Tumblr is having another ~moment~ in the media, so I’ve been thinking about how Tumblr gifsets have been a huge part of how I consumed pop cultural visual media for the past decade or so. I can’t think of any other website (that I use anyway) that utilizes gifs in this way.
A lot of pop cultural discussion websites are text-oriented (here thinking of the dearly departed TWOP and its slew of replacements). Reddit has that but also more noise and more memes. I don’t know how conversation occurs on other websites; I can’t envision it. But with gifsets, Tumblr creators are able to distill their favorite shows down to some kind of ineffable essence conveyed precisely in the form of its own medium, and not awkwardly translated into transcription or commentary, or literally re-cut as clips that rob a potential viewer of their true first-time experience.
With a gifset, a creator is saying, “These are some parallels that I have noticed are artistically interesting in some way,” or “These are moments that have touched me in some way, that I want to relive through the dissemination of this gifset.” And that’s it, no additional commentary (I mean we can talk about tags later). I am interpreting someone else’s interpretation of an entertainment product, before I ever experience that product myself. The gifset creator brings their followers to the doorstep of that experience, but we walk through with our own preconceptions or misconceptions. I may imagine and envision something based on a gifset that does not exist in the actual product (think of all the meme posts that ask people to describe what they think a show is about, based solely on gifs they’ve seen on Tumblr), but I imagine and anticipate on that basis, too, and it’s an experience not available on other pop culture/social media websites.
Hello again, Tumblr. Now that our dashboards are back to normal (‘normal’ doing some heavy lifting here), the crabs are back in tropical paradise (for now), and Mr. Brick Whartley is back with them, we felt it was time for reflection.
In his opening statement on April 1, Mr. Whartley, our now-former Head of Viral Marketing and Exponential Growth and Front End Software Developer, outlined his ambition to “…increase clicks across the platform by any means necessary”. Quite the lofty ambition. And this got us thinking—how did we do? And by we, of course, we mean you. Well, you didn’t disappoint, and if you like unnecessarily large numbers, you’re in for a real treat.
By 12:49 pm (PDT)/3:49 pm (EDT), the community had summoned 7.5 million crabs at a rate of 1.07 million crabs per hour.
By the end of the day, there were 20,000 posts by 14,000 of you with the tag “time for crab.” Time indeed.
The community’s April Fools prank was a resounding success, with more than 52,000 posts from Tumblr users attempting to “crash” this Hellsite by scheduling posts all at the same time.
Mr. Brick Wharley’s blog accumulated more than 3,000 followers and 12,000 notes, while @staff received nearly 50,000 notes across the day.
Perhaps Mr. Whartley didn’t do such a lousy job. Finally, the most important statistic of the day, the community summoned25millioncrabs across Tumblr on April 1, 2022.
Credit where credit’s due, folks. You did us proud, you did Mr. Whartley proud, and most importantly, you did yourselves proud. So give those index fingers a little rest—they deserve it. And you will need all your strength for April 1, 2023.
On iOS 24.0, Ad-Free subscribers now have a “Restore purchases” button in case there are any issues activating their Ad-Free subscription.
Queue 2.0 from Tumblr Labs is once again available and supported on web.
Fixed
On iOS, the Dashboard tab emojis could cause some links to become unresponsive, so we’ve removed them for now. We hope to have these back in the next app release.
On Android 24.1, we’ve fixed an issue that was causing a small number of users to not be able to see their activity tab earlier today.
Fixed some missing padding between an image and a bulleted list or indented block that followed.
When using the legacy editor on web, reducing your screen size while drafting a post will no longer remove its contents.
Ongoing
On Android, it’s not possible to zoom in on GIFs at the moment. We’re hoping to include a fix for this in the next app release.
Upcoming
We’ll soon make it possible to purchase and gift Ad-Free subscriptions to other users.
Experiencing an issue?File a Support Request and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can!
No matter what a post on tumblr tries to tell you, your moral and ethical stances will never be determined by what you reblog and what you scroll past. Don’t let manipulation tactics force you into doing anything you don’t want to do.
I find it very interesting to note the times in which this post has a sudden resurgence. It often follows very stressful, upsetting events, where a lot of “REBLOG THIS OR YOU SUCK” posts start appearing on this site.
So I’ll say it again: it is okay if you come to tumblr to escape upsetting news. It is okay if you’re just here for fun and fandom. It is okay if you do not want to use your tumblr as a place to read about or spread the current events that are circulating. It is okay if you need a place to decompress and just relax. There are other ways to be involved in/support causes and you are allowed to set boundaries on social media platforms without it being indicative of your belief systems.
Your beliefs, values, ethics, and moral stances are not determined by whether or not you reblog something.
Plain text: I find it very interesting to note the times in which this post has a sudden resurgence. It often follows very stressful, upsetting events, where a lot of “(caps) reblog this or you suck (end caps)” posts start appearing on this site.
So I’ll say it again: (italics) it is okay if you come to tumblr to escape upsetting news (end italics). It is okay if you’re just here for fun and fandom. It is okay if you do not want to use your tumblr as a place to read about or spread the current events that are circulating. It is okay if you need a place to decompress and just relax. There are other ways to be involved in/support causes and you are allowed to set boundaries on social media platforms without it being indicative of your belief systems.
Your beliefs, values, ethics, and moral stances (bold) are not determined (end bold) by whether or not you reblog something. End plain text.
Let it never be said that the things you post on Tumblr don’t matter in real life, because I finally watched Encanto yesterday** and 95% of the reason was because this ONE Doctor Who fan I follow on Tumblr has been posting Encanto memes nonstop for the last few weeks and I desperately needed to know why they were so excited.
(** I loved it, it was amazing, but I knew NOTHING about it going in because I somehow missed every single preview, ad, and review about it when it first premiered)
There is nothing more embarrassing on the website Tumblr.com than reblogging one of those “anonymously ask me” type posts, and then following up on your blog with absolutely zero answered asks. Those, those are not hot girl hours when that happens.
And with one decision, I am fully committing to closing this blog and moving all discourse, political bullshit, and whatever my stupid head wants to say about meta tumblr fuckitry on @the-vanguard
However, I feel that politics is overall becoming just boring in it’s own sense, and I will hopeful evolve again even from the vanguard to something I feel more cozy with.
I chuckled pretty hard on how pointlessly stupid this statement is.
I’m Libertarian for a majority of my political leanings with very few exceptions, @guns-and-humor. You would know that by either asking me, or looking over my blog. But you didn’t. Instead, you assumed my position poorly & wrong. You didn’t even want to me to elaborate what I have to said, and blocked me while at the same time leaving a comment.
If that isn’t the tactics of a coward, I don’t know what is.
But you know what, I’m generous man, and I also know I can easily archive this conversation.
Government funded and Taxpayer funded are synonymous. There is no difference at all when saying one or the other. How could it? Government projects are created by parasites who’s only job is to dispense the tax money we have given them. This is civics 101.
Furthermore, it’s a bit weird to even thank the working class. Should I thank everyone, including myself, for breaking treaties, funding terrorist cells, and coups on legitimate governments? Because logically speaking, that is your line of reasoning.
Which is why I said this is a pointlessly stupid statement.
With that said, keep me blocked. A person who wholesale accepts the government, such as yourself, are unpatriotic and overall would be fine seeing all the freedom and liberties the constitution has given us go down the drain.
Oh and I won’t block you, as a Libertarian, I welcome opposing ideas to better challenge and improve myself.
I actually think the real advantage tumblr has over other websites is the ability of “reblogging” to create posts with contributions from multiple users. This allows people to build on others’ posts, whether that’s derailing them with a terrible joke, drawing the scenario proposed as a comic, answering the question posed originally in lively essay format, or rewriting the previous interaction as a scene in Shakespearean iambic pentameter.
This is also why Tumblr is hard to make profitable. Individual users have relatively little power to create good content. It’s interactions between users that actually creates the good content, and therefore, no one involved in the good stuff on Tumblr can really claim to “own” it or be the “creator.”
Posts have to navigate through Tumblr to pick up the people that can add to them in a constructive way, and then when users interact, the whole interaction can spread across the website as a new evolution of the content. There’s no way to simplify this process.
Theres a whole ecosystem running here. It’s not as simple as Creators and Consumers, and you can’t simplify it to that. That’s not how ART works, let alone posts. There’s symbiosis. The users that do the nitrogen fixation aren’t the ones photosynthesizing. The detritivores can’t also be the predators. The “rappers doing normal shit blog” has a different niche than the person that asks why Lil Wayne has socks on in the jacuzzi, who has a different niche than the person who says “those are his hooves, you bitch!”
It’s like bioavailability, you see. The user that responds “Those are his hooves, you bitch” is like a predator on a high trophic level, unable to directly feed on producers, needing primary consumers to convert the post into a form that makes a punch line possible.
This is what I love about Tumblr. It feels more like discussing a common matter with the people you meet while out for a walk than trying to hold a conversation with twenty people at once in a crowded room
I have seen a lot of these “how Tumblr works”-posts going around lately, and I think this one says it really well. I’m not necessarily here for the original post but for the snowball effect of a reblog chain that hopefully follows
College dorms in the late 90s early 2000s had poster boards everywhere and everyone stuck random notes on, some that continued a conversation. Tumblr makes me think of college posterboards.
Tumblr is improv. We’re constantly yes-anding each other.
I knew a linguist once who did a study on conversations in bathroom graffiti and that’s something else tumblr conversations remind me of.
You know the whole reason why I haven’t left Tumblr after all these years is because this site is so introvert friendly.
I don’t have the attention span or much less the strength to keep up with Discord conventions (bc apparently fandom is more in Discord these days?? I am not a talkative person to even take part in a group chat *shivers*) or follow with whatever’s going down on Twitter.
I can come on here, make a post into the void and reblog a bunch of posts then ramble in the tags. It’s great. You don’t have to be a person here, you can be a faceless blog and have a grand old time.
This is not a drill, repeat, this is not a drill—we are rolling out reblog controls across web and iOS, starting today.
How does it work?
When drafting a post, select the settings cog in the top right corner of your post editor. From here, you can choose one of two options.
“Anyone (on Tumblr)” means just that.
“No one” means that your post cannot be reblogged by anyone, ever.
Why?
Your wish is our command. Many of you have told us this feature would give you a welcome sense of safety. If you block someone after the post was made, don’t worry—they still can’t reblog it. This change gives you control over your own posts, and so will improve your posting experience. Ultimately, better posting means a better Tumblr. And finally, don’t worry, Android users. The feature will follow on your platform soon.
That’s all, folks. Happy reblogging!
Any questions? Drop us a line on @wiporSupport, and keep an eye out for the mobile rollout on@changes.
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