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.
Is anyone else more entertained than they should be by the vintage 1990′s straight-to-DVD, home shopping network aesthetic of the pinned ad for “Tumblr Ad-Free Browsing”?
Staff 1: “We should advertise this.”
Staff 2: “I can put together something slick and modern.”
Staff 1: “Are you new here? They’d hate that with the power of a thousand suns. No, our only options are retro tackiness or off-the-wall bonkers.”
Staff 2: “I don’t have any ideas for bonkers.”
Staff 1: “Retro it is.”
It’s gone!
Good thing I saved a copy for posterity.
Honestly, I wasn’t gonna bother with getting ad-free tumblr but then this ad popped up at the top of my dash on Monday and it was an INSTANT purchase. Absolutely irresistible.
New people on tumblr: PLEASE don’t put your random shitposts in the fandom tags unless you post about those fandoms and are specifically trying to attract other people with similar interests.
I know you’re going for algorithmic engagement but putting unrelated content in a tag is a good way to get yourself blocked. If I’m choosing between a stranger’s advertisement or seeing the stuff I’m actually filtering for, the stuff wins.
unpopular opinion I wish people started using edit tags again instead of only tracked tags or blog tags. I would think more content would be shared more like it used to be before the user tag system. I’m not saying not use the user tag but also search edit tags.
I fucking hate James Tissot’s paintings because in ALL OF THEM there is ALWAYS someone staring right at you, but it’s not always immediately visible. You just feel watched by this mf. Sometimes the little shit is right there at the centre, but others the bastard is just gazing from the distance, it is CREEPY, my guys
I was trying to explain tumblr to someone who had never used it before and she said “So what do people post there? Videos, like on tiktok?” and it took all my self control not to say “Mostly we just post bullshit.”
Wild, I too explained tumblr to someone today, and I did not refrain from saying we posted and reblogged fandom bullshit
She literally had NO frame of reference for ANY of it and I was just like “how do I even describe this site”
You can describe Tumblr as “a blogging platform housing thriving fandoms, underappreciated artists, and tons of shitposts” but that doesn’t even come close to the EXPERIENCE of using Tumblr.
You are on Tumblr. You scroll past a thread spouting hot takes about a fandom you’re not in. You see signal boosts for people you will never meet. An ad tells you to put butter on your pillows. Your mutual spams about infinity train for a full hour and you don’t hear from them for days. “Everyone at the farmers market wishes to know me carnally.” The inherent terror and joy of seeing the color of the sky.
You are on Tumblr. You post two videos. The first gets uploaded after five minutes. The second video never uploads. You reupload the second video. Nothing happens. You check your activity. You don’t know if someone just liked the same post eight times or if Tumblr is broken. Two people follow you. You’re not sure if they’re porn bots or empty blogs. Someone messages you about ray bans official charity event. Two days later the second video is uploaded twice. You close Tumblr. You open it again. There’s a thread about how to hide a dead body. Someone tells you to touch grass. You try to search for a post on your blog. The search function does not work. There is a screenshot of a tweet of a Tumblr post. The reblogs are incomprehensible. The tags are worse.
You are on Tumblr.
This reads like a welcome to nightvale traffic report
this is the highest honor you could give. thank you
honestly if tumblr unbanned NSFW we could enter like a golden age
Let’s face it.
If tumblr introduced a tier of paid membership that allowed the free posting and/or viewing of porn and nudity, they’d make this hellsite profitable for the first time in a decade.
People are already proving willing to pay just to shitpost. Imagine what being allowed to “show nuts” and viewing “female presenting nipples” would do.
Just a friendly reminder that on this godforsaken website you can and should do the following few things that involve going into your settings:
1: Under Dashboard, disable Best Stuff First, Include Stuff In Your Orbit and Based On Your Likes. The former ruins the how the timeline works here, the middle violates the sanctity of anonymity if people you follow don’t want you to see their likes, the latter is a crapshoot and annoying and inaccurate because the likes algorithm is fucked.
2: Under Account, turn off letting people finding your blog through your email address, your email should not be just out there like that.
3: Under Notifications, turn off news because nobody knows what the hell is popular or gaining traction at any given moment. Posts from 6 years ago will randomly gain a resurgence of popularity for no good reason. Also just turn off the stuff that gives you immediate info about notes or updates or notices it’s just so fucking annoying and useless.
Under Appearance, you can choose to make who you follow private and what you’ve Liked private. I recommend doing both of those things. The old days of dumbass slapfights and following discourse are long gone but not yet over. Defend your mental health by just not letting folks know what you’re following or what you like, do what the Bird Site never ever let you do. From here you can also choose to turn anonymous asks off and that’s a good way to learn who you need to block if they’re being a shit to you, which to that I say block early and block often.
This website is different than the Bird Site in that 1: it will not tell you who to follow and 2: Likes do nothing, Reblogs are what matters. Likes are nice but Reblogs keep the blood pumping and posts/works by artists circulating. You can even choose to reblog your own stuff. This site is a massive sea of islands that have boats parked around them and bridges between them. There are, regrettably, Nazis and TERFs and tradcaths on this site. I have never seen them except for when they decide to pick fights with people I follow. You should also make it abundantly clear those people are not welcome to interact with you. You can threaten them with death here. It tends to work. Tell the fascists to die, recirculate the blood of content, treat this site well and keep it healthy and it will keep your mind healthy in turn.
This site allows a shocking amount of anonymity in the modern age. You don’t have to share personal information if you don’t want to. I don’t recommend you do. People can and have used DNI criteria and trigger/content warnings to dunk on people or upset them. Keep yourself and your data safe, you don’t have to have a carrd in your header or a list of kinks or a laundry list of things you believe in. Keep strangers at an arm’s length and moderate what you tell other people about yourself. I know this used to be the internet’s #1 naked picture dump and so many people courted parasocial relationships with folks here. Those times have changed. Don’t be weird and don’t let people be weird to you based on what they know about you.
By many standards on this website, I am an old-timer, even though I’ve been here steadily since 2015 with an initial reg date of 2013. I know the old stories, of the Oncelor, of Dashcon, the Kickstarter scams, the doxxing. I only qualify as an old-timer due to the fact that I stayed through the porn ban of 2018 and kept circulating content. This site…it’s not good, but it iswhat you make of it. Curate your content, even though the tagging system doesn’t work. Find what you like, even though the search function sucks ass. If you’re here for popularity you generally won’t find it because the algorithm straight up does not work, but also if you were forged in the fires of the Bird Site you likely knew this would not be the case. My advice is to find a handful of people who provide a feed like I do and if any specific names you see a lot interest you, skim their own blogs, follow them if you like, let your network spread, never be afraid to prune who you follow. Also your follower count doesn’t mean shit, it doesn’t really dictate who can see what you’re putting out there, your marketing and self-promotion is more or less tied 1:1 to using the tag system and your own hustle.
My other advice is to be as queer as you want, support queer people, and most importantly to tell the fascists to die as creatively as you’d like.
A LOT of good stuff here no matter how long you’ve been on tumblr
God… I felt like such a latecomer to Tumblr. It’s bizarre to think of how fast things turn over.
Install new xkit and force real time stamps onto all posts. That’s my biggest piece of advice.
Okay where have my posts gone? I was searching for specific gif sets and they don’t turn up in any searches nor can they be found in my archive. Nor are they flagged. No trace on either the app or mobile browser. I remember there being the issue of posts not showing up in the tag but these are completely gone. Once again I find myself asking WTF, Tumblr @staff ? I’ll check my own files later to cross reference the dates and repost to see if they’ll stick with a retry.
But I shouldn’t have to. Sometimes, Tumblr, you know, I just reeeally reeeally hate you.
i’ve seen multiple gifsets now cut off with a “view post” button under the first two gifs instead of showing the whole set….
this is not good news for gifmakers.
oh shit it’s not even just gifsets! i just saw a regular medium length post with screenshots and memes, literally no gifs and it was under a “view post” link…
alright y’all. it’s a new setting you’ll have to turn off if you don’t want to have to click to see posts all the time
ppl with really long queues amuse me, like, they will like your post and then you find out within 3-10 business days whether they also thought it worthy of reblogging
Wow, first time I receive anon hate, I feel like I unlocked a new level in Tumblr lol the funny thing is that person sent a bunch of anon hate asks pretending to be different people and lying about things to make me feel bad but it was pretty darn obvious that they were all the same person and that they were lying, I’m sorry to disappoint you anon but I’m not gonna waste my time with your hate or give you platform on my blog, blocked and moving on.
Someone left something kinda hostile in the tags on one of my posts, not even necessarily directed at me, but when I told them it was a little harsh they freaked out at me for “combing through every single reblog to find every single note.”
So apparently some people still aren’t aware that all tags are now public on all posts. It’s been that way almost a year, guys. Everybody who can see a post can see all of the tags everyone has left on it, and which usernames left them, by clicking the same icon that shows all other notes and responses.
(I sure hope there aren’t also tumblr couples who still think the tagging system is a quasi-private channel for sharing their kinkiness.)
