[prokopetz]

A brief summary of how user engagement is tracked on Tumblr, for the newcomer:

• When you like or reblog a post, that counts as user engagement for the person you liked or reblogged from, and shows up in their notifications.
   
  
• If the person you liked or reblogged a post from wasn’t the original poster (i.e., you’re liking or reblogging a reblog), it also counts as user engagement for the original poster, and shows up in their notifications as well.
   
  
• This means that user engagement from your likes and reblogs can potential accrue to two different people, the original poster and the person you liked or reblogged from.
   
  
• Consequently, you cannot “steal” user engagement from someone by reblogging their post.
   
  
• This is one of the very few areas where Tumblr is actually functions more reasonably than other social media platforms.
   
  
• Note that this is only true if you use Tumblr’s built-in reblogging function. If you save someone else’s content to your local device and append it to a new post, you effectively become the original poster from that point on.
   
  
• This means that on Tumblr, “reblogging” and “reposting” are two different things; if you see someone complaining about “reposting”, this is not the same as reblogging.
   
  
• Commenting when reblogging does not affect any of this – unlike, say, Twitter, where quote-retweeting causes user engagement to accrue to the quote-retweet and not to the original tweet – and you can and should do so freely.
   
  
• However, every Tumblr user can see who exactly you reblogged a post from, which functions as a soft disincentive against making inane comments; if you make a dumb comment on a reblog, people who see your reblog may “back up” one step in the reblog chain to reblog a version of the post without your comment.
   
  
• Nobody understands tags, and there’s a fair amount of evidence that how tags work changes periodically and without warning.
   
  
• Tags are a divine mystery.
  

[prokopetz]

(For those going “how is this not obvious”, it’s about prior expectations, bro. On many major social media platforms, using the built-in sharing tools does divert user engagement from the original post. For example, as noted above, quote-retweeting on Twitter causes likes to accrue to the quote-retweet instead of the original tweet. This is because Twitter is hostile to human life.)

[eregyrn-falls]

It’s really good for stuff like this to go around every once in a while!  Strange as it may seem, people may in fact migrate here from Twitter or Instagram, where this stuff works differently and where there are different expectations of engagement.

DON’T FORGET - *most* Tumblr users DO NOT MIND if you engage with their OLD posts!  (Apparently on Instagram they do? this baffles me.) 

Many also don’t mind if you “spam” their notifications with a bunch of likes or reblogs in a row.  

Tumblr has a rich culture of Very Old Posts continuing to make the reblog rounds, and people become fond of them.

Also, unlike Twitter, you can reblog the same post multiple times.  Heck, you can reblog the same post every hour on the hour for days. (Please don’t.)  But you do see a lot of “oh this came across my dash again, must reblog” with posts users are fond of.  This is fine.

Tags ARE a divine mystery.  People use the tags both for organization (inasmuch as this works, sometimes), and for added commentary.  Commentary added to the tags will generally be seen by those who follow that person and see their reblog on their dash; but the OP and whoever they reblogged it from can also see the tags in the notifications. 

So again – you can use the tags for commentary, and many people do. But people WILL see it.  It just won’t “stick” with the post… necessarily.  Tumblr also has a culture of people seeing some tags they think are relevant or clever, and reblogging a post with someone else’s tags included.  So bear that in mind as well – something you put in the tags could get “pulled up” into a reblog chain by someone else, and this is generally seen as fine.

[anistarrose]

Adding on, due to current events: Tumblr both does and does not have an algorithm; in a way it’s “opt-out,” but most long-time users have opted out vehemently, and you’ll probably have a better experience if you do the same.

Go to Settings, then Dashboard, and turn off “Best Stuff First,” “Include stuff in your orbit,” and “Include Based On Your Likes.” This will get you a feed based only on people that you choose to follow, and this, arguably, is part of why Tumblr is the least hellish of many hellsites right now.

[segretecose]

me every time i take a sip of my cappuccino: do they know it's called cappuccino because the color is similar to the sackcloth worn by capuchin friars (cappuccini). do they know capuchin friars got their name from the hood (cappuccio) they wear. do they know cappuccino is a double diminutive as it comes from capo ('robe') + uccio = cappuccio ('hood' but literally 'little robe') + ino = cappuccino ('tiny hood' but literally 'tiny little robe'). do they know

[feenyxblue]

It was an

Itsy bitsy

Teeny weeny

Hooded capuchin robe drinky

[myautisticpov]

I’m always kind of wary of narratives of autistic interaction that are like “well, autistic people just aren’t interested in relationships, they don’t like meaningless social interactions”

Because I think there is a mix of trauma, alexithymia, and false narratives being pushed by literally everyone else that leads to this being the narrative that even autistic people tell when it might not actually be the whole story

Because, like, my mum remembers me being excluded from play by other kids before I have my first memories

We know that allistic kids can tell something is “off” about an autistic kid in seconds and not want to play with them

And we know that some of the methods used by neurotypical kids to bully neurodivergent kids is winding them up - deliberately setting off sensory issues or using frustration triggers that they’ve identified - and that leads to autistic kids being told “that’s not bullying, that’s you over reacting”

And this treatment begins very young

So now you’ve got an autistic kid who’s, say, nine or ten, and they don’t play with their peers - they sit with a book or on their Nintendo or whatever

And when people (parents/clinitions/etc) ask them “why don’t you want to play with the other kids?”, you get the combo of knowing that “other kids bully me” isn’t believed and alexithymia meaning that they know that the idea of playing with other kids feels Bad but they can’t quite put their finger on Why

And when they try to rationally look for an answer, the first one that’s likely to come up it’s all of the technical aspects of playing with other kids, like not liking small talk because it’s “pointless”, that come up instead of the trauma

And yeah, I’m wary of perpetuating this narrative as autistic adults that “autistic kids just don’t like that kind of play and autistic people prefer to be alone, actually” because it just kind of reeks of the “the other kids only pick on you because you’re smart” narrative that absolutely did nothing to help me deal with the trauma of being bullied or lead to healthy relationships in my adult life

[discodeerdiary]

It’s funny cause now as an autistic thirty-something a lot of my interactions with other autistic people are playfully, extravagantly, gloriously meaningless

[theothin]

#yeah#its not ‘small talk is pointless’#its ‘i dont know the rules to small talk and its terrifying because the consequence of getting it wrong is ostracization

(via @lilietsblog)

[eraserdude6226]

Just putting this out there to let people know to watch what they post because you can be found and if you think that the government can't do this ...

Well, you better think again!!

[riflebrass]

Reminder that in 2017 4chan played capture the flag with Shia LaBeouf. Without any kind of a retail store to use for landmarks they got a rough estimate of the flags location from a livestream. They used the position of the sun to narrow it down to a specific time zone, they tracked the flight paths of planes seen flying overhead to further narrow it down. Then someone in the area drove around honking his horn while viewers on the livestream told him if he was getting closer until he found and stole the flag.

[fieldbears]

A good example of what one person who knows coding can do, and what a mobile group can do.

[hexthelex]

"Well, ackshualley, most jobs employ your time and mind, not your body. I am very intelligent."

Wrong!

Are you required to perform a physical action, like typing on a keyboard? To be present? To utilise your brain, which is a physical organ? Are you required to talk with your mouth? To listen with your ears? To look with your eyes?!

ALL JOBS EMPLOY YOUR BODY.

ALL LABOUR IS PHYSICAL.

[hexthelex]

This post is specifically about people who do mental gymnastics to justify their disrespect of sex workers and their labour, but it can and should be taken at face value - all labour is physical labour. Some labour poses higher risk to the labourer. Sex work is high risk physical labour, like firefighting, and deserves the same amount of respect and security.

[biglawbear]

You are so right king. The Federal government literally acknowledges the above in OSHA regulations

You work in an office at a desk typing emails all day? OSHA still mandates things like temperature and ventilation of the office, the maximum weight you are required to lift (like 50 pound boxes of printer paper), and other things. The ADA requires reasonable accommodation for assistive devices and access for office jobs. The requirements for simple office work are myriad. Because all labor is physical.

And yes, this should apply to sex workers too!

[audible-smiles]

lowering the social stigma of gender nonconformity also lowers the threshold of how bad people have to be suffering before they’re willing to discuss their feelings openly. I guarantee you that a TON of humans who felt vaguely alienated by/uncomfortable with their assigned gender have lived and died within a cisgender identity framework, because the enormous social cost of being honest just wasn’t worth it if they weren’t miserable. that was a bad thing!

letting people weigh their options for themselves without putting a thumb on the scale is freeing. so of course we’ve started hearing people discuss wildly unusual ways of experiencing gender. it does not matter whether the teenagers who made up the goofy-sounding new gender term you’re annoyed about end up being capital-T trans or not. it just matters that they feel safe talking about it, because everyone benefits from that. you cannot lower one threshold without lowering the other. this is a feature, not a bug. this is a good thing!

[headspace-hotel]

you know how which animals we think are for food is mostly cultural? Well, which plants we think are for food is mostly cultural too. But we don't talk about that one as much

[weshallbekind]

What are some examples of that? Like I feel like at worst I'd go "I didn't know that was edible" rather than like, be surprised someone was eating a plant I already knew was edible.

[headspace-hotel]

Acorns. You can boil or soak the tannins out and turn them into flour.

Amaranth AKA pigweed. It's the USA's worst agricultural weed, but for Native Americans it was a crop and for some fucking reason it hasn't occurred to us to just...eat the stuff. It makes high protein, gluten free flour.

A lot of people know dandelions are edible, so I think that one's starting to change.

Crabgrass was brought to the USA by enslaved people as food iirc.

Cattails are edible (the roots if I remember right)

Every part of Kudzu is edible and it was once the main plant used to make clothing in China.

Virginia springbeauty has underground tubers that are like tiny potatoes and can be eaten similarly.

[the-haiku-bot]

Acorns. You can boil

or soak the tannins out and

turn them into flour.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[wheeloffortune-design]

"you're not man enough, not feminine enough"

so gender is something we can fail?

that means gender is not genetic and absolute and unchangeable

but something we can build and perform, and fail at (the standards they set) but also redefine?

if i can fail at being a woman, does that mean i'm not a woman? so does that make me another gender?

[aquitainequeen]

Pay heed to Klaudia Amenábar's words! Don't let the executives weaponize fandoms. WGA Strong.

[monimccoythings]

My guys it is starting to work, I've seen some people I know complaining about the writer's strike and turning against them because their favorite shows and/or movie got put on hold. Please do not be fooled like this, this is exactly what the corporations want. It can wait, I promise you will find other things to focus, but writers need this.

[sasquatchsightings]

They saw how angry and butthurt people got during/after the last writer’s strike. There are still thinkpieces and YouTube videos that will bring up how Season Whatever of their show was So Bad because it got cut short or had to resort to a new writing team partway into production. They know that if they lean on that this time around, fandom people who form their entire identity around their blorbos will try to push for ending the strike.

Don’t. Fall. For. It.

[blackbird-brewster]

Just a reminder, the WGA strike is still happening!

We're starting to see news of how the strike will [affect shows], don't fall for the above!!

[oneiriad]

I wonder if, in superhero universes, the villains ever get contacted by those “Make a Wish Foundation” and similar people.

I mean, the heroes do, of course they do, kids who want to meet Spiderman or Superman or get to be carried by the Flash as he runs through Central City for just thirty seconds.

But surely there are also the kids, who - because they are kids and sometimes kids are just weird - decide that what they really, really want is to meet a supervillain. Because he’s scary or she’s awesome or that freeze ray is just really, really cool, you know?

[robininthelabyrinth]

Oh, man, that would absolutely be a thing. The heroes would be so weirded out by it. The villains with codes of ethics would totally band together to force the villains without one (should they be the one requested) to do their part for the cause.

[katyakora]

But imagine the person who has to track down the villains and organise everything?

Like, the first time it happens, no one actually thinks it’s possible, but one of the newbies volunteers to at least try. They get lucky, the kid wants to meet one of the villains who is well known to have a personal code of ethics (eg one of the rogues), and it takes them weeks to track the villain down to this one bar they’ve been seen at a few times, plus a week of staking out said bar, but they finally find them.

So they approach the villain, very politely introduce themselves and explain the situation, finishing with an assurance that, should the villain agree, no law enforcement or heroes will be informed of the meeting.

The villain, assuming it’s a joke, laughs in their face.

At this point, the poor volunteer, who has giving up weeks of their time and no small amount of effort to track down this villain, all so a sweet little girl can meet the person who somehow inspired them, well, at this point the employee sees red.

They explode, yelling at this villain about the little girl who, for some unknown reason, absolutely loved them, had a hand-made stuffed toy of them and was inspired by their struggle to keeping fighting her own and wasn’t the villain supposed to have ethics? The entire bar is witness to this big bad villain getting scolded by some bookish nobody a foot shorter than them.

When the volunteer is done, the villain calmly knocks back their drink, grips the volunteers shoulder and drags them outside. The bar’s patrons assume that person will never be seen again, the volunteer included. But once they’re outside, the villain apologises for their assumption, asks for the kid’s details so they can drop by in the near future, not saying when for obvious reasons. They also give the very relieved volunteer a phone number to call if someone asks for them again.

A week later, the little girl’s room is covered in villain merchandise, several expensive and clearly stolen gifts and she is happily clutching a stack of signed polaroids of her and the villain.

The next time a kid asks to meet a villain, guess who gets that assignment?

Turns out, the first villain was quite touched by the experience of meeting their little fan, and word has gotten around. The second villain happily agrees when they realise it’s the same volunteer who asked the other guy. Unfortunately, one of the heroes sees the villain entering the kid’s hospital and obviously assumes the worst. They rush in, ready to drag the villain out, but the volunteer stands in their way. The hero spends five minutes getting scolded for trying to stop the villain from actually doing a good thing and almost ruining the kid’s wish. The volunteer gets a reputation among villains as someone who can not only be trusted with personal contact numbers but who will do everything they can to keep law enforcement away during their visits.

The volunteer has a phonebook written in cypher of all the villain’s phone numbers, with asterixes next to the ones to call if any other villains give them trouble.

Around the office, they gain the unofficial job title of The Villain Wrangler.

[beka-tiddalik]

The heroes are genuinely flabbergasted by The Villain Wrangler. At first, some of the heroes try to reason with them.

Heroes: “Can’t you, just, give us their contact details? They’ll never even have to know it was you.”

The Villain Wrangler: “Yeah sure, <rollseyes> because all these evil geniuses could never possibly figure out that it’s me who happens to be the common thread in the sudden mass arrests. Look man, even if it wouldn’t get me killed, it would disappoint the kids. You wouldn’t want to disappoint the kids would you?”

Heroes: “… no~ but…”

The Villain Wrangler: “Exactly.”

Eventually, one of the anti-hero types gets frustrated, and decides to take a stand. They kidnap the Villain Wrangler and demand that they give up the contents of the little black book of Villains, or suffer the consequences. It’s For the Greater Good, the anti-hero insists as they tie the Villain Wrangler to a pillar.

The Villain Wrangler: “You complete idiot, put me back before someone figures out that I’m missing.”

Anti-hero: “…excuse me?”

The Villain Wrangler: “Ugh, do I have to spell this out for you? Do you actually want your secret base to be wiped off the map? With us in it? Sugarsticks, how long has it been? If they get suspicious, they check in, and then if I miss a check-in, they tend to come barging into wherever I am just to prove that they can, even if they figure out that they’re not being threatened by proxy. Suffice to say, Auntie Muriel really regretted throwing my phone into the pool when she strenuously objected to me answering it during family time. If they think for even one moment that I’ve given them up, they won’t hesitate to obliterate both of us from their potential misery. You do know some of the people in my book have like missiles and djinni and elemental forces at their disposal, right?”

Anti-hero: “Wait, what? I thought they trusted you?!”

The Villain Wrangler: “Trust is such a strong word!”

Villain: “Indeed.”

Anti-hero: “Wait, wha-” <slumps over, dart sticking out of neck>

The Villain Wrangler: “Thanks. I thought they were going to hurt me.”

Villain: “You did well. You kept them distracted, and gave us time to follow your signal.” <cuts Villain Wrangler free>

The Villain Wrangler: <rubbing circulation back into limbs> “Yeah well, you know me, I do whatever I have to. So I’ll see you Wednesday at four at St Martha’s? I’ve got an 8yo burns unit patient recovering from her latest batch of skin grafts who could really use a pep talk.”

Villain: “… of course. Yes… I… yes.”

The Villain Wrangler: “I just think you could really reach her, you know?”

Villain: <unconsciously runs fingers over mask> “I… yes, but, what should I say?”

The Villain Wrangler: “Whatever advice you think you could have used the most just after.”

Villain: <hoists Anti-hero over shoulder almost absently> “….yes.”

The Villain Wrangler wasn’t lying to the Anti-hero. They know that the more ruthless villains would not hesitate if they thought for one second that the Anti-hero would betray them.

But this is not the first time the Villain Wrangler has gone to extreme lengths to protect their identities.

Trust is a strong word. The Villain Wrangler earned it, and is terrified by what it could mean.

[shenko]

My first official deadpool headcanon is this. This this this.

[fireandwonder]

Okay but this whole concept actually makes a lot of sense, because villains are a lot more likely to be disfigured/disabled/use adaptive devices (bc ableist tropes), so of course, say, a child amputee is going to be more interested in the villain with a robot arm who almost destroyed New York than the heroes that took him down.

Also, imagine one of the kids gets better, and a few years down the line becomes a villain themself, except their crimes are things like smuggling chemo drugs across the border for families that can’t afford treatment, or stealing from corrupt businessmen to make donations to underfunded hospitals (idk this turned into a Leverage AU or something) and every time the heroes encounter her, they’re like “oh no. she’s getting away. curses. welp, nothing we can do.” Though it isn’t that she can’t take them on; bc of course once the villain from way back when found out what she was up to, he started helping/training her. 

“I thought they just hired someone to dress up and pretend to be you,” she says, amazed, when he reveals himself. “I didn’t think they actually got the real you!”

Every year the Villain Wrangler gets a very expensive gift basket from the pair.

[brosequartz]

and for the kids who don’t get better the villains are there too, they show up to every funeral, they bear too small coffins on their shoulders and the heroes stand aside

they are fierce with grieving families assuring them that their child will not be forgotten, and they don’t balk at negative emotions, they don’t tell people to be strong or “celebrate their child’s life,” because these parents have every right to their grief and anger

and the lost children are never forgotten. flowers appear on graves during birthdays and anniversaries, heroes find pictures of those kids and they carefully take them down and ensure they’re delivered to the villain’s cell, and a few villains can be seen with friendship bracelets wrapped around their wrists the cops have learned not to try and take them off

[beka-tiddalik]

And then one day, one of the evil geniuses who happens to specialise in inducing bizarre genetic mutations meets a young fan who was born with a rare genetic disorder that is slowly killing them, and realises that they can help.

Another, who created their own exosuit, talks to a young fan and suddenly understands how much the technology that they have built for themselves could revolutionise quality of life for people with muscular dystrophy, or paraplegia, or other disorders that confine people to wheelchairs with little mobility.

A third thinks of a way that their nanobots could be used to detect and remove cancer cells when their fan, who had been in remission, writes to say that the doctors have found a new metastasizing tumour.

Then shortly after, an evil genius specialising in cloning is contacted by an old colleague asking if a suitable heart couldn’t be grown for their young fan with a congenital heart condition who needs a donor.

Suddenly, a pattern of villains offering (and marketing) their insights and resources to improve medical science starts to arise. Many who had previously been operating on society’s fringes are shocked to receive public accolades, research grants and job offers from major companies because of their work.

A grassroots movement arises advocating for imprisoned villains with appropriate qualifications and/or experience to have access to resources to conduct research for the public good. The Second Chance Rehabilitation Project launches.

(It is an open secret that only people who have been vetted by the Villain Wrangler are allowed to join, because the Villain Wrangler has by now a meticulously set up method and intelligence network to run background checks and character references through ensure that none of the children wishing to meet their role models get hurt.)

Being able to say that one is involved with the Project begins to look really good in parole hearings. The Villains involved perform their own quality checks on one another, because if one of their kids got hurt, then all of their kids could potentially lose out, and the ones that are serious about the Project are not having that. (Also, the ability to collaborate with other geniuses is the most interesting thing to happen to most of them since losing to various heroes, and most consider the intellectual stimulation to be worth putting up with the ridiculous egoes and inevitable personality clashes that arise.)

Reformed Villains come out of the woodwork to advocate about better mental healthcare, and support systems. Savvy universities and private labs quietly take their advice, setting up better mental health supports and laboratory safety standards to prevent the Brain Drain caused by losing their less stable scientists to the Costumes.

The Villain Wrangler watches all of this develop with a smile.

Their plan succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

[aallen1350]

This is literally a fanfic… That I love TBH!

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12304924/1/The-Villain-Wrangler

It’s DC based but there is another set in the Marvel Universe. It just doesn’t have as many chapters.

Hope this helps!

[probablyasocialecologist]

ALT

[redpandarascal]

same as it ever was