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Jan. 9th, 2019 09:42 amI have a very distinct memory of 2014 -- I'd just gotten a tumblr recently, because all my friends had moved there and my Reading Page were basically all feeds. I remember thinking, "how do I find fanart of Bucky Barnes?" and then remembering that Tumblr had a search bar. I typed "Bucky Barnes" and so many beautiful fanarts popped up.
And on almost all of them, there was a little blurb: Don't repost.
How do I tell people that I like their stuff, then? Clicking the like button and following the creator didn't feel enough.
Then, at the bottom of one of the fanart, it said "I appreciate reblogs, but please don't repost".
And that was really the moment when tumblr came to life for me. Reblogs is how you show your love. Reblogs is saying "I like your thing so much that I want to share it with my friends." Reblog is on the opposite end of the spectrum as reposting.
I didn't want to spam my RL friends with my new-found Bucky Barnes obsession, so I created a sideblog to reblog the beautiful art, and to post some of my own art along the way.
Then people started following me and reblogging my art. It was so much fun, to read through the tags and comments on the reblogs. Seeing how people choose to tag things, which of their friends they mention, or what interesting points they bring up. The enthusiasm and crying in the tags. Oh god I love tag-yelling so much -- I'll deal with scrolling past the 15th reblog of something if it means I get to read tag-yelling.
As my follower count passed the 1000 mark, suddenly I was more nervous with my reblogs. Every time I came across beautiful art, my hand hovered over the reblog button -- is this something that I want to shove onto the dashboards of 1000 people? What if they've seen it 10 times already that day? But how else would I show my love to the artist? So I stopped reblogging gifsets, and only reblogged fanart that I hadn't seen before.
Then I had a baby, and didn't have time to read my dash anymore, so I stopped reblogging altogether. I'd still post my artwork, and I'd still read all of the reblog tags and comments on my work. The tags on those reblogs was one of the things that kept me connected to fandom as a community. I love the "slams the reblog button" tag, I love the "thinky" tag, I love the "I'm not crying you're crying" tag.
And then my tumblr got deleted, with no warning whatsoever.
Reblogs saved my work. I spent 2 weeks hunting down my old work, and basically, the more reblogged it had been, the higher chance I had of finding it. The one thing I posted with Chinese!Peggy Carter? Gone, because 12 people liked it and no one reblogged it. The other post with racebent!Steve Rogers? Gone. The one with genderbent!Bucky playing stickball? Gone. When I posted them, I was like "oh yay, my peeps like my stuff <3 <3 <3", but because no one reblogged it, it was gone. Reblogging meant sharing. Reblogging meant saving. I had a #humans tag on my personal blog that was just people being their doofy selves, and whenever I felt down I would go visit that tag and feel better about humanity.
So when I moved to DW and some tumblr folks asked me "how do you reblog?" I said: here is how you save cool posts. Here is how you share cool posts. Here is how you express your love.
And that is why, all the privacy and sharing and commenting protocol discussions yesterday were great and invigorating, but an evening of people telling me to stop using the word "reblog" was so upsetting.
And on almost all of them, there was a little blurb: Don't repost.
How do I tell people that I like their stuff, then? Clicking the like button and following the creator didn't feel enough.
Then, at the bottom of one of the fanart, it said "I appreciate reblogs, but please don't repost".
And that was really the moment when tumblr came to life for me. Reblogs is how you show your love. Reblogs is saying "I like your thing so much that I want to share it with my friends." Reblog is on the opposite end of the spectrum as reposting.
I didn't want to spam my RL friends with my new-found Bucky Barnes obsession, so I created a sideblog to reblog the beautiful art, and to post some of my own art along the way.
Then people started following me and reblogging my art. It was so much fun, to read through the tags and comments on the reblogs. Seeing how people choose to tag things, which of their friends they mention, or what interesting points they bring up. The enthusiasm and crying in the tags. Oh god I love tag-yelling so much -- I'll deal with scrolling past the 15th reblog of something if it means I get to read tag-yelling.
As my follower count passed the 1000 mark, suddenly I was more nervous with my reblogs. Every time I came across beautiful art, my hand hovered over the reblog button -- is this something that I want to shove onto the dashboards of 1000 people? What if they've seen it 10 times already that day? But how else would I show my love to the artist? So I stopped reblogging gifsets, and only reblogged fanart that I hadn't seen before.
Then I had a baby, and didn't have time to read my dash anymore, so I stopped reblogging altogether. I'd still post my artwork, and I'd still read all of the reblog tags and comments on my work. The tags on those reblogs was one of the things that kept me connected to fandom as a community. I love the "slams the reblog button" tag, I love the "thinky" tag, I love the "I'm not crying you're crying" tag.
And then my tumblr got deleted, with no warning whatsoever.
Reblogs saved my work. I spent 2 weeks hunting down my old work, and basically, the more reblogged it had been, the higher chance I had of finding it. The one thing I posted with Chinese!Peggy Carter? Gone, because 12 people liked it and no one reblogged it. The other post with racebent!Steve Rogers? Gone. The one with genderbent!Bucky playing stickball? Gone. When I posted them, I was like "oh yay, my peeps like my stuff <3 <3 <3", but because no one reblogged it, it was gone. Reblogging meant sharing. Reblogging meant saving. I had a #humans tag on my personal blog that was just people being their doofy selves, and whenever I felt down I would go visit that tag and feel better about humanity.
So when I moved to DW and some tumblr folks asked me "how do you reblog?" I said: here is how you save cool posts. Here is how you share cool posts. Here is how you express your love.
And that is why, all the privacy and sharing and commenting protocol discussions yesterday were great and invigorating, but an evening of people telling me to stop using the word "reblog" was so upsetting.
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