Being a list of habits I’ve acquired on this website

After a cut, b/c I’ve no idea how long it will be but prob. too long.

1. If I haven’t seen the show or movie or read the book or whatever I’m unlikely to like or (especially) to reblog. But if I do I’ll usually cop to not having seen it in the tags.
2. I, a dude, try not to amplify stereotypically dude things. By that I mean, overtly sexist stuff that objectifies women or is coded male-gaze-y. I realize not all of Tumblr is this way, but the parts of it I hang out in tend to be feminist, and I appreciate that and want to help it stay that way. I feel odd mentioning it, b/c it sounds like I expect a cookie or something. I don’t. I’m just glad to have the chance to exist in this space and learn from my betters.
3. I’ve mentioned this before: I try not to (exactly) repeat myself, in the sense that once I’ve reblogged a post I’m not allowed to reblog it again (which I can keep track of b/c I always like if I reblog, so if the heart is filled in I know I’ve seen the post before, and probably already reblogged it). Exceptions: Things that have acquired new content (e.g., compelling commentary); things I love enough that after a year or two has gone by and I see it again I can’t help myself.
4. I usually, but not always, keep up with my dash. It depends how obsessive I’m being and if I have deadlines IRL that get in the way. I do always keep up with my notifications. Since I leave a lot of replies (thank you Tumblr for bringing that back) it bugs me to think that by not keeping up with my dash I could miss a mutual replying to a reply. But if you reblog something and add to it or if you @ me, hoo boy you can rest assured I will see it within a few hours if I’m awake.
5. I’m bad at tagging. I’ll tag for droll (or at least dad-humorous) commentary, and I try to use a consistent tag when I fall off the deep end with some fandom that I suspect followers might not want to have take over their dash, so you can use Tumblr Savior (does that still exist?) or XKit or whatever the current hotness is for filtering out stuff you don’t want to see.
6. I try not to be creepy. One of my known failure modes is getting caught up in something and wanting to share it, and thinking the people I’m following and interacting with are as excited as I am about the chance to squee collectively about whatever it is I’m excited about. And since one of the ways I do that is to geekishly obsess over tiny details, it sometimes happens that I blow right past normal amounts of that and make people think uh, who is this person and what is their problem? I think I’ve become somewhat better about that, but it’s something I work on.
7. I think about the stuff I see in my dash, about the people behind it, a lot. I read the tags. I build mental profiles (probably wildly inaccurate ones) of the people I follow. When you mention troubles in your life I fret about it, about what I can and should say, about how and whether I can be helpful. I know it’s weird and parasocial. But I think of the people I follow as a kind of community. Yes; it doesn’t work the same as a community in physical space. There are limits and barriers (though also a weird kind of adjacency) that don’t exist with offline friendships. But whatever the relationship we have is, it’s real for me.

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Tags: lies tumblr url.

This entry was posted by jbc on Monday, September 4th, 2017 at 4:28 pm and is filed under Tumblr. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.