The Tumblr Writing Community Is Dying.

The Tumblr writing community is dying.

It’s something I’ve noticed over the past two years of using this site. It was gradual, imperceptible at first, something that most would brush off as a silly concern, or fault Tumblr algorithm for. While it’s true that Tumblr’s engine leaves a lot to be desired, I’ve noticed that even popular blogs have started to dwindle in terms of interaction or motivation. There could be a lot of reasons for this, but the biggest two I’ve noticed, experienced myself, and asked fellow writers about is this: (1) content being stolen, and (2) lack of feedback or interaction. I’ve never seen any logical person defend content being stolen, so I want to address point 2 instead.

Lack of feedback and interaction. I’m not saying this on my behalf so much as I’m saying this for friends and smaller blogs who have lost motivation to write. I was looking at my yandere writing blogs list the other day and noticed that a good majority of them no longer write. I usually update the list every few months, and by that point, more and more writers have stopped writing entirely. This isn’t a problem confined solely to the yandere fandom; in fact, there’s less writing blogs in general these days, especially ones that are active. I used to run a very popular BNHA blog with some friends, but that dissolved after our content was stolen and our followers stopped interacting as much. Out of our 8,500 followers, we hardly got 0.015% notes (~128 notes) on an average post. Tumblr is to blame for the lack of eyes seeing our posts, for sure, but that also means that at least 128 people saw one post and didn’t leave a comment or ask. We were considered a big blog; imagine what it’s like on a small blog.

My friend recently made a post that summed this up perfectly:

“I’ve seen people say “Be grateful that people even lurk on your page.” and, while I get the message they’re trying to say, it’s more dismissive and hurtful in my opinion. Like you’re saying, “Oh your writing is mediocre, you should be grateful people even LOOK at it.”

Me personally? I’ve heard the argument that AO3 is a better place to post fanfics, and while that might be true, I’ve had friends experience firsthand the lack of interaction there too. I’ve heard the argument that interacting with some writers is intimidating (me included). I’ve heard that argument that followers might be too shy to interact. I’ve heard the argument that writers should write for themselves and not for views / likes / reblogs / etc, and while that’s ideal, it’s not sustainable for everyone. What works for one writer won’t work for another, but you know what will? Interaction.

That comment or ask that took you 2 seconds to write? We remember it. That reblog with the compliments in the tags? We remember it. Every single ‘named’ anon we get (heart anon, sunflower anon, etc)? We remember them. And the best part is? It’s actually easier to do these things on Tumblr since you have the option to send anonymous asks or make a sideblog specifically for reblogs! Trust me, whether the lack of interaction is the cause of a lack of motivation or what have you, every writer appreciates feedback (don’t be shy to offer some critique or compliments) or even a simple keyboard smash with some emojis. Even sitting down for 5 min a day per week to comment on your favorite writers’ new pieces makes a huge difference. Personally, since Tumblr’s activity feed is beyond terrible and I have over 1,500 posts, I don’t always see new reblogs or comments on my content; asks though? Always see those, can never go wrong with those. If you don’t want to reblog or leave a comment, then you can never go wrong with an anonymous ask.

As my wise friend says: writing is an art, and in order to improve that art, we need other people’s eyes to see what we don’t.

For the sake of every writer (past, present, and future) on this platform, please share this post.

More Posts from Calamansis and Others

calamansis

5 years ago

okay, i got real fucked up last week and ordered a fuck ton of webkinz, which i thought was a mistake, until the first ones arrived and pud decided she absolutely fucking loved them

at first i just put em on her to see what shed do, which was nothing, so i decided to just leave her alone in my room for a bit. when i came back in later, she was doing this and i dead ass started crying

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calamansis

5 years ago

“But, young man, you need not fear so much. Those who are swept away by the waves will drown, but those who ride the waves will go over them. It is not impossible to ride over these ups and downs of life…”

—

Nakajima Atsushi, “The Rebirth of Wujing” from The Moon over the Mountain and Other Stories

“But, Young Man, You Need Not Fear So Much. Those Who Are Swept Away By The Waves Will Drown, But Those

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calamansis

4 years ago

So after days of pleading with other countries to spred awareness about the current situation in Serbia, a tweet with a video showing police brutality got spread:

And a lot of the responses were:

Apparently only problems worth talking about are those of first-world countries. And it seems that to a lot of people Europe will always remain just England, France, Germany and Italy. And let all of us living in small countries oppresed by totalitarian regimes rot ig.

I am sick of this selective activism.

And Fuck America.

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calamansis

5 years ago

Researchers consider the complexities of bioprinting multicellular tissues

3-D bioprinting is a highly-advanced manufacturing platform that allows for the printing of tissue, and eventually vital organs, from cells. This could open a new world of possibilities for the medical field, while directly benefiting patients who need replacement organs.

Instead of waiting for a suitable donor or having the risk of their body rejecting a transplanted organ, 3-D printed organs allow patients to have a customised organ fabricated specifically to replace their faulty ones. However, even with headway that 3-D bioprinting has made in the last two decades, it is still lacking significant strides in order to produce complex 3-D biomimetic tissue constructs.

According to researchers from the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and Asia University, tissue culture techniques in particular require accelerated progress to address the bottleneck of maturing bioprinted multicellular 3-D tissue constructs into functional tissues. Their research paper, titled “Print me an organ! Why are we not there yet?” has been published in the Progress in Polymer Science.