a guide to Tumblr user interaction for newbies

Tumblr is the user interaction website. Not an advertisement website, not a popularity website. The goal here is not to become known to as many people as possible, but to be a little less lonely in this big wide world, and help other people be less lonely too.

Methods of user interaction, from most to least commitment:

Originally it will by default only be visible to your followers; if you want it to be visible to more people, use tags (five or so first tags count for the purpose of putting your post "into the tag" for other people to find outside of your blog). Beyond that you have no control: if it takes off, it takes off, if it doesn't, it doesn't. It's the highest commitment option because if it does take off it might be circulated for the rest of this website's lifespan, and you will continue to see people's reactions to it for as long as you stay here. Editing won't help, people will continue seeing the version that was originally reblogged (more on this later). Deleting will only help if you've put the post under readmore, in that people won't be able to access the original text anymore. Deleting your blog won't remove the post from circulation either. Beware.

It is very, very, very bad etiquette to make your own post with someone else's content without proper attribution. Tumblr is home to a lot of artists, writers and memers who take this shit personally. Reposting someone else's art (wide meaning of the word) as your own is just about the worst offense you can commit around here. If something you want to share was originally posted on another website, link back (unless it's a screenshot of a conversation, in which case just use your judgement for whether it's public and whether you have suficient permission to share it). If it was posted on Tumblr, for the love of god, REBLOG (see below). If you can't, that very likely means you shouldn't.

Good material for making your own original posts: Your art (and writing, and music, and so on). Your opinion on something (anything). A diary entry (though use your own judgement for whether you want to risk it being spread all over the website forever). A witty observation. A meme permutation of your own creation. A funny story you heard (with as much proper attribution as you can manage). Questions you want other people to answer. Excited recommendations of your favorite anything. Positive affirmations. Helpful information compilations. Wistful descriptions of extreme violence you wish you could inflict on politicians you don't like. Hornyposting. Etc.

Bad material for making your own original posts: Talking shit about other users in a non-vague way that allows others to easily identify them. Do not incite or spread harassment, even if they are really really annoying or really really wrong on the internet. Vagueblog if you have to, or take it to DMs (see below). Someone else's creations, as mentioned above. Unless it's formally published and the person has been paid for it, in which case, just don't take credit for stuff that's not yours, and attribute it so others can find the original source. Anxiety bait ("reblog this or have something bad happen to you") / screamers / jumpscares / common triggers (gore, flashing lights, etc) without proper tags. We used to have a lot of those, and nobody liked them, and we decided as a community to not do this anymore. Play ball or be prepared to get mass blocked and/or reported to the mod team for violating community standards. We don't mind hornyposting or threats of violence here, but don't be an ass to people who will see your posts, please.

You can find other people's posts to reblog on their own individual blogs, in the tags (tumblr.com/tagged/your interest), on your dashboard once you've subscribed to any of the above.

The etiquette around reblogging is a weird and complex thing, but generally: reblogging without adding any text, with or without tags is considered a universal positive.

(Exception: when a person has explicitly asked people to not reblog the post in the text or tags of the post. The "forbid reblogging" function is new and might or might not work well, the point is don't be an asshole)

A reblogged post has its main body duplicated on your own blog, tagged with the tags you added yourself and no others, with your own additions (if any) appended to the end. People can remove additions after the OP (original post) when they reblog, but usually this isn't done. Beware of this also: if you add something stupid to a post and the version with your addition takes off, it also might well circulate forever with no option for control on your end. Deleting will only help if you post your addition under readmore, etc, etc.

The reason it's less commitment is that you will only get notifications from interaction with your post only from the people who will interact with specifically YOUR instance of it, on your blog or on their dashboard where they are following you. If person A reblogs your (reblogged) post, then person B reblogs it from person A, you will only be notified of person A's actions. Anything further down the line is between the OP (original poster) and whoever is further down the line.

Note that the OP gets all notifications for everything that happens with their post, no matter how far down the line. A reblogged post is not alienated from the original poster, it's not "stolen", the other way around, you're adding value and popularizing it (and/or adding harassment and making OP's life hell, depending on context). Most times someone makes a post, they WANT it to be popular and spread around, so unless specifically noted otherwise, reblog away!

As for adding your own commentary to the reblogs: reblogs are a very normal, traditional and classic way to have a CONVERSATION on this website. Don't be afraid to express your opinion, argue, disagree or agree with the OP / any previous opinions in the version of the post you're reblogging. It's even considered perfectly reasonable to copypaste the previous person's tags you are seeing into the main body of the post and express your opinion on THOSE - tags are personal, but not private. It's sort of like whispering to be polite and not interrupt the main conversation, but if someone thinks your tags add value to the discussion - if only entertainment value - into the pot they go.

Tumblr is a clown website for clowns, so making fun of any part of the post above is also valid. (Unless you're being an asshole about it. Don't be an asshole about it.) As is appending a joke or a pun. If people don't like it, they don't have to reblog it. OP will probably appreciate it. Note: "I hate you" or similar in an additional reblog is a common way of expressing appreciation. (If you genuinely don't like someone's joke, you won't parade it around on your own blog. "I hate this" is, sincerely and seriously, a joke love language on this website)

Giving compliments / expressing appreciation is also an always good option. "Holy shit I love this" is a great addition to any post at any time in any context (unless the op specifically asked not to reblog etc etc). The reverse is not true - unless your criticism/disagreement is actively adding value to the public discussion, keep it to yourself or to the less public ways of engagement (more on this later). Or vagueblog about it, always a good option.

A holdover from the horrible old days of notifications clogging up your dashboard is general disapproval of "derailing" a post. If someone made a long post about their favorite Pokemon mentioning the word "stove" and you reblog it with a long monologue on your favorite stoves and the origin of the word "stove" and your personal funny story about using a stove once, it's considered "derailing". We are however no longer in the horrible old days, so derail away if you want to. That said, you can always put any and all of those free association things in the tags - that's the good manners option. Tags are not infinite length, but if you have THAT MUCH to say on the unrelated topic, you can always just make your own post!

Tags are freeform - nothing reblogged can be found in the general tumblr tags, so they only serve for organization on your own personal blog and as storage for your rants. I've seen original posts that have one line of the actual body of the post and then several paragraphs' worth of additional text in the tags. This is quirky and makes other people's lives more dificult if they want to respond, but you don't owe it to them to make it easy to respond to you. Tag away. (Note that your tags are visible to (1) your followers, (2) the OP who will receive the reblog notification along with the tags you used, (3) anyone who looks in the post's notes. Tags are quiet and polite but still public. Use your judgement)

Note that reblogging a post makes the resulting version be part of your blog same as if it were your own post. There's nothing bad about that, but again - it's somewhat high commitment. If you don't want to reblog something, you are always free to. Demanding that other people reblog your post, expressing judgement of those who don't reblog, guilt tripping people over not reblogging, are all considered bad etiquette, and are likely to result in people who would have otherwise reblogged refusing to, just so their followers won't be subjected to that. This particularly goes for artists going on rants over how their like to reblog ratio is terrible (more on this later). You are not anyone's personal advertisement agency no matter how much they wish you were unless they are literally paying you for it. Reblog away, and also don't reblog away. It's your blog, your rules.

Note also that having a blog that consists entirely of other people's reblogged posts with zero commentary or tags is a perfectly normal way of existing on this website that won't raise any eyebrows from anyone. You can even make friends by doing that and nothing else, if people whose posts you reblog choose to talk to you about it. Your blog is as much or as little of a scrapbook of other people's stuff you like as you want it to be.

And finally, there's no such thing as necroposting. If you archive dove someone's blog until you found a post from 2011 you really want to reblog with commentary, go WAY ahead and do that. If they didn't want you to, they would have deleted it. (Barely anyone does that, which is because most people don't mind and perfectly welcome the interaction, however inane. We're a very social media)

Once upon a time, there were no replies and no private messages on tumblr. The only options for interaction were reblogs, asks, and fan mail - an utterly amazing feature I kind of wish they hadn't gotten rid of, even though literally no-one misses it for its functionality. The flavor though, the flavor!

Asks are the result of the assumption that the website will consist of creators and their fanbases, and the fans can send short questions to their favorite creators that they can then deign to answer publicly for everyone to see, or privately for just that person only. (Or delete the ask and forget it ever existed). This usage actually persists for the local celebrities and microcelebrities, and their inboxes are usually as swamped as you'd expect a celebrity's inbox to be, with as little guarantee they'll ever get around to your ask in particular as you'd imagine. In the meantime, everyone else has adapted asks for more mundane, everyday use.

There are "askblogs" - blogs where pretty much all of their content is answering asks sent in. Specifically advice blogs, where your typical post is a one or two sentence long question (ask) and an essay length answer, and roleplay blogs, where your typical post is an ask of variable length with a reply from the character(s) the blog is for in comic form. There are liveblogs (liveblog blogs?), where asks are usually sent to a separate blog where an "ask screener" reads through them to filter out spoilers before passing them on to the liveblogger to answer, usually in screenshot form - basically the microcelebrity situation but with a better chance of having your ask in specific answered. There are submission-based blogs, which use the submission feature instead of the ask feature and are pretty much the only use for the submission feature on this website ever.

When it comes to regular users, an ask is what you send when you want an up-to-essay-length answer posted on their blog. (Although they can always choose to answer your privately instead, unless your ask is anonymous. And either way they can choose to never answer you at all.) Like if someone is doing theorycrafting in your favorite fandom and you want to prompt them to write up their opinion on your pet question? Asks exist for precisely that. (IRL science, US politics and the bible count as fandoms in my personal opinion)

There are ask games being passed around in reblogs. One genre is along the lines of "send me an emoji to get an answer to this question" or "send me one of these emojis to give me your opinion on me". A post like that showing up on someone's blog means they are participating in the game and hoping someone (you) sends them an ask along those rules. Sending an anonymous ask for these is perfectly acceptable, assuming the feature is enabled - many people disable it, for reasons... good, valid reasons. Sending multiple game asks to the same person at once is an excellent thing to do too (assuming the game allows for it), whether you're anonymous or not. If you reblog one of these games with the hope your own followers / mutuals (people who you follow and who also follow you) engage in it with you, good etiquette is to also send an ask participating in this game to the person you're reblogging it from, because all too often everyone hopes someone will send an ask to them but nobody actually sends an ask to someone else.

The second genre of an "ask game" is the chainmail-like positivity messages. "Answer this ask with 10 things you like and send it to 10 latest people in your notifications" or something along those lines. You are never under obligation to answer these, just leave them hanging in your inbox or delete them if you don't want to. In that vein, passing them on to someone else is generally considered a nice thing to do, whether anonymous or not. Someone thought of you, and zero pressure to go with it.

I'm classfying asks as mid-commitment, as while they won't show up on your own blog (unless you choose to reblog the other person's answer, which a lot of people do, whether to continue the conversation from there or just to archive it for their own later perusal and enjoyment / to brag to their folowers), they WILL show up on the other person's blog. Probably. Unless they choose to answer it privately or not answer at all. You know what I mean.

(I'm classifying "answering asks sent to you" under the "make your own original post" option, as it has all the same caveats and conditions. You can of course always answer non-anonymous asks privately, which has the neat feature (?) that the interaction is subsequently deleted from your own inbox to never be reviewable by you ever, and the other person will get their ask with your answer back with no "reply" button and will have to send a separate additional ask if they want to continue the conversation. Basically answering an ask in private is the "and fuck off" of tumblr social interaction. Don't read it like that if other people do it to you though, lots of people, especially tumblr oldies, don't really think of it that way and just act as if it's private messaging. Because, you know, once upon a time it was the only option for that. Yeah.)

(Also, don't harass people. Don't send death threats / threats of violence / suicide bait. Don't dox. Even if someone told you something really bad about them. It's bad form, usually lies, and mass harassment is decidedly a disproportionate response for anything you can know for sure another tumblr user actually did. There's a reason we have 2.5 actually famous people on here under their own names and the reason is everyone else got harassed off the website. Along with a lot of local microcelebrities. Most of them for no good reason / over lies. People have actually died as a result of mass harassment campaigns, too, so, just... don't, okay?)

This feature is surprisingly new - for the longest time, the only way to engage with someone else's specific post was to reblog it. Then replies appeared for special "question" posts that you had to put a question mark at the end to make, then disappeared again for a while, until finally we got the actual functional feature as it is right now.

It's still not... perfectly integrated with the rest of the website. Replies to your post will show up in your notifications along the same rules as other post interaction notifications (on any level of nesting if you're the OP, just for the people replying to your instance of the post specifically if you just reblogged it), but if they are too long they will not show up in full and you'll need to dig through the notes of the post itself to find them. Which of course include all replies to the post, regardless of level of reblog they occured at, and are sorted by witchraft and wizardry. You can't reply to a specific reply to make a thread either, to adress someone in specific you need to tag them (@username) in the text of the reply. Replying to someone else's reply on a popular post is an exercise in frustration. The feature seems designed for everyone to reply to the OP specifically, so that the OP may peruse the mass of the replies as a whole at their leisure. This is not how the replies are actually used, and they are basically a free for all. Write whatever.

A normal way to interact with replies to your post, originating from back in the days of "question" posts, is to screenshot the reply and make a new post with the screenshot and your reaction / reply to it (assuming it's longer than the one sentence of your average reply), and tag the person you're replying to. (Unless you're dragging them / their opinion / their phrasing, in which case it would be polite to not tag them and also crop their username out of the screenshot or black it out. The same old don't be an asshole rule)

This feature is also, in my estimation, mid commitment. Your reply will be accessible on another person's post, but usually fairly buried, whether under an avalanche of other replies or due to the post's obscurity. Note though that unlike a post, you cannot delete a reply you've made (tumblr is a functional website :) ), meaning if you say something particularly stupid the only way to dissociate yourself from it is to delete your account. Which, to be clear, is normally a gross overreaction to leaving a stupid reply somewhere, because literally nobody cares. Stil, it's an Indelible Mark you're publicly leaving on the internet landscape. Can't leave anonymous replies either. Truly tragic.

I believe there are multiple options people can set for privacy for who can send them these. For most people, if you follow them, you can message them. Just say hi! Compliment them! Share a fun fact! Start a conversation! Most people will appreciate it, even if they will first leave you on read for a couple of months because that's how often they check their inbox, oops.

Personal messages are decidedly NOT integrated with the rest of the website's functionality, which is really the main attraction. The only way to publicize a private messages conversation with someone is to take screenshots and post them, same as if you were using a different app entirely. (Incidentally, don't do that unless you have permission or a really, really good reason. Asshole rule etc)

You will sometimes get spambots in your personal messages. You can easily identify them by features such as: wanting you to go to another website, wanting you to buy something, offering you money for something, offering to have virtual sex with you. Don't act like that, and you won't get blocked and reported by other users!

Personal messages are... mid to low commitment. No-one but you and the person you're talking to will ever know (unless they choose to tell other people, but that's any interaction with another person ever), but you also can't delete personal messages, because tumblr is a functional website :) and personal messages are a relatively new feature. Seriously, we used to use FANMAIL to communicate. Fan fucking mail.

Okay, real talk. You will see a lot of posts going around saying "likes don't do anything", "likes only upset people" and so on. Absolutely do not take those as a serious guide on whether to like other people's posts. (Well, maybe as a guide on whether to like THOSE SPECIFIC PEOPLE's posts. Not everyone else's.)

A "like" is a way to communicate to the poster (the OP and the person whose reblog of the post you're viewing, if the post is a reblog, which most posts on this website are) that you: (1) agree with them / the latest stated opinion in the reblog chain; (2) appreciate this post's presence on your dashboard / in the tag; (3) really like the thing they made; (4) are happy for them / sorry that happened and sending positive vibes their way. People whose reaction to being told this information is "if you like what I made you should advertise it on your own blog" or "this is clearly a passive aggressive message that my content is not good enough to share" need to log off tumblr and either go touch grass or start an instagram account or something. They are also a VERY SMALL minority. When seeing a stranger's post, the reasonable default assumption is that they will take a like as the positive message it is - someone took the time out of their day to put a little red heart on their post! - and be happy about it.

Likes are a very minimal commitment way to participate in the general tumblr discourse melting pot. You don't need to put anything on your blog, or say a single word to another person. Just decide what you like and what you don't, and send little positive affirmations to the former while ignoring the latter.

You can also access posts you liked later, meaning likes can also function as a personal archive of posts you want to be able to find later, if you don't want to use your blog for that.

And finally, an important function likes serve that cannot be overlooked is differentiating yourself from a spambot. Spambots are a constant cursed presence, and people generally snipe them on sight (block and report). And one easy way to tell a person from a spambot is that a spambot follows you out of nowhere and does not interact with your posts in any way (maybe reblogs something at some point to make their blog look like it's real). A person, on the other hand, generally follows you because they like some of your posts... which until the recent surge of stupidity, would generally be visible in your notifications via a string of liked posts before, around or after the follow notification. Distinguish yourself from a spambot by also doing that! In my observations, an average like:reblog ratio for posts and for individual followers is about 10:1. That's average, mind you, you have every right to reblog nothing or reblog everything.

(In my personal opinion, it's reblogs without a like that come across as somewhat hostile... but in the recent climate, one has to assume that people don't mean it like that are just took the 'how dare people interact with me without promoting me' moaning seriously)

The absolute newest thing to happen on this blue hellsite, and THE lowest commitment you can possibly have. It doesn't require you to write words AND is anonymous. No-one will ever know. But you DO need to make an account, so... still in some ways more commitment than sending an anonymous ask? Judge for yourself!

And please, for the love of god, like the posts you like.