Something blue

Yet Tumblr was also a deeply flawed “blue hellscape” to many of its users, a technologically frustrating, often unsafe platform that did not always serve all its users well. As our authors testify, its most vulnerable groups faced the same challenges on Tumblr as they did in real life. Nonetheless, these sub- cultures persisted on the platform because it offered participants the best option and tools for alternative networking among very limited choices. Tumblr was, for many, a deinstitutionalized, underfunded, unauthorized, constantly on-­ the-­ run think tank–­ cum–­ chocolate factory, a subcultural, countercultural place where alternative pleasures, education and resource-sharing, creative and critical work happened. During its first decade, Tumblr became the space for the development of, for example, Black feminist theory, LGBTQ+/nonbinary identity formation, disability and chronic pain collectivities, critical media culture, and alternative body erotics and porn. The increasing calls for social justice that marked the 2010s, especially among young people, prompted The New York Times in 2014 to acknowledge the platform’s youth subcultures as heralding “the age of Tumblr activism.”

Given Tumblr’s uniqueness as a platform and the ephemerality of the internet, we began this book in early 2016 with the goal of representing and preserving evidence of Tumblr’s creative forms and critical voices, and we structured this book accordingly. The experience of Tumblr is the experience of multiplicity. Our intention has always been to make this volume as poly-vocal as possible, which means we have included a wide variety of voices, some of which clash with each other, in an attempt to mirror the experience of encountering the variety of perspectives on Tumblr. 

–“You Must Be New Here: An Introduction” (2020), by  Allison McCracken, Alexander Cho, Louisa Stein, and Indira Neill Hoc,
from a tumblr book: platform and cultures