welcome, twitter refugees!!
here's a quick and friendly tumblr how-to:
DO reblog posts!! regardless of whether or not you add a comment, either in the post itself or in the tags, the OP will get notifications of everyone who likes the post via your reblog and who reblogs it from you! comment as much or as little as you like
DON'T repost things! fanart, fanfiction, etc. this is different from reblogging, a repost is when you copy/save the work to your computer and reupload it in a post of your own, rather than reblogging it
DO follow tags as well as other blogs!! really like one specific character from a tv show? a certain ship? search their name and follow the tag, and you'll see posts that mention or tag them even if you don't directly follow the person who made that post
DON'T rely too much on the search function, it's broken. if you want to search someone's blog for a tag, you're better off going to the URL: tumblr.com/[blogname]/tagged/[tag]
DO tag liberally! you can use the tags to add comments that you don't want to directly add to the post, to make it easier for people to search your blog, or to make it easier for yourself to find things later on
DON'T use tiktok censorship speak when tagging things!! it will make it actively more difficult for people seeking to avoid certain topics. instead of "tw: abu$e" just tag "abuse" and anyone who has blacklisted the tag "abuse" will not see your post.
similarly, DON'T tag things like "epilepsy" - instead, tag "flashing lights" so people can still use the epilepsy tag to discuss epilespy without risking seeing triggering flashing lights
DO use the follow and the block buttons liberally! this site has absolutely no algorithm, so it is entirely up to you to curate your space exactly how you want it!
DON'T send hate to people via the askbox on their blog, either anonymously or not. just block people who annoy you or post horrible things
DO participate in polls! tumblr only got them recently, less than a year ago, and people immediately went ham. vote on stupid things like which bug emoji is superior, which ship is the best, and how much vanilla extract should go in a cake! but remember that you cannot edit the original poll after you post it, including its tags
DON'T use or endorse "AI" generators like chatgpt! don't reblog AI images and or AI endings to unfinished/abandoned fanfictions
DO cite your sources if you want to educate people on something in a post, we all love to learn, and informative posts on everything from current political events to which geodes could be made into useable dildos, but misinformation is prolific, so make sure anyone reading your information can refer to a real source!
notes - likes, reblogs (with or without comments or tags) and replies to a post are all agregated to give the number of notes, which is basically the number of times a post has been interacted with
OP - the Original Poster of a post, for example, me, aj-lenoire, with this post. i am op.
hellsite - tumblr itself. this website is insane and unprofitable and broken and we wouldn't have it any other way. hellsite can be either (affectionate) or (derogatory) and often both at once
blorbo - your favourite character, your rotten soldier, your sweet cheese, your good time boyy. post about them frequently and with weird, frenzied gusto
squick - something you personally don't like, such as a ship or a character or a trope, but is not actually bad or harmful - it's just not for you. it squicks you out.
blacklisting means you've blocked a specific tag rather than a blog/person. for example, if you don't want to see anything with spiders, blacklist the tag "spiders" so you don't see any! if someone you follow reblogs a post and tags it with "spiders", or the OP of the post tagged it with "spiders" then your dashboard will hide the post from you and tell you it was tagged with "spiders" and you can choose whether or not to view it
passing peer review means you added commentary to a post in the tags, and someone who reblogged that post from you saw your tags and thought they were funny, so decided to screenshot them and add them as a comment so everyone could see them. congratulations!!
breaking containment is when a post about a niche subject and/or from a blog with not many followers gets super popular because it's funny, and often OP despairs at how their notifications because unseable from the sheer number of notes from this one post
KUNGPOWPENIS - if someone posts something bigoted, tumblr will ban together to reblog, one letter at a time, k-u-n-g-p-o-w-p-e-n-i-s. only do this when the bigot is the OP, because only the original poster will get a flood of single-letter reblog notifications from every single branch of the reblog chain
pornbots and bots in general are not uncommon here. whenever you get followed by someone, check to make sure they're not a bot by visiting their blog. if they only have a few reblogged posts on random topics, or no posts at all, and their profile picture is a beautiful woman, they're a bot, and you should flag and block them
old posts can and do get reblogged and liked all the time, there's no point at which it becomes cringe to interact with a post. we even have some from 10+ years ago that're considered 'tumblr heritage'
long posts will cross your dash from time to time, the most infamous being colour of the sky. you will see it and it will madden you with how far you have to scroll - inflict your followers with the same frustration by reblogging so they can see it too!! if you're on desktop, pressing j will skip to the next post.
read more allows you to shorten a post with a 'click to read more' link that takes the reader to the root post on your blog. this is especially handy if you're publishing fanfiction or a very long analysis of something.
toggling reblogs lets you choose whether a post is rebloggable or not, for example something personal you may want to delete later, turning off reblogs means there won't be any copies floating around after you delete the root post
follower count is not visible! the only way anyone will know how many followers you have is if you tell them. follow blogs based on whether you like what they post, not by whether they're super popular or not
memes are frequent and long-lasting. tumblr plays with jpegs like dolls and there are some memes that have been here for years. a current favourite is the destiel confession meme which has warped into a shorthand for breaking weird news
tumblr loves a goofy-ass-holiday!! here are some of the standouts:
ides of march - 15th march, celebrate julius caesar getting his shit rocked
pride month - june, tumblr is generally a very pro-queer space, so expect everything to be decked out in rainbows for the entirety of june and most of the rest of the year, too!!
halloween - the entire month of october and also a week in july, this site loves some spooky scary skeletons
destielputinelection - 5th november, reminisce about the absolute chaos that gripped the internet during the 2020 usa presidential election
to each their own, and a main draw of tumblr is that there's something for everyone, down to the very, very niche. so, search for stuff that interests you and follow those blogs! however, here are some blogs that are fun for everyone:
heritageposts - your one-stop blog for all the best, weirdest, oldest tumblr posts will all the drama, expect to see a lot of destiel
one-time-i-dreamt - full of weird and wonderful posts, made all the better by the fact that no one reads usernames here, so inevitably there is panicked confusion over what the fuck is going on
biggest-gaudiest-patronuses - one of tumblr's most ubiquitous shit-posters
that's pretty much the basics, but most people here are really friendly, so if you're unsure, just ask someone! have fun!!
gummygunk
pixelskylines
dededos
izzy806
jacobvanloon
ellievsbear
jbbartram-illu
