When
people think about curated lives on social media, they often consider Facebook
or Instagram, where people commonly edit their life to show the positive side,
leaving struggles to be dealt with privately. However, this sort of edited life
appears all over the internet, including on Tumblr. As individuals set up their
Tumblr, following a variety of blogs and adding to the content on their own,
they choose which aspects of their own personality are to be emphasized. For
some, this may be an authentic version of themselves, in which they display
their struggles, their hopes, and their interests rather equally. For others
however, Tumblr is a place to go for a certain interest, a certain aesthetic,
or a certain version of themselves that may not match up with their self in the
“real” world.
McNiell
(2012) discusses an “authentic” self that was supposedly set up through the
creation of a social media profile (according to Mark Zuckerberg). Tumblr,
lacking a profile in itself, never promises such a thing. Yet the idea is
there- that each person’s blog should reflect a unique combination of their own
interests and therefore display aspects of the individual behind it. This is not
how Tumblr manifests, however. Just as identities on Facebook are partially
created through the interference of an algorithm (McNiell, 2012), Tumblr users
find the blogs the follow (and reblog from) through a search function. The
people we follow and the content we add to our own blogs (and our own
identities) is dependent on the mechanisms of Tumblr itself, which edit what we
see when we search. In such a system, the individual is not completely in
control of who they present themselves to be- they can only reblog what Tumblr
allows them to see.
Identities
on Tumblr are tricky to grasp. While there are some incredibly strange subcultures on the site, as Kuttainen (2017) discussed, in a network such as
Tumblr some narratives are more dominant than others, and those that don’t meet
certain standards will be grounds for deactivation. While Tumblr is touted as a
space for individuals to find their own niches and explore new horizons, they
have topics that are off limits. Some people are required to hide certain aspects
of their personality to explore others through Tumblr, and aren’t displaying a
truly “authentic” version of themselves. Others choose to highlight one of
their interests over another, such as blogs dedicated to kpop stars, or certain
tv shows. On the other hand, certain people choose to reveal large amounts of
their personal life to their Tumblr followers, discussing their hardships,
their happiness, and their day-to-day lives in addition to the exciting moments
often shared on social media. Yet while these individuals may be said to be
portraying their “real” identity on Tumblr, there will still be moments in
which they will not speak, and activities they will not reveal. Although an
idea of who users are may be gleaned from their blogs, it’s always appearing
through a filter by which they can decide how much (or how little) of
themselves they reveal. On Tumblr, that is just fine.
Image 1. An excerpt from Tumblr's new(ish) Community Guidelines. (Moss, 2014).
References
Kuttainen, V. (2017). BA1002: Our Space: Networks, narratives and the making of place, lecture 6: Networked Narratives. [PowerPoint Slides]. Retrieved from http://learnjcu.edu.au
McNiell, L. (2012). There Is No “I” in Network: Social Networking Sites and Posthuman Auto/Biography. Biography, 35(1), 65-82. https://doi.org/10.1353/bio.2012.0009
Moss, C. (2014). Tumblr Community Guidelines [Image]. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com.au/tumblrs-new-terms-of-service-is-inspiring-and-funny-2014-1?r=US&IR=T
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