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Picture this: you’re a fourteen-year-old outcast, deep in the closet, low on friends and high on angst. You hear about this website, a place where you can make real friends and be a part of a community that shares your interests. On a whim, you decide to make an account and your life changes forever.
Of all the social media platforms, there is nothing quite like Tumblr.com. Referred to affectionately by users as a “hellsite,” and “the best void to scream into,” Tumblr has made a name for itself as one of the more… alternative social media platforms.
“It’s definitely unique,” says user Samuel Filiaggi. “People are a lot more forward with their opinions and are a lot more confident with how they interact with each other, for better or for worse.”
Tumblr got its start in 2007 as a simple blogging site, similar to WordPress and Wix. Unlike other social platforms like Facebook and Instagram, the userbase on Tumblr is largely anonymous, with many of its users choosing to use pseudonyms instead of their real names.
That anonymity is part of what made Tumblr so popular in the first place. There was no threat of having your parents or classmates see your posts, because for all anyone knew, your blog was run by a Vriska Serket roll player who goes by the handle ArsenalSpider.
Widescale anonymity coupled with the site’s audience of mostly outcast teens made Tumblr a hub for a variety of online fandoms.
I was 14 when I first joined Tumblr. I was a huge fan of the infamous CW show Supernatural, which in its first season, followed the story of two demon-hunting brothers on a mission to find their missing father. To say I was obsessed with this show is an understatement. I remember spending hours sifting through Pinterest and Instagram for Supernatural fanart, memes, basically any shred of fan-made content I could get my hands on.
At the time, Supernatural and other fandom powerhouses had a chokehold on Tumblr’s content and were my main reason for making an account. But, while I may have joined Tumblr for Supernatural, that’s not why I stayed.
Tumblr’s Queer Community
The queer community is central to Tumblr’s online ecosystem. There are similar communities on other platforms, but none of them quite capture the sense of connection that you’d find on Tumblr.
Those who didn’t come to Tumblr for the fandoms, came for the 2SLGBTQ+ community. I came for the former and stayed for the latter.
“Fandom and queer spaces have been very huge,” says user Alison Blattner. “[There were] always a lot of people sharing things that they love, creating content of things that they have a lot of affection for, be it book series, movies, comics, whatever. But then [it was] also a really good way to find communities with experiences similar to your own.”
Because of its popularity as an alternative social media platform that embraced self-identified outcasts and obscure interests, Tumblr was the perfect meeting place for queer teens trying to figure out who they are.
One study from the Scrolling Beyond Binaries project found that young 2SLGBTQ+ people use Tumblr far more than their straight/cisgender peers, and that was obvious based on the users you’d see on the site.
Samuel, one of my first mutuals, joined Tumblr a few years before me in 2012. One of his friends from school pitched Tumblr to him as an anonymous site where he wouldn’t have to worry about being followed by people he knew in real life.
“One of the ways she sold it was by saying that there was a lot of queer people on Tumblr,” says Samuel, “whereas in my high school, we had GSA and stuff but there weren’t a lot of out queer people. So being able to interact with it like that was nice.”
Alison joined Tumblr around 2010 but was more interested in the art and fandom spaces.
“I grew up in a very conservative town,” says Alison. “Like super tiny and small. My graduating class is 92 people, and it was all around not very friendly to queer folks. So, I had completely buried any thought that I was anything but straight by the time that I had joined the website.”
Alison remembers hearing about Tumblr through a user on DeviantArt, a niche art-sharing website that was popular in the early to mid-2000s.
“I specifically remember Portal 2 coming out and that was probably the first community that I was really involved in on there. And that’s when I started noticing ‘Oh hey, a lot of people are queer!’ And I was like, ‘Oh that’s neat, that’s not me, but oh that’s neat, I don’t see that in my town!’” says Alison.
Sage Eaton, another one of my mutuals, joined Tumblr around the same time as Alison, and was similarly drawn to the site’s art space. But Sage says that back then, Tumblr didn’t have distinct communities.
“It was just a bunch of people going ‘Hey, this is cool, look at that!’ And I guess my friend group kind of showed up there after a while, and they were all part of this queer community to begin with so it just kind of slid over there,” says Sage.
Even though they were frustrated by the more toxic and “gatekeepy” side of the community, Sage says they’ve enjoyed their time on Tumblr, especially in the last few years.
“I’ve been feeling much more at ease with how I perceive myself and how people perceive others in general,” says Sage. “I love how there’s an open dialogue there, and I enjoy seeing other people’s experiences and reading people posts, just sharing their take on things.”
For a lot of queer users, Tumblr was their first safe space. It gave us the ability to explore our identity without threat of rejection from our parents or peers. Having a community that you could learn from and who was largely supportive was huge for a generation of queer teens who felt isolated and ostracized.
“At first, [my gender identity] was something that I only kept to Tumblr, and my immediate circle of friends,” says Samuel. “But then having that cornerstone and that starting spot kind of allowed me to explore myself more. And eventually when I realized like… ‘Ok like this isn’t something that’s going away, this is something that I need to pursue to be happy’ then I was able to come out and transition and all those things.”
Tumblr’s user interface (UI) also played a huge role in making the site a safe space for the 2SLGBTQ+ community. Unlike Twitter, Tumblr has no character limit on posts, which allows users to have complex and nuanced discussions about sexuality and gender identity/expression without being cut off.
Tumblr’s tagging system was another tool that made finding information on queer identities incredibly easy.
“If I found a word or label I identified with [I could] search that within the broader Tumblr system and just go back through other people’s posts that had also tagged it with that word and hear how they described their experiences relating to it,” says Alison. “[That was] super helpful for me as I was coming to terms with my identity and trying to describe how I experience the world.”
A Double-Edged Sword
But Tumblr’s queer community was not without its flaws. Just as the community fostered inclusivity, it also inspired infighting.
Arguments over who does not belong in the 2SLGBTQ+ community, otherwise known as “discourse,” has long been a topic of debate in online queer spaces, and Tumblr was no exception.
Around 2016, many users argued that asexuals should not be considered part of the 2SLGBTQ+ community because they were not “oppressed enough.”
Nowadays the “ace discourse” tag on Tumblr is filled with asexual people talking about how damaging and hurtful it was to be an asexual person in 2016. Many users talk about how they were demonized, mocked, and made to feel ashamed of their identity.
I lived through the peak of queer discourse on Tumblr, and that experience had a lasting effect on how I perceive my sexuality. It’s the reason I no longer publicly identify as asexual, and why I subtly cringe at the label of pansexual. It’s the reason I stopped talking about my sexuality online, and why I hesitated to come out as nonbinary.
So let’s be clear, this isn’t “discourse,” it’s targeted harassment against an entire sexuality, led by those who are also a part of the 2SLGBTQ+ community. The idea that someone must meet a certain level of oppression or queerness in order to be considered part of the community is harmful and does not reflect reality.
Samuel says he thinks that this disconnect between online spaces and reality comes from people being disconnected from physical queer-led spaces.
“Because it’s only online, and it’s just usernames and icons, you’re not actually talking to someone face to face and talking about different experiences and that kind of organic touchstone is really missing in a lot of online interactions,” says Samuel. “I feel like that’s how you get to ideas like ‘queer is a slur’ and ‘if you are asexual, you’re not part of the community’ despite asexual history going way back into the 1970s and even before then.”
This lack of physical queer spaces has also led to these “discourses” being perpetuated indefinitely. Even now, six years after the peak of “ace discourse” on Tumblr, we’re seeing the same arguments unfold on Twitter, only with a new marginalized identity on the chopping block.
Over the last few months, neopronouns have become the newest target of queer-led online harassment. In many ways, this discourse about neopronouns is the exact opposite of ace discourse. If ace discourse was about how asexuals “aren’t queer enough,” the discourse around neopronouns is about how they are “too queer.” But even though they are mirror images of each other, the talking points are all the same.
“They’re unnecessary!” says one user. “They’re harmful to the community!” says another. And round and round we go on the endless cyclone of human misery, re-wrapping the same hand-me-down arguments for a new generation.
“I feel that because it’s not a physical space, those arguments never get resolved,” says Samuel. “New people come online, and everything repeats itself all over again, where I feel that if Tumblr was just a big community center where we could all go in person, I feel like things would be more set-in stone.”
I’ll admit, it’s a bit exhausting watching the same arguments we had in 2016 be rehashed for a new generation of young queer people. Even though I’ve accepted it as a natural part of online communities, it doesn’t make it easier to see people who use neopronouns be bullied and harassed the same way I was for being asexual and nonbinary.
But while changing online culture is about as easy as steering the Titanic, we can still help foster positive communities.
“The only way to really form a more positive culture is to be more positive as an individual,” says Sage. “[People who gatekeep] need to understand that every path is different, every road that everyone leads down in terms of individuality is different.”
I try to keep that advice in mind as I scroll through social media, as I hope for a day where the cycle of discourse ends and we’re able to go back to bullying each other over “cringe” TV shows, the way nature intended.
The End of an Era
You may have noticed that I, and some of the people in this piece, refer to Tumblr in the past tense. Even though the site is technically up and running, it’s become a bit of a graveyard, at least compared to its golden years (2012-2017).
This shift has widely been attributed to the 2018 ban of not-safe-for-work (NSFW) content on Tumblr, comedically referred to by some users as the “titty ban.”
It’s no secret that Tumblr has a porn problem. Even today, over three years after the ban, I still have porn bots interacting with my account. But even though it was a well-documented issue, it still took Apple briefly removing Tumblr from the App Store for Tumblr staff to do anything about it.
The new update to Tumblr’s community guidelines would ban users from posting “images, videos, or GIFs that show real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples [including] content that is so photorealistic that it could be mistaken for featuring real-life.”
This move was surprisingly controversial. Many saw Tumblr’s tactics as ineffective and absurd and mocked the wording of the new community guidelines, specifically the line “female-presenting nipples.” Many artists also feared how the ban might affect their work.
The outrage was not unexpected though. Tumblr users have a long history of rioting over any change to the site’s look or content. In early 2019 (almost two months after the NSFW ban), users were up in arms over the site’s background changing from a grey-ish medium blue to a saturated dark blue.
But this time was different. The 2018 NSFW ban caused what can only be described as a “mass migration event.” Many users, including a large portion of the art community, decided to leave the platform permanently, in favour of sites like Twitter.
“That was a fun few weeks,” says former user Shiro Joseph-Mack. “Part of it was how they tried to crack down on artists. Not just not-safe-for-work artists, they got rid of a lot of photographers’ stuff, anything with flesh tone really.”
Shiro is a digital artist who left Tumblr in 2018, after some of their SFW and NSFW art was flagged. Since then, they’ve been mostly active on Twitter.
“I feel like a lot of the community left, so that sort of drew other people into leaving,” says Shiro.
In hindsight, the ban didn’t really impact Tumblr’s content, or the amount of easily accessible pornographic material on the site, but it did impact the community.
According to The Atlantic, in the year after the 2018 ban, the number of users accessing Tumblr’s login page dropped 49 per cent, and the average daily users on the Android app dropped by 35 per cent.
The change has not gone unnoticed.
“It’s been more chill,” says Sage. “The folks who were more aggressive, negative, and gatekeepy, they all went to Twitter and they can stay there. But lately it’s been a lot more positive on Tumblr. It’s been a lot more representative of how we want the queer community to be outwardly as well.”
But this would not be the last time Tumblr tried to ban porn from their platform. In December 2021, Tumblr completely or partially banned a list of just over 400 tags for users accessing Tumblr through the iOS app.
Part of the post announcing this change reads:
“For those of you who access Tumblr through our iOS app, we wanted to share that starting today you may see some differences for search terms and recommended content that can contain specific types of sensitive content. … To remain available within Apple’s App Store, we are having to extend the definition of what sensitive content is as well as the way you access it in order to comply with their guidelines.”
While this change didn’t generate the same amount of outrage as the 2018 ban, it did receive its fair share of mockery.
One post from Tumblr user theflyingkipper reads:
“if I had a nickel for every time I experienced Tumblr enacting detrimental bans to appeal to the iOS Appstore during the month of December, I would have two nickels which isn’t a lot but why the fuck did it happen twice.”
It didn’t help that Tumblr’s list of tags that featured “sensitive content” was beyond absurd. They obviously banned any tag that even hinted at something sexual, but they also went after tags related to mental illness (e.g., #bipolar, #depression, and #CPTSD) queer issues (e.g., #biphobia, #dysphoria, and #lesbophobia) and human rights (e.g., #ACAB, #holocaust, and #racism). They even banned tags for fictional characters like Mineta (from the anime My Hero Academia) and Alec Lightwood (from the TV show Shadowhunters).
The similarities between the 2018 NSFW ban and the 2021 tag ban were not lost on users, and many wondered how effective the change would be.
Like many users, Samuel was annoyed by the 2021 tag ban, and believes that Tumblr’s tactics are too broad and arbitrary to be effective.
“I think the best solution of curbing graphic material on Tumblr is to stop fighting it,” says Samuel. “Whether it’s just some niche horror podcast art with some gore in it or whatever, or straight up porn, most of the userbase will engage with the content they’re trying to snuff out at some point, and they’ll find a way to do it with or without an approved channel.”
Where Do We Go from Here?
Even after seven tumultuous years, I’m still active on Tumblr. It’s hard to say why exactly. Maybe I’m like other users who, as Samuel proposed, are like the “0.01% of viruses that hand sanitizer can’t get rid of.”
Or maybe I just don’t care enough to go anywhere else.
At this point, Tumblr’s end seems inevitable. With each passing year, more and more users abandon their blogs in search of greener pastures on Twitter.
It’s quiet now. Gone are the days of endless squabbles over labels or petty fandom drama. Now we can all sit on our rocking chairs and watch history repeat itself on other platforms from the comfort of our digital porches.
One day Tumblr will shut down permanently and we will all scatter into the wind, with only a handful of friends and a folder of memes to show for it.
“You can’t really re-create the experience of Tumblr,” says Sage. “I mean yeah, you can have shitposts, you can have ‘night Tumblr’ where it’s absolutely bonkers. You’re going to have these little, tiny factions that were part of the Tumblr sphere, but you’re not going to get it in the same flavour, you know?”
Watching the site crawl towards its bitter end, I’m not quite sure how to feel. Tumblr may have not been my first social media experience, but it sure has been my longest. There’s something about the site that has stuck with me — that moulded me in a way that was almost unnoticeable at the time but is obvious in hindsight.
I’m proud of who I’ve become in my time here. When I joined Tumblr in 2014, I was my middle school’s resident weird kid, who still hadn’t come to terms with their gender or sexuality. Now, I am a proud nonbinary person, who will be graduating from college in a few weeks.
I don’t know where I’ll go when Tumblr shuts down. Maybe I’ll finally learn how to use Twitter like most of my mutuals. Or maybe I’ll lean into TikTok’s growing queer community, who’s really to say.
But I do know one thing, my experience on Tumblr has helped me grow into the person I am today, and for all my joking, I know that I’ll miss it when it’s gone.