actually i'm reblogging this again with commentary, fuck it.

There's people in the notes talking about "not basing your worth off numbers", and like. that isn't what this post is about. It's not a threat, either, it's a comment on how this site works, at a mechanical level.

Likes are worthless. Let me say that again.

Likes. Are. Worthless.

They don't do anything. They're a bookmark. They were never part of how tumblr works - in the early days we didn't even have a like button, and the site still more or less acts as though we don't. They're personal bookmarks and the only people who "get" anything from them are you (you bookmark the post) and the OP (maybe a very slight serotonin boost), but they don't keep the post in circulation, they don't keep it alive.

Without reblogs, a post will be dead in the water within an hour. No matter how good it is, no matter how many hours of painstaking love and attention its creator put into it, it will be dead within an hour and never seen again. It gets pushed down the dashboard and nobody aside from the followers who were online when it was posted will see it.
And there's a huge difference in engagement on posts that get even one lucky reblog from someone with wider reach - that one reblog shows your post to five, ten, fifteen other people, and if one of those people also reblogs it, and so on and so forth, that's how posts stay alive and in circulation.
It's like a contagion, but we're sharing creativity instead of disease.

And that matters. That "lifespan" of the post matters, artists and writers give up on this site and go to sites where posts have longer lifespans because it sucks to spend hours of your life, maybe even days, to get two notes and some fucking pocket lint for your efforts.
We create for ourselves, but we share because we want people to see it, because that engagement offers positive feedback and encouragement to continue.
But more than that, if every post (whether art, fic, gifset, whatever) is dying within an hour or a day of being posted, that means it's not making it onto your dashboard. And if it's not on your dashboard, you won't see it. This kills the site, after a while. You stop seeing the posts, because nobody is putting them on your dashboard, because this site doesn't have an algorithm like twitter and insta's and it shouldn't, it's the last bastion of chronological timelines.

Forgive my giant fucking rant I am so tired right now and full of the plague but like stop acting like artists and writers are just being whiny little babies, or "threatening" to withhold our fucking work (you're not entitled to it! it's ours! if we get nothing out of sharing it we're well within our rights to keep it private!) when we say this site will dry up without reblogs. We're just stating facts.

also I’ve seen some people in the tags say ‘oh there have always been more likes on posts’ no there haven’t ???? 

these are posts from 2013, look at the ratio

not to sound like a nursing home resident but back then people know that the point of this site was to reblog things and share them, not to bury them away among your other 23k liked posts

It really does suck, because there's no way to realize your likes aren't actually helping spread posts and art you like.

You may have something you don't want on your main blog, but the solution to that is simple - make a sideblog! That way you can channel certain hobbies one way, and fanart and fandom involvement another.