Very quick old man shaking fist at cloud moment guys, hold on
im pretty sure its just the good amount of new gen tumblr users in the total drama fandom, which like, so glad you guys are here <3, but ive seen this on my and many other blogs I follow that many users do not Reblog posts, only Like them and im just gonna assume the Tumblr Etiquette for Newbies posts just havent breached this fandom lmao
Likes on Tumblr do not act the same as Likes on Twitter or TikTok, Tumblr has no algorithm, and Likes do not supply an Artist, Writer or funny post creator anything that a Like on Twitter or Tiktok would
On these other Social Medias, Likes tell the algorithm that people really like this one post, and the algorithm will show this one post to even more people who Like it. This is what spreads art, writing, ect around the Social Media and are what let the Original Poster know that people are enjoying their content enough to want other people to see it :D With Likes you are spreading a work of art you enjoy, a funny joke, or nice fic around to new viewers who may have not seen it without your Like
Likes on Tumblr do not do this
Tumblr is a reblogging platform, there is no algorithm besides the dubious "Suggested Posts" page and that in itself is buggy and primarily runs of tags it sees you interact with and not specific posts
It does tell the OP you enjoy their post a little, but Tumblr is based around Reblogging. A Like without a reblog means you like it sure, but its not building a post, and its not spreading it to new viewers :/ In order to use Tumblrs UI correctly, you need to reblog posts.
If your worried that it will mess up your blogs vibe, or character, or you just want to keep your blog as posts only made by you, a very common practice is a reblog dump blog! These are side blogs made for the sole purpose of reblogging posts, so they dont clog up a specialized blog (ie character roleplay blog, art blog) but still give other tumblr users reblogs! I use one of these :)
Im gonna be real I personally have not understood why people dont reblog my posts until I rememberd a lot of people in the fandom rn use Tiktok and Twitter mostly 😅 I'll get a ton of likes but then only 4 reblogs, and the kneejerk reaction is that people just must not like the post all that much. Im not saying that to guilt trip anybody as I know its not meant that way! But its the culture of Tumblr that Reblogs are worth more and after being on this site since 2014 its weird to suddenly see a shift to all likes but little reblogs on my work 😭 so just uhhh yeah PSA, please reblog posts you enjoy! Likes mean near nothing to most tumblr users! I say this with kindness!