WTF? Even putting aside the question whether reblogs are actual feedback, when I put fanart on Tumblr it doesn't get reblogged either, unlike say my experiment of putting sloths in pictures of James McAvoy, a Tumblr which still has over 5800 followers and gets reblogs and more followers constantly, even though I haven't posted anything on it for over a year. That doesn't mean pasting animals into celebrity photos is particularly respected or revered as fandom activity.

But that Tumblr had built momentum through daily content posting for months. The key to Tumblr popularity (outside of managing to do one thing that really goes viral) is to be prolific with something for a significant time, so you slowly get into the multiplying effects of really spreading through reblogs. That goes for bits of fic as for art as far as I see it. If you just post something every now and then it just doesn't work.