Tumblr: a Dead Platform With Dedicated Users
In early January 2022, users logging onto Tumblr, the fabled social media relic of the 2010s, would have been immediately inundated with incomprehensible nonsense. On the trending topics list, “horse plinko” and “Blorbo from my shows” abounded. Upon looking at their dashboards, users were forced to ask themselves what does it mean to call something, or someone, “scrunkly” and what on earth is “eeby deeby”? And who is “Scrimblo Bimblo?” The joyful incomprehensibility of it all has continued into 2022, as Tumblr users have embraced memes such as the “Live Slug Reaction,” in which a homophobic slug distastefully regards images of LGBT characters, “if the Joker could beatbox,” which is exactly what it sounds like, and “it’s me boy, I’m the PS5,” a bizarre tiktok video in which a man singing a song about being a PS5 declares that free will is an illusion.
The history of Tumblr is a long comedy of errors. The website was created in 2007 and soon became known for its unique fandom culture. Unlike other sites, a variety of post formats were supported, including text, photos, quotes, links, chat, audio, video, and question-and-answer posts. Additionally, the follower counts of blogs were hidden, making the site inhospitable to the same types of influencers and celebrities that were gaining prominence on other platforms at the time. Features like the now-discontinued fan mail and the still-existing “ask” button made it possible for users to communicate with their favorite account. Because of the freedom offered by post formats, the intimacy, and the anonymity of the site, users had more freedom to be weird and to cultivate more authentic digital selves. Additionally, unlike most of the other social media alternatives, Tumblr was one of the few places where users had the ability to fully curate their own experience. Without an algorithm selecting posts, everything on a user’s dash was there because they had followed whoever posted it.
This freedom meant that users felt more comfortable being completely, unabashedly strange, which is what led to some of the most memorable and infamous moments in the history of the site. From the failed 2014 Dashcon convention (which ended with the planners in debt and most of the celebrity guests walking out) to the bizarre “Mishapocalypse” in which hordes of Supernatural fans flooded the site with the same image of Misha Collins, there has been plenty of user-organized chaos. Much of those hijinks have since been extensively documented by the numerous Tumblr historians that have sprung up on video-essay YouTube to capture the nostalgia users feel for the early days of the site. However, from a development side as well, the site was always far from being perfectly functional. Early on, some of the features were bizarre and perhaps not perfectly thought-out. For instance, the site used to give users full editing power over other peoples’ posts whenever they reblogged them, which, as one might expect, was a source of concern for many. Years later, in 2018, staff made what was considered the biggest mistake yet, when they banned all adult content on the site, leading it to lose a third of its traffic. In 2021, Tumblr announced the creation of their “Post Plus” program in which users would be able to monetize their blogs and put posts behind a pay-well, which led to widespread outrage. Most recently, there was controversy when the app banned a number of common tags, including, bizarrely, “#Eugene Levy,” “#girl,” “#me,” and “#bald.”
Despite being called “basically worthless” in 2016 by Yahoo, their parent company at the time, the website still has shown its lasting impact on Gen Z and millennials, especially through the way that Tumblr culture continues to reemerge. One recent example is the way that “twee” fashion, once popular on the platform, is now experiencing a renaissance on newer platforms like Twitter. Another is the way that, after “Destiel,” a relationship between Dean and Cas from Supernatural which had garnered a devoted Tumblr fanbase, was made canon in the most homophobic way possible (just look up “super hell,” “turbo super hell,” or “super mega hell”), hordes of long-lost users returned, rekindling their old fandom. Although Tumblr has been long-eclipsed by the social media behemoths of Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, that fact does not matter to its most dedicated users. Those still on the site could not care less about its relevance. Instead, what is appealing is the way that the site has resisted monetization and has remained one of the last ungovernable frontiers of the internet which has been increasingly commercialized. Tumblr is not and never was perfect, but it was different from other forms of social media, causing its nostalgia to endure and users to continue returning, even past its prime.
