basic info: reblog loops are a phenomenon in reblog maps where, sometimes, there are reblog-dots connected in a sort of loop. feel free to check out my tag on them for examples.

something i’ve noticed about loops is that they almost always (or maybe always always?) connect back to the root post. i’m not really sure why, but it’s a pattern i’ve seen in them for a while now, i just never bothered to mention it, before.

something else i’ve started noticing more recently, though, is that the number of dots in a loop depends on which reblog of a post you’re viewing, and how deep in the map that reblog is.

for example: the map of this post i made a bit ago.

when viewed from the root post, the red-circled reblog, or the orange-circled reblog, the map looks like this.

the loops in the map, however, look like this. the triangle is when viewed from the green-circled reblog, and the square is from the blue-circled reblog.

it’s interesting how the ‘current post’ dot is never a part of the loop, just the dot before it. i’ve noticed this pattern in every other reblog loop, and i’m pretty confident that if you look through my reblog loops tag, they’ll all be the same way.

so, it seems that reblog loops aren’t an inherent part of maps, but are instead caused by viewing a map from a reblog of a certain depth, and the minimum depth for a loop to occur seems to be 3 reblogs deep.

i’ve just tested this on a few random posts to see if i’m right, and i think i am. it seems like loops will always form if you view a post from 3 or more reblogs deep.

do i know why this happens? no, i don’t have a clue. a bug, maybe, or perhaps it’s some obscure intentional feature for some reason.

the original post, or the “root post”, has a unique marking on the map: a circle with a little dot in the middle, and it’s slightly larger than the regular reblog dots.

if you’re looking for it and you’re having trouble finding it, you can click on any of the reblog dots in a map, and it’ll highlight the path back to the root, so you can also find it that way! here’s a quick example (the red markings are drawn on):

i have!! i Do Not like this new notes ui, but i’ve figured out how to get maps. tumblr’s calling them reblog ““graphs”” now but i’m gonna keep calling them maps.

i’ve just edited my pinned post to include this new process, but i’ll add it here, too.

open the notes of a post, switch over to the reblogs tab, and click on this:

it should open a drop-down list, and you want to click the “Reblogs graph” option:

and then you’ve got a map!! :]

gonna put the same note here as i did in my pinned:

Not sure if this shows up for everyone, and I’m on mobile in a browser so it might look different on a pc or in the app, but when I open the notes there’s this little symbol you can click on to open a post’s reblog map

Once opened, it should look something like this (the map will vary depending on the post, ofc). And then you just press “Load more reblogs” until they’re all loaded!

It’ll say “All reblogs loaded” when you’re done!

I usually have to wait a bit for stuff to un-tangle itself, since all the little reblog orbs move around, and they all seem to load from the same place, which means you kinda get reblog orbs going everywhere when you press the “Load more reblogs” button. If you want a clean/untangled map, I recommend waiting between loading more for the strands to un-tangle, but if you want a chaotic map, you can also spam-press the load more button. It’s a personal preference thing I think :]

Like how do you decide where each reblog is located from the centre(the of post) and other reblogs

each reblog dot stems from the post it was reblogged from. for example:

original post, reblogs stemming directly from op, reblogs separated from op by 1 post, reblogs separated from op by 2 posts

the reblog dots repel each other (kinda like magnets, except there’s no side that draws them together), which is why any post with another post stemming off of it is pushed outward like that.

the direction doesn’t mean anything, that’s pretty much random / loosely based on how the map loads. the reblog dots actually will slowly move around, so the angle / direction of them gradually changes.

the length of the lines connecting the dots doesn’t mean anything, per se, but the length is affected by how many dots are pushing each other apart. the reblog dots repel each other, kinda like when magnets push each other away, and how strongly they repel each other increases the more dots you have in one place. so, more dots in one place = longer lines between that cluster and anything stemming off of it.

here’s a little color-coded map (from this ask i got a while ago) to explain why some strands stick out from the main cluster:

original post, reblogs stemming directly from op, reblogs separated from op by 1 post, reblogs separated from op by 2 posts, and so on.