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 didn’t 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.
It’s not JUST the reblog/like ratio that causing this issue, it’s the type of interaction people have. They’re 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 “I don’t have many followers, my reblog won’t matter” which is untrue.
First ofall, reblogging, commenting and interacting is how you start gathering your own micro community, second of all— you literally do not know how far a single reblog from you could go in the long run.
For instance, let’s 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 don’t 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 it’ll lapse into a large blog that would create a bigger reblog pool. BUT STILL. Saying that you don’t have many followers and so it doesn’t matter if you don’t reblog is UNTRUE.
Even if someone just randomly wanders into your blog one day, it’s 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 didn’t know previously and might also follow / reblog from them!
So yes, do not underestimate what your reblogs and words mean, just because you’re not ‘big’ 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. DOESN’T MATTER IF YOU DIG IT FROM THE DEPTHS OF HELL ITSELF. XOXO :’D <3
TL;DR
Reblogging is absolutely the only thing that helps the site function. Unlike all other social media, likes are nothing here. They are meaningless. Reblogs are the only way to truly say you like something. The only way to make the site work as intended. I know it feels weird, that likes are soooo important on other sites like Instagram and TikTok. This is the anti Instagram. The anti TikTok. Tumblr needs reblogs to thrive. It’s like water to a thirsty critter in the desert. Please 🥺 help the thirsty critters!
#for context just in case tumblr one day gets rid of the checkmarks (via iclimbtreestofeelalive)
This is what it looks like now that they’ve changed from blue to rainbow (I went straight to this post because @grawly is the most checkmarked person I could think of):
ALT
