101 WHEN I'M ON MY WAY

"That was a pretty good movie, but not as good as my movie, House of 1001 Corpses," or "I guess this song is okay. Kind of reminds me of a song I'm working on called 'Faster Car'."

Don’t.

I know this goes against everything you’re used to hearing on this website, but listen. Reblogging posts you don’t understand is basically the equivalent of blindly repeating whatever you’re told. Even if you’re right, if you don’t understand why you’re right, you could be spouting utter bullshit and you wouldn’t even know it.

When I see “I don’t know what this means but I’m gonna reblog it anyway” it sends a lot of messages. It says that you care more about seeming right than being right. It says that you want good ally credit without any of the work of being a good ally. It says you’re on my side because I can make a post sound good, not because you actually agree with me on anything beyond the surface level.

So instead of just reblogging that post, save it for later. Like it, draft it, bookmark it, whatever. Go to the op’s blog and skim through a couple of pages, see if you can find some context. If the post is old, you could try asking for context in a non-condescending way. “Is this post referring to something specific?” is a lot better than, say, “Does this even happen? I’ve never heard of this.”

If that doesn’t help, do some more research. Google, search tumblr tags for recent posts on a subject, ask people who have EXPLICITLY stated they are willing to educate. Maybe in the process you’ll find more posts with a similar message to the original, but in easier to understand language. Maybe someone else already added a reply that adds useful information onto the op.