Tumblr’s Persistence as an Online Safe Haven Annabel Haddad + Perianne Caron

TUMBLR’S PERSISTENCE AS AN ONLINE SAFE HAVEN

The very first time that I logged onto Tumblr, I immediately knew I was on a different kind of platform. I’d spent the first half of my freshman year of high school using little more than Adderall, Arctic Monkeys and the first four seasons of “Skins” to keep myself going, and I was in desperate search of an online platform where little to no aspect of my regular life had to be relevant. In 2014, Tumblr fit the bill: The website had already gained a reputation for being unapologetically uncensored, having a blog for any given niche interest and serving as a home for imaginative introverts instead of aspiring internet celebrities. It wasn’t long before the site became my designated space of refuge.

Founded in 2006 by David Karp, Tumblr was intended to be a social platform dedicated entirely to microblogging — the act of creating a blog in a more condensed form, with shorter text posts and smaller images than would be found on a traditional blog. The website quickly gained traction, growing to host over 100 million blogs within the year of its founding and eventually being bought by Yahoo, Inc. in 2013. The platform stood out from other leading social networks in three notable ways, the first being users’ ability to create content through a variety of mediums. While Instagram and Twitter users had to resort to photos and brief captions, the microblog format of Tumblr enabled users to share music, videos, art, photography and text posts that well exceeded 140 characters.

Writing by Annabel Haddad Drawings by Perianne Caron

The lack of censorship on Tumblr posts was another draw, albeit a controversial one. There were several spaces on Tumblr dedicated to aspects of one’s lifestyle that they couldn’t share in their personal or professional life. Tumblr became a hub for these communities to thrive, due to its lack of censorship and its third key differentiator: anonymity. Instagram has always been a platform where one can curate their real life, and Twitter as one where people can quickly share what is on their minds and stay updated on current events. However, users on both platforms are likely to reveal at least basic aspects of their outside life and identity on the networks. On Tumblr, most people keep their blogs anonymous, and the ones who don’t are far more likely to gain attention for what they create rather than for who they appear to be.

“No one becomes a celebrity off of Tumblr anymore,” says Andra Mide, an artist and long-time Tumblr user from Los Angeles. “And even if you did, like in 2014, you’re kind of lost in the internet history archives.”

Mide initially became drawn to the fandom side of Tumblr but stayed on even as their interests evolved. Now at 21, they’ve had numerous side blogs with themes ranging anywhere from Korean fashion trends to classic textpost humor. “[My blogs] were whatever my interests became,” they say. “That’s the beauty of Tumblr, it enables you to do whatever you want.” Like Mide, many users felt that the element of anonymity liberated them to be whoever they wanted rather than pressuring them to adhere to a certain persona. There was no emphasis placed on the importance of celebrity and most high-profile celebrities barely bothered interacting with Tumblr’s online community. As a result, users were free to create online worlds of their own without holding back anything about themselves.

When I joined them, I discovered the extent of what could be accomplished in a Tumblr community. Having always used the creative arts as my primary tool for escape, I now had an area in which I could keep all of my artistic interests in a single place. My Tumblr blog was an independent space that I would venture to when I needed a reminder that there was more to life than my daily surroundings and routine could allow for. In this world, I was not only able to keep track of the music, literature and movies that were pulling me through high school, but I was also able to discover people from all over the world who shared my tastes.

I never had many internet friends, nor did I end up making any on Tumblr, but I did discover a new kind of dynamic in having “mutuals.” While I rarely interacted with the people I followed and who followed me, I still felt a sense of connection to them through their posts about the passions we shared. This was, in large part, due to the anonymity of the site that allowed us to shed the filtered images of ourselves and instead reveal the parts of ourselves that longed to be seen the most. I saw each post as if it had come from a peer, a friend. We were all on the same platform looking for a distraction or sense of relief in our daily lives, and we were allowed to be authentic strangers.

The sense of community to be found on the website was what kept users loyal to the platform for so long. However, the latter half of the decade would soon see a significant shift in how users of online spaces interacted with each other. Beginning with the buildup to the 2016 presidential election, communication on the platform came to focus prominently on the topics of politics and social justice. More attention was being devoted to topics of race, gender and intersectionality than ever before on the

website, and this led to an increasing presence of online communities from all sides of the political spectrum. As a result, the latter half of the 2010s saw a rise in communities that were dedicated to feminism, racial justice, queer rights, education on intersectionality and more. However, the platform also became a hub for far-right groups such as white nationalists and trans-exclusive radical feminists to congregate. This led to increased tensions among communities on the website, with practices such as doxing — publishing private or identifying information about an individual online — becoming commonplace.

Further controversy occurred when the website announced that it would no longer allow adult content, one of the things it was most known for, to be posted. The general response was not a favorable one, as the platform’s minimal censorship had been a draw to many of its users and allowed it to stand out from other social platforms. The adult community on Tumblr had been home to many groups who did not have another place to openly express that aspect of their lives, notably the LGBTQ+ and BDSM communities. The ban, particularly its focus on “female-presenting nipples,” was also seen as an unnecessary and objectifying attack on bodies that had been assigned female at birth. As a result, the platform lost nearly one-third of its users. Mide cites this ban as an instigator of the platform’s transition into the “dead” era.

“A lot of people left the website,” they recall. “Not just because of the ban, but because there was no one on it anymore. … They just kind of left because there was no audience.”

I became one of them soon after. I no longer interacted with many of the fandom and queer spaces that first drew me to the platform and figured I was growing out of the site. Doing so, however, proved to have a much greater impact on my life than I ever predicted. I spent much of my adolescence on Tumblr, gaining an understanding of who I was to a degree that I couldn’t quite do at home or at school. Tumblr was the first place I went to when I discovered that I was bisexual, and later non-binary. Tumblr was the first place I ever explored where mental health was discussed openly and where political discourse was encouraged rather than avoided. It was through Tumblr that I unexpectedly discovered more about myself and the world around me than I did in most other areas of my life. In leaving behind Tumblr, I inadvertently left behind parts of me that I hadn’t often, if ever, revealed elsewhere.

This changed when I was hit by one of the most abrupt global incidents to ever occur in my lifetime: the COVID-19 pandemic. When I found myself in the confines of quarantine that closely mirrored my entrapping and isolating daily life during my adolescence, I subsequently found myself gravitating back towards the platform that I had always been able to escape to. When I opened the app for the first time in almost a year, I was hit with a string of timely memes that seemed to reflect the current mental state of the general public, as well as a genuine lament over the toll that grief and isolation had come to take on our lives. What was missing, however, were the textposts that feigned positivity or videos of people outright ignoring the rules of quarantine, something that seemed to be commonplace on Instagram. When I continued scrolling, I found that the online community — while significantly smaller — was still finding sanctuary through shared interests.

“I feel like I know them,” says Mide about their current group of online mutuals. “I feel like I’m friends with them. … We’ve never talked before, but we’re friends. We get each other. We like each other’s best posts. Like, I know they’ve got my back on the Tumblr-sphere.”

The site might have fallen into obscurity since the 2018 ban, but a quiet but active community continues to thrive within that obscurity. In fact, it may be the growing distance between Tumblr and mainstream culture that allows users to be far more candid than they would ever be on another site. I, for one, have felt less alone on Tumblr than I have on any other platform since the pandemic began. In doing so, I’ve realized that Instagram and Twitter have always enabled me to project an idealized image of who I am, but Tumblr continues to be the only online platform where I might be able to express some of the most authentic parts of myself. Tumblr may not be considered a “social platform” in the term’s traditional sense, but the sense of solidarity to be found on it makes it one of the only platforms where the term “social” might feel truly fitting.

Annabel Haddad is a student at the University of Southern California currently pursuing a degree in English (Creative Writing). They are the Director of Diversity and Inclusion for Haute Magazine. Perianne Caron is a student at the University of Southern California currently pursuing a degree in Communication. She is a Co-Director of Content for Haute Magazine.