#we love the tumblr algorithm

[its-ate-oclock-somewhere]

[stripedstarsblueflags]

Fanfiction is not an industry.

There are no publishing houses, professional editors, algorithms, distribution managers, talent agents, or, in almost all cases, profit.

Fanfiction is the result of hardworking creative individuals choosing to share their passions and imaginations with no tangible benefit to themselves.

Fanfiction is not, and never has been, an industry.

[imightgetbetter]

smells like you

surprise! she's back! i had this idea and a very slow day at work so i am writing and working and having a grand ole time. i love this concept and it makes my heart feel so warm and tingly. also, i really want to get back into writing on my week off so i'd love some concepts if you all want to chat about matty and the band and literally anything. i just want to write. i haven't been online posting in a while and tumblr loves to silence me so if you could reblog and share it, i would love you forever and ever. i love you all. thanks for being the best in my two months off.

“My pillow smells like you,” he says quietly, his voice low as the moonlight pours in through the windows beside the bedside table. “I don’t even know how that’s possible because you didn’t sleep on my pillow last night.”

“I switched the pillows when I made the bed this morning,” you say, a soft smile pulling at the corners of your lips. It’s mid-afternoon, and the time difference from London to Los Angeles killing you slowly, but there was no way around it, not with a dinner meeting and publishing meetings all morning the following day. You pushed the flight out until you couldn’t possibly push it anymore, not wanting to leave London and your friends, and arguably more importantly, Matty, who’s been living in your apartment for nearly a month, at this point in time. “I figured you’d go back there after you dropped me off.”

“It’s close to the studio,” Matty argues, shrugging his shoulders and leaning further into the plush, white pillow. It’s not close to the studio. It’s actually further from the studio than the apartment that he shares with the guys, right now, while they’re making the album. Matty refused to leave for more than twelve hours at a time though, claiming that he couldn’t get a ‘proper night’s sleep’ there, saying it was ‘too drafty’ or ‘too busy.’

Not that you minded all that much. It was always nicer to have him around. “Hm, is it?”

“Shut up, Sally.”

“I’m this close to breaking up with you over the phone,” you tease, leaning back against the headrest of the backseat in the uber. “I hate when you call me Sally.”

“No, you don’t, darling. If you actually hated it, I would know, and I wouldn’t call you that. You get that cute little smile every time I call you that. That’s how I know you’re lying.”

You roll your eyes, trying desperately to push the smile away that’s aching your cheeks. He does it so naturally, you wonder how you went all those years ignoring your feelings, ignoring him. Having him around in such a different capacity now, it’s hard to imagine what it would ever be like to go back to before, knowing what you know, feeling what you have felt. You say that to him, that you wouldn’t know what you’d do without him, and he always argues that you’d go back to doing the same thing as before.

That’s the problem, though, isn’t it, that you simply couldn’t live with yourself knowing what you have now and having to go back to before. It simply wouldn’t be what you want. You’d be living in misery.

“Fine,” you smirk, turning your head and looking out the window. All the major corporate headquarters line the drive and you find yourself in amazement at the sight. All through your time at university, it never occurred to you that one day this would be your life, in so many ways – seeing it this way, for work, and seeing it through Matty’s eyes, through tour.

“How are you so beautiful?”

Matty’s words pull you out of your daydream. “What?”

“You’re so beautiful. I don’t know how I got so lucky.”

“Stop,” you say, brushing your hair behind your ear and haphazardly hiding behind your hands, the blush on your cheeks complimented by the heat outside. “I miss you.”

“It’s only been,” Matty pauses to check the time, “sixteen hours and thirteen minutes. How could you miss me?”

“You have to stop counting how long we’ve been apart,” you laugh, shaking your head. He’s done this a few times now, usually when you leave, and it always makes your heart twist. He doesn’t give you butterflies, you’ve found, the anxious feeling when you don’t know how someone feels or what they’re going to say next. Instead, you feel it in your heart, every word, every profession of love, you feel it deep in your chest, your heart moving with his sentiments. “It makes it worse, Matty.”

“I count because then it doesn’t seem so tough to be without you, again. Sixteen hours doesn’t seem so bad when I used to go months and months without seeing you. It’s a manageable feat.”

“You make it impossible to write love stories, you know.”

“How is that?”

“Because! How am I supposed to create a fictional love interest for a character when you are there writing the damn script?”

“You make it easy, darling.”

“How so?”

“I just tell you all the things on my mind. I don’t hesitate with you. I know I’m safe to share all my thoughts and you’ll keep them close to you. I don’t have to worry.”

There it is. Always generous with his thoughts and emotions. Matty never ceases to say things that make your heart clench up in your chest. It’s a feeling that’s new, untouched. It’s not something you’ve felt before and you’re uncovering more about it every day – the way it makes your chest feel like your ribs are closing in, but it doesn’t hurt, the way you feel tingling all through your nerves when you touch him, the way you crave kiss after kiss, never having enough. Each thing you experience with Matty is brand new, something you never thought would happen, a pleasant surprise.

“I love you,” you say, dreadfully looking at the hotel rearing in your vision. “I am almost at the hotel, I have to go soon. I need to freshen up before I have this dinner.”

“And I can’t see?”

“Matty!”

“It’s been too many hours since I’ve seen you naked, darling. You can’t blame a man when you look like that. Have you seen yourself in the mirror lately?”

You shake your head. He’s always like this, from the moment you two got together in your tiny New York apartment, he has been unable to keep his hands away from you. Not that you mind all that much, but the incessant reminders are beginning to sound endearing. “I will call you from the hotel room, okay?”

“Do I get to see?” Matty quirks his eyebrows upwards and smiles at you.

“You’re a child.”

“I would like to see, darling. I’m nothing but a man. A simple, simple man.”

You can’t hide the smile when you look at him, the tight-lipped smile and dreamy eyes only sharing half the smirk you know you would be getting if you were standing in front of him. He’s insatiable, and very hard to say no to. “Fine. Once I get into my hotel room, I will call you.”

“I love you, Sally.”

“I love you, too.”

“I love you, what?”

“I love you, you pain in my ass.” Matty laughs, and it’s the sweetest sound you’ve ever heard. “I’ll call you in a few. I miss you.”

“I miss you more, darling. Hurry back, will you?”

[ghost-bison]

"Local Hogwarts Student Destroys Wizarding World By Being A Doctor Who Fan"

[sunbunnyyy]

i know i just got here, but seeing all of the laughably bad takes from both sides of the spectrum is convincing me that no, i don’t actually need to be on social media again.

[bookishjules]

i do love how we keep being a landing place for refugees from various social platforms (bc it's funny) but i'm ngl i do have a mild fear of the tiktok masses

[cowardstiel]

i think it should be mandatory that everyone watch The Social Dilemma at least once every six months

[existennialmemes]

What's up, Everybody? I'm feeling

✨ Tired and Sad ✨

[tiercel]

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

[tsuchinokoroyale]

This is so fucking funny

Famously happy song that begins with:

🎵I have a mandolin, I play it all night long,

It makes me want to kill myself 🎶

[rebellious-sardine]

Tumblr has suddenly decided I like Oasis and ship the Gallagher brothers and I am perplexed.

[oneriderratbug101]

I think tumblr has gotten way too compartmentalized, if you explicitly want to do that kind of stuff (i.e. be a curator) that's fine, but I feel like a lot of people are just afraid of alienating a community they've become a part of

Idk I haven't been here long enough to feel like I have enough info to go in depth on this but like

Pls friend

I get enrichment from thing I didn't expect from person I followed for different thing

[thebiggestmenace]

can not wait until we get to season 15 of supernatural, simply so I know what is going on

[wilwheaton]

Hi friends! I have something super awesome coming out soon, and I want to make sure you know about it.

Hi Tumblr,

I rarely do A Business here, but a whole bunch of you are following me, and I want to make sure you know when my new projects are released.

In about six or eight weeks, a project I've been developing for a couple of years and working on for almost as long will be released. It has a lot of potential, if only it can find its audience.

A lot of you are probably folks who will be in that audience, and because we live in a world dominated by algorithmic fuckery, the best way for me to reach you is directly via my blog.

So I'm inviting you to visit wilwheaton.net, which I have absolutely covered in "sign up for this blog" widgets and things. While you are there, I encourage you to use one of those widget thingies, so you don't miss when I post new things there, including everything about my Mysterious Project.

Okay, that's all. Thanks for listening. May this week be a better year than last week was.

EDIT: of course -- of course -- when I'm asking you to click a link, I fuck the link up. And of course -- of course -- I walk away from Tumblr for hours after I do it.

Excellent work, Wil Wheaton. You continue to thrive without a copy editor in your life. No notes.

Big sigh.

Okay, friends. Please try again, and I'd love it if you'd reblog this, now that it works, if you feel your follows would be interested.

[ladamania]

#op posted this in 2010 and still posts to this day.

Lol, yup, which is less a testament to Tumblr being any good than an indictment of every other social media site being hellishly bad.

[bisexualbaker]

Why do people keep recommending Dreamwidth as a Tumblr alternative, when Dreamwidth and Tumblr are so different?

To be flat-out honest, it's because Dreamwidth has so many things that Tumblr users say they want, even if it's also lacking a lot of features that Tumblr users have come to love:

Dreamwidth has incredibly lax content hosting rules. I'd say that it's slightly more restrictive than AO3, but only just slightly, and only because AO3's abuse team has been so overwhelmed and over-worked. Otherwise, the hosting policies are pretty similar. You want to go nuts, show nuts? You can do that on Dreamwidth.

In fact, Dreamwidth is so serious about "go nuts, show nuts", it gave up the ability to accept transactions through PayPal in 2009 to protect our ability to do that. (It's also one reason why Dreamwidth doesn't have an app: Dreamwidth will never be beholden to Apple's content rules this way.)

Dreamwidth cares about your privacy; it doesn't sell your data, and barely collects any to begin with. As far as I'm aware, it only collects what it needs to run the site. The owners have also spoken out on behalf of internet privacy many times, and are prepared to put their money where their mouth is.

No ads. Ever. Period. They mean it. Dreamwidth is entirely user funded.

Posts viewed in reverse chronological order; no algorithm, opt-in or otherwise. No algorithm at all. No "For You" or "Suggested" page. You still entirely create and curate your own experience.

The ability to make posts that only your "mutuals", or even only a specific subset of your "mutuals", can see. Want to make a post that's only open to Bonnie, Clyde, Butch, and Cassidy? You can do that! Want to make a post that's only open to Bonnie and Butch, but Clyde and Cassidy can't see shit? You can do that, too!

The owners have forsworn NFTs and the blockchain in general. Not as big a worry now as it was even a year ago, but still good to know!

We are explicitly the customers of Dreamwidth. Dreamwidth wants to make us happy, so any changes they make (and they do make changes) are made with us in mind, and after exploring as many possibilities as they can.

Dreamwidth is very transparent about their policies and changes. If you want to know why they're making a specific change, or keeping or getting rid of a feature, they will tell you. You don't have to find out ten months later that they're locked into a contract to keep it for a year (cough cough Tumblr Live cough cough).

So those are some things that Tumblr users would probably love about Dreamwidth.

Another reason Dreamwidth keeps being recommended is that a significant portion of the Age 30+ crowd spent a lot of earlier fandom years on a site known as LiveJournal. Dreamwidth may not be much like Tumblr, but it it started out as a code fork of LiveJournal, so it will be very familiar to anyone who spent any time there. Except better.

Finally, we're recommending Dreamwidth because some of the things that Tumblr users want are just... not going to happen on the web as it is now. Image hosting is the big one for this. Maybe in the future, the price of data will be much cheaper, and Dreamwidth will be able to host as much as we all want for a pittance that a fraction of the userbase will happily pay for everyone, but right now that's just not possible.

Everywhere you want to go that hosts a lot of images will either be running lots of ads, selling your data, or both.

Dreamwidth knows how much it costs to host your data, and has budgeted for that. They are hosting within their means, within our means.

Dreamwidth is the closest thing we may ever get to AO3 as a social media platform. One of the co-owners is from, and still in, fandom; she knows our values, because they are also her values. It may as well be the Blogsite Of Our Own.