Exploring the Unique Social Media Subculture on Tumblr

The next speaker in this Social Media & Society 2024 session is Jessica Crosby, whose focus is on Tumblr. She is interest in online audiencing through Tumblr, especially amongst millennial audiences; platforms such as this enable a performance of the self, but are also complicated by a context collapse between performance and private interactions.

Tumblr is used to think out loud for an anonymous but receptive audience; it has accumulated a cult status amongst creative communities and has accumulated a particularly young, queer, and creative audience. Tumblr presents a continuous stream of content from the Tumblr blogs users follow, and has limited affordances for privacy; in many ways it presents a simpler, older Web aesthetic.

Issues with mobile use complicate routine engagement with the site; this reduces rates of consumption compared to other social media platforms. The Tumblr apps is seen as unreliable, leading users to develop workarounds for access and an emphasis on accessing the site at home (especially from users’ bedrooms) from laptop or desktop computers. This also enables them to work around issues with accessing sensitive and pornographic content from public spaces.

This ‘bedroom culture’ is a practice adopted across genders, and has matured over time. Privacy is a habit, compounded by other privacy tactics. Such tactics also include pseudonymity and limited profile information, reflecting Tumblr’s limited profile affordances, which also reduces profiles’ search engine findability.

As a result, Tumblr provides an ideal environment for self-disclosure that provides opportunities for encountering like-minded people. Users are more willing to be open and honest about their self-presentation, given the lower stakes and more limited threat of context collapse with other online personas.

This promotes a sense of authenticity, and is further heightened by an unofficial ‘gag order’ that encourages Tumblr users not to reference their Tumblr participation elsewhere. The very obscurity of Tumblr participation afford significant cultural capital. In this, Tumblr users are particularly proactive in ensuring privacy and anonymity, promoting a higher sense of security and authenticity.