Untitled

In the First version, Troy’s brother is the one who finds and consoles him at the pier - gives him a joint, they have a heart to heart...

In the other version, it is any of Troy’s buddies who console him. At the time I dipped out, that could have been Posy, or Carlos shortly after..

.・✫・  𝙨𝙖𝙬'𝙨 𝙤𝙣𝙚-𝙩𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙨𝙖𝙣𝙙

𝙛𝙤𝙡𝙡𝙤𝙬𝙚𝙧𝙨 𝙬𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙘𝙝𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙚𝙣𝙜𝙚 !!  ✭・.  

wow, i can’t believe it’s nearly been two years since i hosted my 300 follower wc !! i am so so grateful for the people that have followed me, the people that have reblogged my work with generous comments that make me smile, the people that have created a fun community here, and those have (and haven’t publicly) interacted with my blog. i love each and every one of you so much and i’m so excited to see what you guys come up with !!

enjoy friends :)

  ━  rules

“What gender are you?”

“ Yeah, but what is in your pants? “

Okay, but I fear you won’t like my answer... 

My reply is - no, I don’t, because tumblr actually makes it super easy to ignore the reblog/like ratio. The two are lumped together into a category called ‘notes’ so unless you are looking for it, you won’t know what your reblog/like ratio is, and it’s super easy to view it as a lump sum of people who saw your art and smiled.

Here’s the thing; liking vs reblogging is not personal. And it isn’t something to try to change the tide over. I’ve seen my fair share of posts on here AND twitter, with most of them CONDEMNING liking - going so far as to call it useless. But I disagree. Strongly. 

My opinion on the matter is this - if people wanted to reblog the post, they would reblog it. If they don’t, the cards weren’t right. The stars didn’t align. It isn’t a matter of quality - it’s a matter of the right content being there at the right time for the right audience. Because let’s face is - PLENTY of stuff gets reblogged.... when the circumstances are right.

But the circumstances HAVE to be right. EXACTLY right. There has to be a CHAIN of the exact right circumstances. That’s how sharing ANYTHING works. 

Let me put it this way - say we have a hypothetical follower called J. 

J is scrolling his dashboard and comes across a post he likes, say, of a frog picture. He likes the post and has to make a decision - to reblog or not reblog the frog?

Say he likes the frog enough to reblog. It’s  a natural thing - he wants to show it to his followers. He may not think of it consciously, but he’s following an instinct to share information with people. 

But what happens after? Well, it’s not RANDOM. The thing is, J’s followers are NOT the followers of the blog he reblogged it from. They’re a degree of separation from the OP, and are therefore that much less likely to share interests that align with the OP’s content. 

SO what happens is this:

Some people on J’s follower list see the frog and like it. 

Of the ones that like it, a percentage are just liking out of habit and politeness.

A few are liking it to find it later and show it to their irl friends.

A few are liking it because they DON’T want to reblog it, because it doesn’t align with what they want to show to THEIR followers (who are, let’s be honest, even MORE removed from the OP’s frog-centric content).

And who’s to blame? 

ABSOLUTELY NO ONE. Because you cannot force people to reblog stuff any more than you can force people to show their friend their phone when they see a funny meme. 

Can you imagine something like this happening?

This is ridiculous, right? We cannot presume that people are not reblogging because they’re out to be malicious on purpose. Most likely they just aren’t motivated enough to share it in their own social circles for their own reasons - and that’s FINE. 

Look, I get it. People not sharing your stuff gets you less notes. I get how that is disappointing. But if you put ALL of your motivation into internet clout, then you have to put effort into making your art VISIBLE. That’s the only way to get more reblogs. 

For example, if you’re prioritizing visibility:

Get more social media accounts. Make sure the usernames are the same, or at least recognizable, across all social media. 

Organize your art tumblr and twitter. Make a pinned post that shows off your best work. TAG! Learn common tags used for artwork similar to yours.

Interact with other artists! Comment on posts! Reblog others’ artwork! 

NETWORK!!! That is the only way to guarantee that the flowchart of reblogs gets more than once branch.

Twitter circumvents this issue by shoving likes in your face as often as Retweets and that’s certainly one way to give your reblog-tree a boost, but it’s not foolproof. Tumblr has tags you can follow - and that DOES give you more of a possibility of getting reblogs of the content because if people are in a tag, they are LOOKING for stuff. On purpose. They already like what they see.

I feel your pain, I really do, because it took me literal YEARS to find an audience that consistently likes and reblogged my stuff. And your audience deserves to find you - but your followers aren’t your agent. It’s not their job to advertise on your behalf.