To illustrate this post by @mayahawkse I would like to visualize to you the difference:
A post in 2023:
A post in 2014:
A zoom out of the same post:
This is what a community looks like.
See how in 2023 almost all of the reblogs come from the OP, from their few hours/days in the tag search. Meanwhile in 2014 the % of reblogs from OP is insignificant, because most of the reblogs come from the reblogs within the fandom, within the micro-communities formed there. You didnât need to rely on tags, or search, or being featured. Because the community took care of you, made sure to pass the work between themselves and onto their blog and exposed their followers to it. It kept works alive for years.
Itâs not JUST the reblog/like ratio that causing this issue, itâs the type of interaction people have. Theyâre content with scrolling and liking the search engine, instead of actually having a reblogging relationship with other blogs in their community.
Anyways, if you want to see more content you like, the only true way to make it happen is to reblog it. Likes do not forward content in no way but making OP feel nice. Reblogs on the other hand make content eternal. They make it relevant, they make it exist outside of a fickle tumblr search that hardly works on the best of days.
If you want more of something, reblog it.
Something I see mentioned often is âI donât have many followers, my reblog wonât matterâ which is untrue.
First ofall, reblogging, commenting and interacting is how you start gathering your own micro community, second of allâ you literally do not know how far a single reblog from you could go in the long run.
For instance, letâs say you only have one person reblog from you, and that person only have one person who reblogged from them also, and so on, and somewhere ten reblogs down the line a very large blog reblogs it and boom, the post is getting more and more exposure!
You see, it does not matter if you donât have a large following so long as you cultivate a micro community with the people you do enjoy interacting daily with.
As you can see in the second picture I added, most of the reblogs were between very small groups of people, and occasionally itâll lapse into a large blog that would create a bigger reblog pool. BUT STILL. Saying that you donât have many followers and so it doesnât matter if you donât reblog is UNTRUE.
Even if someone just randomly wanders into your blog one day, itâs beneficial for both sides because A. Seeing you reblog content they like might be enough for them to follow you B. They would be exposed to new content creators they didnât know previously and might also follow / reblog from them!
So yes, do not underestimate what your reblogs and words mean, just because youâre not âbigâ or whatever. It is not how tumblr works!!
P.S IT IS NOT CRINGE TO REBLOG 10 YEARS OLD CONTENT ON TUMBLR. YOU SEE IT. YOU LIKE IT? REBLOG IT. DOESNâT MATTER IF YOU DIG IT FROM THE DEPTHS OF HELL ITSELF. XOXO :âD <3
