  when did you first start writing / roleplaying?

for writing (stories) i'd say in early middle school when i realized fanfiction was a thing. before that i just did a lot of journaling, or i'd finish a trip with family and write a long essay about everything we did on the trip. anyways when the fanfic itch hit i wrote obsessively and even titled my story journals as i finished them so i could keep them in chronological order. (like i had one named after spring, another for summer, fall, winter, etc. and then a series named after favorite gemstones x flowers). i think i filled 40+ notebooks of various sizes by high school? they're still somewhere in the basement at my parents' place probably.

then i found ff.net and realized people posted their stuff online so i tried that a bit, and when ff.net started getting dated i moved onto ao3. i don't have as much energy or drive to write the crazy crossover AUs i used to do but it's still nice to post there, or make up original short stories for fun. anyways TL;DR i'm always writing something somewhere sometime~

for RP i wanna say...early 2000s? back when forum RPs were a thing. and i don't mean the fancy kind they have now where you can custom-theme your posts, but just plain message boards where you started a topic to make "threads" and replies to that thread made up your interactions, and the rest of the board was divided up so you had locations in one place and character profiles in another, etc etc. they were everywhere and constantly opening and shutting down so i went everywhere too, lol. also signed up for this digimon PbEM RP group where they had a plotline and an all-original crest lineup but you had to make up your own digidestined and digimon and apply to join. then we'd RP on a word doc and email it to the next person in the group to get the story going. it was sooo old school but it was genuinely fun. i also applied to join a livejournal MFRP group but got rejected because my app wasn't good enough hahaha that got me a little scarred so i hid away from MFRP for awhile

(also a special bonus to the time my friends and i RPed as neopets faeries in a composition book we'd pass around in school between periods.)

for tumblr RP i think it was like 2014 or 2015 after a RP hiatus? the messageboards were dead or dying by then and heck if i was going to learn livejournal and its weird system so i joined some ancient chinese themed MFRP group with a similar chinese drama-inspired muse but that shut down within a month so i wandered around until i found a bigger more active group and stuck around there. and now i'm on and off here. :)

[ plum ]  are you more of a dialogue or a description writer?

when it comes to RP, i think i lean more towards description because i need to give context to my muse's lines. but for stories i'm more dialogue heavy, and i enjoy writing exchanges back and forth between characters.

[ mulberry ]  what tips would you give someone with writer's block?

i don't know if i'm the best person to ask but when i'm stuck on writer's block i work on a different...writing project..... you know they all have different vibes and stuff so a change of scenery gives the mind a break and stuff? it's good.

and it works because i still wanna write, i just don't want to write for Thing A so why not Thing B lol.

it also helps to find a focus, most of my writing block woes come because i don't know where/what to do next, so maybe i find a song, a pretty quote, or an icon that gives me the right "vibes" for what i want to express and think up the rest of the post from that.

it also helps to have a smaller goal to work towards even if you don't know how the ending will turn out. for example, if in a thread my A is interacting with your B and i think to myself "well according to what i've read in B's app he'd prolly hate A and think him a prick, so it'd be interesting if A gets a chance to showcase his prick side in this thread eventually," then i'd insert stuff into my replies to gradually make A more annoying and play off what B replies to work towards that "goal."

of course since RP is directed by both sides those mini-goals sometimes get sidetracked, but then it's fun to see in what new direction we take the interaction instead haha

[ coral ]  give a shoutout to one of your favorite blogs.

i can’t stress enough how helpful quotes/musings blogs are for like aesthetics or muse inspirations for me and the nice thing is most of them are still around even if they haven’t updated in years so HERE HAVE THIS POST WITH LINKS TO A BUNCH MORE GREAT MUSINGS POSTS BLOGS

[animeengineer]

So tumblr has a new bug that’s driving me nuts. I’m not sure if it’s mobile app only or if the web version is screwed up too.

Basically, I’ll be scrolling, and instead of loading the next chronological set of older posts like it should, it’ll load new posts and append them after the ones I just saw. Then when I get past the new posts, I hit the “you’ve caught up” marker, and nothing loads after that. If I try to scroll down it’ll load a “blogs you might be interested in” row and nothing else, then refuse to scroll down further.

For example, I get back to Tumblr after a couple hours. The post I’m looking at says “4 hours ago” because I was that far along my scroll back when I left off. I scroll a few posts and it’ll eventually jump to “6 hours ago” because those posts are now six hours old but it’s still in chronological order. So far so good.

Then all of a sudden i scroll down from a post that’s “7 hours ago” and the next post is… 15 seconds ago. My dashboard didn’t clear and reset, it simply added the newest posts after the old post, breaking chronological order. I can keep scrolling until I hit the “2 hours ago” posts and it says I’m caught up, because that’s where I started hours ago, before I put it down, and it’ll refuse to load anything after that.

So if I want to get to posts from 7 hours ago or older, I guess I have to force-restart the app and scroll really fast until I get that far back? Assuming it doesn’t break like this and jam up again?

It’s been doing this since the “hey we are adding badges for how long you’ve paid to subscribe” update posts went out. (The actual update supporting that hit today and didn’t fix this bug.)

[illgiveyouahint]

I barely use facebook but when I do open it up and see the dash I am once again reminded how hostile social media is nowadays. You scroll like 5 seconds and you already get sponsored posts, suggested posts for you,then a post or two from a friend, and again sponsored post and suggested post and some reels. Like for fucks sake I just want to see what's happening in my friend's life. God I hate it.

[cyle]

Greetings, first off, than you for your awesome posts, tumblr info-related and not.

I came across a post where a user said their dashboard was missing posts by other users they follow; they said that when they reached out to support, support indicated it was normal and by design - the dash is all chronological (if set as such), but not necessarily every single post is included from who you follow. They recommended to use the notification feature to not miss a post.

Is this accurate and can you talk a little bit about this? As someone who follows a lot of blogs, I don’t want to sift through notifications to look at a chronological timeline, or avoid missing anything. I’m wondering what’s the situation with it.

Thank you!

i'm right there with you on not wanting to miss anything. i'm pretty religious about keeping up with literally every post on my dashboard.

i think it's technically true that this can happen, but it's by far an extremely rare event. one that i don't know if we can even detect in our logs. i wouldn't be surprised if it's a one in a million event. in tech we call this an "edge case".

the cases where a post could be "missing" from the dashboard are varied and some of them are a consequence of architecture decisions, but for each of those decisions there are many more fallbacks and safety nets to make sure you don't miss a post. there are a lot of variables to consider here under the hood, because trying to load every post from all of the blogs you follow (potentially many thousands) is no small feat.

off the top of my head, i can think of maybe this happening because they have "Best stuff first" enabled, which uses a series of algorithms to re-sort the dashboard feed in a way that may make it seem like a post gets "missed", when really it's just not where you'd expect it to be if you were expecting a purely reverse-chronological timeline. it's probably there, though, if you keep scrolling.

another way i think this could happen is if you're using some third party API client to read your dashboard feed and you're using one of the old-but-still-supported time-based pagination techniques to go page-by-page. in that case, it's possible to miss a post entirely if it was published literally at the same second as another post and it's on a page boundary. but that should never happen if you're using tumblr.com or one of our apps or our standard dashboard pagination strategy, which is by post ID.

another possibility is that you can see that post in a different view, and the date you're seeing is actually the user-set "back date", which is not the same as the publish date, making it seem like it should've been at a certain time in your dashboard, but it wouldn't be. we only use that user-set "back date" for your blog view, not the dashboard. that can be pretty confusing if you're trying to debug it yourself.

in the end: it depends on the specific circumstance of their issue, what post was thought to be missed, etc. this isn't even accounting for possibilities like the post got deleted or the blog was temporarily suspended during the time you thought you should see it, or they blocked you, or lots of other possibilities that make it difficult to figure this out.

but in general, 99.9999% of the time, you should never miss a post on your dashboard if you keep scrolling back and back and back to where you last left off in your previous session. even if you have "Best stuff first" enabled, we don't reshuffle the posts you already saw last time.

[biggaybunny]

Most people I see on tumblr have an unconscious understanding of this system these days, but it's a cool phenomenon of unconscious group organization so I wanna talk about it anyway: talking in tags. It's actually pretty clear where it came from once you break it down.

Reblogs are the basic way of interacting with a post. If you reblog and add a comment of your own in the reblog, it's like joining the conversation. It shows up both in the activity feed of whom you reblogged it from, and on your blog / your followers' dashboard (same audience, so I group these two together). Long sets of reblogs almost read like forum threads we're passing around, except they tend to branch out endlessly.

Replies show up in the activity feed for the poster (and anyone else getting notifications for that post), but it doesn't involve putting the post in front of your followers. It's just a different way of engaging with a post, that people use for a lot of reasons, mostly for posts they don't feel the need to or don't want to spread around for whatever reason (personal posts, posts they disagree with, etc).

So what's missing is the opposite case. A way to interact with the post for your followers that doesn't show up in the activity feed. And for the longest time, tags filled that niche. Sure, a lot of us used xkit's tag-viewer, but you still had to go looking for them. If you wanted to comment on a post to tell your followers something *about* the post, but didn't want to start a conversation *on* the post, you could put it in the tags. The only other way to do it was to reblog a post and then make a separate post commenting on the thing you just reblogged, which was always backwards because the dash is chronological and might be confusing based on how fast your followers' queues move. Now we can all see each other's tags anyway, but the practice is pretty well established, so we all largely understand that tag commentary is a person talking to their followers, mutuals, and/or themselves. And it's probably going to continue being used that way even by new users who will have never known about the quasi-privacy of the previous era!

(Also, this is why "why'd you leave this in the tags" posts bother me, but that's a personal opinion)

[sqsupernova]

How to Post your Works to the SQSupernova Collection!

That’s right - it’s almost time for Authors and Artists to put their beautiful works on display! We’ve made our beautiful, wonderful guide to help you post your work successfully - please read it THOROUGHLY before asking questions! We promise we’ve covered almost anything that could cause issues.

The posting deadline for all works is midnight EST on August 30th!

(What time is that for me? Or, check out our Countdown Timer!)

For those of you with experience posting to the Swan Queen Supernova collection from previous years, this year’s collection can be found HERE - just hit the ‘post to collection’ button and away you go!

Quick reminder - don’t forget to click POST when you are done formatting your work, NOT ‘save as draft’! We will not be able to see or reveal your work if you save it as a draft, and it will not count as being submitted!

For those of you who need more assistance as you prepare to post, read on for more specific instructions:

All right! For those of you who would like further clarification, your first step will still be to go to THIS LINK and click ‘Post to Collection,’ as seen below.

On this next page, you will enter all of the information about your fic/art - starting with rating, warnings, fandom, category, relationships, and characters. A sample page would look like this:

Please make sure your rating and warnings are accurate to your fic/art. If you think a warning might spoil something for the plot, you can select ‘Choose Not to Use Archive Warnings.’ Do NOT select ‘No Archive Warnings Apply’ unless your fic/art truly does not have any of the warning elements present in it.

The Additional Tags section is a place to put anything else you feel should be indicated about your story/art. Is it a historical au? Does it take place on a spaceship? Is it fluff? angst? crack? These tags are optional, but many people do use them to organize their fic/art or to find new fics to read and art to appreciate.

Next up is the preface section - this is how you introduce your fic or art!

Authors - you’ve already sent us a title and summary, so if those still work for you, go ahead and just copy them right in there! If you’ve changed some things up since that submission, go ahead and put your final version in here.

Artists - whatever title you use, it’s probably a good idea to add [Fanart] or [Art] to the end of your title, and to tag it as such in the additional tags as well - this will help people find art specifically!

Notes can be posted at the beginning of the fic - like if you are thanking a beta, or blaming someone for making you do this, or giving introductory notes to the readers about setting, etc - or at the end of the fic, if your notes might spoil part of the plot. You can also check both boxes and put notes in both places!

Now for the fiddly bits:

The first, and most important, thing to check is that under Post to Collections / Challenges, ‘SQSupernova6′ is selected. This should automatically show up, since you used the ‘Post to Collection’ button, but please check anyway!

You can also choose to gift your fic to someone - authors may choose to gift their fic to their artist, or vice versa. You should have their AO3 name from your match-up email!

‘This work is a remix, a translation, a podfic, or was inspired by another work’ - this will be a handy section to connect your fic to your artist’s art, but you won’t be able to use it until after reveals. Skip it for now and come back to it later, once your partner’s work has been revealed!

‘This work is part of a series’ - if your SQSN was part of a series that you have already begun, you can link it to the previous parts here. Otherwise, skip it.

‘This work has multiple chapters’ - If you’d like to split your work up into chapters, select this option. Once you post the first chapter, you will be able to add additional chapters from the first chapter of your fic/art.

‘Set a different publication date’ - DON’T DO ANYTHING WITH THIS NOW. LEAVE IT ALONE. You will receive instructions in your reveal date email about how to change this date later, to help ensure that it shows up at the top of the Swan Queen tag, so you get the most eyes on it. You cannot change the date BEFORE the date of your reveal, so leave this field alone for now.

You’re almost there! First up are some privacy questions:

These are all options that can make it harder for people to leave mean or abusive comments - but they also make it harder for commenters without accounts to leave feedback, so consider the pros and cons before selecting!

And finally, it’s time to input your fic or art!

For fic - if you are comfortable with html coding, feel free to use the HTML editor button in the top right to switch editing boxes. Otherwise, the Rich Text editor will let you do most basic word editing functions, and will maintain bolding, italics, etc pasted in from Word or Google Docs.

For art, you will need some words in the post itself in order to post, so be sure to add a sentence or two about your work, then select the insert/edit image button:

It will bring up this menu:

Source - this is where you should paste in the url of the image you are hosting on another private site - so don’t publicly post it to your Tumblr! Use a PRIVATE post, at least until reveals are over. For a list of recommended sites, check out AO3′s helpful article on the subject!

Remember that your image URL needs to end in a filetype, like .jpg, .png, .gif, etc etc.!!! IT WILL NOT WORK IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A FILETYPE AT THE END OF YOUR URL. Your image will NOT appear if your link ends in .html, /, or any random numbers or letters.

Image description - this is very important for people who use screen readers because of vision impairments. Please describe your image as best you can, for example: this is a four-panel cartoon of Emma Swan, a barista, tripping over a chair and spilling hot chocolate down Regina Mills’ shirt. Regina is in a fancy blouse and skirt, and looks very, very pissed off.

Dimensions - if your source image is very, very big, it is recommended that you shrink it down a bit here. You can always come back and play around with the size once you post, so be sure to check that your image isn’t so big it’s hard to see all of it on a normal computer screen.

Aaaaaand, you’re done! If you’re confident everything is correct, you can click ‘Post Without Preview’ (you daredevil, you), but otherwise, click ‘Preview’ and give your story a quick glance over to make sure everything’s in the right place.

Then, once you’re satisfied, just make sure you click POST on the next screen - this is the only way to submit it to us for the collection!

If you don’t click ‘Post,’ your work will stay as a draft and will NOT be counted as submitted! Please make sure to hit POST once you have everything ready.

Once you post your work to the collection, it immediately becomes an unrevealed work. This means that its details are hidden from everyone but you and your beloved mods! Unfortunately, this also makes it a liiiiittle harder to find.

To locate your work once you post it to the collection, go to ‘My Dashboard’ by clicking on the menu that appears when you click on your username in the top right corner of the page, then click on ‘Works’ on the left-hand side.

From here, you can access your hidden work in one of two ways:

Click ‘Edit Works’ on the upper right side of the page. This will let you view all of your works, sorted by fandom, including the one you just submitted to the collection. Click on the title of that work to continue editing it!

Once your work is approved and added to the collection, you can also click ‘Works in Collections’ on the upper right side of the page. This will display all of your works that are currently in collections, sorted chronologically. Your SQSN work should be at the top, with “Unrevealed:” in front of the title. Click on the title of that work to continue editing it!

The URL of your work will also not change once you’ve clicked ‘post,’ so you can also bookmark or save it to come back to at any time.

If you need to add additional chapters to your work, you can do it by going to that URL or locating your fic again as described above, and clicking this link on the first chapter:

Just make sure to press POST on each additional chapter as well! ;D

--------------------

Congratulations! You’ve just Supernova’d! What a rush, eh? Now just lean back, relax, and wait for reveals. Thank you for participating!

Each creator will get an email letting them know the reveal date for each work they have submitted, at least a few days before the date, so that they can prepare and get their friends hyped up for the reveal! If you hear other people getting their emails and you haven’t yet, don’t panic. There are WEEKS of reveals, so some people get emails very early and some people get emails weeks later. We PROMISE everyone will get an email with their reveal date by the time all is said and done!

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at @SQSupernova on Twitter, or at sqsupernova@gmail.com !

[frillshark-fr]

How do you get people to always buy your dragons? Genuine question

i was gonna say something like “haha i have no fucking clue” but that would be a lie i think about this a lot actually so i might have some insights i’ve been breeding dragons as my primary activity on FR since i started playing FR (in 2014...) and people have only started actually buying dragons from me consistently like, 5-6 months ago, despite 2-3 attempts at running a genuine hatchery onsite that always died due to lack of interest & not really being worth the effort. 

so ive thought a lot about what the hell is happening now and why my dragons are suddenly consistently selling and I think ive come down to these being the main points of advice i can give: 1. make friends! be friendly! don’t be weird! be a cool and fun person to interact with! 2. post consistently. post your dragons consistently. post about other stuff consistently. just be an active member of the community 3. POST YOUR SHIT IN THE “#FLIGHT RISING” TAG. THIS IS PROBABLY THE ONLY TRUELY HELPFUL THING I SAY IN THIS POST 4. make pairs that are sexy as hell and be openly proud of them. make dragons and pairs that you like, not what you think will necessarily sell. people can tell when you like stuff and being genuinely passionate about something, whatever the fuck it is, will get other people passionate as well longer versions/explanations under the cut because man this got a mile long. i wasn’t kidding when i said i think about this a lot and i am so sorry if you wanted something concise and useful

1. to be a little glib. i am mutuals/friends with more clout in the FR community than I do kjdshfdsfdhjhkfdf shoutout to everyone who draws their dragons really good on a regular basis because i am riding on your coattails to sell my dragons. i love you this was never my intent, obviously! DO NOT BEFRIEND PEOPLE BECAUSE YOU THINK YOU WILL GET STUFF FROM THEM IT’S JUST A REALLY BAD THING TO DO TO PEOPLE!!! i wouldn’t be friends w/ people if i didn’t genuinely like and get along with them! no amount of pixel cash is worth putting up with people you dont like or abusing people you admire!  but i’d also somehow feel wrong to just... neglect mentioning this factor. idk it’s probably a self-esteem thing sjdkgfhdsf i just Don’t feel like my #success has been totally out of my own effort because its not like im #hustling or whatever i just posted dragons and stuff happened

-----

2. being consistent! just. posting consistently! posting Every Hatchling I Have and Talking About Them On Tumblr!  Once I had a couple nests just sell super fast likely due to aforementioned clout, i was emboldened to just post more of my nests more often and I swear this has more effect than anything else. i just needed the self-esteem boost to Start Doing That posting consistently makes ppl follow u for ur content which gets even more people to look at your dragons which gets more people to buy your dragons.

-

2a. Also just post a lot in general, even if you aren’t necessarily posting about your dragons for sale. it definitely helps! just be friendly and active and people will come

-----

3. post your shit in the tag. not in “#dragon-sales” or “#fr-dragon-sales” or anything weird like that because I don’t know if anyone actually looks at those, but people definitely browse “#flight rising”. no matter how many followers you have, more people will see your content if you post it in #flight rising than if you just chuck it into the void. 

-

3a. however! do not put links into the post if you want it to actually show up in the tag. tumblr is cool in that it doesn’t actually matter that much when you post something, the same way it really matters on twitter bc twitter has algorithms that decide for you what it thinks you want to be seeing whereas tumblr just shows you everything in chronological order. if you post something into the tag at 1am... it will still be there at 2pm when people log on and start scrolling.

the only thing tumblr seems to consistently hide from a tag (and possibly a dashboard, but idk) are posts with links in them, as a half-assed attempt to limit spam. instead of linking to your sales tab/to the dragons directly in the post, reblog it with the links instead. to reduce latency between a post going up and the links being available, i type out the links in the initial post, cut them, post the thing into the tag, then very quickly reblog, paste the links, and post the reblog jdhfsdf. i don’t know if that benefits anything really? but it can sometimes take me a while to type links, so if i posted, pressed reblog, typed up all the links, then posted, it’d be like ~15 minutes where someone may see the post, think “oh i would like to buy those dragons”, then can’t find the link, think “oh well, i will just find it later”, scroll on, and just... completely forget about it. so uh. go quick?

-

3b. the armchair sociologist in me also thinks self-reblogging has the added benefit of like... you know how people are more likely to tip a barista when a dollar is already in the tip jar? or how people are more likely to take one of those little tabs on a flyer if one of them is already missing? i think that works with notes, too. i don’t know why i think that or why it happens i just swear once a post gets 1 note, suddenly it gets Even More Notes, and if it doesn’t get any notes for a while it will sit at 0 notes until the end of time. so giving yourself 1 obligatory note makes people more likely to interact. i think

-----

4. all of these are hard to quantify but this one is especially so: have cool and unique dragons. make your pairs sexy as hell. don’t put all your eggs (hah) into the one basket of selling dragons that are technically “popular”. we have all seen triple white/triple obsidian/triple orca/triple any other popular colors and cherub/pere/stained or wasp/bee/glim pthahlos or whatever. they’re pretty! we get it! but everyone has had one and everyone has had those pairs and market for dragons like that can be super oversaturated. try to break free from that and sell dragons that people can only get from you. I can’t tell you what to do though bc that rly depends on you. make pairs that you find exciting or interesting and people will feel that. i have a very specific theme and aesthetic that i don’t feel like is especially common on FR and i am genuinely very enthusiastic about it. marine shit is my Thing:tm: both on and off FR and dragons are one of my many ways of expressing that   if you have a Thing:tm:, either some fr-centric aesthetic (like being super into plague or earth or light or something) or something more general (such as any of the -punks or -cores)... just fuckin roll with it honestly. if you’re goth? make got h dragons. like scene stuff that looks straight out of a middle school in 2010? rock that hot-topic lair. outdoorsey type? make dragons that look like you’d meet them on a hike in the woods. it really works with anything!  people can tell when you really love something and i know that seeing someone really love something, even if it’s not necessarily MY thing, makes me really excited too!! 

-

4a. never show fear. people can smell fear. never be like “well this one isn’t that good” because suddenly now you’ve planted the idea that it’s ugly in other people’s heads when they may have really liked it had you not accidentally suggested to them that it’s an ugly dragon. people are EXTREMELY suggestible to even VERY minor cues so be always a little bit bolder than you think you should be you’d be surprised at how many times ive been like “eh, this one’s kind of a dud, i’ll probably have to exalt this one when the auction expires” and then that hatchling is the first to sell. never ever ever ever decide what other people like for them. always act like your dragons are the hottest shit in all the land and Believe It. this is what people mean when they say “fake it till you make it”

- 4b. also, idk if it’s true of everyone but it’s really off-putting to see someone having serious pity-parties for themselves, on sales posts or otherwise. ive had bad experiences with people who are uncomfortably quick to self-depreciate (because they were using their genuine self-hatred to manipulate me or my friends), so i might be a little more trigger-happy about avoiding this behavior than others, but don’t weaponize your sadness to guilt people into doing what you want. it’s really not cool.

-----

okay i think that’s my entire manifesto on how i do dragon selling. anon i am so sorry im sure you were expecting like “believe in yourself :)” and here i am dissecting dragon selling like it’s a frog in a science class

edit: AFTER ALL THAT I STILL THOUGHT OF ONE MORE THING. It’s not really a Point, just a Reminder:

i don’t post about all the times i have to exalt dragons that don’t sell. you are seeing me being very selective about what i post. you dont sit and stare at my lair or click through offspring lists or check old sales posts. there are a lot of times where someone just doesn’t sell. even now when i’m selling stuff pretty consistently i will still sometimes have dragons that don’t sell for seemingly no reason. even dragons I think are sure to sell will sometimes just... not. and that’s ok! you gotta just be.. ok with that. it’s par for the course. i typically list dragons for 7 days on the AH, give them a couple more days after their auction expires (partially because i forget, partially to give them a grace period for people to pm/ask me about them), and then exalt them after that point. w/ some dragons that i don’t think got a fair shake for one reason or another (such as the sales post not showing up in the tag or something) i do a little clearance (like the halloween dragons i recently posted) but for the most part if they don’t sell, i just exalt them. 90% of the time i don’t even bother to level them up i just press the exalt button and call it a day. it’s fine

[noesa]

if i were going to make an ideal social media platform, i think it would for sure have to include:

a dashboard like tumblr, with everything in chronological order

but with list functionality from twitter, where you can organize users into separate lists. like: "these people are artists i like, these are my irl friends, etc."

and with twitter's "turn off retweets" feature, where you only see the original content they post and none of the things they're reblogging

also from tumblr: sideblogs! tumblr has pretty much ideal sideblog functionality

better search system where you can search multiple tags, exclude tags from your search, filter by post type, etc. you'd be able to search the whole website, on a specific blog, or over all blogs in a list

no likes, because we want to encourage people to reblog posts.

speaking of engagement: one-tap reblogs, to make it as easy to do as liking posts is on other websites. if you want to add a comment, you can hold the reblog button (on mobile) or hover it (on desktop) to show a screen that lets you write a comment, edit tags, and manually pick which blog to reblog it to

(for convenience, when you reblog a post, it automatically copies the tags from the person you reblogged from, and you can add or remove tags from there)

one-tap reblogs normally reblog to your main blog, but you can set up rules so that posts with certain tags or posts from certain lists automatically get reblogged to one of your sideblogs

no nsfw ban. that's dumb and harms sw

obviously apple's policies get in the way of that, so the best workaround right now is probably something like discord where nsfw content gets blocked on the app itself, but you can still access it through the mobile browser

also: no public follower/following counts, and no verified accounts

i'm curious if anyone else has comments on things they'd like to see, so comment if you do!

[highlydissfunctional]

Is Tumblr a blog or social network site?

When asked about blogs, millennials would say Blogger, Wix or Wordpress; Generation z may go on forever about Tumblr and its latest memes. We get it, today’s generation knows a lot about blogs. So, what are they? Geert Lovink (2011) considers blogs as the epitome of “productive contradiction between public and private” as they exist as “public journals”. Blogging 101 would have you know that blogs at their outset, involved individuals logging journals onto their personal “web logs” which coined the term “blog” (Duermyer 2018). Blogs could be explained as a personalized self-expression; an accessible technological extension for the personal home page; asynchronous; mainly public; have entries that are time-stamped and appear in reverse chronological order (Week 4, slide 8) and are predominantly used for ‘citizen journalism’ as they:

Generally focus on specific subject matters,

has an area for readers to comment or respond to posts,

an archive of previous blog posts,

allows visitor subscription and can be managed by software where many features are automatically created (Saddington 2010).

In another light, social network sites (SNS) are comprehended as web-based services allowing individuals to create a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system; articulate a list of other users who they share a connection with; and view and cross their list of connections and those made by others within the system (boyd & Ellison 2007). Majority of SNS participants primarily seek to communicate with people they have pre-existing social ties with rather than to network or befriend strangers (boyd & Ellison 2007). If one were to ask a teenager – the SNS-addicts of our generation – on what to expect when joining an SNS, they would tell you to start by setting up a public or private profile and working on your home feed,

From there, you acquire friends or followers, 

receive likes and comments from other users, 

and participate in groups and tags (Nations 2018). 

But what exactly differs blogs from SNS?

Their central but sometimes interrelated differences are that blogging generates content to be kept on the blog itself while SNS enables users’ engagement about content (Gussif 2014). SNS traffic also typically comes from user-to-user interaction while blog’s traffic mainly occurs from searches done by potential first-time readers (Collier 2016). Additionally, while SNS posts tend to be shallow in media richness, short in length and are less descriptive, blogs are generally flexible with word count and media content format though it is still not the best medium to host 10-paged articles (Scheidies 2013).

And so, we arrive at the climax of the discourse – is Tumblr a blog or SNS? 

I say both. Maybe a little more blog than SNS, but ultimately both.

Tumblr, as I understand it, is a hub for pictures of someone’s daily lives; amusing memes and gifs; art in the forms of drawings and writings; and porn. All of which, I believe, are personalized self-expressions. At Tumblr-signups, we set up a profile (both blogs and SNS require the creation a public or semi-public profile) then gain access to our dashboard (an accessible technological extension for the personal home page), customize our blog theme (similar to working on our home feed on SNS) and explore Tumblr to find blogs to follow (Moreau 2018). 

Once familiarized with the Tumblr mechanics, we start liking or re-blogging followed blogs’ asynchronous content that are time-stamped and appear in reverse chronological order (both blogs and SNS are asynchronous and have posts that are time-stamped and appear in that order), maybe even start posting our own blog content to receive likes, re-blogs, comments (an SNS activity), to gain “mutuals” or followers (similar to SNS’ articulation of a list of users to share a connection with; acquiring friends or followers), and interact with other users (blogs have ribbons for users to send messages, comment or respond to entries which have also been adopted by recent SNS). And like SNS, Tumblr incorporates tags/hashtags. 

Moreover, microblogging – a combination of blogging and instant messaging enabling users to generate short messages to be posted and shared with publics popularized by Twitter, a SNS (Nations 2018), have been adopted by Tumblr users, further blurring the lines between blog and SNS. Thus, it is safe to say that Tumblr of 2018 is part blog, part SNS. 

Be that as it may, Tumblr’s blogging origins remain indisputable as it fundamentally focuses on specific subject matters, has a properly organized archive of previous blog posts and can be managed by software that automatically creates blog features. It also emphasizes on content generation rather than the enablement of user engagements about content, has the most traffic from searches than user-to-user interaction and are flexible with entry length and content format.

References

boyd, dm & Ellison, NB 2007, ‘Social network sites: definition, history and scholarship’, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, vol. 13, issue. 1.

Collier, M 2016, ‘The key difference between your blog and other social media channels that most companies miss’, MarkCollier.com, viewed 27 September 2018, <http://www.mackcollier.com/difference-your-blog-social-media-company/>.

Duermyer, R 2018, ‘What is blogging and why is it popular’?’, The Balance, viewed 27 September 2018, <https://www.thebalancesmb.com/blogging-what-is-it-1794405>.

Gussif, A 2014, ‘Blogging vs. social media: here’s the difference’, Gussif Marketing Group, viewed 27 September 2018, <http://www.gusiff.com/marketing-posts/blogging-vs-social-media-heres-difference/>.

Lovink, G 2011, ‘Networks without a cause: a critique of social media’, viewed 27 September 2018, <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254810120_Networks_Without_a_Cause_A_Critique_of_Social_Media>.

Moreau, E 2018, ‘How to use Tumblr for blogging and social networking’, Lifewire, viewed 28 September 2018, <https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-use-tumblr-4049305>.

Nations, D 2018, ‘What is microblogging?’, Lifewire, viewed 28 September 2018, <https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-microblogging-3486200>.

Nations, D 2018, ‘What is social networking?’, Lifewire, viewed 27 September 2018, <https://www.lifewire.com/what-is-social-networking-3486513>.

Saddington, J 2010, ‘What is a blog? What is a blogger? What is blogging?’, viewed 27 September 2018, <https://john.do/blog-blogger-blogging/>.

Scheidies, N 2013, ‘The 20 biggest benefits of blogging’, Income Diary, viewed 27 September 2018, <https://www.incomediary.com/biggest-blogging-benefits>.

‘Week 4: blogging practices’ n.d, Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak, Digital Communities.

[art-in-the-age]

Part 3: Mental Health Communities

Throughout its rise and fall, Tumblr was known for its function as a safe space for people living with mental illness. Within some blogs, mental struggles were the primary focus of the content. Some of these blogs were similar to traditional Tumblrs where the majority of the content was reposted from other people, while others were more focused on the production of original content, both text and photos. The anonymity that is inherent to Tumblr as a platform allowed users to lean into sensitive topics and find others who shared similar experiences without exposing themselves to their school or work communities. This was a two-sided coin, as it allowed people to form bonds and discuss conditions that were and are deeply stigmatized, but it also led to the production of content that could be disturbing, explicit, or encouraging poor coping skills. Yukari Seko and Stephen P Lewis authored a study in which they explored what kind of content was present on these blogs, and found that over the course of three months, 41.8% of the sampled images depicted “self-injured bodies or body parts. All images showing wounds were still photographs.” (Seko 186) Of these images, 84.5% depicted cutting (Seko 186). Additionally, Madeline R. Wick and Jennifer A. Harriger of Pepperdine University conducted a study focusing entirely on images categorized as “thinspiration”, used primarily by those suffering from eating disorders as a way to encourage continued behavior. They wrote that these images, “often include a bony image of a woman, typically displayed in a sexually suggestive manner and that the more sexually suggestive the image, the more social endorsement it receives,” (Wick)  and continue that, “thinspiration websites contained significantly more content related to weight loss [compared to websites dedicated to fitness], more positive comments about being thin, more food guilt-inducing messages, and more photos of females engaging in thin poses, such as angling the body at 45 degrees,” (Wick). These two studies combined paint a picture of the sheer amount of potentially triggering content available on Tumblr curated in blogs with the sole purpose of providing content related to mental illness and eating disorders. One caveat in this situation, however, is that users could often choose which content they wanted to see on their page. The primary mechanism for viewing content on Tumblr was the feed dashboard, which displayed all of the posts made and reblogged by the users a blogger followed. Because of this, users could specifically choose to follow accounts that only posted positive messages or vice versa. Tumblr made an effort to curtail the amount of content that explicitly encouraged eating disorders and other destructive coping mechanisms by implementing a policy banning such content, but its enforcement is a reactionary task force of moderators who will remove posts that are flagged. This, of course, does not account for the posts that otherwise go unflagged raising questions about its efficacy. 

There exist very real stereotypes in our society about who is allowed to experience mental illness; there is an expectation that those with eating disorders will be thin and that men do not experience depression, to name a few, neither of which is true. To find community on Tumblr, one was not required to disclose any demographic information or depict their physical being in any way. The blogger was embodied by the images they curated, providing in some ways more free access to a community with expectations surrounding appearance and demographics. 

The dynamics that existed around this sensitive content on Tumblr have been disturbed by  TikTok and the difference in feed style, while the conversations remain the same. Young people are still depressed and anxious, looking to find people who relate, but using TikTok to do so comes with complications. The feed on TikTok does not sort chronologically or by whom you follow, meaning that the user has much less control over what content they see. Someone going through recovery for an eating disorder could very easily be shown a “What I Eat in a Day” video that shows a dangerously small amount of food, which can be very triggering due to the competitive nature of the disorder. There is an option to choose “Not Interested”  to avoid additional similar content, but that is not entirely guaranteed, and sometimes just one trigger is enough to go back into an addictive cycle. Similar problems arise with mental health content more broadly. Engaging with one post about anxiety will tell the algorithm to present you with more of it; sometimes this content will encourage recovery and healthy coping mechanisms, but often will glamorize unhealthy coping skills, something that is, again, triggering and part of an addictive cycle. The algorithm doesn't offer discretion with that content, meaning that users must choose between seeing mental health-related posts that have an equal chance of being helpful and harmful and not seeing them at all, with no real opportunity to create the community that is right for them.

Beyond this, TikTok does not provide the same anonymity, because nearly all of the content put forward on the For You Page depicts someone’s face. All of the most famous content creators have their physical self attached to their content, whether that is dancing, humor, or lifestyle content. It is nearly impossible to generate a following without incorporating the physical self on the app, which was not the same on Tumblr. Going hand in hand with this is the fact that TikTok communities are far less insulated than those on Tumblr once were. On Tumblr, if you only interacted with blogs in a certain fan sphere, you could feasibly never come in contact with someone who blogged in a different one. There was some understandable overlap, but someone blogging about Dr. Who could reasonably expect that no matter how popular their blog was, no one from their school would encounter it accidentally unless they too were interested in Dr. Who. Part of the TikTok algorithm is determined by physical proximity, phone contacts, and mutual followers, meaning that it is entirely feasible that your TikTok could end up on someone you know’s For You Page, even if they don’t follow you and have never seen one of your TikToks before. If this TikTok is divulging personal information, it is no longer private and the attachment to your face means there is no longer any plausible deniability. It also means that should the post leave TikTok and circulate on the broader internet, as they often do, it can very easily be traced back to you. 

TikTok is hosting the same communities and conversations Tumblr always did but without the anonymity of the posters or the control over the content. These communities are vitally important, especially in the context of the American healthcare system, in which it is incredibly difficult to have access to a therapist, more so for an adolescent. It is, however, still essential to protect individuals, especially when so many are minors. TikTok does not allow for separation between the creator and what they create, meaning that users wishing to create content about mental illness are required to subsume that into their physical presence and carry that with their inescapable corporeal being. There is no simple answer to how we can build productive communities where users can feel supported entirely, but the dynamics of content creation on TikTok only serve to complicate them. 

[shinelikethunder]

disconnected thoughts on fandom and the indieweb

Recently I discovered the IndieWeb project, and I... think I am a lot more intrigued by it than by other Better Social Media Platform pipe dreams and decentralization projects I’ve seen? Because it’s not a monolithic platform that has to be all things to all people, or even one that has to gain a critical mass of userbase before it’s useful for anything. It’s just a bunch of people, making sites that work for them, and banging out protocols so their sites can talk to each other and hook up to the social-media hangouts du jour.

The basic idea:

- Have a personal website, preferably a personal domain name, that is the hub for your online identity and stuff. Posts, tweets, pictures, links, reading list, events, whatever you’d normally be posting to social media. You host it, you control it, you own it. You tweak it to fit your needs, no Xkit required.

- Once the original archival copy is up on your personal site, cross-post it to whatever social media sites it belongs on. You don’t have to quit your Tumblr habit, or convince your friends to quit theirs, or give up the audience you can reach on a large site.

- Use a pingbacks-on-steroids tool to collect all the responses (likes, reblogs, comments, etc) from the various sites you’ve cross-posted to. Ideally, display them at the bottom of the post back on your website.

As an idea, I like it a lot. In practice, a lot depends on what tools are already available, how useable they are, how capable you are of coding/templating/configuring to fill in the gaps, and how difficult large sites make it to push/pull from them automatically. That’s pretty much what I’m interested in exploring in the near future, for my own use if nothing else. I already have most of my Tumblr content backed up to a Wordpress install on my own shared hosting account, so I’m kinda curious see how much IndieWeb compatibility I can manage using plugins and template tweaks.

Indieweb and fandom:

As a potential tool for fandom to wean ourselves off the various hellsites we’ve inhabited over the years... okay, it’s an interesting thought. One with lots of unanswered questions, but interesting.

Lots of unanswered questions, so the rest of this is going under a cut.

- Upside: I know a lot of older fans are still nostalgic about the early blogosphere and even--heaven forfend--the Geocities days. Many things about them were shit, but the archipelago of personal fan shrines, indie blogs, having a personal site with a personal archive of your work, etc. was awesome. And the “own your own creations” ethos fits in nicely with AO3′s “we have to own the servers” philosophy.

- Enabling factor: Fandom builds and customizes stuff like crazy. Yes, including the younger generations who weren’t around for the “build it yourself” days and seem to think AO3 burst fully formed out of the forehead of a long-lost deity. What, you haven’t noticed that even on a hobbled hellsite like Tumblr, teenagers are using the relative freedom of the theme system to spontaneously rediscover all the sins of Geocities web design? (I rib with affection, as someone who definitely had a page with flaming torch gifs and a sparklecursor back in 2001.) Full, out-of-the-box, point-and-click setup is necessary to get fandom to adopt something in any decent numbers. But once we’re there, a disproportionate number of us start tinkering with anything that’s customizable, and when someone with actual coding skills comes out with a useful tool to supplement missing capabilities, it spreads like wildfire.

- Gaps and directions to expand: Indieweb principles include “scratch your own itches,” so here are my itches, which I’m going to shamelessly project onto fandom at large.

Import--needs rock solid LiveJournal-clone and Tumblr support if your site is to serve as an archive. I don’t know if there even is a working Wordpress plugin to import from LJ or Dreamwidth. The best-supported Tumblr->Wordpress importer is actually better than most standalone Tumblr backup tools, but it still mangles video posts/embeds. It’d also be cool to have import tools for AO3, Deviantart, and other major fanwork repositories.

Once your Tumblr posts are in, there's no way to automate the very first thing I’d want to do upon liberating my data from the vise-like jaws of What Tumblr Wants You To Do With Its Site: separate out posts I created, posts I added comments to, and posts I just shared via reblog. A nice addition would be the ability to copy Tumblr tags to a metadata field that’s separate from Wordpress tags--WP tags tend to be organizational, whereas on Tumblr, tags are often a sidechannel for comments that don’t propagate on reblog, thus filled with all sorts of crap.

On that note, Itch #3 is mass-organization tools. Select all posts that fit certain criteria and do a mass edit on their tags, categories, post types, or other taxonomy data. Lots of fandom folks have years or decades worth of content from various sites, making organizational tasks highly impractical to do manually. I’ve dicked around with a few Wordpress mass-edit plugins, but none of them seemed to work that well.

Not sure how well the existing backfeed tools support Tumblr notes, but for fandom to bite, the Tumblr support oughta be pretty damn slick. And the cross-posting should ideally support all the features of a native Tumblr post, because by god, we will use them, and we will notice if an expected one is missing. I can spot IFTTT cross-posts from AO3 without even reading text, and tbh my eyes usually skip right over them, unfair as that may be.

If this project extends to feed readers/aggregators, the embrace of multi-site cross-posting implies a need for deduplication. Preferably getting rid of Tumblr’s charming “barf the full post back out onto your dashboard every time someone you’re following shares/responds to it” behavior in the process. For fandom use, it’ll need a blacklist feature. And I’d love some more heavy-duty filtering, selective subscriptions (like to just one tag of a blog), creating multiple feeds based on topic or on how much firehose you want...

This may be a personal itch, but at least for personal archiving needs, I’m sick, sick, sick of the recency bias that’s eaten the internet since the first stirrings of Web 2.0. Wikis are practically the only sites that have escaped chronological organization. It would be cool to have easily-manipulated collections with non-kludgey support for series ordering, order-by-popularity, order-by-popularity with a manual bump for posts you want to highlight, hell even alphabetical ordering. None of these things are remotely unsolved problems, but they’re poorly supported on the social-media silos most people’s content lives on these days. Fandom’s suffered from this since at least the days of LiveJournal, which had the ominous beginnings of what’s since become the Tumblr Memory Hole. Relentless chronological ordering + the signal-to-noise ratio of any space with regular social interaction = greatest hits falling down the memory hole unless a community practices extensive manual cataloguing. Hell, LJ fandom did practice extensive manual cataloguing, but even within that silo, there was so much decentralization that content discovery was shit if you didn’t know the right accounts to search through. Like, fuck, at least forums bump threads to the top if they’re still active--LJ and blogs have the same "best conversation evar falls inexorably off the map as new posts are added, no matter how active it is” problem that InsideTheWeb forums did in 1999. (Anyone else remember InsideTheWeb? AKA 13-year-old me’s first experience with platform shutdown, frantic archiving attempts, and massive data loss. Fun times.) Tumblr and Twitter, meanwhile, spam you with duplicates of the original post every time someone you’re following replies to/shares it, a key component of the endless firehose of noise drowning out any attempt to hang on to the signal.

All those itches are things I could probably code myself if I got a stubborn enough bee in my bonnet, which might well happen. On the other hand, I have some deeper doubts, ones that aren’t going to get addressed by Wordpress plugins or shiny backfeed support:

The whole concept of IndieWeb fails to address (and might even worsen) what I suspect is the core dysfunction of social media. Which is the degradation of community spaces, and their replacement with a hopeless snarl where all content lives in individual accounts. There are a lot of weird effects that arise when the “social” sphere is built entirely upon the one-on-one connections created when someone subscribes to another account or gives someone else permission to view their restricted posts. Echo chambers, shame mobs, out-of-context remarks going viral, popular accounts setting off harassment storms whenever they disagree with someone, the difficulty of debunking hoaxes once they’re out in the wild... all of those are either created or made much, much worse by the lack of any reasonable, stable, shared expectation of who a post’s audience is.

Basically, if “own your content and host it on your site” also applies to your comments, interactions, etc, it starts running counter to one of the strengths of the Old Web. Which was community contexts where you explicitly weren’t posting to your own space or addressing everyone who might be looking at the main clearinghouse of all your different stuff. You were posting to the commons shared by a particular group with a particular culture and interests, not all of whom were people you’d necessarily want to follow outside that limited context, some of whom you might disagree with or dislike, but in any case you knew what audience you were broadcasting to. You knew what the conversation was, how similar conversations had gone in the past, and the reputations of all the main participants--not just the ones you yourself would subscribe to and the ones attention-grabbing enough to get shared by the people on your subscription list. And you weren’t spamming all your other acquaintances with chatter on a topic they weren’t interested in.

Shared spaces can also establish whatever social norms they need and moderate accordingly. (Plus, plurality of spaces = plurality of norms for different needs, which would solve a LOT of what’s currently ailing fandom.) Peaceable enforcement of a code of conduct, beyond the “minimum viable standard” sitewide abuse policy, is fundamentally impossible on social media, where individual muting is the closest thing you can get to moderation. That + unstable audience = any social norms that exist are so unenforceable it turns people into frothing shame-mob zealots, ratcheting up the coercive pressure on everyone the more it fails to work on the handful of unrepentant assholes who would’ve been permabanned from any self-respecting forum within a week. Moving onto personal sites with beefed up syndication/backfeed capabilities ain’t gonna fix that. Meanwhile the truly heinous dickweeds who’d ordinarily run afoul of the sitewide abuse policy will have the same capabilities, minus any risk of getting banned.

If there haven’t already been epic drama meltdowns caused by the “reply in your own space by making your own post, which includes a copy of the original post for context” model... it’s only a matter of time. You don’t even need malicious actors, just a human conflict where one party has overprotective subscribers. Or information turns out to be faulty and in need of correction. Or an argumentative type stumbles on the permalink of an acrimonious reply post that was actually resolved amicably several replies downthread. Or someone edits an apology into their controversial post and someone who’s been attacking it refuses to update their copy because tilting at strawmen is more fun. Or someone tries to make an embarrassing post go away by deletion and their co-conversationists don’t cooperate. Tumblr’s “reply by reposting in your own space and adding commentary” system already spawns endless floods of drama and misunderstanding, and that’s a system with some limits on the participants’ control, and relatively disposable accounts/identities if the shit hits the fan.

Basically, I’m all for personal websites as archives of your creations, but seriously dubious of them as archives of your interactions. Especially if the interactions aren’t well-segregated from the regular content feed that goes out to everyone who follows you. Yes, abuses of moderator power when interaction is all taking place on a site the mod controls are a thing. But if those sites are an archipelago of indie spaces rather than a monolithic platform, shitty mods don’t thwart the development of a healthy social ecosystem, they just drive everyone away to a competing space whose mod sucks less.

(Private/access-restricted archives of your interactions might be a compromise? You still have your stuff in case the other site goes down, but it’s not out there replicating the ill effects of the Tumblr reblog-to-respond model.)

Leaving aside all that, the IndieAuth component--using personal sites as stable identities you can log in with--is just as workable for community platforms as it is for cross-blog commenting. Proliferation of unlinkable accounts was one of the downfalls of forums, after all. That said, one potential point of friction is that fandom is far more pseudonym-centric than the devs and tech hobbyists who’ve coalesced around IndieWeb so far. But stable pseuds with years of reputation behind them have social effects that resemble real names more than anything else, so as potential culture clashes go, I’d hope that’s fairly surmountable.

As noted in the musings on LiveJournal archiving above: CONTENT DISCOVERY IS A BITCH IN DECENTRALIZED COMMUNITIES and that’s a major stumbling block for fandom. OTOH, platform-agnostic protocols with customization potential = room for experimentation with independently-run discovery/search/tagging layers. (Life goals: stay uncool enough that my “Like Uber, but for ___” elevator pitch ends up being “It’s like Technorati, but for fanfiction of Kirk drilling Spock.”)

Okay, that’s it, jesus christ it’s time for me to go to bed.

[katesattic]

My Experience with Anxiety and Depression [and How Supernatural and Thomas Sanders (Unknowingly) Helped] #BellLetsTalk

I wanted to do something completely out of my comfort zone; I wanted to make a video about it. But then I kind of got sick and lost my voice. So that option’s kind of out. And with only two days until the event there is no way I would be giving myself enough time to learn how to edit, so even with my voice now coming back, there still wouldn’t be enough time. So, maybe I’ll try to make a video for next year. So here we are. Back to my usual format: writing.  And that’s OK. I can probably better articulate my thoughts this way anyway.

So, where do I start? Death anxiety? Social anxiety? Generalised anxiety? Depression? I guess with the death anxiety? I view it as my longest anxiety, though I could have possibly had the social anxiety longer, it was the death anxiety that was more difficult to cope with. Why don’t I just split it up into four parts so this way I’m not going back and forth on which I had when. We can focus on the chronology of each individually.

DEATH ANXIETY

So this one arose, as you could image, as the result of a loved one passing away. My grandmother specifically, though I called her Nanny, and to make things easier on myself, that’s what I’ll continue to call her.

I was no stranger to death. My younger sister, my baby brother’s twin, died at nine days old. At the time, I was three.  I definitely knew my parents were sad and that our family would be different yet again (nine days ago we went from a family of four to a family of six, now we were down to five). I knew things were going to be different, but I don’t think I understood the gravity of the situation. I don’t think I knew how finite death actually was.

Seven years later, I was ten, and my cat had been put down. I did not know this at the time, and my mum managed to convince the vet into releasing the body. So my mum brought our dead cat home and told us that she found the cat dead in the basement. For years, I swore I saw the cat’s ghost around the spot where my mum claimed she died. Now, I understand why the cat was put down, her health was deteriorating. But at that time, there was a void. She was my childhood pet and she “suddenly” passed away. I remember being legitimately sick after her passing, not just grieving but cough and fever, that whole deal. But not much else. It was twelve years ago after all.

 Two years after my cat died, so did my Nanny. To this day we still don’t know the exact cause. My dad suspects some things, but we have no definitive answer on what was his mother’s cause of death. I think I took this death the hardest. She was my favourite grandparent, and she was the first of them to die. How was that fair? Again, it was ten years ago, I was twelve, I don’t remember specifics. But I do remember a few years later when the family went to see the film UP, and I just couldn’t enjoy it. You know that beginning? Carl and Ellie’s whole life story is told in like five minutes? Yeah, well, I was kind of triggered by that. I didn’t know that was a term, but in hindsight, I was definitely triggered. Ellie reminded me of Nanny, and I just couldn’t get happy after the movie ended.

I also remember the death anxiety coming up randomly in class in grade eight, and thinking life’s so short and fearing what would happen to me after I died. I’ve had panic attacks about that. My most recent one was a really bad one in 2014. But now I don’t let myself go that deep. I don’t let myself go down that rabbit hole. I take a deep breath, tell myself “we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it” and find something entertaining to distract me from my thoughts. And that’s been working well so far.

SOCIAL ANXIETY

OK, this one doesn’t really have an exact start date. I can’t pinpoint any one event. I’ve kind of just always had it. And I just shrugged it off as shyness and introversion. But it’s more than that. I am definitely shy and introverted, but I also have social anxiety. When I was formally diagnosed, my mum wasn’t remotely surprised about this one. The depression was a surprise but this one she always suspected.

If anything, university made it worse. I mean, it was always an issue, but being in an entirely different province where I literally knew absolutely no one.  That didn’t help. I couldn’t even stand the thought of going to orientation. And I assumed that was because of my extreme shyness, though now I know it’s my near-crippling social anxiety. Hindsight is 20/20 after all.

I think it was during this time that I became much more active on the internet. Tumblr specifically, I love this website. But I began bingeing more on shows and would only really leave my dorm to go to the meal hall or class. I was just so terrified of social interaction. And I still am. But now I’m taking baby steps towards meeting people. Right now, all I can do is talk to people online, but if people don’t rush me and let me do it when I’m ready, I’d be fine meeting people in a comfortable and safe public place.

This is the one I think I have to work on the most. I know where I want to be and don’t know entirely how to get there, but I am taking small steps. I’m even telling people I suffer from social anxiety to let them know I’m not just being a bitch but that I am actually struggling and terrified to make social connections for fear of rejection.

The other real problem with this anxiety, for me specifically, is that I come off as bitchy and standoffish. Maybe I have bitchy resting face? I don’t know. But that’s what my mum thinks anyway. Whether I seem bitchy or snobby, or whatever is just what you see on the outside. Inside my mind, down that deep rabbit hole of suck, I am freaking the fuck out. Apparently, I mask that panic by looking snobby, who knew? But I assure you, if I’m actually being a bitch, you’d know about it. I don’t really keep that side of me quiet. But just standing alone in a crowd or in a corner? Yeah, I’m probably not plotting some bithcy scheme. I’m most likely terrified and seeking sanctuary in the very place that is so often cruel to me: my mind.

Meeting people scares the crap out of me. It really does. But I yearn for those social relationships. I am human after all. But going out into the world and actually seeking out people with whom to form those relationships? I’m not quite there yet. For now, I’m focusing on making friends online, but also people who live near me, so when I am comfortable, I will be ready to take that next step and meet them.

GENERAL ANXIETY

This asshole. This one was definitely brought on by university life. Seriously, I don’t think this would have affected me to the degree which it has, had it not been for university.  In some ways, university is better than secondary school, in others, it is exponentially worse. Procrastination only exacerbates the anxiety monster, but it definitely is not the cause. Deadlines. Terrifying deadlines, the weight of an assignment, and the fear of failure – the intense fear of failure – is the cause.

This one was kind of brought on hand-in-hand with my depression. I mean, I still stressed about marks before, but this really hit me hard when my depression stepped onto the scene. So both this beast, and depression entered into my brain after an event which I just call “the Academic Fiasco”. It is not an event I am comfortable discussing not because I am ashamed or embarrassed (though I am a bit) but because I don’t feel entirely out of the woods yet. And until I the woods are safely behind me (in other words: after I graduate) I won’t really be elaborating upon it. So the Academic Fiasco is a story for next year’s Let’s Talk Day.

Anyway, after the Academic Fiasco, I did enter into a depression. For several months. And ever since then I was never truly able to shake it. And it would come in waves. Sometimes I would be fine and my usual self but often the depression got in the way. So after the actual ordeal of the Fiasco was over with, and the depression had more or less subsided, I was then left with this anxiety. This dread that surrounded my marks in academia and my potential future career after obtaining my degree. This feeling just wouldn’t go away. And in November 2016, my friend started to notice that I was acting differently. She’s been my friend going on seventeen years now (we’ll both be 23 later this year), so she’s known me most of my life. And she could tell, through the virtual world, several provinces away, and through text not video chat, that something wasn’t right. My parents didn’t even know. Apparently, I hide my depression well. But my friend instantly suspected depression as she’s had it in the past and was medicated for it. She told me to seek help. So I booked an appointment at the Counselling Centre on campus and had a Brief Initial Consultation (where they would listen to me for thirty minutes to decide if my issues were serious enough to be waitlisted for therapy). It was during this time that the therapist believed I had anxiety, the death anxiety for sure, but also general anxiety. She didn’t really think I had depression, but she was certain I had anxiety. She suggested I seriously consider medication.

The thought had occurred to me once or twice. But until my friend expressed concern I hadn’t really thought about medication in a while. So, when the appointment was done, I went to the Health Clinic on campus and booked an appointment for the following Tuesday (I saw the therapist on Saturday).  And then I went home with nothing but the knowledge that I wasn’t crazy for thinking I wasn’t OK. And that was a relief.

It was over the next few days that I started to watch Thomas Sanders videos. Now, I know he’s been on Vine since 2013, but I really had no idea who he was up until that point. I didn’t have Vine, so I didn’t know him from there. But his vines would sometimes make their way on to my dashboard on Tumblr, so I knew of him. I knew he was that funny, relatable guy that I would occasionally see on my dashboard which could always bring a smile to my face in seven seconds or less. But I really had no idea who he was beyond that. I don’t really remember how I stumbled upon his vines on YouTube, but I did. It was there where I found an hour-and-forty-minute-long compilation of his vines – it definitely wasn’t all his Vines, but it was a significant amount of them. From there I started watching his YouTube videos. And I quite literally watched them all (check my watch history. I’m not lying) and have re-watched them many times since. For quite some time Supernatural – an oddly dark show – was the only thing that could completely distract me from my mind. Other shows and films could only do so for a time, but Supernatural and Thomas Sanders have consistently kept me distracted from the darkest areas of my mind. And this guy, this king amongst men, this angel without wings, not only did he distract me, but he brought genuine joy to my life during a time when I thought that to be impossible. Thomas Sanders wasn’t just a distraction from that horrible rabbit hole in my brain, he was genuinely uplifting. And for that, I will forever be thankful.

That following Tuesday, the twenty-seventh of November 2016, I was officially diagnosed with anxiety and depression. Together, my doctor and I agreed that it was best if I start medication.

DEPRESSION

Oy, this thing. Depression, my greatest foe. Honestly, depression is King Douchebag. Depression is that demonic Hobgoblin thing that likes to run about inside my mind and cause mayhem wherever it goes. It is the king of a shit-tastic court. This royal dickhead of a mental disorder is the reason I felt worthless after that Fiasco, this monstrosity of an illness was the reason I felt hopeless and joyless. Depression was the dementor, and my life was wasting away.

As I said above, in November I went to the therapist on campus where the therapist believed me to have anxiety but wasn’t convinced that I had depression. My friend, conversely, was certain I had depression. So that following Tuesday, after four days of bingeing Supernatural again, and watching copious amounts of Thomas Sanders videos, I went to the Health Clinic, and I talked about how I felt, and the doctor made me fill out two questionnaires. I was told to evaluate my last two weeks, rate how I felt from 0-4, and tick a little yes/no box on the depression sheet. Then she evaluated me. And she determined that I, indeed, had both depression and anxiety.

We decided together that medical intervention was best. I had been definitely suffering on-and-off since 2015. So I got the prescription and went straight to the closest pharmacy to my apartment to get it filled because I was not waiting another day. I knew the meds would take several weeks to start taking effect, so I didn’t want to waste any time. Why feel crappy any longer right? We decided on Cipralex because it’s a brand I knew (two friends of mine have taken it) and she said it had low side-effects. Now, it’s January 2017, and I definitely feel better. The meds definitely help, and I am in no way afraid to admit that.

COPING

So, I’m taking SSRIs but overall, how am I coping? Much better actually. When attacks strike, I do some breathing techniques and some light meditation. I’m also learning to face the problem instead of just hoping it goes away. Distractions might seem like nothing more than avoiding the issue but, honestly, they help. They help get you outside of your mind. And believe you me, I know how vicious the mind can be. So distractions are nice, even if they aren’t permanent. The other big thing is having someone to talk to, whether that is a friend, a family member, a teammate, a therapist, or some random stranger willing to lend you their ear. It makes a world of difference. To know that you are not alone is another big one. On days like today, it’s easy to see that. Social media is abuzz about Bell Let’s Talk. But throughout the rest of the year, it might not seem that way. And please know that if you feel alone and you need someone to talk to, you can always talk to me. You can contact me in various ways on social media or by email. I’ve been through the bad, and now I’m starting to see the light, and you will too. Just don’t be afraid to ask for help.

I started coping by escaping into shows. That’s the magic of a Netflix account. You can just binge. It doesn’t judge (except on some devices where it asks if you’re still there. Like, geez, I am just let me binge in peace!). CraveTV and the wonder that is Letterkenny also helped. It’s the best Canadian show I’ve seen in years and can’t wait for the St. Paddy’s special and season three. But the show that’s helped me the most has been Supernatural. I found the show on Netflix (I heard of it before and actually tried watching the pilot once before, but Mary on the roof scared the crap out of me, so I stopped) and binged all ten seasons. This was during my summer slump. I wasn’t truly depressed then, but there was just a gloomy air about me. After watching all ten seasons in under two weeks, I looked for other shows. I started watching Stranger Things but stopped at episode four after experiencing a panic attack (which was unrelated to the show or my usual triggers), and I have not picked up the show since. After being talked out of panic by my dad over the phone, I was calm enough to hang up. But I didn’t feel entirely at peace, so I went back to re-watching Supernatural. It was after that attack that I also watched season eleven through less conventional means (because it wasn’t on Netflix yet). And I started to feel better again. For several months, I just re-binged the show, albeit at a slower pace than I first watched it. It was the one thing that made me feel good. My worries melted away when that show was on, and I was enthralled in the narrative.

The other thing that helped me cope was Thomas Sanders. As I mentioned above, in the days leading up to my diagnoses, I stumbled upon a compilation of his Vines, and I was hooked. I found he made YouTube videos and I watched them all. I got Snapchat just so I could see his snaps. I followed him on Instagram and Twitter and liked him on Facebook. Then I found out he has a Tumblr (@thatsthat24)!  And it was magical. My favourite site and my new favourite internet personality, together! So I follow him there too. But unlike the others, I get notifications when he posts to Tumblr, and seeing those notifications are the best part of my day. It’s always something positive, or funny, or relatable, and it’s always certain to bring a smile to my face. I know that Thomas Sanders is only human and that he’s not happy every second of every day (if he were, he would be a game show host), but I really appreciate that everything he puts online is positive. I have no idea what goes on in his life, what anxieties he might face, but if he reads this, I want to thank him for brightening my day and making it suck a little less.  Because right now, he’s the thing that makes me happiest and I hope we, his fans, make him just as happy.

________________________________________________________

Holy! That was 3150-ish words (or 5 12pt Garamond single-spaced pages). If you stuck through it all, thank you. I hope #BellLetsTalk 2017 was everything you hoped it would be. And sorry for the length, but I needed to make sure I said everything. -KNC

P.S. I'm sitting here thinking about the family gossip that might ensue (because, before today, only my immediate family knew) and honestly, I don't care. I don't care if it makes them uncomfortable, because this isn't about them. My illness doesn't affect them, so I really don't care what they think or how they’ll react.