Crimson Reflections

So, up until just over a month ago, I never really used Tumblr. I made an account, and it basically sat dormant. In my mind, Tumblr was, to be honest, one of those things that got big years ago, and was dying out. Probably because in my circle of friends, Tumblr was just used for writing, and most of my friends who tried it sorta shrugged it off as a fad-blogging product and walked away. But, on EGL (which ironically, is on LiveJournal), people kept talking about Tumblr. Tumblr this, Tumblr that… and I got curious. So I tried it, in earnest, for a month, and since I love statistics, I just wanted to come back and share some statistics. First of all, I found a statistics tool which made this a lot easier (even if it isn’t 100% accurate in real time). So, here is what Numblr has to say about me.

I shared a handful of different things; reblogged content I just happened to like, a few quotes, old stock photos I dug up through my work for lolibrary, new collection images from brands, photoshoots from indie brands, silly things I put together on a whim, and research I’d done on specific topics.

What I found was somewhat surprising. The most popular thing I posted in the month was a photoset of images from excentrique showing their 2013 summer collection, which at the moment has been reblogged/liked an insane 4,755 times, which boggles my mind as I had something like 80 followers when I posted it (I have 156 now).

The second most popular was a photo set of Fairy Wish Teacups, which doesn’t particularly surprise me, because they are lovely teacups and not necessarily restricted to only being interesting to lolita

The third most popular was a parody photoset; a set of pokemon cards I made using lolita fashion items as the images with silly little joke-text. They were made for an EGL FFA a while back just on a whim, and they were liked/reblogged 733 times.

The fourth most popular was a photoset of the images from my post here about the women of BTSSB’s fragrant rose memories, which got 632 likes/reblogs.

Lastly, the 5th most popular was Innocent World’s 19th Century series ad from Kera with 559 likes/reblogs… which really surprised me because unlike a lot of the other things here that did well… this isn’t something funny I created, or something super old that people don’t have access to…. and it’s not even a super-popular series. I think it’s mostly just that the model is really pretty and has great hair.

And going on from there:

6. Petition for un-marking the lolita tag as adult – 529
7. Excentrique Spring Collection Photos (pale sleeping lady) – 519
8. Innocent World Fairy Tale -290
9. JetJ Circa 2002 – 274
10. Photos from indie brand Fairy Wish – 270
11. Coord of items from Pretty, Fruits 1998 – 235
12. AP Tokyo Milky Planet Coord – 230
13. Excentrique Spring Collection Photos (boystyle) – 224
14. A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream from the AatP Catalog – 198
15. Stock Photos of Baby’s Little Princess OP, 2001 – 191
16. Angelic Pretty Ad from Kera, 2001 – 181
17. Excentrique Spring Collection (sailor) – 168
18. Polkadot Angel Pony Applique from the AP Catalog – 165
19. Larmes De Angel Bags – 158
20. Popping Balloon from the Meta Catalog – 156
21. Cross Doll OP Stock Photos from Heart E, 2001 -151
22. A gif edit of the AP Whip Showcase advert that said “who eats princess cake” changed to “who eats princesses” – 139
23. Isolated images of the Milky Planet items – 117
24. Chandelier print from the AP Catalog -109
25. Odette Mansion series by R-Series on Taobao – 104

So, basically, what I found was that the people who follow me like the really ancient stuff that I dig up, but they don’t like all of it. It has to be striking, or beautiful, or really capture their nostalgia by fitting into what people think old-school lolita is supposed to look like. They also like things that are red, and images of things they already like that they haven’t seen before. I also found out that excentrique makes really beautiful stuff that makes even non-lolita go a little weak in the knees; but let’s be honest here, we already new that.

All and all, I’ve found that I like tumblr, and I’ll probably keep going with it for a good while. It’s nice to have somewhere I can sort of mindlessly enjoy lolita-related content when I’m not feeling up to intelligent thought (pictures are so much easier than words sometimes) and it’s got tons of adorable bunnies, and I have a real soft spot for adorable bunnies lately.

I don’t like the low-level search and the fact that google sucks at searching it though. I also don’t like that some of the blogs I really like are long-abandoned ones that never credited their image sources, so I feel weird re-blogging their content as it hasn’t any info about who’s content it was in the first place.

All that said, I’m still learning tumblr manners, so if I’ve done anything the wrong way, I apologize. I’m never quite sure how to handle asks, for example. Also, I did get the messages from the sweet people who wrote to me that they liked what I was posting, but I didn’t share them, because it seemed kinda like tooting my own horn, and because then they don’t show up in my messages anymore, and they make me smile every time I open my messages. But I am thankful to those people, just so you know, mystery people.