frezned

I wasn’t playing, do I still win?

I explicitly said everyone would win. So, yes.

Okay so I wanna get exactly one ask in the next half an hour

That says nothing but “one”

I just wanna know if my assorted followers can pull it off

It’s a game; if I get two asks or if its text differs from “one” at all (don’t include the quotes!!) then everybody wins including me.

game ends at 2:15 UTC (google UTC time if you’re not in UTC)

I really want to see if this is possible, I believe it is

Oh man it’s so weird hearing Ann Veal… be the main character in Avatar, what the hecks

tommilsom:

Eddplant: What would be the point in that?
We might as well just post a question in our feed for you to see and reblog. Also you can set replies to just people you follow.

———

There’s a big difference between replies and asks. There’s a big difference between posts and asks too.

Replying to a post is adding a comment to something I’ve said. The act of putting a reply says ‘I have a personal opinion on what you’ve just said, and here it is’.

Posting something and tagging me says ‘I have something I’d like Tom to answer.’ it doesn’t ask me, particularly. It just states, to the people who follow that blog, that the person posting it has a query they’d like me to answer. If I happen to see it, I might answer it, but I’m under no pressure or obligation to, and that’s nice.

An ask is something that says ‘apropos of nothing, here is something that I, someone you don’t know, think.’ it barges in and says ‘look at ME. Answer ME’. Anonymous asks are even more obnoxious because they demand that you share their thoughts with your followers. You can’t answer them privately.

Naith said something about how often people send these things because they like knowing that person, for a second, saw your name and read what you said. And that’s true, and I think that’s ok, and I think on something like twitter that’s fine. I don’t begrudge anyone who sends me a tweet unless it’s vile or incendiary. But on tumblr, you’re sending something that has the sole intention of receiving a direct reply. It is automatically attempting to engage the person you send it to in conversation (if you’re anonymous, a public conversation). It’s self-important. It’s not just shouting at someone you don’t know across a crowded room, it’s shouting at them and tugging at their sleeve until they reply. I think it’s actually a poorly implemented feature of tumblr, and I wish they’d thought the sociological implications of it through more before normalising a generation of kids to the concept of having this level of contact with people they don’t know, and making them think that having those avenues of communication open is a right and not a privilege.

I’m not trying to say I’m above anybody here - it’s a plain fact that a lot more people want to ask me things than the average person, and I don’t feel like those messages are worthless because they’re so numerous; I feel they’re worthless BY THEIR VERY NATURE.

Oh my god get reallll!!! It’s not EVEN shouting at someone across a crowded room.

It’s walking across a crowded room and slipping a piece of paper with something written on it into your pocket.

Then, later, when you feel something is in your pocket, you can reach your hand into your pocket - if you want, or you can do it later - and read the message. If it bears response, you can hop up on the podium at the front of the room and say “someone just asked me this; here’s the answer”, or if they signed their name on the piece of paper you can just find them in the room and tell them personally.

Or you can crumple up the paper and chuck it in the bin!

I mean if they’ve has written something patently offensive on the paper you might want to publicly condemn it, or whatever, but… ugh, just… more invasive than shouting across a crowded room? Really?

Smangs of New York

adambloghart:

I was one second away from making this joke. I haven’t been this close to being on frezned’s brain since

Smanglish

The Big Smang Theory