When yet another stupid update gets rolled out
Although without the spirit of communal posting, now it's more like this
Three Goblin Art

tannertan36
Sade Olutola
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ojovivo
NASA
trying on a metaphor

PR's Tumblrdome

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will byers stan first human second
Peter Solarz
KIROKAZE
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her

祝日 / Permanent Vacation

JBB: An Artblog!
taylor price
AnasAbdin

pixel skylines

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DEAR READER
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@raenysart
When yet another stupid update gets rolled out
Although without the spirit of communal posting, now it's more like this
The Death of the Digital Ecosystem: Why Decoupling Notes Destroys Tumblr
@changes (Edit: I already sent this to Tumblr Support under the feedback option. I encourage everyone to send feedback on how bad this feature actually is).
For years, the total note count on a post served as a universal metric of a piece of content's impact. Whether a user liked the original post or a reblog fifteen branches deep, that engagement flowed back to the source. This ensured that the original artist, writer, or editor received the full credit for the viral success of their work.
Under this new system, engagement is trapped within the specific reblog a user happens to see on their dashboard. If a massive, high-traffic blog reblogs a piece of art from a small creator, every like and reblog that occurs through that larger account stays with them. The original creator is left with a stagnant note count on their own dashboard while their work generates thousands of interactions for someone else.
Erasure of Creator Visibility
Instead of seeing one post with 10,000 notes, a creator may now have to hunt through dozens of different reblog chains to find where the conversation is actually happening.
If the notes no longer flow back to the original post, the creator loses the ability to see who is enjoying their work, what the tags say, and how the community is responding.
On a platform where engagement often dictates visibility, splitting that engagement into tiny, unlinked fractions makes it significantly harder for original works to gain momentum compared to the high-reach blogs that reblog them.
Incentivizing the "Big Blog" Monopoly
This system rewards accounts that have already established a large following at the direct expense of the smaller accounts that actually produce the content. It transforms reblogging from a method of sharing into a method of acquisition.
When a reblog functions as its own independent post with its own note count, the incentive to click through to the original source disappears. The platform is transitioning from a collaborative ecosystem into a standard social media feed where the person who posts the content last—not the person who made it—reaps the rewards.
Impact on Collaborative Conversations
Tumblr’s unique culture is built on the reblog chain: a chronological, evolving conversation. By allowing users to like or reblog "any part" of the chain as an independent entity, the platform is breaking the narrative thread.
If engagement is siloed into specific branches, the incentive to add to a conversation is replaced by an incentive to simply own a piece of the engagement. This change doesn't encourage conversation. It encourages the commodification of individual posts within a chain, making it harder for the original voice to ever be heard over the noise of the rebloggers.
The Disincentive to Create
Perhaps the most damaging aspect of this update is the psychological toll on the creative community. When the platform actively diverts credit and engagement away from the source, it destroys the motivation to share original work at all.
For many, the reward for posting is seeing how far their work travels. If that travel is now invisible or attributed to others, the labor of creating becomes thankless.
This system makes creators want to share nothing. If the platform is built to harvest a creator's effort for the benefit of curator blogs, the logical response is to stop providing the raw material. I am one leaning into this category. Without us creators, the curator blogs have nothing to curate.
By making it harder to protect and track one's own work, the platform is effectively telling creators that their presence is secondary to the conversations happening around their work: conversations they may no longer even be able to find.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid dir. Thor Freudenthal
They are already selling data to midjourney, and it's very likely your work is already being used to train their models because you have to OPT OUT of this, not opt in. Very scummy of them to roll this out unannounced.
here's some instructions for anyone who doesn't know how to opt out:
login in on desktop, it's not available on mobile yet
click "Account"
click on your blog
go to "Blog Settings"
go to "Visibility"
Scroll down to the bottom option
turn the toggle ON, not off
you will have to do this individually for each sideblog you have too, no way to do it for each account in one go
I made a little guy
@raenysart I loved your little guy so much I just had to draw him, hope that's ok!
LOOK AT HIM
This is so precious omg!!!! Thank you for sharing ;_;
Dancing Lights is a vain little guy
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The Dragon Garden
Scorching Ray | Burning Gaze | Calm Air | Dancing Lights | Tireless Pursuit (soon) | ???
a BIGGER GUY (gender neutral)
good luck taking a nap with rambunctious siblings, Calm Air
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The Dragon Garden
Scorching Ray | Burning Gaze | Calm Air | Dancing Lights | Tireless Pursuit (soon) | ???
meet Burning Gaze, the younger sister of Scorching Ray
she enjoys bothering her siblings and enforcing naps
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The Dragon Garden
Scorching Ray | Burning Gaze | Calm Air | Dancing Lights | Tireless Pursuit (soon) | ???
I made a little guy
Update: I named him Scorching Ray
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The Dragon Garden
Scorching Ray | Burning Gaze | Calm Air | Dancing Lights | Tireless Pursuit (soon) | ???
I made a little guy
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Update: his name is Scorching Ray and he has a sister named Burning Gaze!
See the family:
The Dragon Garden
Scorching Ray | Burning Gaze | Calm Air | Dancing Lights | Tireless Pursuit (soon) | ???
Winter King
pretend this isn’t late for pocky day and observe the morons at work
<- Part I: Estinyan to the Rescue
Part II: The Adventures of Catraiya
Part I: Estinyan to the Rescue
Part II: The Adventures of Catraiya ->
Hi, I'm starting a new campaign (lvl 1) on D&D 5e, and my character has a pet Feystag. I was searching for Feystag's stats, lore and etc and found your drawings, can you help me find more info about Araiya's Feystags and how the DM managed it?! Where can I find their campaign?! Thanks a lot! 🥰
Hey, sorry I just saw this! It's really just about working with your DM on how you want to handle it.
What my DM did was take into account our character levels, find a creature with similar seeming stats to what she thought a companion should have, and then swapped things out! As for special abilities that feystags have like being able to use identify at will or operate magical items- we decided that it would be a little broken for her to be able to do that in session, so we reasoned out why she just... wouldn't do that if it affected game mechanics. But it was still fair game in character building RP stuff!
So yeah, just have a conversation with your DM and come to an agreement about how you want to handle it! It was a homebrew solution :)