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.
