Leia Shot First

Remarking that he wished to one day care so much about another person, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agent Matthew Howe decided Thursday that he wants to have kids of his own after seeing the love and devotion of the immigrant parents begging him not to take their child. “I always said kids weren’t for me, but seeing the desperate love in the way those parents screamed and tore at their son’s shirt as I pulled him away—to have that powerful a bond must be amazing,” said Howe, admitting the intense sobbing as he kicked the parents off their son helped him finally understand how the power of the parent–child connection made two people very nearly inseparable.

So, I’ve seen a ton of Twitter users talking about making and sharing their new tumblr blogs, to escape Elon Musk’s “anti censorship” bullshittery. First of all: welcome! I know it’s looking bleak over there; especially for trans people. But, now that you’re here, I’m here to tell you all about tumblr etiquette, how this website works, and how it’s different from Twitter. Because you can’t come onto here acting like it’s Twitter, lest The Beast get to you.

First, here are a small handful of tips!

Your likes and following are automatically set to public. You can make them private in your settings!

You can block tags from the settings, too.

There are lots of bots on here. If you’re not careful, you could be mistaken for one! The main way you can avoid this is changing your icon and header from the defaults.

You can queue and schedule posts so that your account posts throughout the day.

Now, let’s talk tumblr etiquette and how it’s different from Twitter. You’re a tumblr user now! It’s time to start acting like it!

Don’t just like posts. They don’t increase visibility whatsoever. The way that you can help posts that you like is reblogging them to your blog. Especially for art!

We don’t say “oomfs” or “oomfies”. Just “mutuals” is fine, thanks!

Adding onto a post with pointless comments is frowned upon. If all you have to say it “this is so true,” or something else to that effect, you should put that in the tags of your reblog.

Most people don’t have carrds or rentries on here. Some of us do, but it’s not an obligation like it is for Twitter.

Similarly, we don’t censor words like “die” and “death”. Posts about wanting to brutally murder people in power go viral all the time, and it’s completely allowed. I’m serious! Enjoy your newfound freedom!

Blocking isn’t a big deal here. Get rid of any weird notion you have that morality is linked to blocking certain people.

But lastly, and most importantly:

Drop your discourse at the door.

If you try to post about most of the things that Twitter users discourse about, you will be laughed off the site. Especially LGBT+ discourse. Posts actively mocking topics of Twitter discourse go viral on here regularly.

Tumblr has healed since its discourse-ridden days, and it’s now very chill. For a lot of us, it’s the last pleasant social media site left, so don’t ruin it.

Here is a list of discourse-related things that tumblr users don’t do:

We don’t do callout posts, unless it’s something actually serious (like that one blog that had a human slave).

Everything that you heard on Twitter was “exclusive” to certain LGBT+ groups is used by just about everyone on here. Bi women use the double venus symbol on here. You’ll just have to learn to live with that.

In particular, I want to emphasize how much we don’t do flag discourse. To the point that somebody caring about flag discourse of any kind is how we tend to identify an ex-Twitter user.

On here, you will never have to see another slur discourse post again, unless you actively seek it out.

You’re free.

And of course there's then this:

Here is a painting I did of the movie Willow. It was a commission. I hope you like it!