Remembering Tumblr
May. 22nd, 2026 11:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeRogan: we were on tumblr from roughly 2011 to whenever the first porn purge was, they weren’t good years, and I’ve been thinking about it.
Tumblr was never going to work for me, as someone who doesn’t like repetition (spiders Georg and no beef, I FOREVER HATE YOU) and gets oversaturated super fast. At some point, I felt like I HAD to be there, and then I just kept making myself mad that it wasn’t a site that was good for me and I wasn’t a good user for it.
I originally joined tumblr because of three artists I like. Two I still follow the work of elsewhere; the other kinda had a flaming meltdown and I don’t know what became of them and I have zero desire to look at their work, past or present.
There are some amazing comics, zines, and porn that I learned of and got because of tumblr... but it was overwhelmingly through those three artists. (Except Bash Back. I truly do not know where on tumblr I learned of Bash Back, but I bought it when they tabled local, so odds are decent I would’ve found it without tumblr’s help.) I still have a lot of that work and cherish it! (Fucking Trans Women, my beloved. Queen of zines.) But then tumblr purged the porn and effortlessly axed all the best stuff it gave us. (I remember being relieved that they made the final cut-off so easy for me; some of those artists were viewable by account holders only, so I kept not deleting my account.) Of all the artists I like, those that survived all moved elsewhere and now I just lurk and RSS them.
I also admittedly met a bunch of multis (or more accurately, Y’ALL heard of ME) through tumblr, but though I still like a bunch of y’all... there’s a reason we talk here, or through email or text or whatever. Looking back at most folks’ tumblrs, it feels like we were trying our damnedest to have a tea party only for randos to keep blasting in, shitting in our teapot, and then sauntering out while we, at best, tried to pretend they weren’t there. Tumblr was an environment BADLY designed for any demographic that was harassment bait! I’m kinda staggered that I spent so many years trying to make it work, all because I’d convinced myself that I would die socially and professionally without tumblr. Which wasn’t true.
I guess I can say that my tumblr history means I can pinpoint where/when the whole genic slapfight started... but that’s like saying, “I was there at the first fecal blast of the Great Diarrhea War!” That is nothing to be proud of.
All those years on tumblr, and it feels like all the good I got was a bunch of cool art (which I mostly could’ve gotten just by lurking or RSSing), the Screencap War With Gamewtfs (which I saved), my Adventures of Genius Cat tag (which I copy-pasted into this blog), and some of y’all. On the not-so-good side, I got a bunch of hang-ups that took years to defang, a twisted idea of queerness, race, and social justice, and became... honestly, I don’t like the person I was on tumblr. I was overstimulated, needlessly aggressive and bitter, getting sucked into all sorts of completely avoidable teapot tempests, and... it just wasn’t good. At least I learned some lessons from it, I guess? Eventually? But I’m sorry that I apparently had to learn them in the first place.
That site felt so important to me for years, and it’s mostly crumbled off into the wind. And what’s more? I’m glad. That site seems to have been a nice place for a lot of people, but it was never going to work for me, and I’m glad I accepted that and bunkered down here instead.
A bunch of the artists I like are now on bsky, and I just RSS them. I wish I had done that with tumblr; it would’ve gotten me damn near all the good stuff, and likely mitigated quite a bit of the bad.
Tumblr was never going to work for me, as someone who doesn’t like repetition (spiders Georg and no beef, I FOREVER HATE YOU) and gets oversaturated super fast. At some point, I felt like I HAD to be there, and then I just kept making myself mad that it wasn’t a site that was good for me and I wasn’t a good user for it.
I originally joined tumblr because of three artists I like. Two I still follow the work of elsewhere; the other kinda had a flaming meltdown and I don’t know what became of them and I have zero desire to look at their work, past or present.
There are some amazing comics, zines, and porn that I learned of and got because of tumblr... but it was overwhelmingly through those three artists. (Except Bash Back. I truly do not know where on tumblr I learned of Bash Back, but I bought it when they tabled local, so odds are decent I would’ve found it without tumblr’s help.) I still have a lot of that work and cherish it! (Fucking Trans Women, my beloved. Queen of zines.) But then tumblr purged the porn and effortlessly axed all the best stuff it gave us. (I remember being relieved that they made the final cut-off so easy for me; some of those artists were viewable by account holders only, so I kept not deleting my account.) Of all the artists I like, those that survived all moved elsewhere and now I just lurk and RSS them.
I also admittedly met a bunch of multis (or more accurately, Y’ALL heard of ME) through tumblr, but though I still like a bunch of y’all... there’s a reason we talk here, or through email or text or whatever. Looking back at most folks’ tumblrs, it feels like we were trying our damnedest to have a tea party only for randos to keep blasting in, shitting in our teapot, and then sauntering out while we, at best, tried to pretend they weren’t there. Tumblr was an environment BADLY designed for any demographic that was harassment bait! I’m kinda staggered that I spent so many years trying to make it work, all because I’d convinced myself that I would die socially and professionally without tumblr. Which wasn’t true.
I guess I can say that my tumblr history means I can pinpoint where/when the whole genic slapfight started... but that’s like saying, “I was there at the first fecal blast of the Great Diarrhea War!” That is nothing to be proud of.
All those years on tumblr, and it feels like all the good I got was a bunch of cool art (which I mostly could’ve gotten just by lurking or RSSing), the Screencap War With Gamewtfs (which I saved), my Adventures of Genius Cat tag (which I copy-pasted into this blog), and some of y’all. On the not-so-good side, I got a bunch of hang-ups that took years to defang, a twisted idea of queerness, race, and social justice, and became... honestly, I don’t like the person I was on tumblr. I was overstimulated, needlessly aggressive and bitter, getting sucked into all sorts of completely avoidable teapot tempests, and... it just wasn’t good. At least I learned some lessons from it, I guess? Eventually? But I’m sorry that I apparently had to learn them in the first place.
That site felt so important to me for years, and it’s mostly crumbled off into the wind. And what’s more? I’m glad. That site seems to have been a nice place for a lot of people, but it was never going to work for me, and I’m glad I accepted that and bunkered down here instead.
A bunch of the artists I like are now on bsky, and I just RSS them. I wish I had done that with tumblr; it would’ve gotten me damn near all the good stuff, and likely mitigated quite a bit of the bad.
no subject
Date: 2026-05-22 09:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-05-23 05:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-05-22 11:32 pm (UTC)> I guess I can say that my tumblr history means I can pinpoint where/when the whole genic slapfight started... but that’s like saying, “I was there at the first fecal blast of the Great Diarrhea War!” That is nothing to be proud of. <
slightly relatable . do not remember specifics as much , but remember how environment change while kossai just kind of play with dolls in corner . feel like one minute things fine , and then next minute wet towel just whack in side of head .
never really get into bluesky , but given experiences with twitter , think will just stay off . ( for real , someone on twitter once claim kossai stalk ... because twitter algorithm highlight inflammatory tweet by that user which indirectly reference kossai , and kossai decide to privately ask how to solve . nope ! not down with that ! not that tumblr is free of bullshit by any means , but at least have better grasp on tools . )
no subject
Date: 2026-05-23 05:48 pm (UTC)We remember cohost with fondness, even though we only lurked.
no subject
Date: 2026-05-23 06:26 pm (UTC)there was definitely up and down on cohost , and users of colour get worst brunt , but will say when one extremely vocal anti-endo join and try to directly attack kossai , that user get swift ban . for anti-endo stance necessarily , maybe not , but for attack absolutely - some nonsense about " 40 hazbin hotel fictives " ( have no public lists and never watch hazbin hotel ) and of course , say that " need to learn english , idiot " .
overall in community there was more ground rule that syscourse and system origin labels basically did not exist , and anyone who try to bring in was on shaky ground ... could see general environment start to sour more when more people flock from tumblr after predstrogen ban , though . lots of hurt people who did not want to give up on instincts of attack , and moderator team who hesitate to crack down on some of these attacks simply because of circumstances .
no subject
Date: 2026-05-23 07:31 pm (UTC)And yeah, I think we missed the tumblr flood, Rogan was mostly using it to track cool art and stuff, avoided most plural stuff because we had that at home.
no subject
Date: 2026-05-23 09:50 am (UTC)Nail on the head. We were on there from about 2010-11 to the first porn purge. Every second we spent on that site we felt like we were in middle school again. Were were 12 once again, thrown back into the fucking nightmare that gave us SzPD in the first place. It didn't help that one of our friends joined the social justice cult and became a warrior and so one of the teapot shitters was sitting at the desk right next to us and still insisting we were friends. All that outrage at injustice was blatantly preformative, nobody gave a good shit about what they were yelling about, they just wanted to let us know what Good People™ they were.
We did too, and we're still in the process of defanging ours. The one that fucked us up the worst, though, was... Um... Remember when the sjws went though that phase when, if they weren't screeching about rape culture and how nasty and bad cishet men were, they were insisting on emulating them? Namely, inappropriate sexual behaviour, like hitting on women in very inappropriate places. (We think this was when they were all obsessed with Panty & Stocking and calling it a feminist masterpiece because the promiscuous girl got an STD and so it was portraying women as imperfect and that was überfeminist. They were positively comparing her to James Bond as good female representation because of this, but we don't recall Bond ever getting an STD.)
Well, during the height of this stupidity, we were sitting in the waiting room of our therapist's office, and one of these girls/nbs came in and yep, hit on us. And we can tell you, it is not any less creepy and gross to be in that situation just because the instigator is female or nb. And keep in mind, by these people's admission, they were emulating the behaviour of rapists. Yeah. Some chick from tumblr decided to play rapist and hit on us in our therapist's waiting room. That was a Good Person™. That was what they were really like.
We all have a lot more to add to this, but we should probably end it here. We just needed to share that story. Just... Tumblr really fucked us up. :/
--Dietrich
no subject
Date: 2026-05-23 06:02 pm (UTC)