I don’t know if she is using a program or some kind of script, or why Tumblr doesn’t flag it. But if you look at the reblog diagram on her posts, the one with the dots, you can normally click each dot and it takes you to the blog that reblogged the post.
With posts from rocktheholygrail, though, about 80% of those dots just lead to error pages. The blogs don’t exist anymore. Which strongly suggests they’re using bots to like and reblog their posts and then deleting the reblogs almost immediately. The inflated interaction numbers on the post stay the same, though, so it still looks like a post with a lot of engagement and is always popular in the fandom tag - overshadowing everything else that gets posted unless you block her. That’s also enough for Tumblr to treat it like something that’s trending in the tag.
People have called her out on it multiple times, during the last years but she just keeps doing it. And you’ll also notice she never reblogs from other fandom blogs either.
Honestly it’s just kind of sad. Imagine putting that much effort into faking Tumblr popularity.
Also, look at the numbers compared to the rest of the tag. Almost no other hannibal fandom post gets that many notes anymore, maybe the occasional really incredible fanart. The fandom is much smaller now, so those numbers just look completely unrealistic.
@/rocktheholygrail bot drama
Holy shit I previously said “but all their reblogs looked like they were from real accounts” cause I didn’t think about the possibility of them being deleted, but I just counted the reblogs from one of rocktheholygrail’s recent posts and YEA over 160+ reblogs are missing!!!!!! Meaning only 228 out of 391 reblogs are real. Only 58% of reblogs are real.
I opened up their reblog graphs and yup a lot of their reblogs show as “unable to load post”!!
I have noticed she’s separate to the fandom as in she doesn’t interact with it, but I assumed it was because her blog was a gifmaking blog instead of a fandom blog. And so I assumed she got a lot more notes because her posts were reaching other communities outside the Hannibal fandom. But nope! Wow! I wish my posts had a boost of 160+ extra reblogs😀
But yea this makes a lot of sense, and I shouldn’t be surprised, cause again this isn’t the first time I’ve seen this mentioned and it didn’t make sense why Hannibal kept trending when there hasn’t been a higher influx of new posts under the tag. It makes sense for it to trend if a post with the Hannibal tag suddenly got so many fucking reblogs at once.
And usually when we trend, there’ll be posts from different blogs featured on the trending page, but right now all 6 posts are hers as well..
Thanks for letting me know!
TL;DR: rocktheholygrail uses bots to boost their gifsets. You can fact check this on all their posts by checking their “reblog graphs” on browser. Or by hand counting their reblogs.
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