{ al } { they/them } {21+ } { read my about page / byf please } { TERFs, racists, nazis, pedos/proshippers, and other nasties fuck off }
I’m Al! You can also call me Xeno. I’m the guy with the dragon puppet. You can find more of said puppet here!
they/them, queer, adult, go read my about page. BLM, ACAB. fuck NFTs and fuck ai “art”.
basic DNI stuff; no TERFs/transmeds, no ace/aro exclusionists, no pro-shippers, no racists or other bigots of any variety. If you unironically and genuinely refer to yourself as “problematic”, you’re not wanted here. Go away.
Also if you have any harry potter stuff on your blog, I’ll block you on sight. Same goes for hazbin/helluva fans. I will also block you if your main/following blog is mostly or entirely dedicated to NSFW content (don’t take it personally, it’s for my own comfort).
I also have a Spore sideblog, @xenospores! It’s not super active but I try to keep a semi-steady queue of my creations.
There’s also a secret literally not secret just not linked oc blog. If you find it you get a gold star and some mediocre oc lore. I also have a worldbuilding blog in progress; I’ll link it when I feel comfortable enough to make it public.
“please buy crabs so that Tumblr doesn’t have to implement changes we hate to become profitable” right, let me explain something about capitalism.
Tumblr didn’t change course because they need the cash and are down on their luck. they did it because corporations want growth.
and that desire for growth is gonna be the same whether they have negative infinity money or positive infinity money. a corporation seeks money and growth.
if Tumblr suddenly became profitable after announcing these changes, it’s not even that it would send the wrong message, although it would.
it’s that Tumblr wouldn’t be taking care of us better if only it weren’t for the cruel realities of the world. it’s a subsidiary of a corporation. it doesn’t care.
it’s still going to keep the changes that it thinks are profitable, and ignore changes it thinks won’t be. Tumblr is not our friend, it is a website we use, and it wants to profit from us regardless of if that’s in our best interest and regardless of if it has “enough” money. that is the relationship. don’t get it twisted.
“yeah but Tumblr needs the money 🥺”
what part of corporations aren’t our friends isn’t fucking clicking
To illustrate this post by @mayahawkse I would like to visualize to you the difference:
A post in 2023:
A post in 2014:
A zoom out of the same post:
This is what a community looks like.
See how in 2023 almost all of the reblogs come from the OP, from their few hours/days in the tag search. Meanwhile in 2014 the % of reblogs from OP is insignificant, because most of the reblogs come from the reblogs within the fandom, within the micro-communities formed there. You didn’t need to rely on tags, or search, or being featured. Because the community took care of you, made sure to pass the work between themselves and onto their blog and exposed their followers to it. It kept works alive for years.
It’s not JUST the reblog/like ratio that causing this issue, it’s the type of interaction people have. They’re content with scrolling and liking the search engine, instead of actually having a reblogging relationship with other blogs in their community.
Anyways, if you want to see more content you like, the only true way to make it happen is to reblog it. Likes do not forward content in no way but making OP feel nice. Reblogs on the other hand make content eternal. They make it relevant, they make it exist outside of a fickle tumblr search that hardly works on the best of days.
If you want more of something, reblog it.
Something I see mentioned often is “I don’t have many followers, my reblog won’t matter” which is untrue.
First ofall, reblogging, commenting and interacting is how you start gathering your own micro community, second of all— you literally do not know how far a single reblog from you could go in the long run.
For instance, let’s say you only have one person reblog from you, and that person only have one person who reblogged from them also, and so on, and somewhere ten reblogs down the line a very large blog reblogs it and boom, the post is getting more and more exposure!
You see, it does not matter if you don’t have a large following so long as you cultivate a micro community with the people you do enjoy interacting daily with.
As you can see in the second picture I added, most of the reblogs were between very small groups of people, and occasionally it’ll lapse into a large blog that would create a bigger reblog pool. BUT STILL. Saying that you don’t have many followers and so it doesn’t matter if you don’t reblog is UNTRUE.
Even if someone just randomly wanders into your blog one day, it’s beneficial for both sides because A. Seeing you reblog content they like might be enough for them to follow you B. They would be exposed to new content creators they didn’t know previously and might also follow / reblog from them!
So yes, do not underestimate what your reblogs and words mean, just because you’re not ‘big’ or whatever. It is not how tumblr works!!
P.S IT IS NOT CRINGE TO REBLOG 10 YEARS OLD CONTENT ON TUMBLR. YOU SEE IT. YOU LIKE IT? REBLOG IT. DOESN’T MATTER IF YOU DIG IT FROM THE DEPTHS OF HELL ITSELF. XOXO :’D <3
I don’t get it, man. why. why do we have to homogenize everything. why does every product have to look and behave and feel the exact same way. why can’t tumblr maintain its individuality? why can’t it lean into the things that make it a unique and refreshing offering instead of scrambling to make it a carbon copy of twitter? sucks, man. sucks.
it’s just like. this broadcasts loud and clear that the people behind the curtain have no pride or faith in this site at all. that tumblr, as a whole, has no worth or merit unless it’s somehow tricking the larger internet community into thinking it’s actually another site. and the users are supposed to celebrate this? where’s the dignity? where’s the self-respect? where’s the joy? it’s disheartening and embarrassing to be forced to conform. smh.
please use your brain to hate on tumblr updates correctly. I saw a post going around talking about a new terrible dashboard feature called “include posts liked by the blogs you follow” so I checked changes and saw this:
it was just the “stuff in your orbit” feature with a new name.
I hate ai generated art for more reasons than this right but one thing that has been getting on my nerves recently is how they fuckin flood up Pinterest and Google images when I’m looking for references or inspiration. It’s infuriating when I’m looking for things with actual form and structure to consider in my process and I get incomprehensible nebulous blobs of nonsense 60 percent of the time! I wish I could just filter that shit out easier! Ugh!!!
So I think the best strat here is for the users who did get the new layout to just stop using the desktop version of the site for a while, like a week or a month or however long their ‘experiment’ is supposed to last, while the users who didn’t get the new layout should keep using the desktop version like normal or, perhaps, use it even more than usual.
My guess is that they’re doing basic A/B testing on the new layout to see if it would boost engagement: the userbase is split roughly 50/50 between the 2 versions and they are going to be comparing the engagement data between the 2 groups of users to see if it’s worth it switching everyone to the new layout or not.
Basically,if you got the new layout and don’t like it - don’t use it. If engagement metrics of group B (new layout) are lower than those of group A (no change), the experiment will be considered a failure and they will have to reverse the change.
If your tumblr suddenly looks like twitter - it’s a sign to log off and go touch some grass! (or just use the mobile app since that engagement data isn’t relevant to this particular experiment)
as 90% of desktop users have probably found out, today @staff released an update that for some insane reason COMPLETELY remodels the dashboard to replicate twitter’s. this is of course in the wake of numerous other thoroughly hated changes and a continued refusal to fix any of the site’s actual problems, half of which stem directly from site management.
HOWEVER, thanks to the power of jQuery, i was able to throw together a userscript that remodels the dashboard back to its original look almost perfectly.
here is my dashboard right now, with the script active:
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and here is the old dashboard in separate tab container that hasn’t received the update:
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it’s hardly perfect; i had trouble making it force reload to the fixed layout when switching between other pages and the dashboard, and it currently only fixes just the dashboard. it’s also completely untested on browsers other than firefox, and chances are it looks a bit screwy on ultrawide monitors. but for now at least, it’s a good fix.
the unfucker is a tampermonkey userscript. all you have to do to use it is install the tampermonkey extension, hit “create new script”, and replace the default code on the page with the script (link here) and save it.
I needed this drag. Let’s change guys and not look back
working out your brain is a must!!
• hydrate it by drinking lots of water
• eat dark chocolate and blueberries and walnuts and salmon and other foods high in antioxidants!!
• play little brain games on your phone; I like wordconenct! anything that makes you think!
• read books. It’s simple but necessary. Even better - join a book club, or read with a friend, so you can have discussions after. This will improve your reading comprehension.
• do puzzles - it doesnt have to be sudoku, I love playing Beat Saber on the Oculus Rift because it makes my brain have to match colorful patterns to physical movements very quickly!
• learn a new dance - even a tik tok trendy dance. Learning new dance moves are proven to strengthen synapses!!
• go bird watching, or foraging, or anything outdoors that requires you to explore pattern recognition and visual searching
• watch a movie with the intent of analysis - this is best done with a cinephile friend!! talk about tropes and symbolism and character growth
• cross stitch, or sew, or do anything that requires matching nimble hand movements to patterns
• play or learn an instrument!
• develop a consistent sleep schedule (or as close to consistent as you can get!)
• when eating, try to identify the ingredients and flavors you’re perceiving!
I hope this helps :)
I like how this went from me feeling like “hm why is this attacking me 🤨” at first, but feeling grateful seeing an added guide on a genuine expansion on a “ how to” work out the brain. This genuinely helps a bunch. People find solace in doing activities that get them through life by doing said activities of phone/tv or if that’s all they’ve ever known in their life to get them through things + etc tho. However, this was very impt to point out. Slowly beginning incorporating things to work the brain in ones own time.
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