the remnants of hurricane helene have wrought unprecedented devastation on appalachia. while there are many areas of the southeastern US that are currently hurting because of what this storm has brought, the infrastructure in this particular region, hundreds of miles inland, is not built to withstand this kind of damage. western north carolina has been largely cut off from the outside world since the storm hit, with large scale disruptions to power and cellular service, many facing up to weeks without power and water, and washed out roads mean that many, still, especially in the more rural areas of the region, are trapped.

people need help, and they need it urgently.

as a native of western north carolina, my heart hurts for the beautiful place that i still call home even if life took me east, and for the wonderful people i still consider my community.

some of the most immediate, dire needs are securing access to basic necessities such as food, which is why i am highlighting two specific nonprofits: manna food bank, located in asheville and serving the surrounding communities, and second harvest food bank, serving northwestern nc, including several hard-hit counties in the northern mountains of western north carolina. manna food bank lost their entire headquarters in the asheville flooding, and are desperately seeking donations to restock their supplies for distribution to those in need, while second harvest is organizing a large scale hurricane relief effort.

in exchange for a donation to either of these food banks, i am offering a custom short work of writing, for whatever characters and prompts that are requested. for a $10 donation, i will write a drabble of at least 500 words, and for a $15 donation, i will write a short story of at least 1,000 words.

donate to manna food bank; donate to second harvest.

i encourage you to spread this, and i encourage you to participate in this fundraising effort as well! let's do our part to come together and show the people of western north carolina that we have not forgotten about them, and we will help them get through this.

thank you for using this hellsite as intended.

reblogs are important, if you liked a post, reblog it! that is how posts are spread, that is how people get to see art and creations and fics. it makes creators very, very happy.

we have a long time until season three, let's make sure everyone feels appreciated.

as always, reblogs on EVERY ACC ARE APPRECIATED 🥹🥹🥹

just saw someone post “it’s common knowledge ur not supposed to spam reblog from someone ur not mutuals with” …..?????????? am i confused??? IS that common knowledge???? i try not to spam if i can help it but i actually personally love seeing spam notifs lmao??? unless i dont know what spam reblog means

Reblog if you like it when people “spam reblog” from you or whenever that means at any time

It’s common knowledge that you ARE supposed to do that, actually, and anyone who says the opposite is a confusing this with Instagram

I hate how people coming on Tumblr from Twitter, Instagram, etc. are trying to redefine how Tumblr is supposed to be used, based on those other social media platforms they’re coming from. Apparently, you can get shadowbanned on Instagram if you go on a liking spree. (I wouldn’t know because I’m not on Insta myself, but this is what I’ve heard from people who are on it.) But that’s definitely not the case on Tumblr.

From the beginning, Tumblr has been all about sharing your interests with others via reblogging. In fact, reblogging is vital for Tumblr to work. And that’s why it’s alarming how content creators have been saying for a few years now how the reblog/like ratio is skewed with people only liking posts and not reblogging, which means that their hard work will disappear into the ether. But that’s another discussion.

I, for one, can say that it absolutely makes my day as a small and non-popular blog when someone likes and reblogs a lot of my posts.

I got this message from a bot, and honestly? If I was a bit younger and not such a jaded bitch with a career in tech, I might have given it an honest try. I spent plenty of time in a tough situation without access to any mental health resources as a teen, and would have been sucked right in.

Chatting right from your phone, and being connected with people who can help you? Sounds nice. Especially if you believe the testimonials they spam you with (tw suicide / self harm mention in below images)

But I was getting a weird feeling, so I went to read the legalese.

I couldn't even get through the fine-print it asked me to read and agree to, without it spamming the hell out of me. Almost like they expect people to just hit Yes? But I'm glad I stopped to read, because:

I was curious about their business model. They're a venture-capitol based tech startup, owned by Airbnb, the famous mental health professionals with a focus on ethical business practices./s They're also begging for donations despite having already been given 2.5 million dollars in research funding. (If you want a deep dive on why people throw crazy money at tech startups, see my other post here)

They also use the data they gather from users to conduct research and publish papers. I didn't find them too interesting - other than as a good case study of "People tend to find what they are financially incentivized to find". Predictably, Koko found that Kokobot was beneficial to its users.

So yeah, being a dumbass with too much curiosity, I decided to use the Airbnb-owned Data-Mining Mental Health Chatline anyway. And if you thought it was dangerous sounding from the disclaimers? Somehow it got worse.

(trigger warning / discussions of child abuse / sexual abuse / suicide / violence below the cut - please don't read if you're not in a good place to hear about negligence around pretty horrific topics.)

Kokobot is incredibly predatory and exploitative. I wrote a post about how it exploits minors' empathy and gamifies "giving mental health advice", resulting in an unregulated mess that can only do harm to teens' mental health in the long run.

There are young people on tumblr that actively seek support from KokoBot right now, if you check the tag for recent posts. Those people did not get paid to promote it, so do not harrass them. If you can, direct them towards resources about Kokobot (like this post) that are more transparent about what this company is up to.

This... is DEEPLY DISTURBING.

SIGNAL. BOOST.

RLDR (real long, DO READ)

Considering the issues/history tumblr users already have with bots, why would anyone?? But seriously, please read and share to warn others. This is not the way.

20+ years is a lot to ask of an AC unit, but it has served us well. We need to raise 5k to replace it. Of course, we overworked the thing, and it keeled over in the 100° F weather.

Please help with money and/or sharing

Cashapp $BucksPeaches

With 2 senior dogs, one of which (Bucky) has a heart murmur, and a little Brachycephalic Airway Syndrome frenchie Peggy, it's been a rough couple of days.

Please boost. We're trying to get a better estimate, but the one we're currently trying to fund is parts only! They're throwing in the labor costs.

We've been hovering at the mid 90s inside the house. 🥵

Hey gang. Utah is still hot as Satan’s taint (totally a legit meteorological measurement and not something I made up).

If you’ve got a couple bucks to spare or find some loose change in the couch cushions, consider throwing it ^this way. @steverogersnotebook has been a staple of my dash basically since I got to this hellsite and she and those good doggos could really use a break.

If you don’t have a couple bucks to spare or change in the couch, please hit that reblog button!

Tumblr Migration 2: Reddit Boogaloo

We all know about the Twitter immigrants, but there seems to be radio silence on what's happening now with Reddit users from certain subreddits doing a similar thing.

What's happening?

Reddit is restricting their API later this month and killing off third-party apps. An AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the CEO Steve Hoffman was held and it was clear that he would continue with the changes.

In protest, thousands of subreddits across the site are planning to go dark for 48 hours on June 12th. Some are planning to continue indefinitely until the changes are reversed.

Okay, so how does this affect Tumblr?

Some subreddits (mainly queer and left-leaning meme ones, don't worry too much about Reddit Atheists™ overrunning us) are encouraging their users to jump ship to our beloved - and beloathed - hellsite. There will be another influx of new users and many will be unfamiliar with how the site works.

What do us Tumblr users do?

Show them how to use the site; introduce them to the site's culture, tell them to reblog shit and curate their dashboard. Sorta like how we welcomed Twitter users back when they flocked here. Kungpowpenising optional.

I'm new from Reddit, what do I do here?

CHANGE YOUR PROFILE PICTURE AND BANNER TO SOMETHING OTHER THAN DEFAULT BECAUSE THIS SITE IS FILLED WITH BOTS AND YOU MIGHT BE MISTAKEN FOR ONE. This is the FIRST thing you should do after getting a blog.

Other folks can help you with stuff like curating your dashboard or creating sideblogs (or you can look shit up) but please, PLEASE just give yourself an icon and reblog some stuff so people don't mistake you for a bot

This is one of the first posts I've seen after trying to look at Tumblr again, so I've decided to head their advice and reblog this. I don't even know what a reblog is but I'll find out in time. It's a learning process

a reblog is what you just did! it's similar to a retweet on twitter and it's the main way things spread on tumblr

Very Brief Guide to [tumblr], for Reddit refugees

Shit You Must Do Right Fucking Now:

Basic Features of the Site:

Stuff Tumblr Does That Other Sites Don't:

General Etiquette:

Tips:

Have fun on [tumblr], everyone!

Speaking of fanfiction.net, did you know that while it was seven years ago and therefore obviously well out of date (though given the declining traffic over the past few years, that's not the biggest issue), some insane person (positive) on archive.org managed to do the unthinkable and archive a full snapshot of the site despite its infamous unarchivability; I didn't until I went looking for if anyone had good tips on downloading from there easily and found a reddit thread from 2016. It's here. So while I continue to fret about how goddamn difficult archiving the website in full will ever be when it inevitably collapses on us randomly, at the very least we have a snapshot of it as of 2016, in fact.

in case you were wondering why we haven't just done this again, the original re-pack is described as follows:

I have to admit, I'm surprised to see people reblogging this saying it was 'barely usable'- I was shocked by how usable it was, having expected it to be basically unnavigable unless you had a story ID etc, more like the oocities geocities backup and that sort of thing. I appreciate that it's hardly like opening up the actual website, of course, but mass backups of this type tend to be far more obtuse than this one in my experience.

Reblogging this again now that I'm on desktop and can grab the link.

The same person did an updated full-page grab in early 2019. It's here.

True story, downloading it is what got me so inundated with Destiel fics that I started falling behind on the archive, and has been so overwhelming that I've kinda given up on catching up. It's HUGE. If what you're looking for existed on FF.net in March, 2019, it's in this.

It contains 10 MILLION stories.

Happy reading, y'all.

(Also, I agree, it's very easy to navigate and use. Yes, it's hard to find things, but that's not the archivist's fault...that's just how ff.net IS. Finding things on there is a nightmare. I recommend using your file browser's built in search, that's your best bet.)

FanFiction.net is not gone.

Right now it's a victim of DNS (Domain Name Service) spoofing. This means that a malicious party is trying to trick people into thinking that they are the real FFn (/steal traffic/make money/whatever) by purchasing a very similar domain.

So if you want to read fanfiction and not see leaves, you have have to type out "www.fanfiction.net"

Pls reblog if u vote :)

@staff the numbers do not lie!!!

@staff @support

The bots have apparently realized they were too obvious and now don't add a description or title to their blogs at all so reminder to any new users to have Something there or you'll end up blocked and reported by mistake

legit just had the friend of someone with a real blog message me and ask me to unblock their friend bc said friend was a real person and not a bot.

so like. seriously, y'all. make yourselves look like a human inhabits your blog.

Please do this before you follow anyone! Upload an icon, write a little blurb (even if it's just a couple whole sentences about your interests). We're all tired and skeptical at this point.

Dead ass reporting a blocking EVERY. SINGLE. FOLLOWER. That doesn't have a blog to look at. If it's a pfp and a header and not shit else, see ya 🖕🏻

Before you follow someone, reblog a couple of their posts. PUT POSTS ON YOUR BLOG. I need to know you are an actual human

for the love of god please listen to old users when we say this site works differently. that you can’t just sit around with a blank blog. make posts or reblog, but do something at least. this site works because we don’t have an unavoidable garbage algorithm forcefeeding us posts based on our likes. we do not need another fucking twitter, tiktok or instagram.

liking a post is literally useless here. we don’t have an algorithm. we see posts when people reblog them onto our dashes, they show up in a tag we’re following/searching, or they end up chucked into our recommended page (very inaccurate, basically just popular posts that may be vaguely related to your interests sometimes). liking doesn’t do anything. it’s just a button that’s there to show, hey, i saw this post. or you’re saving it for later

this is (partially) why art blogs are dying. if you don’t actually reblog the art posts you enjoy, they won’t reach anyone and just...stay there with a few likes.

From now on

You are not allow to complain about lack of content if you don't reblog content.

You're part of the problem. I don't care if it doesn't fit your aesthetic or you think that a like is "just as good". Reblogs are way more important than likes.

A like is like a quick almost mindless thing you do as a "neat" before you keep scrolling. At least that's what it feels like they are.

A reblog is telling that creator: Hey, I really like your stuff and want you to make more. I'll help by spreading your content around so more people can see it.

We all appreciate likes but they don't do any good if no one is sharing the content.

Every time I see such a difference in likes and reblogs it discourages me from writing more and I'm sure others feel the same.

This. All of my notes come from me reblogging it myself. But then when I wake up and check my notes I've been spammed like for my entire masterlist.

Spotlight Saturday

Make a post recommending a someone else’s fic that you love. Whether it was posted this week or whether it’s been in progress for a while and is currently updating, tell everyone you know that they should check it out.

Reblog artwork and gifsets from other fan creators. Recommend someone you think others should follow - and why. Share the love for your fellow fans, creators and consumers alike. Be the Will Smith meme for your fandom.

Feel free to repost this header!