29 year old Tumblr gorly

Earlier this year, for the first time, I started using Tumblr. I remember those who used it at uni, and associated the image sharing platform with 90s fashion clad images. Each image depicted a minuscule woman wearing a very small outfit. The ribby images to me, said “undertones of an eating disorder” and I thought that was what mainly occupied Tumblr. 

Fast forward 10 years, and I’m having conversation about what Tumblr meant to that era of internet kids at the time. A place to be weird, a place to express yourself with a highly obscure image found in the recesses of another teen’s imagination sitting behind some bulky computer on the other side of the world. 

I was in New York for work back in February, speaking to a lot of Gen Z kids for a creative strategy tech brand project. A few of them mentioned using Tumblr. It was a name I hadn’t heard in a while, but in the spirit of “keeping up with the kids”, it stuck with me. Perhaps as one of those things that’s coming back around, like Y2K (though that never really went away) or polaroids, or mini dvs, or tape decks, or bizarre shaped Nokias. The list goes on. 

What really interested me was how Tumblr felt like a place to share images purely for yourself. Once upon a time, I bought into Instagram for this reason too. A space to share inspiring content for creatives. Back then, I was really into art deco poster design and probably some Oliver Bonas-style homeware, so I followed furniture designers as such. But as the algorithm vamped up its consumer optimisation tactics; Instagram, with its visible likes, shares, public-facing clout and so on, became something very different. And there’s nothing wrong with cute pictures of friends, selfies, babies and the likes; it’s just hard to find some visual inspiration amongst your friends’ various life updates. 

Tumblr for me, has become a place to rediscover my current visual taste. As someone who worked in a very “aesthetic conscious” company for a number of years, I was conditioned around a certain style which unsurprisingly leaked into my definition of taste. For me, this meant a certain type of graphic design and cute illustration for the most part. It’s no surprise that the scenes that we’re a part of impregnate our idea of what is “good art and design” but when you take a step back, move away from those doctrines that make up the visual culture of a corporate company for example, it’s interesting what you can find about yourself. And that’s what Tumblr has helped me to do. 

Of course there’s no such thing as really starting from scratch as a sentient human being with a lifetime of experiences that have shaped the course of taste. But Tumblr has become a place to document these fluctuations. No one can see how many people follow you. Being Tumblr famous means nothing these days (maybe it does but not that I’ve heard of). It’s purely a place to curate all your visual stimulus in a randomised way which for me, gives an indication of how far my taste has developed from someone who used to fawn at colourful risograph prints of arbitrary geometric shapes to images that tell a story. To give some sense of place or time or history or context through a visual. Maybe those images just say something to me because it triggers something in my neural pathways, but that’s sound enough to me. 

And so, I find myself now, a 29 year old Tumblr girl. When I’m bored, I procrastinate with less Instagram and more Tumblr. An excuse I assure myself with because it has more cultural value. It’s like a digital sketch book, handy because I don’t have to carry it around on my various excursions. It keeps me curious, looking for the next interesting thing that piques my imagination. It teaches me indirectly about the lessons of composition - what styles complimentarily clash next to each other. What colours pose an intriguing dynamic. What photography creates an interesting relationship with painting. It expands what I’m looking at. I can tell if I haven’t looked at much painting recently, and it allows me to have that gentle reminder of what is more prominently standing out to me at any given time. I like it. It makes me feel like I’m doing something just for myself. I hope that still counts even after shouting about it on here.