I'm thinking abt that pretty fall leaves embroidery pattern post and about how like... it is categorically a repost, it's a reupload. right? a thing that is generally disliked. but because it's credited, it's genuinely boosting the artist in question. and it could ALWAYS be like this. reposting content could ALWAYS be a symbiotic relationship, but because sourcing back to the original creator of something is so uncommon, it's just easier to ask people not to repost it at all. and people still don't understand the difference. or they'll go to the effort of cropping out usernames/signatures to repost something, which is More Effort than literally crediting the creator of something you liked enough to want to repost. Like. I literally don't actually care if my own shit gets reposted, you have to understand. I just don't want it STOLEN. But "do not repost" is easier to write on my art than "you can repost this, but don't alter the image/remove my signature, don't you dare write 'credit goes to the artist' because that is not credit, please link back to my original post or someplace that you can actually find me. please use an actual link/url instead of writing a non-clickable link of my username, because making it text instead of a clickable link cuts the number of people who will go to the effort of visiting my own page in Half." All those aggregate themed accounts, those fuckin annoying as hell instagrams and facebook groups that are like "body positive art we love wamen 💕 hashtag feminism" and then MASS-STEAL plus sized art created by women, if pages like these that always go and steal my older self-portraits and other works... If they just put a link to my prints of those pieces in the text of those posts, or, fuck, my commission info page? I would literally be living on the moon right now. I would have a house on the moon

I've seen you pop up in the #sparkletag quite a bit recently, and as both a Patron and as a friend of Kneeby, I think I've had enough of your antics.

It's really depressing to see someone dedicate their entire online presence towards hating someone. It's extremely creepy and weird to obsess over every single thing kit does like this. I urge you to go find a better hobby, and I mean it. This kind of parasocial behavior is toxic and only serves to hurt everyone including yourself. Take a break from this and use that time to reflect on yourself and what you really want. Do you want to dedicate all of your time constantly rambling and raving about everything kit does online? Does that sound like a productive use of your time? I don't think it is.

all my posts boil down to "the pacing and prioritization of this comic could use a lot of improvement + i find it weird that the creator isnt raising awareness to a literal genocide going on rn" and you react by writing an angry essay. your ask seems to boil down to "you cant criticize my favorite comic because it might hurt the creators feelings" so im gonna respond with an angrier essay

there are good things about sparklecare, obviously. i resonate with it in some regards. but that doesnt mean its perfect, as nothing is. i dont even tag my shit under the main sparklecare tags (apart from the stuff about kneeby not raising awareness towards palestine) because i know people like you are gonna get upset if you see a conflicting opinion on your dash. the only tags i tend to use are #sparklecriticism and #sparklecare criticism, none of the main tags. block those tags if you dont wanna deal with me.

my criticism is valid (i think) since yeah. the comics writing has a huge problem when it comes to letting things happen naturally instead of rushing them, which results in kneeby having to explain things on the blog (which 99% of the time you have to scroll deep into since the main blog is constantly reblogging the cometcare one) rather than having the comic clarify it on its own. thats a genuine issue in storytelling so i feel like it should be addressed and worked on.

i have way more of a presence online than this blog, obviously. i just dont want this blog connected to my real identity for a wide variety of reasons (mainly not wanting to be harassed even further than i already am)

if youre a friend of kneeby then i think you should tell kit to actually DO SOMETHING to raise awareness to the genocide going on in palestine and other targets, PUBLICLY. not just an announcement in a private discord, a public statement, or AT LEAST reblog the fanart of uni waving the palestinian flag. all the social commentary ive seen (yes im still taking the social commentary into account since the comic was described as such until my blog popped up) has come across as performative to anyone besides the clowns themselves, id love to see kneeby talk about issues that dont just apply to kit.

i know damn well the sparklecare blog is kits biggest platform, kit should use it to raise awareness, i dont care if the topic makes kit sad, it makes me sad too, but i still retweet as much shit about it as possible whenever it crosses my mind because i actually care about issues that dont involve just me and i actually want to do something to change the world. im a teenager and i do more to raise awareness than a group of adults.

im just a kid with opinions

re news literacy on social media: i find that the best way to follow fast-moving news these days is to follow beat reporters from multiple outlets (especially people who are either local to or reporting from wherever the news is happening). they may not get everything right every time because people are inherently imperfect, but that's why you can't rely just on one source. and good reporters admit when they've been wrong. reporters will also RT non-journalist sources that they trust, and then you can add them to your list too. i left the journalism industry bc i didnt like keeping my opinions to myself lol. but even when i was working in local news, this is how i'd keep up with things outside my own beat.

i would never discount eye witness accounts of people affected by violence and tragedy, but this is a way you can corroborate claims you see on people's personal accounts -- because unfortunately, people like to troll or push agendas when emotions are high. at least reporters can't delete their accounts and disappear after they spread disinformation; they have to deal with the consequences. and yeah, sometimes their org protects them from more concrete consequences, but you'll still see people cooking them in the replies, and that'll help you to make your call. because at the end of the day, there's never going to be one place you can go to fully understand something -- you need to make a good faith effort to seek out information and make the best call you can. and if you make a call and form an opinion and everyone tells you you're wrong? don't be an asshole about it. own it and try again. both unconscious biases and fucking up are part of allyship and the only way to move on is to accept the consequences and do better.

personally, i'll never reblog or retweet something if i don't feel confident in it. there's amplifying voices, and then there's spreading disinformation. i am not going to break news that will help the people of Palestine on my fandom social media account by reposting something that i can't tell is real or not. but i sure as hell could clog up the feed and warp people's perceptions of real events by reposting something fake and potentially harmful.

what do you expect tumblr to be able to do about like to reblogs ratios though... if I don't want to reblog something I'm not gonna reblog it and the posts floating around guilt tripping people into thinking likes are worth nothing and only reblogs matter make me want to neither like nor reblog from them. I don't think there's anything tumblr can do short of forcing people to interact with others' posts as the user base of this site has already said pretty explicitly we don't want an algorithm recommending us stuff

My comment about staff not understanding their userbase was specifically because of their claim that there isn't an issue, which is provably untrue if you go back and look at older posts. The ratio between likes and reblogs USED to be much more equal. This isn't just a tumblr issue, though. Interactivity has nosedived across the entire internet over the last 10-15ish years.

If you don't want to reblog something, that's fine! But reblogs are an important part of how this site works, and they're more important here than, say, a retweet on twitter, specifically because we DON'T have an algorithm. Reblogs are why not having an algorithm WORKS here. It's one of the main ways content gets spread around. We're the algorithm, honestly. Instead of some faceless programming controlling what you see, it's the people you've chosen to follow, and they're controlling it by reblogging things they find neat. If you don't like what they're reblogging, you can just unfollow or even block, which is a hell of a lot more control than you get over what you see on 99% of other sites at this point.

It's not a guilt trip to want people, especially newer users, to understand how this site works and how it differs from basically every other social media site these days. Some posts about it do get guilt trippy, which sucks, but that doesn't erase the core issue. They're just badly presented posts from frustrated people.

As to what staff can do about it, I think there's a few things, both feature wise and just general culture wise.

Feature wise, I haven't looked too deeply into the Tumblr University thing (because I have been here way too long), but it hopefully has some mentions of reblogging and outlines what I've said above about how that's what we have INSTEAD of an algorithm.

Culture wise, now that @staff has become more interactive via blogs like @wip and @changes and @art, I think they can start steering the culture towards more reblogging. Posts about why reblogging works the way it does, showing off reblog reach graphs from that one beta feature and analyzing them, featuring funny additions on reblog posts, that sort of stuff. Just really show off what reblogs are and why they're important.

And yeah, it'll never be the same as it was 10+ years ago. The internet just doesn't work that way anymore. But that doesn't mean it can't be better than it currently is.

If you like it, put a reblog on it, it really does help.

Hi beauties.

So I want to say that if you follow the criteria of 1. Being a large game developer / artist with a large audience, and 2. have educated yourself by watching videos of people in Gaza and have seen what is going on on your timeline, you have a responsibility to use your platform right now for spreading word of the Palestinian genocide that is occuring right now.

If you follow those criteria and are still silent or are not reblogging, retweeting, or anything, and you have a big enough account where lots of people can see your posts, you are not your platform wisely right now during times of crisis.

People who are just causal game consumers or art consumers need to have their eyes opened to what is happening to Palestinians right now. It can get the ball rolling for so many people who either willfully turn a blind eye to this event, or to people who are unsure about acting and need to see other people act before they do.

Big accounts that do the work outside of social media are precious and cherished, but I do think that you need to use this opportunity to do some outreach and good with simply spreading awareness online. It's a powerful tool.

Is there a chance of blacklisting? Yeah. Is there a chance people will leave for your posts? Sure. Think, though, of the videos you've seen and how their houses and livelihoods have turned to ash. And then look at where you are now.

Not condemning or hating on accounts that aren't big not saying things because impact might not be the largest, but big creators need to use this opportunity to spread awareness. Otherwise, "regular" people will never know or care what is going on. And, sadly, that's a bit on you if you don't take action.

Much love to anyone. No hate at all. This is just something I felt compelled to state. If you are a big account and want to educate yourself, please DM me! I'm more than willing to start a conversation or even a Zoom/discord call to help you understand. There's no better time than now than to educate!

I think the only people who follow me are the ones knowing me from my other blogs.

Except that this place is pretty much my void to shout my feelings, but I don't want to make anyones day sad, so I put it under the cut. Just keep scrolling.

I do think about leaving Tumblr. Like, not just a quick thought, I have been thinking that for a few weeks.

Tldr.: Blogs will probably be queue powered, and I only look occasionally in here to check if a mutual posted something cool or contacted me.

Before anything, it's nobodies fault, not the anons or open blogs that sidestabbed me out of the corner.

What drew me back here in the first place was the social aspect I had so many people to talk to! But within a month, many got burned out or had no time to anymore. Then those who still were there moved on to other fandoms. Of course, for something to be that long in everyones mind, Larian sure did a great job!

So yeah. I feel lonely. That's the gist of the whole post here.

The BG3 roleplay community is something I am not able to fit in. I really hoped, I really enjoyed it, I loved drawing little silly comics to what was written. That was what actually got me into drawing comics, and for that, I will be forever grateful. But yes, I really tried and kept successfully failing at it. So either it's my English (not native tongue, so my writing could be horrendous and I don't know it.) Or Ceres (and Tae) are just not someone that fits (everyone I approached) the general taste, which is... unlucky. I don't know. But it is me who is the problem, sadly I will never find out what it is.

In the end, it is nobody's fault. It's a me problem. I am not sure how to tackle it anymore.

Then there is the Galemancer community I adore. The tags and comments on my little switch-aroo Gale videos were genuinely wonderful. Addictive! I was laughing at them loudly and had to explain to my partner, which tags or comments it were this time that made me cackle. Outside of Tumblr, I barely found people who liked him, so it was a wind of fresh air! However, I am out of content for videos I could create, and there are better gif and screenshot makers out there for Gale content. I haven't seen anyone who has yet made the videos, but I am sure that will come too since his popularity is now rising!

But I did pretty much everything I could with the Content Larian gave us, and with me running out of it, the interactions there pretty much died down. I keep reblogging, of course! After all thats what my blog was created in the first place, for me to shout into a void how much I love the wizard, so Gale art, fics, and creations of all kinds are filled in my queue!

Now to the most depressing topic. Art. Well... Art is sadly a thing that never worked on me on any platform. For an artist to be fed the good chemicals, art needs to be seen, and to be seen, it needs to be reblogged or retweeted or whatever the term on each side is. I know my art is not good, nor will it be ever good enough to be considered worth sharing. For that, I am not creative enough.

I love my friends reaction to the art I draw, so I will keep drawing, but sharing it immediately on Tumblr? I don't really feel like it anymore. Especially since I gathered mostly Galemancer and Art that's not Gale or horny Gale related gets ignored. (It really hurts)

Again. Nobodys fault except mine. It was my little Dom!Gale who gave me most followers! They came for the smut I barely provided.

I did get a few Patreons, which is amazing. For someone with disability it made a huge impact, not money wise - of course the money is nice - but more about having people out there who say "your art is worth 3usd a month" does give you a really nice feeling. Like... I am allowed to exist: I am contributing to society. It's hard to explain, but maybe someone out there understands what I am talking about.

Anyway, on Bsky, I cultivated a very small following of people who genuinely follow me for my art and ideas, not for Gale exclusive things.

And yet, I am still here. I am writing this and feel really dumb why I am even writing it. It's clear Tumblr is not my space. Not that any social media ever was. But I guess Bsky is the thing that comes the closest for me.

So yeah. If I am suddenly stopping or the blogs die down. At least 5 followers here can check this blog if they remember, and find this post.

Engagement is down//

His last post anywhere got 2.3m likes which was more than most of his LOT posts from 2023. I don't know how else to measure engagement as he isn't on twitter or tiktok.

Some asks about Harry, engagement and fandom's reaction to his silence on genocide under the cut.

Hi, anons!

Engagement can be measured in many ways. Likes on posts is one thing. Likes are usually up when he hasn't posted for a while. When he does it consistently and often it's down to a medium level. I usually think of several different ways to measure engagement. Clicks on tabloid articles about him (how interested and invested are people in him?), google search results (how many are googling him), name drop results (how many are talking about harry styles across all media platforms), how many streams are his albums getting (is it up or down?), how much merch does he sell, when he does something is he trending on social media? etc.

I don't have the numbers for all this, but i feel like people are pretty apathetic about his current stunt, people aren’t reblogging or retweeting pictures of them or even hating on them (that would still be engagement). He's been off for a while so that might explain things, but i thought his football match appearance didn’t engage people like i would expect it to. Maybe i'm wrong.

Hi Marte. Considering online outrage doesn't necessarily transfer to the real world. Like there is endless online discourse about JKR but the HP game was one of the best selling games of 2023 despite petitions to cancel it and negative review brigading. It made over a billion on PC alone. A book she released some time ago went straight to number 1 best sellers list. The majority of people are still buying her products. They're making a HP tv series and she's part of it and I wouldn't be surprised if it does well. There is a lot of excitement about it. I guess you could say the same with TSwift. There is nothing but hate for her online and she's still the best selling artist worldwide. So I'm just wondering. Do you think this will be a similar situation with Harry where if he is cancelled online it won't make a difference to his career or do you think he won't hold up as well as the others? I guess it depends on how good his next album is. If his album is really good then people will buy it. I can see him getting a lot of online backlash if he goes back to queer coding when he releases his music.

Yeah, and that's why i wrote that we'll have to see how this impacts him. I don't think a major celebrity will be cancelled in a flash, and they'll go from everything to nothing. It all depends on what the "crime" is too. The HP game did well, but did it do as well as it could have done if JKR wasn't cancelled? Also she's a te*f, i don't think many people in the gp even know what that is. Many also unfortunatly agree with her. So the "crime" isn't percieved to be that severe in the gp's eyes. I think Lizzo is a better example. She's internet cancelled before she's even convicted of anything. She might bounce back (doubt it), but i don't think she'll do as well as previously. Harry is accused of being a zion*st and supporting genocide. I think that's a worse "crime" among the gp and his target audience than the crimes of jkr and lizzo.

I think it all depends on a lot of things. How the situation in Gaza develops, how many other fuck ups H does, how much he stunts, how much he "queerbaits", how good his album is and how he choose to promote it. Despite people not being happy with him for different reasons right now, i don't think it will impact him much. We'll have to see. I'm pretty sure that no matter how he does, he could have done even better if he fixed his zionis* reputation and the queerbaiter reputation.

He'd probably lose all his wealthy American fans if he spoke out against Israel so he's not doing to do it. Not everyone supports Palestine. Tumblr gives a false impression because 70% of users are under 21 (according to tumblr polls).

I'm not saying he needs to speak out against Isr*el. Or support Palestine. I'm saying he should demand a ceasefire and state he doesn’t support genocide. That's saying murder is bad, and that both parties needs to lay down their weapons. It's a pretty neutral and basic statement.

Not everyone supports Palestine, that's true, but most people are against genocide and want a ceasefire. Regardless of that, H's target audience are millenials and gen z, where most people want a ceasefire and to stop genocide from happening. If he loses some zio*ist fans then so be it, he's already lost a million for not speaking up. I can't imagine there being that many zion*sts among his millenial and gen z fans. It's not the fans that's the reason he's not speaking up, it's his label, management and friends and the brand deals he has.

If engagement is down its because his own fans are constantly hating on him and trying to cancel him. So where are fans who don't see things in black and white and are ready to write him off supposed to engage in harry fandom content?

Jeez, anon. Idk, i think a genocide is pretty black and white, it's murder. Either you are for or against. Most people think murder is bad in all circumstances. I think stopping genocide is a bit more important than you getting your harry content...

SO, @cyle , I've actually started using Twitter properly for the first time ever (not cuz Elon, I just hit the daily like limit here too often) and honestly I understand the hate but at the same time I love the tabs each user gets on their own Twitter page.

Specifically, replies.

I love how twitter replies work, I think it's really cleverly designed.

Quote tweet is essentially reblog - it's literally the same thing but stripped down: without showing the via, without being able to see all of the previous comments. So of course it's not feasible for conversations like how tumblr's reblog is, and in general retweet is just awful for content curation, but anyway that's besides the point.

Reply allows for nicely layed out conversations. It fixes the issue of recursive indentation to show consecutive replies to a specific comment, it fixes just tagging the person you're replying to and hoping they know which comment you're replying to, it fixes major platforms (Instagram, tiktok, YouTube, Facebook)'s unhelpful hybrid of both. Tapping through reply tweets, retweeting them, replying to them, it all just makes sense, to me anyway.

Now, if we somehow display reblogs as if they were reply tweets, we'd be implementing replies in the tumblr way! We'd be introducing reblog replies - or something like that, for the lack of a better name.

Reblogging as a user experience would remain exactly the same. The user would be presented with the familiar Tumblr "reblog chain" post, and can reblog it normally, either adding their own text/media or not , along with their reblog.

BUT, the reblogs tab for each post would act like a twitter replies interface - where the user is presented with the most reblogged (with text/media) or liked reblogs (with text/media) first, and then expanding each reblog to reveal more and more reblogs that act in exactly the same way as the one described.

Tumblr and Twitter are vastly different platforms. I love the current way reblogging for conversation works. I think it's just as unique and brilliant as Twitter replies. And it reflects the vastly different nature of the way tumblr is supposed to be used compared to twitter. But , as we all know, Elon happened, and even Duolingo tweeted about returning to tumblr, so there is a very high interest right now in making tumblr at least a bit more like Twitter, so as to accelerate the adoption of ex tweeters. So that they feel a bit more at home here, feature wise, whilst knowing the platform they're on is in safe hands (big up Matt🙏)

I'll add that it is smart to take features from rising platforms such as tiktok as opposed to declining platforms such as Twitter. And Tumblr is way more art & media focused than Twitter - so seems more attractive to the likes of Instagram and tiktok and Pinterest users when Twitter doesn't as much.

But even Matt himself said in an interview, Tumblr could easily be a bigger and better twitter than Twitter is! It already is better in many ways, and bigger because it FEELS bigger because old posts recirculate, nothing has a expiry date!! But yeah it just needs something for the ex tweeters. And me. I love reply tweets٩(♡ε♡ )۶

Those are just my thoughts on one aspect in particular. I hope this can be useful to consider. All the best!! Posting here as opposed to feedback support request because it may need some debating amongst the tumblr users.

thank you for using your blog to archive MUGEN content, thank you for reblogging amazing smaller artists, thank you for being on this website. happy new year

Thanks, Anonymous Tumblr User, I just do what I feel good about. I gave up on trying to do a gimmick blog when I remembered I made this blog because I didn't like how gimmick accounts are run. So I appreciate that I can throw out whatever and have it land in someone's range, for better or worse. And I also appreciate anyone who actually benefits from it.

Completely unrelated topic, but I occasionally think about @baddieoftheday on Twitter. They would post a female character as the "Baddie of the Day", and I thought it was cool at first because they would post/retweet really obscure/cool-looking/whatever characters and like "Yeah, she is bad"

But people would very commonly send in popular, well-known characters from stuff everyone was currently watching or whatever. Lot of Fire Emblem, whatever anime girls, OK-KO girls after a point. There were SOME obscure Pokemon girls but few. Sailor Moon monsters get a pass for being one-offs, and some of those designs were off the chain.

Always bothered me cause it felt like taking the fun out for just the horn dog behavior, in spite of the premise alluding to that. There were some fun popular ones though, I thought the account lasted since 2018 but it started and ended in 2019,

sucks.

Reminds me of how people will submit to @lesserknownwaifus and it'll be girls from stuff that hasn't even come out yet. Like yeah, she isn't known because no one's got the chance to know her yet, beats the point.

hi maya do u know why DoF picture you posted was deleted? wanted to retweet it!

Yeah, sorry, my brain get occasional short circuits, I get mad at twt and delete stuff. Better reblog here instead if you want to share!

hi ! long time fan of your work Koko :) i wanted to ask you what your experience has been like delving into each social media platform, trying to get a feel for each, and now settling on tumblr ? how would you compare each of them, and why do you feel that tumblr has been your best experience so far? thank you for your time <3

[really long post lol]

There are so many things going on in my mind that I want to be able to articulate into words as I read this question lmaooo.

To have a fuller understanding I've talked about quality over quantity of social media interaction here and here. To summarize, I did some reflecting after attempting to 'reboot my art accounts' earlier this year. I realized that attempting to spread myself thin doesn't make me happy and I should only focus on a platform that encourages meaningful feedback and thoughts from other people. To me, Twitter and Instagram was not a place for it due to the nature of its design and algorithm.

I prefer comments over numbers. Something that in my experience isn't super common on Twitter or Insta (unless you're a really big account, or your post blown up to a massive audience). Most interactions there start and end with a like, and perhaps if they are generous enough, maybe a Insta Story share or retweet. The stories are just plain, and it's not often one get's a quote retweet (if you have more qrts, then you are being ratio'd LOL). It's a numbers game. The only parameters you base your "success" on these platforms is through the amount of likes or retweets you have. I am not saying it is impossible to have a good experience on these platforms, nor saying it's impossible to get mutuals there. However, I personally did not feel that people are actively encouraged to actually say something about the artwork if the person isn't a mutual or someone they already know. One experience that put it into perspective was when an old FNAF painting I did got around 1,500 likes despite the account being new and bare. Flopped on Insta but blew up on twitter; it dawned on me how meaningless and based on luck these large numbers were.

Now, here is where tumblr kicked in! Tumblr was part of the social media 'i tried to reboot'. I know that the growth here can be long (the ban, and people left blah blah yeah), and honestly did not expect much from it. But, I channeled my familiarity with tumblr from 2014 and remembered: "hey! In the tags, guys". Posting and reblogging made me enjoy the "tag culture" of this hellsite—even WAY more than before! The "comments via tags" thing is almost a way to give your thoughts and prayers remarks without the expectation for direct social interaction. Some people prefer this over the actual comment section, and it makes them more comfortable to say something about the work! I value every reblog that has comments and tags. Being able to hear your thoughts about the piece, why you like it is 1000% better than tons of likes. I get to actually see why people interact with the post; I'd describe it as having a touch of humanity in the interaction. Actual quality!

This is inherent to Tumblr's design from the beginning. There were no likes on this site before. At its core, people must reblog. And with the whole craze back then on this site with fandoms and such, people just started blurting out comments via tags. Even when likes were first introduced, the number reblogs often out weighed the likes. Because tapping a singular button and ending it there doesn't actually show much appreciation! Being on a platform where the community is encourage to use the tags beyond blog organization is amazing. Input and thoughts, are valued here and I think that's pretty cool. I look at the type of interaction the platform can give, not its quantity. I had fun time here at 40 followers, am still having that same fun at 200+. Probably will be the same throughout! (hopefully)

At the end, this place is still social media and one's relationship with it should be monitored. All comments (good and bad) shouldn't go to your head too much. But, at the very least, Tumblr's design and community allows a bit more of a humane touch when interacting with someone's work.

In terms of design though, I like that tumblr allows for different types of media (videos, audio, image sizes, long posts, asks + answers). Its archival system and the ability to open different blogs is also cool. Customization and markups are really nice! I love how personalized this place can be.

Hopefully this answers your question, and is comprehensive enough LOL . Again, this is my experience, and my journey. It may be different from yours. Just remember to go where you grow while having fun!

hey!! hope you’re doing well, i’ve really been enjoying your fics :) i kind of have a random question; what are your thoughts on the “reblog to like ratio” discourse that’s been going on here on tumblr? personally i have some opinions on it but they don’t really match with the majority of what i’ve seen haha. so i’m curious about what your thoughts are? like do you think writers are entitled to reblogs and comments?

hihi anon !! 💘💘 thank you for supporting my fics ! and i hope you’re having a great day/night love :’) ooo hmm i’ve definitely seen conversations about that going around 😵‍💫 i’ll put the rest of my answer under the cut since it sort of got long 🤧

i do agree that interaction is a factor of encouragement for a lot of people and it can be discouraging when you pour your heart into a fic and don’t get the engagement you anticipated. however, i do think we should be realistic about how well content does in certain fandoms. for example, smaus and headcanons/reactions seem to do a lot better in enhablr than long fics. with tumblr in general, a lot of readers seem to prefer smut over fluff. btw i’m not saying people don’t like other genres like crime or mystery or something, but from what i see smut gets a lot more engagement

and there’s also other factors as to why engagement might be slow. maybe your readers are just too busy to read at the moment, maybe the certain trope/plot you’ve written isn’t their cup of tea — it honestly just comes down to personal preference

i used to write on wattpad and i’m ngl i feel like the interaction there was worse (and kind of negative) so tumblr is kind of a dream LMFAO and also ngl i never thought of my like to reblog ratio until i saw posts about it and stuff. i don’t rlly mind it tho bc the reblogs and comments and asks are very very sweet. tumblr does have an odd algorithm where only reblogs are how you spread posts across other blogs, and that’s why i use my likes as bookmarks instead :’)

i do see that across most platforms tho, like tweets will have more likes than retweets and wattpad books will have more votes than comments sometimes. so i do encourage people to reblog more for that exposure, but i also feel like the criteria changes each time i see a post LOL like i’ve seen posts going from “don’t just like, reblog the post” to “don’t reblog with just tags” to “don’t just reblog with one comment and keysmashes.” i will say when you place these expectations on your readers, it becomes hard to enjoy what you’re writing and to appreciate the praise you do receive

i used to be a silent reader around 2019-2020 and now i do enjoy leaving extensive commentary on fics if you see my fic recs blog, but i also can only really do it with long fics :o if it’s a smau/drabble/timestamp/reaction, then i sort of just read it and don’t have much to say yk? i feel like that’s the same for a lot of people as well, especially on enhablr when that seems to be a lot of the content

i’m not sure if “entitled” is the right word for reblogging and commenting. i do encourage readers to reblog and comment on content they like !! since we’re all putting out free content tho, we gotta keep in mind that readers are not expected to read all of our works in the same way that we’re not obligated to write for others. i also respect that some people like to curate their own blog’s content. like yeah blog aesthetic whatever — i make multiple side blogs for that reason. we can’t be entitled to reblogs but not allow our readers to be entitled to having their blogs be the way they want yk ??

i’m sure people have other opinions on this so i hope this didn’t come off in an aggressive way or anything !! and i’m sorry for rambling on for so long omg 😭 ofc i’m always open to other perspectives on this matter as well 💗

love your new update even though it hurt a bit. sorry you're sick and i really hope you feel better soon. ive been wondering if there is a reason your more active on twitter over tumblr

I'm so glad you liked the new chapter!!

Tbh, I'm really sicker today than yesterday, but hopefully, I'm on the mend. It was my own stupid fault, and really, given how little I sleep etc., I'm surprised it's taken me this long.

Haha, I wonder if this would be a better question to answer on Twitter than here. No, I think the answer is pretty straight forward; I just get a lot more interaction over there. Most of it is just retweeting things about myself or posting about new chapter uploads. If I get mentioned here, I repost, and I reblog every time I upload a chapter here as well. The interaction levels are just vastly different.

i.e, 10 hours ago, I reblogged chapter 13 here and got two new likes (I know reblogging is a bit different because you can't re-like something). I tweeted about it and got 104 likes, 5 retweets and 14 comments - just for a chapter update. And they're pretty standard stats for me on each platform.

I'm so thankful for Tumblr and I wasn't even mentioned on Twitter until the very last chapter of ychiits was about to go up, so all the momentum that it gained as a WIP was either from people finding it on ao3 or here. But yeah, I don't think it's that not I'm not active here, I just have a lot less to interact with.

(May delete this whole thing when the cough medicine wears off).