first rule of making fantrolls is to remember that 90% of widely accepted "canon troll traits" are propaganda made up by )(ic to divide the trolls to make them easier to control as a dictator and the fandom simply did not understand that there was an unreliable narrator aspect at play. the second rule is to make them at least a little bit of an asshole. the third rule is to ignore hiveswap
unparalleled interaction on reddit... someone made the comment "who the fuck would want to read lord farquaad testicular torsion erotica" and reddit user FarquaadsFuckDoll replied "I can think of one potential reader"
Be careful of the double-speak in the Update Post.
Staff has officially posted an update regarding the reblog decoupling, and while they are reversing the change for now, we need to look closely at the language they are using. This is a classic example of corporate "double speak" designed to de-escalate a PR crisis while keeping the door open for the same harmful features later.
The Post: Reblog Update: Weâre Reversing the Change
The Red Flag:
"We still believe there's a better version of how reblogs can work. One that gives every voice in a chain the credit it deserves. But we want to get there with you."
The Breakdown: When they say they want to give every voice the credit it deserves, they are still justifying the decoupling of notes. They are framing the destruction of the original creator's attribution as a feature for the rebloggers or the loss of community. Their goal hasn't changed. They just realized their current execution was a technical and social disaster.
They also mention working "directly with some of you." This often means selecting a small, curated group of "power users" who may not prioritize the accessibility or safety needs that we have been fighting for.
Viral Hell & The Power of the Call to Arms
To my friends and followers: my condolences for going viral are accepted. I love you. Letâs look at the numbers. My original post on this has cleared 24,000 notes. This is exactly why a Call to Arms was necessary. When we first saw the decoupling, we saw the immediate theft of credit.
In my case, over 10,000 notes were stolen or hidden by the uncoupling before I even realized the extent of the damage. This isn't just a UI preference. It is the systematic erasing of a creatorâs reach and legacy.
Why we cannot stop now:
Staffâs reversal is a tactical retreat, not a surrender. Their language proves they still intend to push for a version of decoupling in the future. We forced their hand because:
The volume of feedback was undeniable. 24k notes on a single advocacy post is a massive indicator of user dissatisfaction.
Emails and Support Tickets work. They specifically cited emails as a reason for the reversal.
Public pressure creates friction. By making this a PR nightmare on Bluesky and X, we made the cost of the update too high for them to maintain.
The Mission Moving Forward:
We have won the first battle, but the Double Speak in their post tells us the war isn't over. They are going to try to rebrand a change like this in a few weeks or months.
Keep the pressure on: Continue to reblog your concerns when they surface.
Stay Vocal: They are betting on us getting tired and going back to business as usual. We need to show them that our safety and our creative credit are non-negotiable. Continue to voice concerns when they surface.
Weâve seen that we can move the needle. Let's make sure they don't try to move it back when they think we aren't looking.
What I donât understand is who these people were who were clamoring for âcreditâ for their contributions to the communal conversation that tumblr used as the excuse for attempting this change in the first place? Pretty sure they were a straw man.
But beyond that, we already do get âcreditâ for our contributions to the conversation; any likes or reblogs of our reblogs, or reblogs down-chain of us, flow to us and then back up the chain to everyone before us, all the way back to the OP! Together, we all share in the success of our shared conversationâwe can see all the Notes we have generated together, and no branch of the conversation is locked away in a silo separate from any other.
The existing reblog chain is almost the Platonic ideal of the form of an online conversation, and I cannot fathom why anyone in their right mind would want to change it, let alone throw it away wholesale.
As an aside, I donât have much reach beyond a couple dozen or so mutuals, and most of my time and energy goes towards my writing on AO3, but I occasionally do come up with an image or some short-form stuff where Iâm the OP. Unusually but fortuitously, I had a couple of such posts the end of last week/over the weekend, and I got several reblogs and dozens of likesâŠand then on Monday the interactions completely dried up. I had no idea how much of my interactions came from/through even the handful of mutuals who had reblogged my OPs.
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