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levyfiles · 9 days

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i feel like if they just said straight up that they don't want to be youtubers cause they're "better than that" - which honestly feels like the subtext here - it would have been better than this disingenuous sentimental nonsense followed by an ask for money, the phrasing of which made it sound like we should feel guilty for consuming their art for free till now

OK, I have said this a few times but this is going to be my last time saying this on tumblr.

Youtube is a platform once built for users in 2006; the idea was for those locked out of the industry to have an opportunity to share their creations. As time went on, the very moment that content started to be funded by sponsors, the platform changed. Decades later, the platform--and believe me when I say this--is controlled by sponsors and ads. A lot of people don't realise this because we all have our ad-block on. We work tirelessly not to have to consume media peddled to us with agendas and propaganda; we pay for software so we don't get it.

We accepted Youtube charging some of us monthly so we don't see ads, so we can enjoy the platform more comfortably. If you're in your early-to late 30s then you know that Youtube crafted a whole lot of our experience online but it has not gone without changes. The ad breaks are now populated with sponsors with a big list of prerequisites and we sit there and guffaw through a straight 40 seconds of a creator peddling fast-fashion, cheap drinks with poison in them, platforms that sell $1 items off the backs of slave labour, and knives that don't even work just so we can sit back and pretend we'd rise to the occasion when an opportunity to practice socialism presents itself.

Well, here's the bad news. Socialism does not mean you sit back and get everything handed to you. That is literally right-wing propaganda. Socialism is every one taking a piece of what they have to crowd-source the things we want. It is letting artists be artists to create things that do not contribute to consumerism/corporate culture.

In the end, the internet has shown me that all these LARPING children believing in the future where shit gets handed to them off the backs of other people's hard work will open their greedy maws and scream slurs, insults, and backhanded statements at any creator who seizes control of the thing they've produced. You don't want to see artists grow; you want creators/artists strapped to the capitalism hamster wheel while they create the same trendy crap that sponsors tell you that you want until they burn out and retire.

The saddest thing of all is the irony of you calling that video sentimental nonsense when it shows you the story; it tells you that they all got started the way most of our favourite youtubers started but then Buzzfeed happened which may have opened some doors for them but if Ryan didn't fight tooth and nail, we would have had a Netflix show with some non descript white guy hosting it because that's the vision Buzzfeed saw. It's what so many of you see when you want the thing you like, that you watch them work tirelessly to make, to be free forever.

Of course they're too good for Youtube. Youtube is trash now and you're going to start to notice that very quickly now.

#watcher #shane madej #ryan bergara #steven lim #youtube

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barmadumet · 4 months

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You’ve seen all the Star Wars decor all over the house, but THIS is my private little sanctuary in my bedroom closet that’s just mine ❤️

I reworked the space during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays to make room for my treasures from the cons I attended to meet Hayden & Ewan 🖤🤍

Friends, I’ve been thinking about logging off tumblr for good lately. Social media exploded when I started college at the end of 2005, and I stayed away from ALL platforms until joining tumblr in 2020, and even after that, it took me several months to start posting and interacting. My main concern was my self-esteem - my mental health. I have always struggled with not feeling good enough and comparing myself to others. I made the decision to give this a try when I was in a good headspace - when I felt mature enough and strong enough to fight those negative feelings. It hasn’t always been easy these last few years, but it’s been so very rewarding. The good always outweighed the bad.

But lately, I’m not sure I can say that any longer. I feel like I am straddling a fine line. It surprises me how much things I see here can affect my mood and feelings of self-worth. Thanks to past (somewhat recent) trauma, I wrestle more than ever with this voice inside my head that says, “You don’t matter.” And usually, I can find ways to justify that being a false statement… Right now, I can’t find any reason not to believe it. For the moment, I do believe it. I feel if I vanished, it wouldn’t make a difference.

The friends I’ve made here are honestly what is carrying me through. And I can exit this space and keep those relationships, but then I wonder what I might miss out on. What about the new friends I’ve yet to meet? What about those people that I really don’t have side conversations with but always make me smile when I see their names in my posts’ notes? What about all the art that is yet to be created that I wouldn’t get to see? What about all the comms I wouldn’t get to share with you? How would I even know when comms are open??

My decision isn’t made. I’m going to try to hang in there and focus on all the positives. I’m feeling fragile, but typically, opening up helps me to better sort things out. So, here’s what’s in my head, and here’s what’s in my bedroom closet lol. I invite you in - because that’s the scary and vulnerable thing to do - the thing that’ll make or break a situation.

I want you to know that I care deeply for each and every one of you - maybe too much - and maybe that’s part of the problem. Not everyone will care in return, but that’s my issue. That’s something I need to learn to be okay with. I thought I had toughened up in my old age, but I suppose the tenderheartedness will always be a part of who I am, waiting to flood my emotions in weak moments. The people that are reading this give me the will to be strong ❤️

#tmi #my Star Wars sanctuary #my stupid self esteem #I’m losing the battle #am I believing lies or finally seeing the truth?

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bettsfic · 9 months

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Hi betts! Hope you're doing good! Do you have any advice on how to distance yourself from social media? I saw that you've done so with success and the older I get the more I feel a bit trapped by the internet.

social media certainly has benefits: keeping people connected, giving a voice to those who otherwise wouldn't have a platform, and it allows you to meet new people in the context of interest rather than location.

at least, these are the things social media set out to be, and over time those benefits, to me anyway, haven't been able to outweigh the drawbacks: compulsively checking apps, doomscrolling, content appearing by algorithm to attempt to cater to my interests, and just generally a lot of wasted time.

i don't necessarily believe that if you stop using social media, suddenly you'll be able to devote every minute of your day to a higher pursuit. the brain doesn't work like that. it always needs downtime. before phones, we had television. before television, we had radio. lacking glowing screens and people telling us things from far away, i think we'd all spend a lot of time looking at the things humans are built to look at: fire, water, mountains, sky. we'll listen to stories or read them or watch them.

during your mind's downtime, i don't think anything you decide to do is fundamentally better or worse than any other thing. but i do think social media is designed to manipulate our attention toward it during that downtime (and honestly, all other times) and that pisses me off. it also pisses me off that even though we impose cause-and-effect sequences to our interaction with social media, it doesn't often provide us with a narrative the way reading, watching tv, or listening to a podcast would. stories are a psychological necessity; without the mind's ability to perceive sequences of events and connect them, we wouldn't have memories. we would have no concept of time, of thinking into the past or casting our thoughts into the future. social media, in its drive to keep us scrolling, looking at posts with no narrative connection to one another, deprives us of the stories our minds seek during our downtime.

this got super long so i'm putting it under a cut. tl;dr you need to remove social media as a positive stimulus and build immediate positive stimuli into other aspects of your life. in other words, social media feels good immediately but neutral or bad over time; most other things like reading feel bad or neutral initially but good over time. so you have to find ways to make the latter feel good with the immediacy of the former.

i don't mean to be "old man shakes fist at cloud" about this. i'm a millennial. from facebook's widespread release through the beginning of the pandemic, i raced to every new social media platform. i was an early myspace adopter. my high school graduating class was the very first year people outside of college could use facebook, and so we're the first cohort to have all befriended each other before graduation and never lost touch, completely removing the appeal of a reunion. i joined twitter in 2008 but never used it, and i joined tumblr in 2012 and never stopped using it.

i remember the day i got a smartphone. i was a few years behind everyone else. it was 2010 and i'd just gotten my first office job and i was desperate to be able to look at social media, scroll through stuff or read something, when i was bored. it was an iPhone 4. and as soon as i got it out of the box, i sat and played on it for 10 straight hours.

for those of you who are too young to remember a time before smartphones, i can't emphasize enough how much they changed things. in my life, i went from waking up and eating breakfast and reading for a little bit, to waking up and eating breakfast and getting on my computer to look at facebook and read my daily webcomics, to waking up and reaching over to my nightstand and looking at my phone.

and i don't know, i just decided i didn't want that anymore. last fall i was at this artist residency with no cell service and barely any wifi. and one day the wifi went out. i had a visceral negative reaction to that, which made me step back and go, oh wow, i am way too tethered to the internet. that day, wandering around the property with nothing to do, i got this intense urge to read an old paperback novel. you know, the mass market paperbacks with the pulpy yellow paper and the misaligned typeface. and so i found a very old copy of fellowship of the ring, cracked it open, and read it all day.

the thing about getting away from social media is that it's slow. i don't think you can really go cold turkey. when i got home from the residency, i went on a long hiatus and had all these strict rules for myself about when i was allowed to look at my phone and when i wasn't, but that didn't really work for me. but i did delete all the social media apps from my phone, and on my computer i logged out of all of them and deleted my saved passwords, so if i wanted to check them, i had to go to that extra step of logging in and even typing in my password. and that doesn't seem like a lot, but when you're checking social media out of habit, muscle memory, something to attend to that might give you a brief blip of dopamine, having to type your password is just one step too far. the brief pleasure i would get from checking my notifications was less than the hassle of logging in.

and that's what it all comes down to: feeling good. in the moment, it feels good to check a social media app, to see that somebody has interacted with your content or maybe with you directly. it's that tiny subconscious exclamation point, the feeling we get when somebody politely smiles or waves at us, when a dog comes up to us wagging his tail, when a well-meaning stranger compliments your outfit. that's the social part of social media. but that's also the part that keeps us cycling through our apps out of habit and boredom.

so you have to take away that stimulus from yourself, and you have to create positive stimuli elsewhere. to take away the positive stimulus of social media, you have to stop posting content on it. content is the mind killer. when you tweet something, your impulse might be to check that someone has interacted with it. but if you step away from the great conversation of social media, nobody speaks back to you, and you develop more patience for the longer-term good feelings of reading a book.

of course, that's complicated. i guess the first step that i did a long time ago was losing interest in traffic and developing the internal validation skills that make interaction on social media a bonus, not a need. before that, though, i had a drive to be seen and listened to. i think i just grew out of that. regardless of the existence of the internet, all people throughout history have spent their lives developing their relationship with themselves, learning who they are and coming to accept it. i'm not sure there's a way to rush that inner journey along.

creating positive stimuli is a matter of adopting a kind of little-treat attitude toward things. you have to really pay attention to yourself. the day i picked up the fellowship of the ring, i remembered that paper is important to me. vitally important. i like to write on it. i like to read from it. and it's kind of weird to say "paper is my special interest," but it is. all tools of writing interest me. so acknowledging that, accepting it and choosing to accommodate it, was my first small goal of building immediate positive stimuli.

some of the connection we have to social media (and phones in general) is the physical habit that develops from it. when smokers quit smoking, their hands feel empty. they're used to having something between their fingers, and so they replace that with something like a pen or a straw.

for me, i replaced the physical habit of phone-checking with paper-holding, either in the form of a book, or a notebook and pen. i set about finding my perfect notebook: the one that feels best to hold, the one i'm eager to fill, the one whose paper is quality enough that i love to write on it. the one i found and that kind of changed my life was a Rhodia A4 spiral bound. i take it everywhere with me. in fact i went to the doctor earlier this week and because i was holding my notebook, it didn't even occur to me to look at my phone while i was waiting for the doctor to see me, even though it was in my pocket (and i did download tumblr again, and instagram to support my sister, who is kind of a local influencer). the positive stimulus of looking at it had become less than the positive stimulus of holding my notebook. the potential to easily write something or doodle felt better than the distraction of social media.

did my doctor probably think it was weird that i was taking notes? maybe. did i look weird sitting in the theater before seeing oppenheimer, brainstorming barbie fic ideas? definitely. but i just don't care anymore. sometimes making healthy choices for yourself in a world built to manipulate your attention makes you look weird.

my advice is to spend a week without social media apps on your phone, logged out of them on your computer, and pay very close attention to the things that make you happiest. find ways to interact with those things continuously, and see what happens.

#writing advice #reading advice #social media

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reasonsforhope · 1 year

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A wild about post appears!

Hey! Call me Cactus. They/them, late twenties. I also run Direct Action for Hope, for petitions/campaigns/protests that don’t fit on a good news blog, as well as my own takes and activism.

Queer, trans, disabled, white, USian, for context. (Please let me know if I accidentally post something offensive, btw! I promise I have like. an actual ability to take that kind of feedback gracefully and work to remedy the situation)

Some Info about This Blog

Actual good news only!

No heartwarming stories that aren’t actually news. No stories that other sources THINK are heartwarming, but that are actually super depressing and dystopic!

All websites/sources are at least preliminarily vetted by me

If I don’t think a source and/or a news story I find is accurate or reliable enough, I find a new, better source with a new, better article

Relatedly, any links that have the url web.archive go to an Internet Archive copy of a paywalled article. Usually this is the LA Times, NY Times, or Washington Post. Not a weird suspicious link, I promise!

All posts are cited and dated at the end!

All posts should be tagged, including for major/common content warnings. I can’t promise that I won’t miss any warnings, but I am definitely keeping an eye on this

Filter the tag “not news” if you only want to see the news articles/posts

Feel free to send me articles to look at or submit posts! I’ll vet these before I feature them. That said, you might be waiting A While, because despite many efforts to the contrary I am the worst about checking/answering messages. Sorry about that

Posts are generally long because I have Many Words And Endless Details Disease. Hopefully the thoroughness and the bolded highlights make up for that

A couple people have asked me if I could share their donation posts, so I wanted to pin this up: I’m sorry, but unfortunately, I will not be sharing any donation posts, because I don’t have the time or skills to vet all of them and weed out any potential scams. If you’re struggling, please check out this post, which lists communities designed for donation posts and mutual aid. You’re much more likely to get help there than on tumblr. You can also find other mutual aid resource lists and wikis here, here, and here

If you’re struggling with depression or anxiety, especially around climate anxiety or climate grief, there’s a really, really thorough directory of crisis hotlines by country that you can find here. Seriously, they have so many countries I wouldn’t have expected them to list - try it, if it might help

Tip Jar

I put a lot of work and passion into this blog—and a not inconsiderable amount of time. Also, I’ve been too disabled to work much at all for most of the past year...rip. (but thankfully doing better now!) So, if you want to support my work, you can buy me a coffee!

Good News Source

You can find a comprehensive list of all the websites I’ve bookmarked as sources for this blog here!

Note about Gaza

I will be posting good news (as much good news as there can be in this sort of situation) about the ongoing genocide in Gaza, because one of the most important ways to help is to refuse to be silent. Palestinians in Gaza have asked us to please keep talking about it, that it really does help, so I’m going to listen.

And honestly, my disabilities significantly interfere with my ability to take irl action like going to protests, so using what platform I have here really is all the more important to me. (Though I am also setting a notif on my phone to remind me to call my representatives every few days, and I encourage you to do the same if feasible.)

All that said! It is completely legitimate to need a break from horrific news (a huge part of why I started this blog), and it’s also legitimate to say “I need to find out about this stuff Not from my tumblr dash.”

If news about the war/genocide (esp on social media specifically) is making you spiral and shit, then I genuinely encourage you to filter out these posts. I’m not judging. I have significant filters around what Israel/Palestine stuff I see on here myself, because I want to be very intentional about the times I do engage with it. (Which is every few days and via the Actual News.)

I’m committing to fact-checking this stuff before posting, fyi, even with reblogs.

So, tl;dr:

I will be posting about Palestine and Gaza

I will still only post good news, eg: about successful protests, aid reaching Gaza, progress toward ceasefire

I’ll only post actual, concrete news, not just Politicians Saying Words

If you need to not find about this shit from tumblr and/or my tumblr, then filter out the tags “Palestine” and “cw war”

If you don't want to see my posts on this blog about the Israel-Palestine War, then block the tags "Palestine" and "cw war"

if you need a break, then take a break

#about #me #not news #reasonsforhope

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justjstuff · 1 year

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Babes. I really appreciate all the asks about Daughter of Fire! It makes me happy to see that people love it as much as I do, I just gotta ask something of y’all. Please leave a review before sending an ask here! I noticed a lot of you don’t do that (not to mention the anon asks that I can’t possibly know if they did comment or not) and I just wanna explain a bit why it matters. I don’t know if u guys have been around here for as long as I have but the fandom culture changed a lot over the years, not all of it for the better. Five, ten years ago, it used to be the norm to comment on almost every single fic you read, in every chapter. There used to be discussions in the comment section, readers answering readers and sparking conversation… just genuinely a lot more interaction than nowadays. I’ve mentioned this before but I felt like writing another post about it.

Please notice that I’m not saying “don’t ever send me an ask about DoF again” or “you should be giving me comments NOW!!!”. I’ve just been scrolling through my endless unanswered asks and noticed that there were a lot like those I mentioned.

Now, I know sometimes it’s hard to send a review. I, myself, sometimes get so anxious just by the thought of writing a comment that I just don’t even read the fic/chapter. But notice how this is aimed towards the people who already took the time off their day to sit down on Tumblr and send me an ask. It would take the same amount of time to drop a review! And you can even do it anonymously too!

Anyways, this isn’t a complaint, I’m just always a bit sad to see that this is the way we led fandom culture? I know it might seem a bit disingenuous to be saying that when DoF has the reach it has but keep in mind that I also write other fics and most of them only get a little bit of engagement. It’s honestly disheartening because while I don’t write fanfiction for the comments, I do share it for them. I could just write them and satisfy that need and keep it to myself, never putting myself out there so others might judge me but I do because I love the fanfiction community and I love interacting with it.

I also noticed that authors who don’t have their social media linked tend to have more engagement in the comment section and that’s kinda what this post is about. Although we don’t comment as much as we did back in the days, it’s still the way some people choose to give fics their time of day, they see if there’s a lot of hits/kudos/comments before even giving it a try. So it does matter in a way that the engagement gets through other media only like some of the asks here! I’m not saying stop interacting with me here and keep only to the comment section, even because I chose to link all my social media because I love interacting w y’all in a deeper level here and on twt and other platforms but like. If you do choose to reach out to me, don’t forget to leave a review!

As I’m writing this I’m already regretting it lmao I don’t want to seem ungrateful and nitpicky but in the end I’m forcing myself to post this because it might spark some conversation and I do know a lot of authors feel like I do. We’re seeing how much writing isn’t being valued in our society and that’s kind of the same in fandom culture imo and I dunno. What do y’all think?

Love u to bits and I’ll see you soon 🖤

Oh, btw! Regarding the next DoF update!!! I can’t, and really it’s more like I don’t want to, give you guys a precise date. I struggled for quite some time with feeling like DoF was a chore, a job I had to keep up otherwise I would let everyone down and that (and some other stuff) led me to the biggest writer’s block I’ve ever had in my life. I’m just now trying to reconnect with that part of me that loves writing and finds actual enjoyment in tackling this huge and complex fic (and any and all writing tbh), so I don’t want to slip back into that same pattern I had before. I don’t like the term hiatus for fanfiction because it gives me this notion that the author is obligated to go back to the fic when in fact they’re not (unless the fic has a set update schedule and the author is letting u know when they’ll be back). No one is getting paid for this and most of us study and work full time jobs before coming and sharing something that can be really personal with strangers on the internet. If an author wants to drop their fic and never come back to fandom life than that’s their prerogative. We as fanfic readers kinda sign that unwritten contract that when we start reading an unfinished fic we might never get to see the end of it. However, I like the term hiatus because it illustrates my point with this which is: I’m not done with Daughter of Fire. I just don’t know when I’ll update next. Rest assured that if I ever decided to let it go, I would let everyone know. I would release all the chapters I have written, I would give y’all all of my notes and unfinished drafts and lone scenes, I would give you the document where I tell you step by step what would happen until the very end of the fic (and the sequel I have planed for it 👀). And I would also leave it open to anyone who wants to continue it to pick it up and give it a try. As it stands, I’m nowhere near done with Daughter of Fire 🖤

#daughter of fire #dof #kakasaku #fandom #fandom life #fandom culture #fanfic culture #fanfic #fanfiction #just me being silly #and talking mostly at myself lol #i love y’all

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mooifyourecows · 10 months

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Hey moo! I miss you, and I hope ur doing well. College has beat (and is beating) my ass and I read ur fics regularly to keep me going. Wanted to ask if ur on threads? I know that it's new and controversial, but tbh tumblr is more mean to me than any other platform I've been on (I've never been on twt). What do u think?

Oh, no, I'm never touching Threads lmao there are waaaaaay too many red flags. Also I'm not interested in another algorithmic socmed app. I don't even enjoy the ones I have. Twitter pisses me off and tiktok is only good like a quarter of the time (and that's being generous). Not to mention I don't have an instagram, and am not interested in Meta's horrible data scraping. Zuckerberg is trying to get a monopoly on social media and I'm just not interested in helping him out.

Honestly I strongly advise people to not play into this pissing match between billionaires. I think we should cut off their heads and parade them through the streets, bathed in their blood, not give them more attention and money. I hope Elon and Zuck do their cage match and kill each other.

Tumblr is on thin ice with staff edging all these piece of shit changes but that's why everyone should do the surveys in the post I reblogged recently and keep making your opinions be known. Who knows if it'll actually be effective but it's better than giving in to the capitalistic dopamine machine

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lansplaining · 1 year

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it’s silly but honestly a bit of a downer comparing jiang cheng’s birthday last year to this year-- so many people who were making great posts and art and just generally contributing to the energy of it have already left the fandom. tumblr is better than any other social media platform going right now for fandom stuff, but i really do miss the days of being able to cultivate long-term communities. i definitely came to this fandom “late,” but a year after the show ended isn’t that long in fandom time back in the old days!

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batboyblog · 1 year

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Things I like about Tumblr, 2022

first off, Tumblr isn't perfect, it's full of people, and people in general and on-line can be pretty crap, but in a rare move for me I'm looking at the good.

you are not expected to post under your own name/face. In fact people would think you were pretty freaking weird if you did. To the Best of my knowledge only one person posts under their own name with their face as a profile pic, Hi Neil Gaiman! If we keep this up Tumblr will not become a semi-work space like twitter

No one knows your follower count (and honestly you shouldn't know it either) The level of brain rot I see on twitter around having a big follower count is so embarrassing, "help me get to X million!" is so very cringe, much like blue checks its a meaningless thing and we're all better off not knowing who's "popular" there are popular posts not people.

I have a very popular post about the long term nature of Tumblr so I won't go too much into it other than to say that it's nice that we can have long term jokes and memes on here, because we're able to reblog things from the past without any shame and judgement and so a culture and in jokes and yearly (or weekly) events happen here in a way I don't see on more "now! now! now!" social media.

You can do whatever, linking to #1 because we're not a semi-professional webpage where people are selling their "brand" etc there's little to no pressure (outside of yourself) to stay on topic or theme, you can and should reblog that gif set of a funny show from 10 years ago, that moody art shot of a field before a storm, and that short video of puppies falling over, wild out.

You decide if people see your likes. How many times did people get busted for having porn in their Twitter likes, where here no one can judge you, again we're not a work space so if you like that picture of a man in jock strap, go for it reblog that shit, but if you're shy don't worry you can enjoy what you enjoy without having to share with the class.

We hate crypto, we hate NFT, we always have we always will and thats very sexy of us

you can (still) say what you like. The need to make platforms safe for advisors and influencers has lead to "unalive" and other ways to try to get around using bad words. On Tumblr I can say that Elon Musk sucks a whole bucket of monkey shit and I hope he's pushed down the stairs at Twitter HQ.

Tags my beloved, tags are funny, lovely cool little notes, a way to add a joke, say something heart felt etc without worrying "is this needed?" and guess what if the answer was "yes it was" someone will screen shot them and add them to the post for you, win win.

Long form thought, I know this is a semi-jokey list but like no joking I think having all our politicians, journalists and "thought leaders" spending all day on and mainly communicating through a webpage with a very small character limit was/is very bad for our society. Tumblr (as you can see) you can write an essay (I don't think those people should come here, but I never run out of characters)

there's nowhere better for formatting gifs or picture sets, I honestly can't imagine trying to post a series of gifs or pictures on Insta or Twitter and having them all folded up rather than laid out in order all visible at once (and not cropped down, well most of the time)

There's no algorithm, everyone says it but it needs to be on the list, there's no real hand holding pushing you to this or that, there's nothing boosting or hiding your post, you pick what you like and follow it, and then those blogs do something weird and different and thats chill and you keep on.

we're the gay trans sex website, pretty much no where else on-line can you find this much dumb, non sequitur queer humor or as supportive of the trans experience, yes there are TERFs but they are more fringe here than basically any where else.

we just don't matter, back to #1 we are not a place where you can market yourself or your brand or whatever, as such things are just not that serious, this is a social media website made for fun, to enjoy TV, books, and movies mainly but really whatever you do enjoy.

negative I'd like to address before I go, the on-going porn ban, I'm not in favor of porn itself on here, I don't think we need gif sets of studio porn or whatever. But once Tumblr was a safe space for a lot of queer performers to spread their self made work. It also was a safe space for Queer art, both photographic and drawn, to express sensuality and sexuality. And a safe space for Queer artists to draw art of characters totally fucking the shit out of each other. It was a place where enjoyment of the human form and sexuality could be mixed with all the other parts of life as normal. There were for sure problems, however in an ever more censored and sex negative world I think a freed Tumblr is more needed than ever, so I hope we figure that out soon.

#Tumblr #twitter #social media #meta #thoughts

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csvidaldraws · 9 months

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What websites/platforms can artists even use anymore? Honestly, I feel like there aren't any where one can try to build a following.

Tumblr is sort of dead for artists. Completely dead if you are not a fandom artist. I'm lucky to get two or three likes on a post.

DeviantART is dead, period.

Twitter I never used because of the terrible layout, word limitation and lack of customization...and now it's also dead.

Instagram was the best bet before they changed the algorithm and app to only care about already popular posts and video formats. Now it's dying for artists.

ArtStation was never welcoming to anything that isn't high-end digital concept art.

I have never been able to build a following anywhere, and now I feel like there aren't even places to try and do it anymore.

And I have been trying for so many years. I used to think I couldn't get followers because my art wasn't good, but nothing changed as I improved. I have tried changing the way I use tags, engaging with other content, minding my pages' aesthetics, whatever the guides say. Nothing has ever worked.

It has made me resent making art. My art skills are better than they have ever been but I struggle to even finish one piece a month because I am so jaded. I discard all ideas before I even pick up a pencil because the concept is not "interesting" enough, not complete enough, not enough to stand out on any social media.

And before someone sees this and tells me to "just make art for myself" - I do. That's why I haven't 'sold out' to drawing popular fandoms I have no interest in. That advice is still naive because one can't make a living without a following. And is it really so hard to believe art is meant to be shared?

...I won't even get into the depressive spiral one can get into when considering the rise of AI art. After all, this was meant to be a question and it turned into a whole rant. Will people see it? Probably not. In case anyone does...feel free to rant along. I am sure I am not the only one living this.

#Art #Artists on Tumblr #Small Artist #Rant #Art Block

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munchbuddi · 6 months

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I feel like perhaps people might have a little bit of a hard time figuring out that some bad things are worse than other bad things. (at least in generally small meaningless situations, where it really doesn't matter a whole bunch, but I still wanna complain about a post I saw anyways)

Saw a post where somebody was like "I will never use Bluesky as a social media platform, because Jack Dorsey is a Crypto Bro" which is honestly fine, (because damned if I can tell you to use a social media platform that objectively sucks ass) but the problem is that they seemed to imply that posting here on TUMBLR is somehow better.

Ya know, TUMBLR!! The website that was sued by the state of New York for algorithmicly suppressing and banning users for posting LGBTQIA stuff, and even AFTER getting sued, STILL regularly flags the profiles of trans creators as NSFW!! Tumblr!! The website that literally this past month has been deleting posts and banning users who are outspoken against GENOCIDE, because let's not forget here that TUMBLR is undenyably PRO-ISREAL and PRO-IDF as a company!!! The same Tumblr that has been slowly making itself less and less accessable over the years by bloating itself with features like Tumblr Live that every user hates!! THIS IS A WEBSITE WITH BAD MORALS, AND ISNT EVEN USEABLE ENOUGH TO JUSTIFY DEFENDING!!

AND WHERE ELSE ARE YA GONNA POST?? The fucking bird app that has the owner that regularly shares hate speech and allows PragerU to take out million dollar anti-trans ads?? The stupid short video app that is verifiably spyware that censors literally WHATEVER THEY FEEL LIKE whenever they want for no reason with no explanation?? The propaganda website run by the other awful tech dude bro who turned all our grandparents racist and regularly allows people to share harmful misinformation to interfere with foreign elections?? The photo app that's owned by the same people who own the racist grandpa app? The Other Other app that's owned by the people who own the racist grandpa app? The long video app that loves hate speech and conspiracy theories owned by the company who owns the most amount of data of any company ever, because they essentially own the internet? (in order: Twitter/X. Tiktok. Facebook. Instagram. Threads. YouTube.)

AND ALL OF THESE SERVICES ARE LITERALLY SPY WARE, ERODING YOUR PERSONAL PRIVACY IN FAVOR OF ADS!!!

like, fuck Bluesky and all, because it is GENUINELY a pretty dog shit service, but I fail to see in the grand scheme of things how its supposedly somehow worse than any other social media platforms. Jack Dorsey is a fucking LOSER and an annoying tech bro, but unfortunately he's probably a little bit less evil than the other techbros who have 100x as much money as him!!

Also, Tumblr users really like to hate on Tumblr 24/7, but then give it a weird pass whenever it's time to hate on other social media platforms, but you GOTTA stop deluding yourselves, TUMBLR is just as legitimately evil as the others!! It's simply got a liberal coat of paint on its facist core, and has a site culture that YOU LIKE BETTER than the other sites!!!

My thoughts on this extend to NewGrounds as well, because is certainly IS annoying that NewGrounds is run by shitty edgy artists, and has a general site culture of spoiled milk, but anybody who wants to pretend that edgy artists is somehow worse than Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, or whatever the fuck is going on with TikTok and Google is being disingenuine.

Use whatever Social Media platform you feel like, god fucking knows everyone out here is just trying to make meaningful connections to others and share pieces of themselves to internet users they would have no means of connecting with otherwise, but I really really implore Tumblr Users to stop acting like Their Shit Don't Stink.

#munchposting #rambling keeps the mind at bay

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glassprism · 1 year

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Since twitter is a mess these days due to owns it now do you have any good recommendations? Any good social platforms for theater people?

Bold of you to assume I'm on enough social media to even have recommendations.

That being said, I can give you a run-down of... some of the stuff I'm on, whether it counts as social media or not. I'll try to go in semi-chronological order. Big caveat that this is based mostly on my own experience; so much of social media is what you make of it and the niche you create for yourself, so it can be hard to determine what is the "general vibe" and what is just "my opinion". Having said all that, here we go.

Forums - Definitely not the oldest place for phans to congregate online, but it's the oldest I've been on, so I'll just start here. I honestly only know one, Deserted Phans, and it's pretty quiet. (No wait, I know another, but it's the phandom equivalent of the shadow lands and we will not speak of what goes on there.) When active, it tends to be the place for many older (or old-school) fans, people who were there when the ALW musical first opened, viewed many of the original casts, saw the changes wrought by the 2004 movie and LND first-hand, probably got into actual fistfights with ALW and CamMack. Cool people, but they've seen A Lot and are a bit tired. Nowadays, it's probably not worth it to make an account since they're so quiet, but the nature of forums is they're great archives of info, so that's a good reason to check them out.

Facebook - You can follow the official Facebook page for Phantom on here, but the closed, private groups are where most of the discussion is at. That being said, remember, it's Facebook; the people on there tend to be older, less Internet-savvy, and less connected to other parts of the phandom, so be prepared to see constant rehashes of the same old arguments, over and over again (if I see "Team Erik or Team Raoul?" or "How do you guys feel about the 2004 movie / LND?" one more time...). Occasionally yields some spectacularly funny conversations that you can pass around to your friends.

YouTube - It's YouTube, so most everything is video content and the comments are not worth reading. You'll get people of all ages and experiences here, and their commentary will reflect that. Expect a lot of "Ramin Karimloo and Sierra Boggess are the best!" or "Why do people hate Gerard Butler and Emmy Rossum so much? I love them!" type comments. Good if you want to get a bead on casual phandom. I use it mainly for bootlegs and promo footage of shows.

Reddit - There's a dedicated subreddit for Phantom, but it's pretty quiet. I don't go on there too often, but it feels like a slightly better version of the Facebook phandom - a lot of the same questions popping up over and over, but there are some oldies on there ready to give intelligent, nuanced responses if needed. If you ask the right question, good for discussion and responses as it's more text-based.

Twitter - I know you're trying to flee Twitter right now because it's a hell hole, but before you go, I really do need you to make a verified fake account of Cameron Mackintosh and announce that the original stagings of Phantom and Les Mis will be returning. In less than a year. To every country worldwide.

Tumblr - Age-wise, skews a little younger than some of the other places, more older teenager to young adult (thinking 18 to 30s, though there are many, many exceptions). Image- and text-based, so good for gifsets, art, or meta and fic. Very much what you make of it, and who you follow will probably determine what kind of fandom experience and discussion you get, but I've seen people willing to talk about fic, about shipping about meta, about the various adaptations, pretty much whatever you want. Can definitely be some discourse, though I think the phandom is comparatively quiet.

Instagram - In terms of age, I think Instaphandom tends to be a little younger than Tumblr (more teenagers IMO). Very, very picture- and video-based, but also very popular, and lot of actors and people involved in the show and various versions are on there. Didn't have that good of a reputation a few years ago, mainly because people on there kept reposting stuff, but it seems better now. Good place to get very... in-the-moment news and postings, I think. Has some drama and such, again because of how young the population is and the presence of celebrities, but can also be a great source for information that you won't get elsewhere (e.g. news updates, casting info).

Discord - Think of this as like a big group chat. If you're into that, you might have fun on Discord. What you get is very dependent on what kind of server you join, servers being the places where people congregate and talk. Some are public and so you'll have very active conversations with a wide variety of people, some are private and quiet and more like an online friend group. The group chat nature of it can make it overwhelming, but if you're okay with that, it's where a lot of phandom discussion is happening.

TikTok - I dunno, I'm not on here, but it looks like a wild place. Seems to have a lot of young people. The weirdest discourse appears to be coming from here. If you go, tell me what it's like.

#GP gets asks #anonymous

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crimsonaurorablog · 1 year

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This is gonna be a long, rambling post but I felt like I had to discuss it. Feel free to scroll right on past my cringe monologue.

Anyway.

I was just laying down with not much to do when I started thinking back on my Google+ days. And, man.

Yeah so like, Google+ was my main social media from the period of 2014-2017. I made a lot of friendships on it and it helped a lot with coming out of my shell and trying to socialise more. It was a really formative period for me.

One day, I just quit it cold turkey and abandoned a lot of the friends I had made on it, without giving any real explanation. If I could go back and do things differently, that would be one of those things.

From memory, I had close to 900 followers on there? I don't know how honestly, but looking back that's a really scary number of people. And I'm pretty certain most of them were genuine users and not bots. If I had that following nowadays it would be terrible for my psyche. I'm not sure what exactly changed, but just thinking about that makes me a nervous wreck.

When it was shut down in April of 2019, I didn't really feel much, other than a small amount of catharsis, as there were a fair few unpleasant people on the platform with bigoted views, which in retrospect very easily could've swayed me politically and sent me down a far right rabbit hole. Very thankful that didn't happen.

Reflecting on it now though, it's tragic. Any chance I had to remedy those lost friendships is now gone.

That isn't to say that I lost everyone, as I do still have a few of them added on Discord, though I very rarely converse with them. But the ones I did lose, well, as far as I'm concerned they're gone forever. And maybe those friendships were never meant to be, but it's sad to think about what could've been.

I was able to archive the images I shared, but none of the text posts and private messages were preserved, and that upsets me. Being able to look back on those formative years and how I communicated would be nice, but that's all gone now. All I have left are the memories from that time, the good and the bad. And I don't know how much longer I'll hold on to those memories.

Google+ was far from a perfect social media, and it was shut down for a fair enough reason, but it's tragic what I and many others lost. Maybe something similar will happen with Twitter any day now; it's seeming more and more likely to me with each passing day.

If you take anything away from this, it's that you should never take anything for granted, and also that you should save your data backups. You don't wanna forget the good times you had, even if it's just in the form of images, gifs and mp4s, that's still better than nothing.

Also, always have a backup platform to keep in touch with your friends. Who even knows how long Discord and Tumblr will be around for?

#crimson rambles about dumb shit #but it's okay because this is my blog and i can discuss whatever i want #google+

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boba-beom · 10 months

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DING DING DING! congrats! you are correct!

it's one way for me to socialize with you guys because of

(1) how fast you guys are speaking in discord (ngl i kinda feel left out a lot of times) especially with me waking up to find 200-1000 comments that i have to mute the group chat worrying about my phone battery

(2) how i live on the other side of the world so i can't to you guys as much without losing sleep.

other than that, i hope you learn more about me.

also, me only using youtube and tumblr as my social media platforms is because of the bad relationship i had with others social media platforms. i don't use tiktok at all because of the oversaturation and seeing people around me obsessing about tiktok challenges that it turns me off from joining. i also quit instagram because i use to compare myself with others, even with my friend circle. i also have other social medias like snapchat, facebook, and others i couldn't think about but deleted it because i don't use them anymore, while i used to be active on kpop stan twt before the toxicity comes to me but i still own it because it relates to the monthly minecraft event that i watched lmao. so i delete social media to detox myself and delete myself form the internet as best as i could so that people could only find me based on my internet persona.

i am back on instagram but purely so that i could open a portfolio page for the gfx designs i made for my hellsite fics and others...

do you have any leftover questions you want me to answer???

p.s. hope you're having fun with the cloudbusting fic you're planning. ngl i didn't think you'll be doing it for real hehe

-🐝

WHOOP I knew my inkling was right! it wouldn't leave me :>

I understand and I'm sorry about that :< I know the group chat blows up so much and time zones are difficult but we do love having you there when you come on! <3

I have definitely learnt a lot about you , considering we have a google spread with all the hits you gave us collectively hehe I get where you're coming from in terms of social media and I think if that's what helps and is better for you then it that's good, you know? I had a social media detox at one point too with only tumblr being my only social but I've been alright everywhere, I just usually dip after I go on it. sometimes social media isn't for everything so I understand!

no question actually, but I just wanna say that you answering your own anon ask threw me off because that was the only thing that held me back from not suspecting you hehe it was fun nonetheless!

I just can't believe that I was super late to catch on that bee is in beabadoobee T^T things came to pretty late because I was busy with family, friends and packing the past week but literally the other night I managed to give myself time to search, link and piece together these things :> it was fun honestly, really pieced these things at 2AM hehe

OMG so I watched palm springs and it's interesting, I just don't know if I would make a long fic based on the movie, a short scenario from the movie (like when the song comes on, but idk how I would write about that without writing a long fic) or I'll just listen to the song and figure out what scenario to write about, but from listening to it a few times it does sound dreamy. still just gonna think of a scenario :> I'll figure it out ^^

thanks again lissie it was fun getting to interact with you this way! just know that you're very much loved in the gc! and in general, you're amazing and so are your works, it's an acquired taste <3

#lissie ᡣ𐭩 #writingmochi ᡣ𐭩 #🐝 anon #[ 🧸 ] — mutuals.#[ 🪴 ] — asks.

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