There are over 1,300 of you guys now! Welcome to the fellowship!

While I appreciate the research people have done on the hoops people have to jump through to get a new blog set up and the odds of the suspiciously blank tumblrs being a human’s actual new account, I’ve tested the bots myself. I’ve been playing whack-a-mole with these things all year and they had days to update their descriptions, and they were still blank. As an experiment, I let one of the recent arrivals sit for a few days. It’s still a blank blog, no profile descriptor, no reblogs, no pfp. So the odds of my accidentally blocking a person who just wanted to lurk are very small.

The bots aren’t harmless. Bots follow to up their legitimacy by following “real” blogs, the end goal being spammy purposes—to sell products, spread misinformation, and in some cases gain further legitimacy via insincere engagement (such as rage-baiting, to lure people into engagement). So far the bots that follow on tumblr just…sit there. Doing nothing. Why are they here. What is their purpose. No one knows for sure. Whole bot army just sitting there. That’s totally reassuring.

An actual person would, once they’ve jumped through the hoops and followed some blogs, update their pfp and add a brief descriptor and maybe reblog a few things. While I can buy .001% odds some actual person just hasn’t bothered to do it, the flood of blank tumblrs that are all remaining blank bot-like is highly unlikely to be actual people. So I’m not buying the “it’s actually people lurking” concept. You haven’t blocked actual people. You’ve blocked bots.

Some people genuinely don’t care, that’s fine. I find it annoying and creepy, and I curate my online accounts carefully. I’ve also had bad experiences discovering hate-follows (fandom hate socks that follow people just to hate-watch).

If I can’t get at least some sense of why the account followed me or at least that it’s an actual human, I block. Aside from personal curation reasons, there’s benefits to cutting the bots off from the jump.

Hey, I was thinking of starting a Genesis rp blog, and was wondering what sort of advice you had considering you have such an amazing Genesis rp blog yourself.

// .___. I am a potato that goes with the flow friend, but thank you! Ahh….well ok, are you asking from the stance of you have never run a rp blog? Or have you had one before in a different fandom orrr? Kinda effects the answers really. Going with the former, one thing I will stress is have a clear info/rules page. Many people will look for this as a guide or a sort of gauge of if they feel they have the green light to go interact with you, or as a way to draw comfort that they won’t offend or misread your muse before replying if you are the one to approach first. In all reality I should change my info page to just ‘info’ and not 'basic blog info’because mobile users especially will look for ease of access in safari browsers. In all honestly a lot of my pages really need to get a facelift since I haven’t touched them since I made this blog a few years ago. Anyway, moving on! 2! Never feel obligated to go 'fancy’. There is no truly correct way to roleplay, though many of us tend to gravitate to para format or average sentence structures and not the whole *action here* form unless we’re fooling around and writing crack with one another. There’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s just what I’ve noticed. Don’t stress over having fancy detailed tags, or having unrelated posts on your blog. You don’t need special headers and font types, or bolded speech patterns to be considered a 'good’ or 'quality’ blog. How you reach that status is you have a clear understanding of your muse and be kind. You can be selective, you can be open, all that matters is be polite, and in some cases be the bigger person. 3! Don’t feel obligated to use icons or reaction gifs. Many of us do, I do when I am actually on my computer. Some of us don’t, and honestly I find it some real saddening bullshit when bloggers begin worrying or feeling inferior to other role players just because they opt not to use icons. That’s not what all this is about. 4: communicate! Try not to be like me in this sense. I am absolutely shit with communication at times, and this can hurt people unintentionally. Don’t be afraid to pop over to a partner and relay if you feel uncomfortable with where a thread is going, what their muse is doing, or if for some reason you don’t want to roleplay with them. But again, be polite. 5: find a friendly hub and network of people to surround yourself with. Every fandom has its bad apples and toxic corners that many people want to just punt into the void of the abyss, try and avoid these. I find myself pretty fortunate to have landed immediately into one of the very good corners upon starting this blog, everyone here has been absolutely amazing, understanding and supportive. The only drama I have ever seen was from 3rd party blogs where I knew who was involved or targeted, but I was a outside viewer the entire time. Honestly I find it a giant testimate to how good of a network I’ve landed in, that to this day, after almost 3-4 years on this blog, and 660+ followers in, I have never received a single piece of anon hate. Honestly I find it rather baffling. But I digress! Build yourself a network of positive welcoming people, build yourself a little hub of good friends, and you’re good!6: on the flip side of this. If you find yourself in a toxic area, and end up receiving anonymous hate DO NOT REPLY TO IT. Don’t post it, don’t reply, just delete it immediately, and if you need, go talk to a friend for support afterwards, cause that sort of thing understandably makes ya feel pretty shitty. As someone else in a post I saw said, replying to anon hate is what they want. Whoever was small and bitter enough to try and tear you down to make themselves feel better is going to be sitting there on their phone or at their computer. They’re going to be constantly refreshing their browser, monitoring your blog, waiting like a goddamn vulture to see the results of you getting attacked. They send those things for reactions. They feed off the negativity they spread. Don’t give them any satisfaction. Be the bigger person and ignore it. If it continues, there are ways out there to blog the IP address of whoever is sending the anonymous messages for good. Then they won’t be able to even access your blog. 7: Your muse, your portrayal. don’t let anyone else dictate how you write your character, especially when it comes to sexuality and identities since that seems to be a hot topic lately. I personally write my Genesis as being a cis flamboyant as all shit gay man, some people have him straight, I’ve seen some peg him as gender fluid, and all of these are wonderful! I’ve just learned through writing and even reading some fanfic that my personal muse has 0 interest in women. I read a very well done fic where Gen was with Aerith, and my muse was just blank the whole time, he didn’t care, he wasn’t interested. It didn’t inspire me and the character to do anything. As long as you’re writing a character, and nurturing a muse, you’re putting your heart into them, you’re giving them attention, you’re showing 'I love this character so much, I want to make their character deeper. I love them so much I’m going to build them up and expand on what their creators never showed us’. Who is to say this character wasn’t into this topic, or this hobby, in real life there are people that have interests and quirks you would NEVER expect by looking at them and learning the sheer surface of who they were, so this goes the same for our characters. 8: and last but not least ROLEPLAY IS A HOBBY. It is an escape for us, a way to have fun with other people, and you should never ever stress yourself out over it. If you get too overloaded, don’t be afraid to ask a partner if you could drop threads, take a break, anything. Because, if roleplay starts to make you stressed, it’s not a hobby anymore. It’s not a fun escape, and it should never feel like a job. Don’t be afraid if you lose your muse for a while, it happens all the time, people will understand. Don’t feel bad if you have to take breaks and leave for a while, or just lurk and stop role playing for a while. It happens to all of us! So essentially, have fun. That’s about all I can think to offer at the moment, but by all means nonnie! If you have any more questions or anything specific you want to know, my inbox is always open, and you will never be a bother.