re: your tags on the post defending people being dramatique about reblogs; whoever ghosted you over that is a dick, but also there has GOT to be a happy medium between "fuck you if you don't reblog everything you feel positively about" and "fuck you for asking for reblogs" like omg, tumblrinas plz, i am begging for like half an ounce of nuance i know this is the internet but please for the love of the blorbos stop the madness *headdesk*

I mean, yeah, I don't actually think guilt/shame is a good motivation for engaging with fandom, for a lot of different reasons, and tbh the overall tone of the post I just reblogged is probably more abrasive or something than what I've reblogged before or said myself. I mostly just reblogged this one because apparently I can't get over how hurt I feel over the whole basically-being-ghosted-by-a-long-term-friend thing (especially given that it made me feel really insane in a specifically neurodivergent way, like, "either I have massively misinterpreted literally everything about this relationship for years because I fundamentally don't understand friendship or social interactions in general, or you didn't mean anything you said to me, or you changed the rules at some point and didn't tell me").

but it's also just...deeply frustrating that even the mildest posts saying "if you don't do some very basic things to support the fanworks you like, you will start seeing a lot less of those fanworks, because those creators will get discouraged and stop producing it" gets categorized as whining or guilt-tripping when it isn't, it's literally just describing cause and effect. there are other posts scolding fan creators for expressing that discouragement or asking for a little damn engagement because we just want to feel like we're part of a community, all of which just contributes to the atmosphere of discouragement.

and it feels increasingly bizarre to me the more time I spend on Instagram, following all kinds of artists and small businesses, all of whom talk a lot about how important engagement is to what they do and how much their work lives and dies by The Algorithm and how crucial it is for people to take a few seconds and boost stuff they like because otherwise it just gets lost to the void, and I don't see the same backlash there of "well you should just be satisfied with creating for yourself, you shouldn't worry about stats, stop whining for attention, stop guilt-tripping people," whatever. granted, it's a different matter when there's money involved, because with a small business whose only source of advertising is social media, we're talking about someone's actual livelihood, but there's a huge amount of crossover with literally any artist--fanartist or otherwise--given that loads of them do also have Patreons or Ko-fi links or shops with physical items, or maybe they don't start out that way but when they build an audience organically they're able to bring in some actual money. and I've definitely seen people who aren't primarily selling things, who really are just producing art as a hobby, but still ask people to share their stuff because it encourages them to make more, and that seems to be seen as perfectly legitimate, except on Tumblr and also Reddit. fanfic is a little different because it's inherently an extremely bad idea to monetize, so there isn't the angle of "of course you want to share this so your favorite writer can keep food on the table!" but it doesn't seem like a huge stretch to say it follows a similar principle, right? if you like it, it just makes sense to support it in some small way, because then you're more likely to keep getting it? and if you don't make any effort to support it, then you can't complain when you stop getting it? (making this very basic point got me downvoted on r/Fanfiction because of course it did.)

and, I don't know, I personally get really discouraged begging for reblogs, and it would feel a lot better if I didn't have to. not even just my own fic (although, yes, especially that), but original posts about helpful resources or awesome Kickstarters or fic recs or cool free games or "hey this artist is doing charity commissions, look at their awesome art, please reblog so they can raise money for this important cause" mostly just all kinda fall into the void. not that I'm at all unique in that respect, obviously; anyone who doesn't have a big audience deals with that frustration (while people who do have big audiences get to deal with different problems, as I understand it, although I certainly wouldn't know from experience). it just sucks, you know?

Allie I have two questions. One is a twitter question, the other a tumblr question. Tumblr first: I follow #harry styles on here, but due to that I constantly get het Harry fic posts recommended. Can you tell me how I get rid of those? Some of them are just so...bizarre.

The twitter question: apparently verified accounts had to do something in order to not loose the blue tick in the last days, and the One Direction account still has it. Do you know if this means someone is still running that account?

Hey, anon! I don't particularly follow any hashtags on tumblr or check my recommendations tab because I think the best part of tumblr is being able to see on your dash *only* what I follow, no algorithms. So I only check my "following" tab and avoid anything out of my bubble.

But if you enjoy going through followed tags or recommendations, I recommend you blacklist stuff you don't want to see. You can do that by going to blog settings > account

As for the twitter question, I really have no idea, I didn't know this was a thing tbh. But a couple of years ago, there were some changes and inactive accounts were losing their blue check and the One Direction account lost it for a solid 24hrs 😂😂 and then they got it back! I don't know if someone responsible for the account did something about it or if it was just because fans went crazy, but it was back pretty quickly.

I don't think anyone is actively running the account, that wouldn't make any sense, but someone could have paid for it, yes. No idea who would be responsible for 1D's social media these days though. Twitter instagram and youtube accounts were active during the 10 years anniversary, so someone was obviously running it, maybe it's the same team.

serving up some 'finally wearing something other than pajamas or a uniform' Looks 2nite 💀✨👌