#then there's tumblr's specific vernacular and sense of humour | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

squarebracket-trickster · 3 months

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By the way, lurkers are welcome on my blog<33

Yeah, yeah, Writeblr is a community and all that. But I get it.

Some of us have anxiety disorders. Some of us are (or were once) minors on the internet who had it drilled into us to never make our presence known in online spaces lest we get stalked or groomed.

It's okay if interacting is outside of your comfort zone.

Some of us aren't actually on tumblr enough to make making a Writeblr intro worth it.

Some of us prefer to take a few months, maybe years, observing the community to learn the rules. And let's face it, there is a huge learning curve to Tumblr culture. I came here from Pinterest in like 2018 and hooo boy was it intimidating!

Like, I was that 17 year old pinterest lurker with an anxiety disorder who was taught that internet safety meant "never comment on anything" who took a few years before I felt comfortable enough with tumblr culture to reblog things with tags, let alone make public posts.

So I guess what I am saying is, I can't judge. Because I've been there.

Writeblr is a community. And the community (for me) is the best part. And remember that if you don't contribute to the community you don't get to complain about it either. But this is also a public space. Silent observers are to be expected. And on my blog you are welcome.

#I do really think we people who have been here a while forget just how many social rules there are in tumblr culture #I mean ask games and tag games have etiquette #then theres reblogging with commentary versus leaving a comment versus talking in the tags #then there's what tags are appropriate to use on an original post #then there's tumblr's specific vernacular and sense of humour #then there are post formatting conventions #and just learning what tags exist and how to search them #how to organize and sort your own blog #I'm forgetting something but like There is So Much

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mda20009blogpostassignment · 2 years

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Week 3 - How does Tumblr function as a digital community?

Tumblr is a blogging site that gives all users an equal opportunity to get their content, whatever it may be, out to the eyes of any other users. Whether it be through similar hobbies, a shared sense of humour or a shared initiative towards an ongoing movement, this type of space is what causes communities to grow and share interactions. Whether it be through searching a specific hashtag, browsing the Trending page to see what others are engaging or in sifting through the highly curated Staff Picks tab, users can engage with one another and help not only build one large community on the website, but their own smaller communities as well.

One particular community that this very site helped prosper was the feminism community. A woman named Jessalyn Keller explored the teenage feminist movement in her article titled “ “Oh, She’s a Tumblr Feminist”: Exploring the Platform Vernacular of Girls’ Social Media Feminisms”, where she discusses why these young women are choosing to use this platform over other alternatives such as Facebook in order to express their opinions and spread the message online. Definitely worth a read for anybody interested, will be linked in the references down the bottom.

Another more unique community came from a user named “Pizza”. After amassing a following of around 100k people, she took on this “Pizza” persona and used it to repost and comment on almost any post that mentioned the word, often alongside a witty joke. By the end of 2014 she’d grown to over 1 million followers at the young age of 17. This young girl had managed to grow a community of 1mil by simply using the word pizza! Truly sets a strong example of just how easy it is for groups of people with similar interests to engage online.

One last community I want to touch on is one that I personally find very interesting is the Tumblr porn community. At least up until the censorship that they’ve started to enact on, Tumblr functioned as a useful site for people trying to grow in the adult industry and entry point for getting their name out there. Whether it be to promote additional products through their blogs or simply get some content out their for people to enjoy, Tumblr's strong focus on content easily searchable to cater to your specific tastes meant that those searching for this content would see it, and those creating the content would reap all the benefits.

Anyway, see you next week where I’ll be talking about Fandoms and Reality TV.

References:

Keller, J. 2019 ‘“Oh, She’s a Tumblr Feminist”: Exploring the Platform Vernacular of Girls’ Social Media Feminisms’, Social Media + Society Volume: 5 issue: 3.

Reeve, E. 2016 'The Secret Lives of Tumblr Teens', New Republic

Vex, A. 2019 “Tumblr porn eulogy”, Porn Studies, 6:3, 359-362

#mda20009

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