trees.

[grrl-beetle]

Thorben Danke

[wifegideonnav]

“bits to use in everyday conversations”

[photomatt]

Tumblr Advisor Board

I think it could be cool to put together a board of the top Tumblristas in the world, that could see previews of what's coming up and advise on strategic direction. Who should be on it?

[prismatic-bell]

Okay, look. We're gonna do it like this, Matt. I used to work in market research. This one is free, next time I expect a month of free premium and if there's a third time I expect a job.

TO EVERYONE ELSE:

A series of ten reblogs is about to follow, since you can only have one poll per reblog. Please answer all ten polls. If you don't see them all, check the notes (this shouldn't take me long so if it's more than like, fifteen minutes since I posted this one they should all be there.)

1) What is the PRIMARY thing you do on Tumblr?

I mostly reblog others' posts

I write original posts

I make/post memes

I make/post images or gifs

I make/post videos

I run a poll blog

I run a gimmick blog

Voting ended onMar 27

[prismatic-bell]

2) how long have you been here?

Under twelve months

1-2 years

3-4 years

5-6 years

7-8 years

9-10 years

More than ten years

I don't remember

Voting ended onMar 27

[prismatic-bell]

3) how old are you?

Under 18

19-28

29-38

39-48

49-58

59-68

I'm one of the Tumblr grandparents

Voting ended onMar 27

[prismatic-bell]

4) thinking about the recent Tumblr feature release/rollback, what did you find most frustrating?

There was no communication before the fact

I felt like the feature didn't take Tumblr users' wants and needs into account

I felt like the feature showed a lack of understanding of Tumblr culture

I felt the feature would hurt Tumblr culture

I felt the feature would hurt Tumblr artists and small makers specifically

I wasn't bothered by the change

It happened so fast I didn't even know until it was all over

Voting ended onMar 27

[prismatic-bell]

5) thinking about the recent Tumblr feature release/rollback, what satisfied you most about the response?

Tumblr staff responded quickly

I felt like we were heard and listened to

It was nice to see our concerns were understood

I wasn't bothered by the change

It happened so fast I didn't even know until it was all over

Other

Voting ended onMar 27

[prismatic-bell]

6) thinking about features you use on Tumblr, what would you like to see improved?

The recent UI changes to reblogging are too confusing

I'd like tagging to be easier

I'd like to see the tagging system overhauled

I'd like to see the reporting/adult tagging system improved

I'd like a separate page for my communities

I'd like to be able to mark posts as for my followers only

I'd like to see the blocking system improved

I'm happy with Tumblr as it is

Other

Voting ended onMar 27

[prismatic-bell]

7) with the understanding that Tumblr needs to attract new users or convert more current free users to paying users in order to stay online, what do you think of Matt's "top tumblrista" idea?

Absolutely not--this is very famously the influencer-hating site

Absolutely not--this site is too diverse for that to work

Absolutely not, for other reasons

I'm actually liking this poll method

The poll method is clunky but something similar would be great

I think the panel of "top users" would be great

I have no opinion on this

Voting ended onMar 27

[prismatic-bell]

8) if you don't currently pay for use of a Tumblr feature, why not?

I have paid Tumblr features

The price point is too high for my wallet

The price point is too high for what's offered

There's nothing offered that I want

I wouldn't pay even if something I wanted was offered

Other

Voting ended onMar 27

[prismatic-bell]

In the following question, "pre-social media" refers to platforms like LiveJournal, forums, alt.net boards, early MySpace, and similar spaces.

9) thinking about the given definition of "pre-social media," how much do you agree with the statement "I think most tumblr users I know would prefer pre-social media to modern platforms like Facebook and X"?

"Strongly agree" is not strong enough

Strongly agree

Agree

Kind of maybe agree?

Neutral/I don't know enough about pre-social media to say

Kind of maybe disagree?

Disagree

Strongly disagree

"Strongly disagree" is not strong enough

Voting ended onMar 27

[prismatic-bell]

10) do you think Matt should just hire me to do this so I don't have to squeeze it around my break at work?

Yes, this was awesome

Sure, you're not perfect but this was way better than what they've done til now

No, but someone should do this

Honestly I'm just sad you didn't give us nuance/bald/vanilla extract/tickybox

Voting ended onMar 27

[rowark]

I love the irony that if that new reblog change had actually happened, @prismatic-bell would have been getting all the notes for this post, making it completely useless for @photomatt for any sort of research purposes, because he happened to get reblogged by a more popular blog and would have not gotten all the notifications when people added comments

Like, I hope this clears up why we all hated that idea

[prismatic-bell]

This is an excellent point. I genuinely hope @photomatt looks at the answers here and finds them informative even though I definitely could have done better if I wasn't cranking it out in an hour while waiting for my machine at work to come back online.

I especially love that as of right now, almost 70% of respondents agree he should hire me. I'm being wasted in this 90-degree factory, Matt, I have no degree but I do have a good grasp on Tumblr culture and how to generate useful data. Listen to the people 😎

[rowark]

I think the fact that you made these polls in the first place, on your own time, really highlights what sets Tumblr apart from any other social media platform, which is that Tumblr users actually LIKE Tumblr

We don't see this platform as a means to an end, like how influencers use other platforms to make money off their followers and don't actually care what platform they're on, as long as it pays them... we see it as a community we are all part of, and that we want to see improve without losing the community aspect

Every other social media is just using algorithms to feed us non-stop ads, pumping out the most far-right Nazi content, and being completely overtaken by bots and AI. There's no "social" aspect left to most of them.

Tumblr also has a Nazi problem, and dealing with that would be a great change to implement, but aside from that, Tumblr is pretty much the only place you can go and interact with real people, without being sold to non-stop.

Influencer culture is dying out everywhere... this is NOT the time for Tumblr to hop on that bandwagon. It would literally kill this website... no one is going to join Tumblr because it become more like the other platforms that everyone's already sick of, and the more it becomes like Twitter or Tik Tok or whatever, the more current Tumblr users will abandon it, just like they did with every other platform.

Actually, that would make a good additional poll, I think:

What social media platform do you use DAILY, excluding Tumblr:

Facebook

Twitter (yes I will keep deadnaming Twitter til the day I die idc)

Tik Tok

Instagram

Reddit

LinkedIn????

Other????? (are there more??? I don't even know)

More than one of the above

None of the above, and I never have used any of them

None of the above BUT I used to, and have since deleted my accounts

I have accounts for one or more of the above, but RARELY use them

I have accounts for one or more of the above, but NEVER use them

Voting ended onMar 27

... for the purpose of this poll. rarely means more than never, but less than daily, I guess

I am not a market researcher, but I do love polls lol

[prismatic-bell]

I actually meant to have this as a question and then forgot it because I was doing it off the cuff rather than actually writing out and tweaking it ahead of time, because it's a deeply important one. So thank you for adding it.

[klfg]

[source]

[klfg]

🚨BREAKING: OpenAI published a paper proving that ChatGPT will always make things up.

Not sometimes. Not until the next update. Always. They proved it with math.

Even with perfect training data and unlimited computing power, AI models will still confidently tell you things that are completely false. This isn't a bug they're working on. It's baked into how these systems work at a fundamental level.

And their own numbers are brutal. OpenAI's o1 reasoning model hallucinates 16% of the time. Their newer o3 model? 33%. Their newest o4-mini? 48%. Nearly half of what their most recent model tells you could be fabricated. The "smarter" models are actually getting worse at telling the truth.

Here's why it can't be fixed. Language models work by predicting the next word based on probability. When they hit something uncertain, they don't pause. They don't flag it. They guess. And they guess with complete confidence, because that's exactly what they were trained to do.

The researchers looked at the 10 biggest AI benchmarks used to measure how good these models are. 9 out of 10 give the same score for saying "I don't know" as for giving a completely wrong answer: zero points. The entire testing system literally punishes honesty and rewards guessing.

So the AI learned the optimal strategy: always guess. Never admit uncertainty. Sound confident even when you're making it up.

OpenAI's proposed fix? Have ChatGPT say "I don't know" when it's unsure. Their own math shows this would mean roughly 30% of your questions get no answer. Imagine asking ChatGPT something three times out of ten and getting "I'm not confident enough to respond." Users would leave overnight. So the fix exists, but it would kill the product.

This isn't just OpenAI's problem. DeepMind and Tsinghua University independently reached the same conclusion. Three of the world's top AI labs, working separately, all agree: this is permanent.

Every time ChatGPT gives you an answer, ask yourself: is this real, or is it just a confident guess?

[marypsue]

Do you ever start writing something that you’re excited about and that seems like it’s turning out well and that you’re getting eager to share, and then you start typing it up or doing an edit pass and it’s just awful it’s awful its premise is fundamentally flawed and it’s out of character and the prose is clunky and the plot is badly paced and ludicrous and the whole thing is embarrassing, how could you have done this, how could you have sunk so much time into this, you can’t even look at it, how is this that shining thing you were so excited about, how could you even have considered finishing it let alone sharing it with anyone, you’re crying, your mother is crying, nuns are spontaneously exploding in the streets,

[marypsue]

reread the WIP I wrote this about and turns out actually it’s fine

[un-monstre]

Hate it when TikTok farm cosplayers and cottagecore types say stuff like "I'm not going to use modern equipment because my grandmothers could make do without it." Ma'am, your great grandma had eleven children. She would have killed for a slow cooker and a stick blender.

[un-monstre]

I’ve noticed a sort of implicit belief that people used to do things the hard way in the past because they were tougher or something. In reality, labor-saving devices have historically been adopted by the populace as soon as they were economically feasible. No one stood in front of a smoky fire or a boiling pot of lye soap for hours because they were virtuous, they did it because it was the only way to survive.

[jimmythejiver]

Taking these screenshots from Facebook because they make you log in and won't let you copy and paste:

[zanyexpertkitten]

Crashing out? Read Harrow the Ninth. It won’t help but it will be an incredibly immersive experience.

[notherface]

For maximum fuckery, read Harrow the Ninth first and THEN read Gideon the Ninth

(actually has anyone done that, I need to know)

[noah-wyles]

forever grateful for the AO3 volunteers

forever grateful to the code reviewers and testers who work tirelessly to maintain the site

forever grateful for the endless people who donate their hard earned cash so AO3 can continue to run

forever grateful for the authors who work and write and continue to produce work contributing to the 16 million fan works

forever grateful to the readers and the ones especially who leave comments, kudos, bookmarks, and encourage authors to keep on writing

and always and forever grateful to AO3 for being an archive of endless choices and hosting some of the greatest works fandom have ever produced and all of it is for free

[just-shower-thoughts]

Imagine if someone handed you a box full of all the items you have lost throughout your life

[a-case-of-tragic-magic]

#it would be nice to get my sense of purpose back

[celtic-pyro-deactivated20230725]

“Oh wow my childhood innocence! Thank you for finding this,”

[stuffinspace-deactivated2017100]

“my will to live! i haven’t seen this in 15 years!”

[ilikechildren--fried-deactivate]

“I knew I lost that potential somewhere!”

[tatt00ine]

“Mental stability, my old friend!”

[gay-armadillo]

[tomat0burger]

i’m a big bbc merlin enthusiast

[ear-a-corn]

We have always existed, and we always will.

[persiefae]

Fuck.

Reblog.

Reblog.

[greeniery]

so beautiful to be on this earth where everybody has something extremely wrong with them. i know i’m doing my part

[santapau]

Remind me later.

[doctors-star]

highly recommend keeping a small portrait of a historical figure who met a grisly end on your work desk. for perspective.

[doctors-star]

me: oh thomas cromwell, we're really in it now. every day i get emails.

the postcard of thomas cromwell i keep on my desk: i was on committees with the duke of norfolk. and they beheaded me.

me: yep. good point.

[doctors-star]

me: cromwell. cromwell this post has got too big and famous and people are starting to misunderstand me on it.

the postcard of thomas cromwell i keep on my desk: oh no! you achieved too much fame and status? and now people are misrepresenting you? should we strip your lands and title? have you been beheaded?

me: YES ALRIGHT FINE

[animentality]

[important-animal-images]

[ad-wills]