[thinginthedirt]

Hey folks I'm Ollie (he/they)🪱 I'm an illustrator, printmaker, fiber artist, and game designer. I love birds, fishing, and nature in general. I used to be @/ maldecorum.

transsexual, nonbinary, audhd 🐌

terfs and zionists will be blocked on sight 🚫

⚔️ you do not have permission to repost my work without credit or use it for any ai related purposes ⚔️

shop

prints

portfolio

bluesky

instagram

redbubble

ko-fi

art for palestine

[thinginthedirt]

White Stork mama for June's coloring page!

[thinginthedirt]

please stop reposting my good omens show art lmao i don't represent yall

[thinginthedirt]

this month's coloring page! 🐈

[thinginthedirt]

my first monthly coloring page is now available on kofi!

this one is free :)

[thinginthedirt]

my first monthly coloring page is now available on kofi!

this one is free :)

[taplingzines]

For Trans Day of Visibility, come support a project run by two trans husbands with a bunch of trans artists participating! 🩵🤍🩷

We've Always Been Here is filled with queer art set all throughout history, all over the world.

Only 2 days left on Kickstarter, so pledge now! 🏳️‍⚧️

Art by @leeminarium

[thinginthedirt]

happy trans day of visibility! 🏳️‍⚧️

starting tomorrow I'll be posting monthly coloring pages on kofi, and this first one will be free! You can also support me by buying my prints

[thinginthedirt]

i had the idea for this last tdov but it didnt come together until now 🥖🍷 though i'm not religious, this quote is beloved to me

prints available

[thinginthedirt]

happy trans day of visibility! 🏳️‍⚧️

starting tomorrow I'll be posting monthly coloring pages on kofi, and this first one will be free! You can also support me by buying my prints

[taplingzines]

Injustice and oppression heavily impact queer people in Slavic countries, Hungary, and other nearby nations. We wanted to fight this by celebrating their queer joy and rich history in our zine!

Get the book (including historical lore) here — only 9 days left to back on Kickstarter!

Art by: hortensjjja on Bsky, thecojsz on Bsky, heruvimski on Instagram, @thinginthedirt

[kedreeva]

Hey hang on a second

As important as it was to contact Tumblr when they made that asinine, fucked up change, now that they've reversed it, you have a chance to say thanks for reversing it.

I know that you're probably still riding the high (negative) from the stress of going through yesterday's changes, and worrying about the fate of your community, and how badly the change would have affected creators. We banded together, and we let the staff know that we didn't like what they were doing, and you know what? They listened. That's part of why we're here on Tumblr and not other places that would have just shoved that down our throats regardless of the hundreds of thousands of complaints. Yeah, they fucked up. Big time. But they also backed off, and it's important to speak on that front as well if you want them to do it again later.

So, even though you may still be mad that they did it at all, take a moment and a breath, and click here. Select feedback if it isn't already selected. And just say "Hey, thanks for listening to your users, and for rolling back the change. I like my community here, and I like that you listened to us when we asked you not to do something we didn't like." It doesn't need to be elaborate. But if we want them to listen to us, making it worth listening to us is a step in the process.

Which also means that if you added a negative review somewhere due to this update, consider retracting or editing it to address the back track on the update. If you were a premium user and you cancelled in order to speak with your money to object to the change, consider speaking again now that you've been listened to.

Staff fucked up. But I'd rather have a staff that fucks up sometimes and then actually listens to its users and fixes or tries to fix it, than a staff that fucks up and pushes through to force the fuck up on everyone. So I'm going to thank them for listening this time, and I'm going to encourage them to listen again next time.

[thinginthedirt]

preview of my piece for @taplingzines Queer History zine! Please share and support the Kickstarter if you can, we still have a ways to go before it's funded!

[bardic-tales]

The Death of the Digital Ecosystem: Why Decoupling Notes Destroys Tumblr

@staff

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.

[taplingzines]

🎉 Live on Kickstarter! 🎉

We've Always Been Here: A multicultural art book celebrating queerness throughout history, with illustrations from over 50 incredible artists! 🌈

Get the book and limited edition merch here:

We've Always Been Here: A multicultural LGBTQ+ art book

50+ artists worldwide have come together to illustrate how queer people have always existed, and always will, all around the world.

@trans-zines @queer-joy-detector @zinefeed @zine-shop-channel

[thinginthedirt]

update

If everything goes well I'll be moving back to the states this summer, so I'll finally be able to add more patches to my shop! I'm also hoping to open some map commissions soon to help fund my move, so keep an eye out!

[thinginthedirt]

i watched the animation and I'm going insane once again so i drew their wedding 🏮