The fact that if someone posts a link to a tumblr post in a reply I cannot navigate to it using the tumblr app highlights the reason I hate apps replacing websites.

I really hate the way apps break basic interface functionality that’s been standard for decades across different web browsers, to deliver content that is fundamentally just a webpage. @staff please fix this very annoying UI issue at least

If the easiest way for me to navigate your site is to get up off the couch and get on my computer, your app design has failed miserably.

I feel like the logical implication of that last sentence is that all app design has failed miserably.

I'm not disputing the claim.

This is why I use tumblr from my phone ON FIREFOX. ON MOBILE FIREFOX. The only downside is the stupid annoying "dont you want the app though" popups from tiem to time.

Anyway, the fact you can't navigate to a reply from your activity page or even see the full reply is a failure of whole-tumblr design

One thing I really like about how we use the affordances of tumblr is how reblogging yourself is used to break textposts up. It's not just a novel form of punctuation, it's effectively borrowing a structural trick from comics.

Space is time.

Tumblr can never be my main means of engaging in politics and it comes down almost entirely to Tumblr's pathological need to distill The Right Opinion:tm: from any complicated issue.

It's always the most important thing. Not because it helps solve the issue or helps the people impacted, but because The Right Opinion:tm: is a proxy for you, morally, as a person. And every issue needs to be broken into the language that sets the stances of Make You Good or Make You Bad.

And I don't mean this in any generic statement about echo chambers or virtue signaling. Those are separate but related concepts. What I'm talking about is how people are nervous about a topic until one doctrine is crafted which defines the Sports Team Color of our Sports Team, so we can be identified as being on the Us Sports Team, and absolutely not on the Them Sports Team. Because this issue is actually about you and the proxy for you as a person and how people should perceive you so, really, the sooner we figure out the Home Sports Team Colors the sooner you can stop feeling worried.

The moment something new happens is usually the first and last time you'll actually see a range of opinions on it. And some of that is fueled by misinformation! Some in bad faith! When dust settles and clarity is achieved, this helps combat those things, but it's also the moment when the Loudest and most Articulate voices craft the Zeitgeist Opinion and everyone comes to roost around it.

You get people on this site pissed off at AI models that can diagnose cancer from a research paper in 2019 because The Right Opinion is that AI is bad. If you even see a post trying to articulate good uses of AI, well that's someone wearing Packers colors at a Vikings home game, and if you wanna make a point in the "wrong" direction you better be damn articulate about it.

A well-defined set of actions are transphobic. Another set are actually not transphobic, and you'd be transphobic for thinking so. Are you trans and actually your lived experiences differ? Get articulate real fast or shut up. You might be able to eek an exception for yourself, but it's going to require a 10-paragraph post justifying your claim. If you're REALLY good at it though, you might be able to rewrite the Zeitgeist and now anyone who disagrees with you is transphobic. Teams switch uniform styles every now and then, after all.

And it's such a farce because so often it's not actually about the topic at hand. It's about why you should be allowed to be perceived as a good person while toeing outside the fringes of The Right Opinion, why you aren't actually quitting the faith or committing blasphemy or deserving of exile for going off the written word. Or if someone really IS trying to make it about the topic at hand, the ensuing slapfight in the comments needs to be about whether OP has sinned against the covenant.

It's not helpful.

reblog if your name isn't Amanda.

We’ll find you Amanda.

world heritage post

has it occured to yall that people don't search for older posts because tumblr doesnt find shit

like it's actually a pretty important feature to be able to find a post by remembering some of its content but not remembering who made it

also by "posts that old" do you mean "posts that were first posted at that time even if they were reblogged recently" or "posts that were not reblogged since then" bc the difference is also important

Sometimes someone invests at 12 notes and then it only goes to 26 notes, and that's not a very good return on investment. It's bad enough my post didn't do well, but now I have to worry about someone not being able to retire from tumblr? It's too much pressure.

hey quick question you are a great author and all but who gave you the right to just come on tumblr and know our customs. and just. insinuate yourself like this. you joined like a month ago. it took me 2 years to learn what "tbh" meant. where is your license sir

I come from the age of "lurk moar" and "RTFM", when there was an expectation that a new user would take some time to understand the culture, when we would read from the sacred FAQs and listen to our betters, who had a high post count to their name and a very long signature.

In the age of social media, everything is impermanent, even here, where posts float around for decades. The only things you need to learn are the ones that will show up on your dash the first day you came here. There's deep lore, like DashCon and the president's shoelaces, but it's not referenced often, and you can slip by those conversations pretty easily. Even if you feel the need to pretend you've been here all along, how much effort does it really take to watch Goncharov?

The vast majority of the signifiers are easy to learn, because you see them constantly, and the rest you don't need to learn, because they're rare. I still learned them, of course, just in case I needed them.

There is no hellsite that has anything close to a requirement like 1800s high society, where you were expected to read through a book of etiquette and take some classes and get slapped by your mother for not bowing low enough. It's just not how they make them anymore, they're not exclusive. If you want that, you have to go to a tiny discord with a calcified culture or one of the few private forums left that are still active, or maybe a niche subreddit.

Statistics that I use to motivate myself

I have a really bad case of the tinkerbells (I need applause to live) so I have these statistics I use to keep myself from getting depressed as a creator*. Here they are. They may help you as well!

So if your fanfiction has 100 hits and 5 kudos, you're meeting your goals at fanfiction corp and you're getting your raise this year. If your fanfiction has 100 hits and 10 kudos you're getting a promotion.

If you make a post about your new ttrpg and it gets 20 likes, 10 reblogs, and makes 1 sale, you're doing really well!

If your stream has an average of 1 friend who drops in and chats to you occasionally, you're doing better than average. If you make it to Affiliate you are genuinely doing incredible work.

90% of online creative work is just shunting stuff into the void, and it feels so so so bleak sometimes. But remember. You're doing good at it! Your "flop post" with 3 notes is actually more attention than 90% of internet users get.

Remember not everyone clapping for you is telling you about it. <3

*these statistics are from memory and from anecdotes from various people I have met/seen posts from on the internet. I do not know or care if they are completely accurate thank you

"I have a really bad case of the tinkerbells" I have never seen it put better, adding this to my vocabulary now

“posts that have 10k to me” -boring, cliched, causes mild alarm

“Posts that will have 10k” -threatening, inevitable, sounds like a curse

there is no way that is ever going to happen. even the posts people actively tried to get to 10k plateaued after 1k. your threats are weak. i dont fear you.

Tumblr has a dash pagination mode, which I use. Very beautiful, very powerful

tumblr users love reading. you literally stopped for this post just because it has words in it

this is one of my favorite bits about tumblr

the users seem to actually prefer text posts to anything else, and treat it as a chore to play a video especially with sound

From the math Tumblr discord server:

i cant imagine being mad about discord selling stupid cosmetic shit for absurd prices. thats like. by far the absolute best case scenario for monetization on any platform you enjoy using. obviously i would never be caught dead buying one but i hope that a bunch of people pay 2000 dollars for their profile picture to have a semi transparent png overlay if it means that discord wont become an unusable adware laden piece of shit for another five years

the same for tumblr's equally stupid badges. theres a lot to get mad at this website about and i would rather spend money on anything else but i would personally love it if a bunch of powerusers bought 1000 badges or paid a premuim fee to get the Deluxe Dickrider badge because the altenrativers are tumblr shutting down sooner rather than later or doing more obtrusive insufferable bullshit like whatever clearly insane deal they signed with tumblr live

that said people talking like its a civic / moral duty to make tumblr inc money are the most insufferable people on this website and make me spitefully wish for the entire website to explode in a freak accident but then i snap back to reality and remember that i quite like using this website and so ultimately i hope a bunch of people buy their dumb meme socks so that they dont start asking you your blood type when you sign off even if im going to think those people are lame

Microtransactions that do not affect usability/function and are purely aesthetic are the best possible case in this capitalist hellscape internet.

i follow a lot of people and talk in the tags a lot so im curious

i personally like hearing what people have to say but i always feel kind of bad about doing it myself especially if i start to ramble on like a non-art post

What???????????????????

Like.......... that's what this site is for. That's the "social" part of social media. That's what you are SUPPOSED to do. I feel bad when strangers DON'T talk in my tags (<- exaggeration, I love reblogs with or without comments, they're just a lil bland without someone starting an argument)

Hey people!!! Hey everyone!!!!!! Talk on the posts!!!!

“Tumblr doesn’t have an algorithm” actually it does. It just gives us the ability to use the website without it, and we’ve all decided to use it that way and only that way because engagement algorithms suck.

That’s fucking hilarious

Someone please draw the color of the sky as a very tall twink.

Oh shit, I'm an artist. Hold up.

Personally, I like his shoe laces. I bet you'd never guess where he got them.

Dunno if anyone’s done this yet but…

i love how this is so uniquely Tumblr™ that no one from any other website would get this.

Im... Im not sorry

I decided to make it worse 

Sexy Leg Einstein Post

Gradient Zone Post

and MishaPocolypse join the group

color theory hospital post

I want you all to know that I despise every single one of you.

Can I interest you in some fine copper ingots

He has survived Plinko Hell and back with a vengeance

Any time I think “welp, my dash is kinda boring this morning,” something like this happens.

now someone do this post