“Come for what you love, stay for what you
discover” is the slogan emblazoned upon the front page of Tumblr’s website,
right above where one goes to sign up. The website, while branded as a blog,
appears to have morphed into something unique in the decade since its creation.
While it still uses terminology such as “reblog” as one of its main features,
the vast majority of its users have utilized it not to blog, but rather to
share their interests and find niches of relatability amongst the millions of
posts created every day.
image 1: Tumblr's post and blog count, circa 2012 (Brian, 2012). With so many posts being created every day, it's impossible
not to find at least one that will strike a chord in you.
Every
Tumblr page begins as open space. It holds the potential to be dozens of
different things, from a “fitblr” that is designed to provide inspiration for
fitness, to something such as my own, which is a random assortment of posts
that fit my interests. The development of this space to a place that has been
crafted to fit a certain niche can be extremely intimidating, as Tuan (1977)
described in his work. “What begins as undifferentiated space becomes place as
we get to know it better and endow it with value” (Tuan 1977) Getting from
one to the other can be a challenge, however. As Kuttainen (2017) discussed,
space can be considered a new frontier or something dangerous. When you start a
new Tumblr there are no posts on your blog, you have no followers, and you aren’t
following anyone. It’s an empty space that you need to populate, a task that
can appear daunting and disempowering to begin with. Over time however, the space
that you began with takes form and starts to feel familiar and homely. People
with similar interests appear, and they lead to more of the same. The empty
space becomes a place to relax and enjoy content that you and others create
together with those in your circles. Therefore, after a period of development,
some consider Tumblr to be a very empowering place, where one can go to see
that they aren’t alone, that there are others who feel similarly and will show
support, even if indirectly.
Individuals
are drawn to this space for different reasons. For some, it’s simply something
to scroll through while they’re on the bus, or waiting for class to start. For
others, they’re drawn in by the seductive power of a 90’s aesthetic blog and
want to stay updated, or obsessed with fitness and searching for a community of
like-minded people to inspire them. These kinds of power run through the
landscape of Tumblr, and pull people in while keeping those already there
hooked. A running joke on the site is the reality that many spend hours
scrolling through their feed, while feeling as if 20 minutes have passed. The
place that is a person’s Tumblr is created through the connections between
individuals that may be worlds away, and those connections and the sense of
belonging created through them can be addictive for many. There, your friends
are your friends, even if you’ve never met. Even if you never post original content
yourself, on Tumblr you belong.
References
Brian, M. (2012, March 28). Tumblr Hits 20 Billion Posts, Nears 50 Million Hosted Blogs [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2012/03/28/tumblr-hits-20-billion-posts-nears-50-billion-hosted-blogs/#.tnw_8eBmQ89P
Kuttainen, V. (2017). BA1002: Our Space: Networks, narratives and the making of place, lecture 3: Space and Identity: Genre and Transformation. [PowerPoint Slides].Retrieved from http://learnjcu.edu.au
Tuan, Y. (1977). Introduction. In Y. Tuan (Ed.), Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (pp. 3-7). Retrieved from http://learnjcu.edu.au
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