Wanna know what "2014 Tumblr" was really like?

Hey party people. It is high time I kick off my TUMBLR SERIES <3.

Tumblr is 18 this year. Like every teen that has ever used its platform, it has gone through many (sometimes turbulent) phases to get to this point. Say what you want about its current place in the culture, it has maintained much of its heart. 

Tumblr has played a different role for each generation of users it has hosted. For millennials, it was a place to publish their writing or photography and get discovered by media companies. For Zillennial cuspers who were teens in the early 2010s, it was a place to figure out what was cool and engage in some of the worst discourse you have ever heard (shout out to TikTok for continuing this legacy). For younger Gen Z (and maybe Gen Alpha if they’re lucky?), it is something else entirely — an escape from the barrage of influence across other mainstream apps.

For the next few Thursdays, I have some interviews lined up with young creatives whose journeys started on Tumblr. I also have an interview with Tumblr representatives about the site’s legacy and future coming soon. Subscribe to the Yapper tier so you don’t miss it. 

I’m also loading up some essays about old Tumblr trends that have stuck with me over the years. Today, we’re talking about what it meant to be “Tumblr famous.”

BTW, Yap Year has a Tumblr (: I plan on being more active over there this year. Follow if you’re still lurking dashboards 💋

Someone recently described me as “such a Tumblr girl in high school but in a good way,” and it is perhaps the highest compliment I could have ever received. 

Indeed, my teen years were full of knee socks, One Direction, studded acid wash denim cutoffs, the Arctic Monkeys, etc. I dreamed of Jeffrey Campbell Litas and settled for more reasonable wedge booties from Payless. My classmates joked about me being “Tumblr famous” because I had 2,500 followers. I secretly loved when they said this because I wished it was true. 

This era is all so quaint to think back on now. I think that’s why people romanticize the hell out of “2014 Tumblr,” which is really just shorthand for the hodgepodge of different aesthetic tastes popular with teens on the website in the early 2010s.

Tumblr hit my teen cohort before we knew what influencers were and what the creator economy would be. We were posting, writing, signaling, and reblogging what was cool — artists, brands, aesthetics — for the hell of it. When TikTok first blew up, it reminded me a lot of this era of Tumblr, except back then there was not a dollar to be made. Everything was an ad but nothing was an #ad. (We kept the lights ON at American Apparel HQ!)

Money be damned, you could cultivate the most important capital of all at that age: status. Tumblr fame wasn’t even about numbers because you could never see how many followers people had on there. Yet, the teens who received this coveted designation were widely accepted as cool and their pictures were suddenly on dashboards everywhere. I think the online obsession with “2014 Tumblr” exists in part because many former Tumblr famous teens are still our culture’s premiere “it girls.” (See: Barbie Ferreira, Tavi Gevinson, Orion Carloto, Devon Lee Carlson, etc.)

Maybe I’m the only one who will admit it, but Tumblr fame seemed kind of fabulous. I wanted it — and recalling the amount of blog networks that sprung up at the time, with similar blogs promising follows for follows and likes for likes, I know a lot of other people wanted it too. 

So the rest of us sat behind our desktops and tried manifesting coolness through reblogging or posting photos emulating these other teens. The beauty of Tumblr is that the people you thought were cool were curating entire blogs of what they thought was cool. So you modeled your blog after theirs in hopes of getting attention from others. You tried on different styles and aesthetics and themes to see what fit the best. 

I didn’t even know why I wanted to be Tumblr famous. In retrospect, this was my first taste of wanting online validation, of wanting random people to affirm that I have that special, elusive “it” factor. In subsequent years, Instagram would perfect this mode of posturing. After even more years, this kind of online life seemed way less desirable and way more exhausting. 

All of this, of course, is an assessment of a particular side of Tumblr — the aesthetic one, full of aspirational images. Having also participated in the fandom side (RIP my One Direction sideblog!), individual fame was definitely not the goal for everyone on the site. Over time, it wasn’t even mine after about a year or two of trying. But across all categories, Tumblr was (is!) a place to discover, archive, and explore your interests. 

My Tumblr years are deeply woven into my DNA. I still like the same celebrities, wear similar clothes, and listen to the same artists over a decade later. I live the life that 15-year-old me — who religiously curated images of it girls, hot musicians, aesthetic cityscapes, and chic outfits — aspired to. And I laugh when I see Tumblr history repeating itself on other platforms (because Tumblr trends are everywhere for those with the eyes to see). 

At risk of glazing a tech company, I will confess that Tumblr is still my favorite form of social media. I like it now for the opposite reason I was so active before — there is no possibility for me to be famous there. That isn’t what Tumblr is about, as evidenced by the remaining community’s persistent, yearslong insistence that the place be inhospitable to the influencer crowd. It is ironic that the first influencers who I obsessed over were bred on Tumblr — but it is no wonder that they have built careers elsewhere. 

Tumblr representatives told me in a recent interview (coming soon) that younger Gen Z has started to take to the platform. They are finding their own ways to find themselves on Tumblr — away from the traps of comparison and influence that dominate other platforms. This is a great comfort to me, as their generational elder (👵🏼) who has lost my joie de vivre on the internet because it has become so high stakes. I’m curious to see if Gen Alpha will have a “2024 Tumblr” to aspire to. For now, I will keep blogging into the void, creating an archive for this moment, because that is what Tumblr is best for. 

As a treat, here is a ranking of all my old Tumblr names (and none of these are my current blog name which is a SECRET!):

1) n1konic

Perfectly of the time. In 2012, it seemed like everyone had a clever blog name and a number in their names (because most usernames with normal words were taken). I was a quality blog at this point, which means I exclusively posted high saturated DSLR photos, and I thought it was fitting to name my blog after my camera. I was a really bad photographer. 

2) peaceteen

When I moved away from quality blogging and went for a more general “aesthetic” blog, this felt more appropriate. Another portmanteau, I was a teen and I liked Peace Tea. This is exactly the dumb, beautiful name you pick for your blog when you are 16.

3) loveandexpress

Bruh, I thought I was hot SHIT for securing this name in 2011. This was my first blog name and it is the perfect, cheesy handle for a 13-year-old who was reblogging fake deep quotes on Tumblr. No further notes. 

4) zephyrians

Now this one doesn’t even make sense foreal… zephyrians isn’t even a WORD! I wanted a handle that was a pretentious, hardly used, sophisticated word like “petrichor” or something. I made “zephyr” into gibberish instead. That’s why she has to be last. It was my latest Tumblr name until very recently and I changed my blog to this name when I was 17.

Every Monday letter gets a playlist. These are songs that I actually reblogged between 2013 and 2015 — sans leaked, unreleased Lana Del Rey and One Direction tracks, of course.

In this week’s playlist:

• Sweater Weather - The Neighbourhood

• I Wanna Be Yours - Arctic Monkeys

• Girls - The 1975

• Electra Heart - Marina

• Everybody Wants to Rule the World - Lorde

• Real - Years & Years

• Shades of Cool - Lana Del Rey

• Let Me Go - Haim

Other things I want to share with you.

• Charli XCX reflecting on the end of the brat era is so fascinating. I often think about what it’s like to toe the line between pop culture dominance and oversaturation. It’s real as hell that she’s acknowledging it. 

• I’ve been thinking about this late 2010s softboi era and I’m glad someone made a visual for it. Don’t worry, there will be a post about my cursed Brockhampton phase at some point. 

• Chat… is this real? BJ Novak and cringe comedian Delaney Rowe? I guess it’s been happening for a bit now since DeuxMoi posted about it in December. Strange times.