I Also Drew Some Epilogue Scenes Cause They Can’t All Be Sad!

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

“Well Your Honor, my client literally never asked to be born so…”

Defense attorney’s closing statement from a 1918 burglary case I’m working on.

Gavin: Alot of people tend to ask me, "Gavin, I don't like you"

Dialogue That Gets Scarier When Trapped In A Hug:

1.“I know what you did.”

2.“Just play along. Please.”

3.“When I let go, run for your life.”

4.“Don’t open your eyes.” 

5.“Don’t look.” 

6.“You’re right. None of this is real.”

7.“They can hear us.”

8.“Play along or they might take us both.”

9.“I always knew you’d die in my arms.”

9.“Go. Go now, and don’t look back.”

10.“Wake up. Before they get you too.” 

11.“You know I’m not real, don’t you?”

12.“Don’t. Move.”

13.“How can’t you see them? They’re right there!”

14.“It’s almost like when you were still alive.”

15.“Wrong choice.”

16.“You’ll be free soon.”

17.“You can’t go back home now. They’ll be waiting.” 

18.“Shh. They’ve got your apartment bugged.”

19.”I’ll make it quick, I promise.”

20.”Did you think I just forgot?”

All the cute nicknames Victor Frankenstein called his son throughout the book:

catastrophe 

miserable monster

demoniacal corpse to which I have so miserably given life

an ugly mummy

a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived,

the filthy daemon to whom I have given life

no human

the wretch whom I had created

sight tremendous and abhorred

unearthly ugly being

too horrible for human eyes

miserable head

vile insect

abhorred monster

wretched devil

you, whose joint wickedness might desolate the world

too horrible for human eyes to behold

the filthy mass that moved and talked

wretch whom I dreaded

villain

monster of my creation

fiend

figure most hideous and abhorred

+ bonus - all the cute ways captain Robert Walton described Victor’s son on 1 page:

a form which I cannot find words to describe

never did I behold a vision so horrible as his face, of such loathsome, yet appalling hideousness

tremendous being

scary and unearthly in his ugliness

Tag yourself I’m “the filthy mass that moved and talked” 

Have you ever looked closely at a car windshield?

The edge of the glass is painted where it is glued to the car but it has these small dots between the clear and painted glass.

These are there for a reason. When the sun hits the glass the painted areas and the clear areas will absorb heat at different rates. This causes the glass to expand and contract differently putting stress on the glass.

These dots help the glass to warm up more evenly over a larger area so the glass does not suffer stress that could cause it to spontaneously explode.

Fun fact: the Tesla cybertruck doesn’t have these.

Yes, the glass will spontaneously crack or explode in the sun.

Hi, i’m a new tumblr user and i’m using the mobile app, and i just came across your “tumblr how to” post and it’s super helpful so thank you so much. I wanted to ask about something, sometimes when people color their words like this they do other stuff like add more than one color to the same word hut not like this, the colors blend together. So i wanted to know if there’s a way to do this on app bc i don’t have a laptop. English isn’t my first language so sorry if my explanation is vague. Thank you, hope you have a good day!!

Tumblr ‘How To’s

Thank you! I’m happy to know that I could help. And don’t worry, you explained it just fine.  (English isn’t my first language either btw)

I didn’t know how to do this so I searched about it. The unfortunate thing is that in order to do this, the ‘text editor’ of post needs to be changed from ‘Rich Text’ to ‘HTML’. And while this change can easily be done on a laptop, there’s no way to do it neither on the mobile Tumblr app nor on Chrome browser on mobile. And it sucks! 

Apparently this option to change the text editor used to be available on mobile, but the recent Tumblr updates have discarded that feature for some reason. So now while posting/editing posts through mobile (whether on app or browser),  the only text editor available is ‘Rich Text’, which can change colours of letters like you did in your ask but it CANNOT make them blend in together like in a gradient. 

Just putting this out there:

I found this amazing and super easy tutorial by @kylos​ . It’s made for laptop users but it’s easy to follow on mobile too. I tried it myself and it worked more than fine for most of the steps. But as I said, since we can’t access ‘HTML’ text editor on mobile, we can’t implement this to the last step. 

I tried finding more ways to do it, but since Rich Text doesn’t offer gradients and HTML just isn’t available on mobile, there’s really no way about it. I’m sorry I couldn’t help this time :(

In case I stumble upon a solution for this -which I think is highly unlikely but still, I’ll add the new link in my masterlist) 

Les Modes : revue mensuelle illustrée des arts décoratifs appliqués à la femme, no. 94, vol. 8, octobre 1908, Paris. La Robe-Manteau de Zimmermann. Dans ses diverses transformations. (Modèle breveté S.G.D.G.) Photos Félix. Bibliothèque nationale de France

my job in the comune will be to fuck your mom