i hated when elphaba and glinda reunited after like 17 years and instantly started linking and touching each other's arms habitually because even though the book didn't really mention it of their college years it retroactively tells you they used to touch the hell out of each other. stop

in loving memory of tumblr's april fools' pranks 💐 2014 - 2024

icymi, tumblr used to do an elaborate april fool's prank every year, but this year they suddenly stopped. here's a somewhat detailed recap of everything they did over the decade:

2013 - mishapocalypse (honourable mention): tumblr staff didn’t start doing april fools until 2014, but the mishapocalypse happened on tumblr in 2013 and i feel like this list would be incomplete without it

2014 - tumblrpro: upon opening your dash you were greeted by an “inspirational” video, that ended with the option to get “tumblrpro (for free)”. all it did was put a top hat on your icon.

2015 - tumblr executivesuite/coppy: a copying machine appeared in the corner of your dash. it would offer tips on how to use tumblr, like clippy the paperclip used to do in microsoft word. as the day went on, it slowly broke down and died right in front of your eyes. many people hated him (but not me). you could also make a (small) spreadsheet. @executivesuite2016 is the official blog.

2016 - this is decision/lizard election/tumblrdecides: a parody of the 2016 US elections. there were 4 lizards (well, one of them turned out to be a salamander in a scandal) to vote for. the dash looked different and there was a live news report with election updates, as well as an election blog for each lizard. they all had their own slogans and you would get an "i voted" button after you voted that would get slapped next to your icon. there were built-in functions to make an election poster for your favourite lizard and to create a text post that supported your lizard of choice that autogenerated a statement for all your followers to read. imo tumblr’s april fools peak. @thisisdecision2016-blog is the official blog, @mop-2016-blog @wretchedtooth @timefordeborah-blog were candidates. rick also had a blog (rick-official) but that now seems to have vanished because he ended up dropping out of the election. mop won, if you're curious. by far the most elaborate prank tumblr ever did.

2017 - horse friend: a tamagotchi-inspired game where you had to take care of a little horse in the corner of your screen. it came with a randomly generated name, and you had to feed and clean up after it. if you didnt take good care of it, it died. you could then hatch (yes, hatch) a new one. there was also an option to look at the names of all your dead horses. this is now available to buy in the tumblr shop. @horse-friends is the official blog.

2018 - tumblcoin: a parody of cryptocurrency (this was the year bitcoin took off). you could ‘invest’ in tumblcoin, with which you could in turn buy things with to spice up your dash, including last year’s horse friend, coppy from 2015, and a frame for around your icon. you could share the amount of tumblcoin you owned in an automatically generated gif post which would be tagged #tbc2018 and #tumblcoin. @tumblcoin is the official blog.

2019 - @memories: this blog still functions the way it did on april fools itself! it's like mad libs, where it takes post templates and then adds in tags you use a lot and users you frequently interact with on your main blog. like a personalized shitpost bot.

2020 - group chat prank/@storybot: it was so hard to find info on this because it was contained entirely in the now-defunct group chat function, which no one used. i had to go through the notes of this post for information because no one cared enough to actually write anything explaining it. turns out, you could write a story with your mutuals by adding storybot to your group chat. it also kept working after april fools (well, up until the group chats were deleted) just like memories. many people missed out on it entirely because they did not use the group chat function.

2021 - tumblcryptids: tumblr allowed you to adopt “non-fungible tumblcryptids”, a parody of NFTs. clicking a button that said "Summon thy Tumblrcryptid" would spawn an image of a little blob-shaped creature with a short description, which would always read "Hi! My name is [randomly generated name]. I love [thing most people like]. I hate [thing most people dislike]. Like my parent, I can't get enough of #[tag from your main blog]." you could share them in a post, which would automatically add the tag #NFTumblcryptids to your post. and yes, people on the piss on the poor website freaked out about it because they thought they were real NFTs harming the environment. @tumblcryptidadoptioncenter is the official blog.

2022 - click-a-thon: when you clicked a light switch on your dashboard, a bunch of colourful things showed up, like a sponge you could move around, an "engagament meter", clickable buttons, and a “Summon Crab!” button, which would summon a crab when you clicked it. you could. the crabs, like horse friend, are still available in the tumblr store as of 2025. here's some screenshots. there were various ways to share your crab activities, which would all get tagged #april fools 2022. the prank was presented as a marketing technique created by Brick Whartley, a fictional businessman character created by tumblr, who (afaik) originated in a post on the official blog of the 2018 april fools prank, albeit originally in a different role. around this time he also started functioning as the mascot for tumblr's shop ( @emporium )

2023 - abstract reactions (emoji reacts): buttons were added to every post that allowed you to add emoji reactions, many of them based on tumblr inside jokes (horse as a reference to horse plinko/horse friend, vanilla for the vanilla extract meme, pikaman, bug for bug race, and brick whartley, who wasn't a meme but staff really wanted him to be). if one specific emoji was used a certain amount of times it would add an effect to the post, eg many cheese emoji reacts would cover the post in cheese. this was also attributed to Brick Whartley ("his" blog @brickwhartley also documented the day)

2024 - boop-o-meter: allowed you to “boop” other users who had opted in to the booping, like facebook’s poke feature back in the day. depending on how long you held the button, you would either boop, super boop, or evil boop. on the dashboard there was a counter for both how many times you had booped others and how many times others had booped you, as well as how many boops were given side-wide. when booping someone, an image of a cat paw appeared. you would get badges (which can still be used) for booping 1, 100 and 1000 times. if you got more than 999 boops, the counter would simply say “WOW”. this was brought back for halloween 2024 (as BOOp-o-meter. get it), with a ghost, skeleton and mummy paw. no official blog, but here's an official recap for april first from staff. i believe this was the only april fools prank that was mobile user friendly.

2025 - @fandom is running some polls, i guess

My favourite harmless prank I've heard of was done by this girl whose dad was a geologist, and they'd go on day hikes with his geologist friends/co-workers and when she got bored on them she'd habitually pick up a random rock and go ask him what it is, and one of them would explain what kind of a rock that is, how it probably got here, and usually some notions of the more unusual features the rock had, if any.

And she had a friend who had once gone on a tourist trip to Iceland and brought back a volcanic rock. So she borrowed the rock and took it with her on the hike, and after two randomly picked up "hey dad what rock is this", she presented the volcanic rock, in the same fashion as all the others.

3 minutes later there are five middle-aged and older men circled around this mysterious rock, all agreeing on what it is, but not why it is. They keep asking her questions, where did she find it? Were there any other rocks around there that looked like it? Was it like this on the ground? People walking past the group try to stretch their necks to see over the geologists' shoulders to see what's the source of such amazement.

And in the end she couldn't take it anymore, burst into laughter and confessed. The geologists agree that it was pretty clever.

Geologist enrichment

So was anyone gonna tell me the Greek navy still has a fully functional trireme?

Her name is Olympias! She was built in 1987 and can sail up to 17 knots (30 km) per hour!

Olympias weighs 47 tonnes, but is remarkably agile, able to make a 180 degree turn within one minute. Everything but the bracing ropes was constructed of the same materials as in ancient Greece. (They used steel instead of hemp rope for cost reasons.)

Experiments with Olympias have helped us understand the capabilities of warships from ancient Greek and Roman times. Triremes like her were built for speed, maneuverability, and aggressive ramming. (Her beak alone weighs 200 kg.) It appears that many of the seamanship feats described by Thucydides were indeed possible!

Olympias is now an exhibit at Naval Tradition Park in Palaio Faliro, Athens, Greece. She's usually dry docked these days, but I've found a couple videos of her at sea!

The massive continuity of duck (boats)

This was a whole thread, here are some of my favourites:

Me: I don't get it. I thought I was doing a lot better than I was a few years ago. I'm like 10 times more on top of things than I used to be. How does everything feel terrible now?

The Tiny Me in OSHA-approved Hi-Vis Gear Who lives in my brain and pulls all the levers: Boss, it's the fascism. You're completely gunked up with cortisol due to the fact that your entire daily life is now underscored with a haunting awareness of the rapid erosion of your rights, dignity, and any and all social safety nets, and you're also bearing witness to the most vulnerable people immediately being persecuted. This creates a natural stress response that basically means you're going to continue having memory and organizational problems, as well as emotional imbalances.

Me: BUT I HAVE A BULLET JOURNAL AND I MEDITATE NOW.

Tiny OSHA Me: BOSS, THE FASCISM.

(Source)

other notable quotes from this article

Divorce seems to radicalize american men in a way that needs to be studied

A divorced american man will join a right wing terror group because he didnt get custody of the kids he didnt take care of at all

An american man will have an affair with a colleague, get caught, get divorced, and join isis

Intelligent words from @junequeer

Honestly being overworked makes people unobservant and passive and it literally kills people every day. People don’t seem to realize that an overworked nurse might not notice your sepsis symptoms and a tired truck driver might not notice your car when he’s merging into the lane. Failing to protect worker’s rights impacts nearly everyone

THIS. I want workers to be treated well for their own sake, but I NEED workers to be treated well for MY sake. We have got to stop glorifying eroding margin into the negative zones.

we asked the average "i'm sooo empathetic ai brings out my maternal instincts🥹" person how they treat real human retail employees

kinda funny that there's no tariffs on the vatican but at least 10% on all other microstates in EU

italy about to invent levels of catholic corruption never seen since the 17th century

Can you imagine Pirate King Elizabeth killing people on the high seas and her final words to them are ‘Say hello to my husband’

#the pirate queen kills you and you meet davy jones and he’s eagerly like ‘did elizabeth have a message for me?!’ #you flash back to your bewildered last moment #’…she said jack is teaching your son to shoot’ #‘oh god no’ says davy jones

I feel like "thanks to bisexuals and gen z" deserves a place in the tumblr meme phrases

"Trump has been found dead thanks to bisexuals and gen z"

Were bisexuals not previously counted in the LGBTQ+ census or

It’s important to remember that this sign and the one that will replace it are easily removable so they can be replaced as a normal course of operations. They’re fragile and flimsy. They’re made to be replaced so easily. They come off the wall like nothing.

I sure do hope they get left alone though because they’re just so flimsy and easily removed since they’re meant to be removed and replaced.

Apropos of nothing, throwing sand into the gears of the system in Nazi Germany by making small, tedious things a problem and making the overall progress of bureaucracy difficult did well to slow the machine. It didn’t stop it in the end, but it definitely did help to slow it from tearing through the at risk population like wildfire immediately, giving people a chance to hide or escape. It also forces resources to have to toil in the tedium to march their agenda forward. Signs cost money. Ripping them down is free. Again, unrelated thought.

i work at a company that builds store displays and corporate signage. Most signs like this are attached with a combination of silicone and double-sided tape that holds the sign to the wall while the silicone cures. You can pop one of these off with a screw driver. They are almost never anchored to the wall in any truly permanent way. Whatever glue is on there will be back from the edge a bit because no one wants adhesive oozing out from beneath. Work a flat-head screwdriver under a corner and pop that fucker up, and smile knowing that you will likely fuck up the wall underneath as a bonus.

being on doxxing terms with a tumblr mutual is kinda funny like we met at yaoi university and now an year later we both know each other's exact locations