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sonicenvy · 1 year

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Let's have a chat about AO3

Hiya friends and loyal followers! My last post about AO3 blew up yesterday so I figured now would be a good time to continue the conversation about AO3.

As I mentioned in my previous post (and probably in multiple other previous posts):

AO3 is NOT a social media site. AO3 is an ARCHIVE.

So let's delve into that a bit more since people don't seem to be getting that. Fanfiction predates the internet, and was transmitted via the internet way before sites like AO3 and FF dot net. Relatively speaking, I am a fanfiction newcomer, as I first started reading fanfiction in ... 2011? or thereabouts. I say this to say that I obviously don't have as personal of a memory of a time before fanfiction archive sites (my bitty fan experiences were on teaspoon and lcfanfic), but I certainly know plenty of people via fandom online that absolutely do.

For the newest children to fanfiction please check out the following pieces of reading to get started on your fandom history education:

“Fanfiction.” Fanlore Wiki. Accessed June 15, 2023. https://fanlore.org/wiki/Fanfiction. Archived [https://archive.is/yJpOq].

“So I’m on AO3 and I See a Lot of People Who Put ‘I Do Not Own [Insert Fandom Here]’ before Their Story.” sonicenvy.tumblr.com, July 2, 2016. https://sonicenvy.tumblr.com/post/146818589611/mikkeneko-thepioden. Archived [https://archive.is/FRNCy]

ofhouseadama, Emily. “A Brief History of Fandom, for Those on Here Who Somehow Think Tumblr Invented Fandom.” sonicenvy.tumblr.com, May 21, 2014. https://sonicenvy.tumblr.com/post/131935827010/ofhouseadama-a-brief-history-of-fandom-for. Archived [http://archive.today/j2Rfq]

mizstorge, fantastic-nonsense, and fanculturesfancreativity. “The Places Fandom Dwells: A Cautionary Tale.” fantastic-nonsense.tumblr.com, June 29, 2017. https://fantastic-nonsense.tumblr.com/post/162395547190/the-places-fandom-dwells-a-cautionary-tale. Archived [https://archive.ph/QK2wI]

As you read through this stuff, three things should become apparent to you:

Fanworks have always existed in tenuous space -- that is, they have always been under threat of removal, or threat of loss, whether this loss was through events like the livejournal strikethrough, the loss of a fandom specific website, destruction of physical copies of the work, or C&D/legal action from original creators of the work.

Fandom has a long and colored history with many of the most defining events of early fandom history being related to threats to the community.

A need was ripe for a place to save and ARCHIVE fanworks and protect them from deletion, legal action, corporate sanitization efforts, site deaths due to the deaths of admins, etc etc.

Out of all of this, comes The Organization For Transformative Works (2007), and their brand new site Archive of Our Own (2008). The stated intention of Archive of Our Own (AO3) (bolding mine):

The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) is a nonprofit organization, established by fans in 2007, to serve the interests of fans by providing access to and preserving the history of fanworks and fan culture in its myriad forms. We believe that fanworks are transformative and that transformative works are legitimate. We are proactive and innovative in protecting and defending our work from commercial exploitation and legal challenge. We preserve our fannish economy, values, and creative expression by protecting and nurturing our fellow fans, our work, our commentary, our history, and our identity while providing the broadest possible access to fannish activity for all fans. The Archive of Our Own offers a noncommercial and nonprofit central hosting place for fanworks using open-source archiving software.

Source: Works, Organization for Transformative. “Archive of Our Own Beta.” Archive of Our Own. Accessed June 15, 2023. https://archiveofourown.org/about. Archived [http://archive.today/QYtbM]

You may also want to check out the original LiveJournal Brainstorming sessions for AO3 by astolat as archived here [https://web.archive.org/web/20220627134339/https://astolat.livejournal.com/150556.html] if you need further clarity on this point.

Some neat stuff from astolat's original posts that I find are relevant:

making it easy for people to download stories or even the entire archive for offline reading (thus widely preserving the work in case some disaster does take it down)

code-wise able to support a huge archive of possibly millions of stories.

allowing ANYTHING -- het, slash, RPF, chan, kink, highly adult ...

As we can see both from the mission statement of OTW/AO3 and from astolat herself in the brainstorming sessions, AO3 is an ARCHIVE. It is a project that is meant to preserve and provide access to fanworks. Run for fans, by fans and meant to host any and all kind of content with none of the commercialization or censorship that fans found elsewhere. Before AO3 there were certainly numerous, disconnected, fandom specific archives for fanfiction or other fanworks. Many of these old sites have been archived (see we're getting that word again) via the opendoors project. Some, like teaspoon or lcfanfic still exists and are semi-active.

A common thread is that writers and readers weren't just using the archive site to connect. They were doing more connection through other sites like dreamwidth, livejournal, facebook, their emails and later tumblr or twitter. Archive sites were meant as a supplement to other fan spaces like message boards, blogs and journals.

So, dear friends, you might ask, what is an archive?

An archive is a place where documents, artifacts and records are kept and preserved for future reference, use and access. Archives help us maintain a better understanding of the past and protect objects, writings, documents, records and more in longevity. In the context of fanwork archiving, this means preserving fanworks in longevity/perpetuity so that fans can continue to access them for enjoyment and for historical purposes. Archiving fanwork is vital to preserving and, indeed creating fan culture and identity.

To read more about archives in general, check out this article from the American History Museum of the Smithsonian (https://americanhistory.si.edu/archives/about/what-are-archives) or this one from the US National Archives (https://www.archives.gov/about/info/whats-an-archives.html).

So AO3 is an archive. Why does this matter?

Oh, boy, I am about to get LIS nerdy on y'all. At this point in the post we can all agree that AO3 is and always has been an archive (it's in the name...). When we view and understand the site starting from this premise, a lot of, frankly stupid as fuck arguments that people have about AO3 look even dumber. Understanding AO3 primarily as an archive helps us understand:

The tagging system. Given AO3 is an archive, the tags for content on the site function exactly the same as headings in a library archive. They are designed to store information about the fic (that is, they are intended as metadata) which is then used to find the record of the fic in the archive. This is why it is important to tag what is in your fic, and to use tags properly, using the agreed meanings of particular tags.

The kinds of content that are permitted and excluded under TOS IV. The archive permits fanworks, which include: fanfiction, fanart, podfic, and fan videos. The archive thus excludes things that are not fanwork (records with no content (aka "placeholder fics"), posts asking for writing prompts or submissions, posts looking for fic, commerical promotions of ANY kind, original fiction with no relation to fan content, spam etc). Every library and archive has their own collections policies, and AO3 is not an exception. Collections Policies are generally guided by the mission statement(s) of the archiving party/library. As we saw above in both the official about page and the original brainstorming posts from astolat, AO3 is a library for fanworks, meant to preserve fanworks and is in opposition to advertising and commercialization. Therefore, if the thing you want to add to the library of AO3 is not a fanwork or contains commercialization, it does not qualify to be an object of the archive. Re: the "placeholder fic" post that I didn't know was going to blow up so much: imagine you go to the library to get a book and open it to find that it is empty or you get a DVD and play it only to find that it is the movie theater trailer for the movie. Doesn't that make no sense?

Why there is NO censoring of "adult" or other quote on quote "objectionable content". The archive does not chose to preserve works based on subjective quality or "moral purity" type standards. This is true in libraries and museums as well. We keep and save materials that people find objectionable as archiving and librarianship are and have always been diametrically opposed to censorship. As an archive AO3 follows this. Moreover, you can see in astolat's original post "allowing ANYTHING -- het, slash, RPF, chan, kink, highly adult" as a founding idea.

Why there is no advertising, and why this includes you adding your Ko-fi or paypal or whatever the fuck. Outside of the fact that doing this violates TOS and invalidates OTW lawyer arguments for the legal existence of fanworks under US Fair Use, AO3 as an archive is meant to be a keeper of fan records, not a space for promotions. Archives do keep records (and indeed some archives keep records of advertising) but they, themselves are not using their platform to advertise for anything else.

Why there is no "AO3 algorithm". The kinds of algorithmic feed generators that sites like the t*kt*ok or whatever use are antithetical to the mission of archiving stuff and providing access to it. In an archive you search for content based on terms and headings and self-select. I'm not on the t*kt*k or whatever and I actively block and disable all "suggestion" type things so I don't entirely understand what y'all are looking with this.

Ok, that's great, why are you telling us all of this?

There is a concerning trend of newcomers both young and older to fandom and fanfiction that have not taken off the social media brain filter before coming on board. Some excellent tags I've seen on The Post™ that spawned this one include:

#guys quit bringing the worst elements of capitalism to AO3 (via @watchtowersystem)

#algorithms have rotted people's brains i swear (via @pearly--rose)

#omg stop trying to social mediaify ao3 (via @greyduckgreygoose)

There were also some bangers on my reddit post on this topic as well, but the reddit I posted it on is (rightfully) on blackout at the moment.

I think the sociamediafying of fanfiction that a lot of these people are bringing has a few major negatives:

social mediafied fandom views fanwork soley as consumable content, creating more passive, entitled participants in fandom. For fanwork=content social media brain folks, the fact that fanwork is meant to be an active and engaging thing is lost. Fanwork is a gift from one fan to other fans, it is a point for discussion, a result of people's passion and creativity. It is transformative, out of the box and part of building a niche community. When you start to see it as "content" like a random object on a feed you stop valuing it, analyzing it, and interacting with it in the same way, and are more likely to passively consume what you see as content. Social media has made "content" out of everything, and everything becomes something to scroll past in a few seconds, always looking for more stuff, the newest stuff, etc etc. It's obviously very tied to the experience of social media being used to sell you shit, but that's another conversation I think.

fanwork=content social media brain also allows some of these people to post incredibly demanding comments for "more content" on fancreators works or makes them think it's ok (and indeed creates the same result as what the writer is creating) to feed someone's incomplete fic into an ai to get a "completion".

fanwork=content social media brain also means that when these folks start creating content they feel entitled to views, hits, kudos, etc etc, and feel like it is ok to do things that they see as "gaming" the system to get their fics to be at the top of the pack. They begin to care too much about posting to get their "content" the most views because that's how things work on social media.

fanwork=content social media brain also makes some of these people think that "fic" that is "written" by an ai is acceptable fanwork, because they do not view fanwork as artwork/writing with merit, as much as an entertainment property to be consumed. How the meat gets made becomes irrelevant, because the end result is the only thing that is important.

social mediafying of fandom is something that has helped a lot of advertising and commercialization sneak its way into our spaces, which actively hurts our chances of building good communities.

social mediafying of fandom turns fanwork creation and fandom into popularity contests, which is bad for all fan spaces. The point is that we're being weird together. I've seen new, young authors post on reddit about how they feel so bad about their fic because it doesn't have 1000s of hits or because they feel incapable of writing things (even things they might want to explore) because "no one will read it, and it will not become popular". This makes me very sad.

social mediafying of fanwork also turns right around into .... wait ... you guessed it .... censorship! people are now practising self-censorship that is utterly unnecessary and completely sad to me because they are afraid of getting deleted from anywhere for "objectionable content". This carries over into new users on AO3 doing things like using leet speech for curse words, sexual content and more in the TAGS or the body of their AO3 fics. Stop Don't. You can say fuck, dead, kill, murder, cunt, cock, and whatever the fucking hell you want on AO3. That was the whole goddamn point.

These people are trying to bring fanwork=content social media brain to places like AO3. I'm not entirely sure why.

tldr; AO3 isn't a social media site for talking with your following or posting about ideas that you've had. It isn't a popularity contest. It isn't a place where there will be no inappropriate content. It isn't a place for advertising or commerical promotion. It is an ARCHIVE OF FANWORKS meant to be "allowing ANYTHING -- het, slash, RPF, chan, kink, highly adult."

Anyone of you fans older, wiser, more well versed in fan history, and more articulate than me, please feel free to add to this. Ditto on any of you other funky LIS friends out here on tumblr dot hell.

#AO3 #archive of our own #fanfiction #fandom #fandumb #fan history #fandom history #long post for ts

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willidleaway · 7 months

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"We are at the point where after 600+ person-years of effort put into Tumblr since the acquisition in 2019, we have not gotten the expected results from our effort, which was to have revenue and usage above its previous peaks," the posted memo reads.

irreversible damage was done to user interests between 2017 and 2019. the site was never going to return to (let alone exceed) its previous peaks in usage. I'm shocked that Automattic thought this was a realistic goal.

The cultural reach and cachet of Tumblr has long exceeded its business prospects.

true enough, which is why I would have thought Automattic acquired tumblr as a loss leader, using it to enhance their overall image and maybe redirect businesses and professional users to other more profitable offerings under their corporate umbrella. again, shocked that they expected to return to peak revenue in any way. Flickr's new owners, on the other hand, are actively embracing the fact that Flickr is an absolute financial albatross but culturally invaluable, so much so that they've managed to spin up a nonprofit organisation to this end. just as you don't treat Flickr as a competitor to Instagram, surely the absolute worst thing to do with tumblr is treat it as a high-revenue competitor to mainstream social media?

anyway, if this site zaps away into oblivion, you won't know where to find me. unless you do. which you might.

#meta post #this has been a tumblr service announcement

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naryrising · 1 year

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3 easy things to do so you don't get locked out of your AO3 account

(Prefacing this by saying that while I am chair of the Support committee and thus handle plenty of attempted account recovery situations, this is unofficial advice based on my own observations.)

OK, ideally you would never get locked out of your AO3 account. You would keep your email address there up to date so if you ever did forget your password, you can request a reset and get right back in. Or you would use a password manager and never forget your password again. But sometimes things happen - maybe you used an older email that you no longer have access to, or you can't remember which of 27 different fannish emails you used, and now you want to get back into your account but you can't. I get it, it can happen easily enough.

Here are 3 things you can do with relatively minimal effort that would potentially make it easier to recover your account if you do get inadvertently locked out.

Put some social media links in your AO3 Profile. Add your tumblr, your twitter, your dreamwidth, your fanfiction.net or wattpad, or whatever you feel comfortable putting there. If you don't want to put your "real" social media there (for whatever reason - stalkers, nosy family, don't like mixing fannish and real life, etc.) go MAKE a fannish account somewhere else purely for the purpose of linking it on AO3. Keep those accounts active (by which I mean, don't lose the email/password there too! Maybe even use a different email address than you use on AO3, so if your email access suddenly shuts down one day, you haven't lost both accounts.)

Post a work or two! Even if you are mainly using your account for reading/bookmarking/subscribing, write a drabble or a short fic and post it. You can disable comments, make it restricted to archive users only, etc. if you don't want to deal with potential feedback. You can even post it to an anon collection if you want to keep people from knowing it was you. It doesn't have to be a masterpiece, just a valid fanwork (so don't just post some random words or something).

In conjunction with #1 and 2, cross-post a work from another site. If you have older fanfics you never imported from Livejournal or Wattpad or fanfiction.net, import them now! If you have a little series of ficlets you wrote for a prompt on tumblr or twitter once, archive those. (Yes, even if you think they're bad or embarrassing. They still deserve to be archived! See above about making a work anon or restricting access if you prefer.) If you don't have pre-existing older works posted elsewhere, write a new story, post your story somewhere else (say, on dreamwidth or tumblr), and then a day or two later, archive it on AO3.

Even doing one or two of these things would make the chances of recovering your account higher, but doing all three would be ideal!

#ao3 support

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diabolikpersonals · 8 months

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I am not certain yet that I want to call out specific blogs (last time I did that it got WEIRD) but it has been a while since we've had a discussion about reposting art as a fandom, and someone asked me to comment :')

I've been in the fandom long enough to see art reposting cause plenty of problems, and I've also been a victim of it myself, so I hope I can help someone understand.

So, fanartists, right? You might not be aware if you're not an artist yourself, but a lot of artists dislike it when you take their work and post it somewhere else. Plenty will have something like "DO NOT REPOST" written right there on their page. Even if they don't, that does not mean that they allow reposts.

There are plenty of reasons why an artist might feel this way, but to name a few common reasons, it could be an issue of credit or publicity: imagine you put hours of work into a piece of art, but another account posts it and they're the one who gains interactions, followers, etc. Even if that account mentions you as the artist, people aren't necessarily going to seek out the original artist. They're probably going to interact with the repost that's right in front of them. Can you imagine that feeling? Like, "Why is this person building a social media presence based on my work, and the work of other artists?" Interactions aside, it's really frustrating when you put a ton of effort into something and you're not recognized for it.

To name another reason, an artist might only want their work to be published in one particular place. This is often the case for me too, actually; I only want my dialovers fanart on tumblr, and I never post it on my twitter account, because I don't want it there. Another medium but still relevant: I don't want my youtube videos exported to other sites because if a lot of people view those reposts, I lose money that I would've gotten if they had just watched my video. Maybe there's a certain type of user that you don't want your work to be exposed to, or maybe you just don't like a site and you don't want your work there. This is something an artist should be able to decide for themself, and it's not right for you to put their art in places they didn't consent to putting it.

It's a case-by-case basis, of course, because different artists have different feelings about it, but generally, you need to obtain permission from an artist before taking their work and publishing it yourself. You can just ask! It's totally normal to ask. Worst they can say is no. Plenty of artists do allow reposts, and if they say that they allow reposts, then go for it!! But if they don't have "reposting is ok" written anywhere, and if you didn't ask permission......then that's not okay. You need to respect artists a little more than that.

Because you know what artists do when they don't feel respected? When their boundaries are crossed, and people post their work without permission?? A lot of times, they delete their stuff, they move their work someplace else to try and evade reposters, and sometimes they stop drawing for a fandom altogether. If you've been in the dialovers fandom for a long time, this has absolutely happened multiple times, whether or not you were aware of it. If you know which repost acc we're discussing here, you might've seen some of their posts say something like "artist is no longer active." And it blows my mind, because I was there when they became inactive, and more than one of them because inactive because people reposted their art! So, besides being disrespectful, it also leads to less dialovers fanart.

But anyway, most of you reading this probably don't repost art, so the more useful thing I can tell you is that I hope you can support artists by interacting with them rather than repost accounts. If you see a repost acc and like the art you see, and if you want to see more of it, seek out the artist's original account instead.

unfollow art repost accounts. seek out and follow artists instead. they are out there. they are awesome. change da world… my final message. Goodb ye.

#text #also just to be safe uh. dont like dogpile on anybody ok. u can talk nicely to people online #I've found that a lot of times it's a lot more effective to just politely ask reposters if they have permission lol

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mf-downer · 11 months

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Like I really, really want to sit down and talk with whoever is in charge of tumblr’s day to day operations and planning and just ask, “Why?” Like I don’t think they’ve made very many changes over the past two years that have been well received and yet, they’re striving to do worse in a time where every other social media website is under the gun. you can win by doing nothing and yet you choose to actively lose. people would be happy to spend money on worthless gimmicks for their blogs if you actually put in effort to make the website more functional instead of less.

Like holy fuck I know a shit ton of staff are tumblr users. Are they fucking blind and deaf, or just straight up in denial on how bad they’ve been blowing it? you can’t tell corporate executives are responsible for bad UI designs. Yeah I can see how tumblr live definitely came down from people who wanted that twitch.tv money but really, making likes public? it’s not even the worse thing but if I wanted my likes public then I would turn that on because newsflash assholes, that’s been a feature for over a decade.

I don’t even have porn and other nsfw shit in my likes it’s just a matter of privacy. That’s why people love this site, is because you still have some of the old net shit where you don’t have to put yourself on display every waking moment you’re online.

#literally my likes are like a storage space for things I might want to reblog agsin because I don’t tag anything

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fangirl-erdariel · 2 years

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Ok so I am fully aware of the irony of me posting this in English, but

One thing I have to admit I miss of fandoms before Ao3 and big social media sites was the non-English fandom spaces for fandoms centered around English-language works. Like, okay, fine, it was only ever a few big ones, like Harry Potter and LOTR and the like. Okay, fine, I only got to experience it briefly, by the time I figured out internet and fandoms around eight years ago, Ao3 was already becoming big, becoming the site for fic, and fandom stuff was moving onto the various social media sites. But there were still a few non-English forums and fic sites around; I frequented one for LOTR and read my first LOTR fics there, while my English was still so weak that I struggled with reading English fic. The site still exists, but there's been barely any activity for years, and no new fics. The Harry Potter site I know for a fact existed once although I never used it myself, I can not find at all - I don't know if it's gone down (though that seems likely) or if i'm just stupid and can't find it.

But these days? Tolkien fandom does still have one active fan forum in my first language, but that site doesn't to my knowledge host fanfic or really put much attention on that aspect of the fandom. As far as I know, there isn't an active Tolkien fan community in my first language on tumblr either, and why would there be? Tumblr is predominantly English-language site, and it's hard, I suppose, to have an active fan community here that uses a language other than English but shares a fandom and relevant tags with predominantly English-speaking fans. The only active fandom community I know of on tumblr that primarily uses my first language is centered around a work that was written in said language in the first place.

And as for Ao3 and fanfic? Well, yes, Ao3 has a lot of language options! But how much do people use them? For my first language, for fandoms I care about myself, not a whole lot. For Tolkien fandom in particular, there's 48 works altogether. Most of them are cross-posted on or archived from that old fic site I mentioned previously. More than I'd care to admit are something I wrote and posted when I was like 12 or 13, and much worse of a writer than I am now. I have left them up, I'm not taking them down because it's more effort than it's worth, but they're not something I like to remember or think about, let alone reread. Many of the rest are about ships and characters I don't care about. That is compared to the something like 700 Middle-Earth fics + an assortment of other non-Tolkien fanfics and oc fics + poetry and song parodies the site also had sections for. (Plus the threads in the conversation sections, but like if we're talking about content you might post on Ao3, that's not on the list). And as I said, some of the 48 works on Ao3 are cross-posts of some of the 700ish fics on the language-specific fansites.

The thing with Ao3 is that yes, it allows for posting in other languages than English. Which is great! But at least in my first language, and I would imagine in many other languages as well, it's not something people do much, aside from a couple of fandoms where the source work is in that language, and a few extremely popular fandoms. Even then you have to go out specifically looking for fics in that language, because if you just look at all the fics in the fandom, fic in other languages gets posted so little that in any bigger/more active fandom, it gets quickly drowned by the English works.

Also, even when people write fic in my first language, I can't really find that sort of dedicated fan community, and I don't have anywhere, aside from their Ao3 comments or maybe some private chat between two people, where I can talk to them. I have, in some fandoms where I'm lucky, one friend who speaks the same language I do, and we can toss ideas back and forth and be fans about our fandoms in my first language, in a private chat. Which is fun and I love that person so much!! But two people isn't a community. And I have to admit, that community is something I kind of wish I could have.

Of course there are merits to the English-speaking fandom spaces and the fandom scene on big social medias! I've made so many friends from all over the world on tumblr and on fandom discords! Even if there were dedicated fanfic and fandom communities for the fandoms I'm into that used predominantly my first language, I'd probably still also hang around in English fandom spaces as well, and read and write fic in English, too. But I just- I would like the chance to choose to do that, you know? I'd like to be able to decide that, you know what, right now I feel like reading/writing something in English. But yesterday I read fic in another language, because I felt like it. I'd like to be able to write fic in my first language and have some hope that it might be read by a handful of people, and I'd like to have enough other people writing fic in the same language to be able to read their work and be inspired by the way they use the language when they write! (Because let's be honest, it's kind of hard to write in isolation, coming up with everything on your own, and I'm constantly getting inspired by and taking notes from the way other people whose fics I read write!) As much as I love that one friend of mine, I would like to be able to have a meta/headcanon discussion in my first language with more than one person besides me chiming in. Everything that's good about fandoms and being in fan communities, I'd like to be able to experience in my first language as well as in English.

And I realize I'm part of the problem, too, posting almost exclusively in English and very rarely writing fic in my first language (although I am planning on making a few things for the None English Fest on Ao3). The dominance of English language in fandoms is in part a self-fulfilling prophecy; no one uses other languages, because no one else uses them either, and someone has to be the one to first start actively writing and/or posting in a given language, and maybe other people would then start doing so too. (Although let's be real, I write fic or post any original content so infrequently that I would probably not be able to kickstart a non-English fandom community by myself even if I wanted to.)

I don't have a solution for this. I don't know whether there is a solution. But I wanted to make this post in the hopes of perhaps stirring up some conversation on the topic, at least making people think about this. So, if you have something, anything, to add - feel absolutely free to do so! I would love to hear other people's opinions on this!

(PS if you speak Finnish and you're into any of the fandoms i'm in, feel free to come chat with me! And if you ever write fic in Finnish of one of my fandoms, please link it to me, I wanna read it!!)

#fandom #fandom problems #fandom culture #fanfiction #ao3 #fan community #fandom community #fanfic writing #languages #archive of our own

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downtherabbitholewithlucy · 1 year

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Heyyyy! Thanks for stopping by my blog, "The Rabbit Hole"

First off, NO MINORS - MINORS DNI. Secondly, there are a couple of wishes I ask of you to respect if you decide to venture "down the rabbit hole" of all things Wes and LB in my blog and that includes the following:

PLEASE (like pretty please, with a cherry on top)...

DO NOT Re-post any of my posts OR share any links to any one of my posts on any other social media platforms outside of Tumblr.

DO NOT Re-post any of my video edits (meaning videos where I have added text to the actual clips OR compiled multiple clips together to create a theme for a video) to any other social media platforms outside of Tumblr. (Stuff like just a singular clip of a band interview or idk like a video Wes posted on IG (just a couple of random examples), that I don't care who also shares that video on whatever site, obviously, because these singular clips can be found online anywhere (IG, Youtube, FB, etc.). But what I mean is like don't repost video edits of mine that have a theme and multiple clips strung together, such as something random like "A compilation video of Wes saying the word 'guitar' " (btw that's not an edit I've ever done, but this is just an arbitrary example) and then it's a video of a bunch of different clips I've compiled of Wes saying the word 'guitar'. Like don't re-post or share a link to video edits/posts like that because it takes me so much time and effort to find clips and edit them all together. Gosh, I hope this makes sense and I'm not sounding like a rambling idiot, lol.)

DO NOT put direct links to my blog or post screenshots of my blog with blog name on display on other social media platforms outside of Tumblr.

DO NOT tag or share anything associated with my blog (meaning with my blog name attached to it or with link to my blog) to Limp Bizkit or any of the individual band members. (I'm a big believer of "Please don't bother the musician/actor/actress/celebrity with any fan-obsession/fan-shipping stuff. Just leave that within the fandom".)

In summary, if it's a whole post edit/video edit of mine, DO NOT re-post/share it anywhere else that is not Tumblr. DO use that ✨REBLOG✨ button on the post if you wanna show my silly blog some support.

Reblog (GOOD) Happy Lucy the Rabbit😊🐰

Re-post (BAD) Very, very sad and uncomfortable Lucy the Rabbit😩😭🤬🐰

I adore fanning out over Limp Bizkit here on Tumblr with all the amazing blogs in the LB tags (Seriously, Y'ALL ARE AWESOME!)... but that's just it. Tumblr is my ONLY social media space where I'm active in the LB fandom. While I am on other social media sites (and others I am not on), any other site that I am on is just for personal use. I don't post about LB on any other sites other than Tumblr. Therefore, I just feel uncomfortable when I happen to stumble across some of my stuff on other sites OR when I've been made aware by someone else of my stuff/posts/blog being on other sites, especially when it's a site I am not on at all. I hope this makes sense and it doesn't come off as me being overly controlling. Tumblr is just my safe space to share my love for LB and fanout over the band, so I just hope that can be respected.

Thank you so so so much for taking the time to read this. Please enjoy your time "Down the rabbit hole"✌🏻

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dirtytransmasc · 1 year

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How come you don’t like spam liking?

on tumblr, likes have little to no effect on your posts, it doesn't benefit a creator, it doesn't spread the post around, etc. this is unlike other social media's where likes at least have some benefit. I don't like it because my content isn't being benefitted by it, I'm not being supported as a creator, and my time and effort is being blindly consumed. first world problems, I know, I also know that the activity I get on social media shouldn't impact me, but my content is my hobby, and I want it to be respected and appreciated.

basically: likes =/= support they're basically personal bookmarks on this site, and it can kinda suck when its most of the activity you receive no matter how hard you work or how much effort and energy you put into your content. as a creator, who puts time and effort into making my own content and/or reposting other's creative and original content it muddles my motivation and the motivation of other creators when we get 1 reblog to every 15 likes.

#my content is my livelihood so I have very strong feelings about this #I also know a lot of people feel the same way #please reblog content #especially creative/original content

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cursecrazy-writing · 11 months

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I think I've finally struck a point with Cursey + social media where I realize it's just not worth the hassle of making it "work." I think the fact is that fetish writing is always going to be undercut on modern social media so it's not even worth the effort of trying to tag everything just right, or include the exact right SEO, etc. because ultimately the moment the algorithm detects that my post is about weird porn, it's going to dump it into an irrelevant category and make sure as few people have their feeds clogged by its presence. Even porn-"friendly" places will put huge censors, blocks, and shadowbans on fetish posts, it's kind of torture trying to figure out what exact words are allowed and won't get your account hidden without any warning or clue whatsoever, while also trying to put in enough words to reach your target audience + describe the contents within so they know what they're getting into.

So basically my strategy going forward is to probably be as lazy as possible with social media lol. Trying to hold myself to this professional standard is just not something I can have on my plate right now, not when social media is also actively working against me. If you see my posts getting sloppy or less consistent... I guess just know that I don't care as much! Because it really is such a waste of mental strength trying to make social media work for me.

I'm here on Tumblr for now and don't foresee myself going to any of these new places. Every single new social media spot seems to be making the same exact pitfalls as its predecessor, and I don't want to waste my time setting up new accounts and learning about new ~algorithms~ just so I can get maybe five extra pairs of eyes on my fetish writing.

If you aren't seeing my posts or updates, don't be surprised! Tumblr might very well decide to shadowban me without any explanation or heads-up, just like every other social media site. It's highly likely my posts will end up hidden. If you want to stay up to date with my writing, there's no better way than subbing to my Patreon and turning on alerts, so that whenever there's a new post, you get a notification about it immediately. It's the only reliable method of actually seeing my posts -- anywhere else has a vague but real chance of just being made invisible to the public.

For now, I'm going to try and keep this tumblr alive by reposting some of my older/now-public stories, mostly because I think I have to "prove" to tumblr that I'm not a bot account and that I actually have a human soul. I love social media! So be aware you might see some "new" stories that aren't actually that new if you've already been following me~

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brightgnosis · 1 year

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If another neurodivergent person with multiple mental illnesses and conditions is "anxiety inducing" to other "neurodivergent people" by having a clear cut and forward page about their own boundaries for interacting with them on their own blog ... To the point you feel the need to send them a completely random Hate Anon about "typical Wiccan behavior" instead of just moving on if it ain't for you?

Then you have far bigger mental issues (and multiple issues at that, clearly) to deal with than my incredibly limited request for literally the barest, and most basic iota of respect because I don't want to be treated like a brainless content farm by zombies who can't be bothered to interact with me like a person anymore ... In an age of social media which actively encourages everyone on the internet to treat each other as subhuman.

Like, starting with your exact participation in that system by sending Hate Anons in the first place ... Though, honestly, I literally cannot fathom how the core ideas of:

"Don't have a blank blog because it's common tumblr courtesy to show others you're not spam; actually customize your blog and I'm going to assume you're spam or just not putting in any effort to learn this site's etiquette (etc), if you don't"; and

"Actually interact with me and my original (non-content) posts or go away, because there's no point to you being on a personal blog unless you're interacting with the PERSON behind said blog", and

"I actually DO pay attention to who follows me, so I will boot you if you don't follow my rules and / or I just don't like the content of your blog and think you'll wind up being Drama"

Is so difficult for people to understand- or even "anxiety inducing" on any level ... Let alone "typical Wiccan behavior"; like oh no someone asked you to treat them like a person- and then told you exactly how to do that, and what behavior makes them feel Human online!

A. I love having clear cut knowledge of exactly how to interact with people in their spaces. It's so nice. Some people aren't like that, though, and that's cool. You don't have to be. But don't piss on others who do because you don't like "the rules" you were handed for their spaces. Especially using your own neurodivergency as an excuse to do so, oh my God ??? Grow up; you're not the only model of neurodivergency to exist.

B. Y'all are really reaching with that one, wow. Because I literally had these rules well before I was even Wiccan. It has nothing to do with Wicca. And the absolute best irony is that I got praised for this same exact set of rules before I started calling myself NeoWiccan, and told it was "so nice to have a clear set of boundaries to follow" by other Anons ... But now that I'm calling myself Wiccan, suddenly it's bad and "Typical Wiccan Behavior"; your hypocrisy's showing BIG time, y'all.

C. Though, like, frankly? At least you could've had enough respect to put your name to it so I can avoid clearly anti-Wiccan people in this shit hole. Because if you don't want to interact with me because I'm Wiccan, I'm more than happy to oblige because I don't want to interact with y'all either; I keep a permanent block list of people from the Wiccans DNI tag so I don't bother y'all. Y'all could have the same basic fucking courtesy. Good Lord.

You don't have to be here. I am not holding a gun to your head and saying "you must follow me or else" ... If you don't want to be here because you think it's too much effort to actually treat me like a human being, cool. Clearly my blog isn't for you, and I wouldn't want you here anyways.

Hate Anons are literally the last thing you need to send, however. Just move on instead of acting like a child; go back to Twitter or whatever other platform you came from where that behavior's acceptable, if that's your way of interacting with people and you're going to get big mad about someone putting their foot down and saying "not here in my personal space".

#Personal #Answered Asks #2023 Asks #2023

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cyberpunkpizzaman · 2 years

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On Tracking and Tumblr

There was a post on Tumblr a while back from prokopetz about people incorrectly sharing advice on how to stop companies from tracking user activity by removing "anything following a question mark in a URL". I reblogged with some commentary around what query parameters were, as well as some information about how Tumblr uses href.li links to defeat referral tracking.

I was thinking more about this topic recently and I wanted to put together a more complete and detailed run-down on what's going on here and how it differs from other social media sites.

Let's talk about Query Parameters

Query parameters are the technical term for everything following the question mark in a URL. They're a way to pass information between web pages, sometimes within a site and sometimes across sites. In many cases, they actually enable key functionality, like with YouTube's video ID system; the only thing that distinguishes one YouTube video from another is that part of the URL.

And sometimes they're used to track user behavior.

For example, most marketing campaigns use so-called UTM parameters to pass information to web tracking tools about where users came from.1 You'll often see utm_campaign, utm_medium, and utm_source following the base URL in marketing emails or advertisements — these values categorize your traffic so the company can understand how effective different efforts are at bringing you to their site.

Link Shorteners, Tracking, and Social Media

Many social media platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn have built-in link shorteners — every time a link is added to post it's replaced with a shortened version. On Twitter this looks like t.co and on LinkedIn it looks like lnkd.in.2 I'm not on Facebook enough to speak to that platform but I imagine it's similar.

What this means is that every time someone clicks one of those links they very very briefly hit the company's servers before getting redirected to the actual destination. This logs a 'hit' on the company's servers, allowing them to track how many times that link has been clicked. There's a lot of reasons to do this, but almost all link shorteners work this way — the link first hits the company's servers, then redirects to the actual destination.3

Tumblr doesn't just not do that. It goes a step further.

How Tumblr stops referrer tracking

Instead of using a normal link shortener, Tumblr uses href.li links throughout the site. Adding https://href.li/? in front of every link obviously doesn't shorten them, so what's this meant to do? Well, adding this string doesn't just not track clicks - it actually breaks the ability for destination sites to figure out where the click came from.

This stops Tumblr from being tracked as a referrer — traffic to a site from Tumblr comes through stripped of any identifying information around where it came from. Most companies use Referrer information in concert with UTM parameters to identify the source of traffic. This decision to block referrer information makes it really hard to use Tumblr the way most companies use Twitter or LinkedIn; a kind of billboard to lure users back to the company's site. If you use that strategy on Tumblr, you'll have no idea if it's working (aside from some work-around options I can get into more detail about in a future post).

For example, here's the channel mix I can see on my own site:

I'm something like 80% certain that Unassigned comes from Tumblr (I don't share links in that many places) but I can't say that for sure.

Actual paid advertising on Tumblr doesn't work this way — I am 100% certain that companies can see how many people click on those links and, if Tumblr is at all a competent advertising platform, that number will be front-and-center. But from an organic perspective, Tumblr is actually protecting your privacy by default.

I have a feeling this has a lot to do with a core ethos around how Tumblr should work and its history as a blogging platform. It's not a place for people to post teaser links feeding back to their own sites. It's the place those sites and that content should actually live.

* There's a future post here around the history of UTM parameters and how they fit a pattern around Google's acquisition and integration of different companies.

** You can see from Twitter's page that they're not actually hiding the fact that this lets them track clicks: "Our link service measures information such as how many times a link has been clicked, which is an important quality signal in determining how relevant and interesting each Tweet is when compared to similar Tweets."

*** This includes options like bit.ly

#tracking #advertising #tumblr #twitter #linkedin #query parameters

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