I SLAPPED OUISER BOUDREAUX

like, i used to have an art blog with 340 followers. not a ton but not a small amount either given how this website works with creators. and in my experience back then even the ones who only left likes still reblogged other things or at least posted their own stuff. literally the only empty blogs were clearly bots.

but on this New art blog, i've had so many people with fandom-specific headers and icons with actual usernames as urls and some kind of title or description, but have. Nothing. no posts. all they do is like things. and it's always public, too. their following list and their likes list.

and honestly all it makes me think is that these people are New and also don't know how tumblr works. how likes don't give exposure. not even in a "oh, i know it doesn't give exposure, but i'm still going to reblog anyways" way, but in a genuine honest to god straight up doesn't realize tumblr likes don't work like twitter's.

PLEASE please if you're from tiktok or twitter or whatever please reblog people's art both fandom and original if you like it!! and maybe actually pad out your blog's content in some way so people won't potentially see you as a bot and block you.

FOLKS if you're new, please, please, this is not like Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. Reblogging is the way to go. This is how we network on here. This is how you make mutuals. This is how you share new stuff with others.

You are also:

Encouraged to add your thoughts to the post

Engage in conversation freely

Express yourself in the tags if you don't want to write in the post

In fact, write a god damn essay in the tags - we old members will read it, I promise - the limit on tags per post is insane anyway

But.

You'll get blocked a lot.

Because that's what the spambots did.

Because having a blog that showed up in "like" lists made them seem like a real person to SEO bots.

It's also what the fake begging accounts do - empty blog, and sending people asks that say "I am in dire straits; here's my sob story; please donate to my GoFundMe." They hope those people will post their ask publicly. Then the post sticks around even if their account is deleted later.

Blogs with no content are considered shady, because we've seen a lot of scams that involve empty blogs.

If you want to just watch quietly, you can do that. Even logged out. (Sort of. That's harder; some blogs aren't visible if you're logged out.)

But if you want to be considered part of the Tumblr community (or part of one of the many Tumblr communities)... reblog things. Comment on them, whether that's by adding comments to the reblog, replying in the notes, or adding tags when reblogging. All three is fine.

You don't have to be social to be here. But if you want access to most blogs, you have to avoid being perceived as hostile or a scam or possibly a data-harvesting bot.