#tumblr etiquette
Hello new Tumblr peeps!
As you may have noticed there are a lot of new people coming to tumblr and some old friends are coming back. (I actually saw 2 people who hadn’t been here in 6 years post yesterday! Amazing!)
So if you are new maybe you don’t know why you aren’t getting followers or engagement. Let’s talk about tags!
For language learning blogs you want to use the following tags on your posts:
- Langblr
- (Xyz language) langblr ex. Japanese langblr
- Polygot
- Learn xyz language ex. Learn Japanese
- Xyz language grammar/vocabulary/etc.
Don’t tag things with your blog name.
Be patient. Sometimes people put posts in their queue and it can be a few weeks before it posts on their blog.
Look at the tags on blogs you like. You can use those tags.
Yes tumblr has a method of talking in the tags. Only do that on reblogs unless you don’t care about who sees it.
Sending inappropriate asks and unsolicited naked pictures is just as bad when girls do it to guys. Being gross is being gross, irregardless of gender. Stop it and have more respect for yourself and other people.
Here is what you should not do:
1. Threaten them with violence, rape, or murder. (e.g. You believe in what? People who believe that deserve to be raped!)
2. Make threats of stalking or imply stalking. (e.g. I have your IP address. I know where you live!)
3. Tell them to kill or hurt themselves. (e.g. Why don’t you go cut yourself!)
4. Make fun of their physical appearance. (e.g. You’re opinions don’t matter you fat cow!)
5. Mock their spelling or grammar. (e.g. Well I can’t take anyone seriously who doesn’t know how to use the right “their”.)
6. Tell them that their opinions are based on a mental illness. (e.g. You’re psycho if you think that!)
7. Tell them that their opinions are based on a passed trauma. (e.g. You think that? Then you must have been raped as a child!)
8. Negate their traumas. (e.g. That information isn’t true! If you’re lying about that then you must be lying about being abused!)
9. Name call. (e.g. You’re a cunt!)
10. Continue the conversation if the person no longer wants it to continue. (e.g. Continuously reblogging a post for weeks with more opinions when the OP has asked you to stop.)
tumblr blaze needs an update so that even when you reblog the sponsored post it’ll have a little icon on it somewhere so your followers will know it was a sponsored post. it’s necessary for the comedic impact
Just want to put this out there…
To everyone who reblog my gif sets, first of all thank you… but I’m asking to please NOT post negativity in the tags when I obviously care about the drama and the characters enough to make an entire set on them…
Hi all – newbies in particular, and newbies from tiktok extra in particular…
Please be aware that if you are tagging sensitive topics for the sake of other people’s blacklists, you NEED TO SPELL THE WORD CORRECTLY.
Lets use the word “yellow” as an example. Let’s say the word yellow means something horrible, and many people might want to filter it so that they don’t see posts that mention or discuss anything to do with the word yellow.
If you tag the potentially triggering post as “y3llow” or “ye11ow” or “yell0w,” then youre actually circumventing most peoples block lists. Youre making your post highly difficult to avoid by anyone who doesn’t want to see that word. People have to add every possible spelling combination of the word “Y3770w” to their block lists, and even then, some that they haven’t thought of will slip through their blocklist net and will give them an unpleasant surprise.
But if you just tag the post simply as “yellow,” correctly spelled and with no creative letter replacements, then all anyone needs to do to avoid ever seeing that content is to add the word yellow to their blocklist.
For the love of God, PLEASE stop censoring sensitive topics in the tags. Youre not helping; youre actively hindering anyone who is trying to avoid potentially triggering topics.
yknow ever since people realized tumblr isnt dead and have decided to flock here from twitter and tiktok ive seen a huge influx of people in fandom spaces who dont reblog anything. at all.
like, i used to have an art blog with 340 followers. not a ton but not a small amount either given how this website works with creators. and in my experience back then even the ones who only left likes still reblogged other things or at least posted their own stuff. literally the only empty blogs were clearly bots.
but on this New art blog, i’ve had so many people with fandom-specific headers and icons with actual usernames as urls and some kind of title or description, but have. Nothing. no posts. all they do is like things. and it’s always public, too. their following list and their likes list.
and honestly all it makes me think is that these people are New and also don’t know how tumblr works. how likes don’t give exposure. not even in a “oh, i know it doesn’t give exposure, but i’m still going to reblog anyways” way, but in a genuine honest to god straight up doesn’t realize tumblr likes don’t work like twitter’s.
PLEASE please if you’re from tiktok or twitter or whatever please reblog people’s art both fandom and original if you like it!! and maybe actually pad out your blog’s content in some way so people won’t potentially see you as a bot and block you.
REBLOG ARTIST’S WORK. THIS IS THE ONLY WAY THEY GET ANY ATTENTION ON THIS WEBSITE OH MY GOD. PLEASE. I BEG of you
WAIT THEY’RE REAL PEOPLE?! I’ve blocked several accounts so far because it was just “blanks space” and I assumed it was a bot.
FOLKS if you’re new, please, please, this is not like Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. Reblogging is the way to go. This is how we network on here. This is how you make mutuals. This is how you share new stuff with others.
You are also:
- Encouraged to add your thoughts to the post
- Engage in conversation freely
- Express yourself in the tags if you don’t want to write in the post
- In fact, write a god damn essay in the tags - we old members will read it, I promise - the limit on tags per post is insane anyway
- Reblog the same thing as many times as you like. Like every time you see it, and you want to reblog it because it brings you joy - go for it!
all the new fuckers: don’t censor words in ur post with numbers, @ and punctuation signs, different letters, shit like that. not just cuz it’s absolutely fine to say weird shit and things that other places generally censor on tumblr, but also cuz there are people with screen readers, and when u unnecessarily censor things like that, it really fucks with screen readers and makes it very difficult to read.
this isn’t just a “you don’t have to” thing, it’s a “you shouldn’t”.
also it makes the blacklist function useless
pretend the word “bananas” is a common trigger and i don’t want to see posts with that word, so i add it to my blacklist. if you make posts spelling it “b4n@n4$”, my blacklist won’t block it and i will see your triggering post.
Gentle reader, I make again a foray into the realm of the Selfie. For indeed my lady hath of late been enamoured of her face, and so the subject is much in my mind.
My lady fretteth oft on when to like the selfie of someone she followeth: will they think it odd that she hath liked it, when she hath not spoken to them? will they think it presumptuous? For my lady’s part, she is, I must admit, prone to the sin of Vanitas, and so welcometh each like with joy; but others are more private by far than she. And this incertitude is doubled when she thinketh of reblogginga selfie; for it is one thing to like a photo, and quite another to expose it to the eyes of her followers. And yet again, she taketh it as the highest of compliments when her face is reblogged.
It is good, I think, to tag whether or not you would like your selfies rebloggèd; and yet, since this does not happen consistently, it is impossible to tell if the lack of such a tag showeth that a selfie should notbe reblogged. I advise you, then, to ask the person if they would like their selfie to be reblogged; but of liking, I would advise you to show your appreciation – for liking is a simple thing, and showeth, in some small way, that the person you follow is not simply posting into a howling nothingness.
Here even the wise, among whose number I dare to count myself, fear to tread, and so I shall be brief.
Oft in the world of tumblr doth a gentleblogger encounter one who disagrees strongly with their own strongly held opinion. And in some cases this is benign; and it is of these cases that I would write of. For the cases where it is a malignity, a cruel thing, such as when a blogger doth disparage a whole race, or holdeth that they know better the gender of a person than the person themself are a tangle into which I would not ride; for no sword, be it that of Alexander himself, can sever those knots.
No, I speak here of kinder topics. If you encounter someone who differs from you in opinion, but there is no harm in it, I beg you treat them with courtesy; for I know there are some who would have it that, for example, Bradamante should not wed Ruggiero, but rather elope with Alcina. And perhaps you hold that Bradamante and Ruggiero should wed and have a multitude of children. On such a subject as this, I beg you, speak to your interlocutor with kindness and with the gentility that I know all my readers have within them; for the gentleblogger doth not pick a fight without cause, and neither do they cause anger intentionally.
Fair reader, you know my advice already: be kind; be direct; be gentle.
Often is the anonymous message used for hatred; and of that we have spoken of before, and my advice remaineth the same: do not. I speak now of the anonymous message that is meant kindly.
For often in the realm of the Internet is tone misread or mistaken; and anonymously more often than when speaking to someone who is known to you. My lady knoweth one who hath receivèd advice from someone who hath not declared their name; and, though it was not ill-meaning advice, it was strange indeed for them to receive it from a blank face. For though those who maintain personal blogs expose themselves to the world, showing vulnerability, this display does not grant access. And, you might argue, the showing of the opening meaneth that one cannot complain if they receive anonymous advice; and this is a bad argument.
For we keep blogs as records; and if a monastery keep an annal saying “we have been attacked by the Vikings,” it does not invite advice on the building of walls. And I know that my lady’s friend did not welcome the message: for again, tone does not transfer through the internet, and, though you be well-meaning, it is always better to show your face, if you would advise a friend.
Yet anonymous compliments have their use; my lady appreciates an anonymous message about her beauty or about her writing. Yet a simple “I love your face” is different indeed than anything more detailed.
And so, if you must, through shyness, be anonymous, be simple and straightforward: as one should strive always to be.
I don’t know where this recent idea came from that fiction has to be perfectly healthy anyway. Fiction is not inherently healthy and never has been, its not real, its for exploration and imagination. Fiction is separate from reality and that is why we like it. What you write about is not what you condone, Stephen King is not serial killer for writing about murder. People are not being “abuse apologists” for shipping two characters in a less than healthy way.
I’m sick of this new trend.
You don’t have to like a ship but you want to know what is actually hurting people? What is not promoting healthy behavior? Harassing shippers, telling them they’re disgusting over fiction, that kind of shining behavior antis exhibit.
Tag invaders (for one example) are displaying an unhealthy behavior. You don’t burst into your neighbor’s living room and tell them they’re gross for liking that television program. You don’t monitor their bedroom and tell them they practice their sex lives incorrectly—not if you’re a healthy individual, you don’t.
Of course, you see where I’m going with this.
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.
Additionally,trigger tag and spoiler tag your posts. Putting “THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS” or “THIS POST CONTAINS DISCUSSIONS OF THIS TRIGGERING THING” at the top of the post does NOTHING if you don’t tag said spoilers/triggeringthing. People block tags, not keywords. For spoilers, it can seriously tick people off, and for triggers, it can be DANGEROUS.
