The 5 Realms of Tumblr.
*TW - Reference to mental illness, suicide and ED.*
Words by Anna Mac
Tumblr: a haven for some, a cesspit for others. My experience using the website throughout my teen years was somewhere in between. For anyone who isn’t familiar with Tumblr, (or too young to know - I already feel old enough) Tumblr was, in its glory days, a place to share your deepest secrets, your darkest emotions and plaster them across the internet - all the while keeping a certain aesthetic on your ‘blog’. It was essentially a scroll down page of photos, quotes, videos and to be honest general thoughts written in ways you could never articulate so perfectly, that you ‘reblogged’ and shared to your own page. Tumblr had many subsections which I will now carefully dissect in an air of nostalgia that I truly miss.
Realm Number 1 - Aesthetically Pleasing Photos.
Some of you may remember weheartit.com, a website not unlike Tumblr, but much more PG. It involved the classic California girl: slim, long beach blonde hair and sun kissed skin. These girls were often drinking iced drinks (before iced coffee really took off in Europe) and flashed smiles of perfectly white teeth. Often they were seen in convertibles, in denim shorts and converse and could often be sporting Brandy Melville items of clothing. These photos were of the girls I dreamed of being as a teen, and I did my darnest to create photos that mimicked the WeHeartIt vibes. After about a year of scrolling, longing and attempting to create this image that was, let’s be honest, not true to myself in the slightest, I found tumblr.com. I realised I didn’t have to look like these girls to be aesthetically pleasing online. I could be emo, grunge, funky, quirky, not slim, have crooked teeth and STILL be able to take cool photos and upload them to Tumblr. I found inspiration across the website, from black and white photos in bath tubs to old photos of movie stars that were just that much better than searching on Google photos to explore my own identity. There is a lot to be said for the groundwork Tumblr put in to aesthetically pleasing photos and blog aesthetics, which subsequently followed on to Instagram accounts. You know the ones: colour scheming grids, stunning photos of food that never quite live up to how good they look, and of course, the online image of the e-girl. I have full faith that the focus on aesthetic and importance of colour schemes, moods and style came from Tumblr, as users focused intensely on presenting a perfectly selected blog to create an online image. It’s something we all do to this day, and have Tumblr to thank for the birth of aesthetically pleasing photos.
Realm Number 2 - Mental Illness
I say mental illness instead of mental health here because there was absolutely nothing healthy about the way Tumblr users spoke about various mental struggles. For many, it was an outlet to express emotions to an online community that felt more understanding than friends IRL. For others (myself included) it was a place to find inspiration on how to lose weight fast, self harm with no one knowing, and even gave tips on how to do serious damage to yourself. I was part of the ana-mia community, which was a nickname of the personification of anorexia and bulimia, all tied together in a sweet little pet name. Users uploaded photos of their weight loss, thigh gaps and aesthetically pleasing photos of people who were severely underweight, that were quite disturbing looking back. It definitely enabled my eating disorder as a teen, and thinspo was alive (barely) and kicking on everyone’s dashboard. TikTok currently has a similar issue, with the introduction of MyFitnessPal, a calorie counting app, among younger people, Teens upload videos of ‘what I ate in a day’, which is a great way to get tips and tricks to lose weight in a healthy way, however many people abuse MFP and the videos of their diet can not only be triggering, but act as inspiration to eat less than the day before, since it is all recorded and documented. Tumblr once again was the king of thinspo, and certainly ‘inspired’ users to be just like the people in the pictures on their dashboard.
Realm Number 3 - Porn
Pornography has been around since the dawn of time, in one sense or another, and Tumblr was no different. I remember scrolling through my feed as a 15 year old and low and behold pornographic imagery would appear. It was always one of the most reblogged subsections on the site, probably because it was free. There was gifs, images, videos, erotic fiction - something for everyone. Tumblr eventually banned all “adult content” in 2018, and since then the usage of the site has decreased dramatically. When it was in its prime in the 2010s, Tumblr was notorious for erotic imagery, and the attraction to the site was undeniable. It was inclusive, non-judgemental and to be frank, quite steamy for something that appeared on my iPod Touch at 1am. I rarely knew what to do with myself when it appeared, so I usually scrolled past it, but it was a major part of the community that has since died a death when it was banned. Porn is available pretty much everywhere online, and as one empire falls another rises - enter OnlyFans.
Realm Number 4 - Quotes
Sayings, thoughts, inspiration quotes, #wanderlust etc. were all huuuuge on Tumblr. Think Live Laugh Love but with an edge, or RM Drake’s prophecies on love, life and relationships. Seriousness aside, there were a massive amount of jokes and intertwining users commenting on each other’s posts, mainly to take the piss out of one another. I remember following justshowerthoughts, a blog dedicated to the fallacies of life and wonderment of the universe i.e. things you think about when showering. Memes were also very popular, whether they were gifs or images, a text accompaniment (now known as a caption) gave that bit more depth to the meme. For quotes and thoughts to be popular, they had to be #relatable, and Tumblr users who were popular knew their audience inside out. Romance, depression and a lust for something more among popular themes in these quotes, and what better way to get across your feelings by reblogging what someone else had wrote?
Realm Number 5 - Fandom
It is impossible to talk about Tumblr and not mention the birth of fandoms across the world. One of the most notable community of fans were, of course, the SuperWhoLockian tribe. The SuperWhoLockians were an amalgamation of Supernatural, Doctor Who and Sherlock fans that united to discuss and share their theories, fan fiction, and downright obsession with the shows. Music wise, fan fiction was extremely popular among One Direction fans, as was the shipping of Harry Styles and Louis Tomilson (Larry Stylinson). Another common trope was written accounts of Point Of View experiences with your favourite celebrity, that often turned into semi-erotic novels (hello Fifty Shades). Marvel of course was, and probably always will be, the centre of every fandom universe, as well as music stans creating scenarios that will never probably happen, but we can dream, right?
