Random teen browsing the web @lifians - Tumblr Blog

my biggest issue with tiktok is like…yes as a 25 year old i am going to find teenagers inherently annoying so whatever. but that doesn’t mean teenagers shouldn’t have the opportunity to connect with each other and share content and explore media etc etc. HOWEVER i think tiktok sets an insane and dangerous precedent of having your Actual Face And Voice in these posts that are ultimately pretty publicly accessible to anyone. like, teenagers deserve to have spaces in which they can be cringey and embarrassing and weird and nerdy but for everyone’s sakes it should be fairly anonymous…i shudder to think of the world in which every unhinged thing i ever posted about glee or sherlock or hp or whatever had my dumb little 14 year old face attached to it for anyone to see over a decade later.

copperbooms

when did tumblr collectively decide not to use punctuation like when did this happen why is this a thing

rodimuss

it just looks so smooth I mean look at this sentence flow like a jungle river

prismatic-bell

ACTUALLY

This is really exciting, linguistically speaking.

Because it’s not true that Tumblr never uses punctuation. But it is true that lack of punctuation has become, itself, a form of punctuation. On Tumblr the lack of punctuation in multisentence-long posts creates the function of rhetorical speech, or speech that is not intended to have an answer, usually in the form of a question. Consider the following two potential posts. Each individual line should be taken as a post:

ugh is there any particular reason people at work have to take these massive handfuls of sauce packets they know they’re not going to use like god put that back we have to pay for that stuff

Ugh. Is there any particular reason people at work have to take these massive handfuls of sauce packets they know they’re not going to use? Like god, put that back. We have to pay for that stuff.

In your head, those two potential posts sound totally different. In the first one I’m ranting about work, and this requires no answer. The second may actually engage you to give an answer about hoarding sauce packets. And if you answer the first post, you will likely do so in the same style.

Here’s what makes this exciting: the English language has no actual punctuation for rhetorical speech–that is, there are no special marks that specifically indicate “this speech is in the abstract, and requires no answer.” Not only that, it never has. The first written record of English (actually proto-English, predating even Old English) dates to the 400s CE, so we’re talking about 1600 years of having absolutely no marker whatsoever for rhetorical speech.

A group of teens and young adults on a blogging website literally reshaped a deficit a millennium and a half old in our language to fit their language needs. More! This group has agreed on a more or less universal standard for these new rules, which fits the definition of “language.” Which is to say Tumblr English is its own actual, real, separate dialect of the English language, and because it is spoken by people worldwide who have introduced concepts from their own languages into it, it may qualify as a written form of pidgin.

Tumblr English should literally be treated as its own language, because it does not follow the rules of any form of formal written English, and yet it does have its own consistent internal rules. If you don’t think that’s cool as fuck then I don’t even know what to tell you.

sussexbound

i love this post

willowgrovecreates

This is super cool! Also idk if this has any relevance whatsoever but if you wanna have an argument inside one tag you cannot have commas in it so that’s a real existing constraint that has forced tumblrites to construct commaless sentences and perhaps this has helped in adopting the custom into posts as well ok I have no idea if this is what’s happened just I think it’s a reasonable assumption there might be a connection

sanerontheinside

^this.

The tags are absolutely a factor. You want someone to take a breath in the middle of a sentence, you start a new tag. You want to have, as seen here, this removable piece between commas (does it have a name?) - you have 5 tags in this sentence alone. And sometimes you just

pause in the middle of a sentence…

and let your voice

trail away

obaewankenope

look at all you precious brilliant nerds nerding about language you make me so fucking happy omg

language is this constantly evolving thing tbh, it doesn’t remain the same unless it’s dead and the people who used it gone so seeing the evolution of the language used on tumblr is literally so fucking amazing i want to cry with joy at it

because we also add in words from other languages, or make entirely new words up as additional terms to denote something (see ‘tol’ and ‘smol’ in relation to ‘tall’ and ‘small’) and this is constant. we are doing this daily without any sort of breathing space because there’s millions of us on this hellsite and we are constantly talking and so the language changes day-by-day until we have general, universal rules for what to do in a post, what to add in our tags, how to add it, why we add it, what we mean by it

we’ve created a language in the same way our ancestors all did: by building on the ones that came before and changing them to suit our needs and our system

and that’s fucking awesome okay

awesome

adora-korra

I love this so much and language is so great and I’ve noticed the lack of punctuation thing recently, even on twitter, and used it for like a specific kind of rhetorical effect. idk it’s so fun I fucking love linguistics and the evolution of language

elenorasweet

I also loved that the following one-word responses all sound drastically different out loud and showcase different reactions:

What?

What.

what

solitarelee

Oh hey! This is the post that caused me to write a thesis. Yall know this post is cited in like five different academic papers that I found while researching for it? @prismatic-bell is a username I see screenshots of in academia these days. P sure they’re in the tumblr book too. Wild.

prismatic-bell

I’m sorry, I WHAT?!

eloylannoo

CATWALK

hanfugallery

chinese hanfu by 桃花序

mercuryfountain-deactivated2024

Twitter users are defending their right to assume Picasso was a renaissance artist. Tiktok users think watching any film made outside the US makes you a snob. “Replace classic lit with YA and fan fiction” discourse is flourishing. I think we’re just living in anti intellectual times.

yyyyddmmsupremacy-deactivated20

it's not anti-intellectualism it's anti-snobbery

mercuryfountain-deactivated2024

Let me ask you this: how many “snobs” have you actually met? Because I have met many people who take interest in art history, watch vintage film or films from films from outside the US (which by the way are not all “arthouse” films), or read and cherish historically and culturally significant literature. But I have never met anyone who will treat me like I’m a bad person for watching Mama Mia or just wanting to be entertained once in a while. I have, however, met people who think art history is stupid and pointless and that those who study it deserve to live in poverty, who are xenophobic and dismissive toward any art made outside the US (or western Europe for that matter), or roll their eyes at people who read literature they consider boring because they’ve never given it a try. In fact, most of the people I know who you would consider “snobs” out of projected insecurity are cautious to bring up their interests because they think they’ll be made fun of. Is anti intellectualism “anti elitist?” At times, but it’s the sort of pseudo populism that fits comfortably within contemporary right wing discourse. Have you paid any attention to politics the last decade or so? If you are allergic to culture and new information, fine. Just don’t claim the moral high ground for it.

pettydavis

you could have just asked for her wig instead of snatching it like that

45percenterthen

cosmetic surgery is yassifed taxidermy for alive things

paperplanechemtrails

weirdlandtv

Pulp sci-fi illustration by Italian artist, Aldo Di Gennaro (b. 1938).

auckie

This is probably the most culturally important thing I’ll ever seen in my lifetime if I’m being honest. I want this affixed over my mantle, embroidered into my denim, and emblazoned into my flesh so that generations to come may never forget this 1938 gem of an illustration. Put this on my gravestone and name my children after Alfo Di Gennaro. This is what it’s all about.

crabofdoom

Artist was obviously a leg man, but I have never seen a female alien love interest designed as THIS alien before. She’s uniquely hairy, bugged-eyed, lines would indicate at least a partial exoskeleton, she has escaped being saddled with the mammories that a non-mammal being would not have, yet she’s got it bad for Space Force Leatherhead and he is so into her. I can practically hear his prose of her cabochon eyes of nebula violet, glowing with the passion to know and be known, in the starlight. The green of her body turning more vivid as discovery (and carnal knowledge) consume her conscious mind.

To suggest a red-blooded, human man could love Greedo’s cousin? Desire her??

This is fantastic, in every sense. How many lives did this change forever?

ice-dancers-and-chill

in which i finish a sketch from 2016 😏👈

discount-supervillain

burger heavy week

marbirds

kitty kisses [ID in alt text]

tattoo tickets

dark-deathrage

you're a stupid fucking anti-sjw lol. This blog is stupid. I hate you crackers white people SUCK go suck a dick.

looks like I triggered more sjws. Keep sending these asks they only fuel my logic.

ulysseus

Never forget the guy who didn’t remember to hit anon before sending himself hate mail

biomic

saru brother

ohthewhomanity

OK but aside from the funny, this is the gorilla doing its best to correct a gorilla faux pas! Gorillas don’t make eye contact except as a challenge. They avoid looking at each other directly as much as possible. So this fella just accidentally slid forward and looked the human right in the eye and went “oooooops” and turned FULLY around to go “I have no quarrel with you!”

frozteddonutz

This is how I found out Shakira is on trial for tax fraud 😀

coolxatu

oh my god........... shakira is on trial for tax fraud.

lizofalltrades

NEW CHALLENGE

1. FIRST, create a picrew using this maker, and then 2. SECOND take this quiz on how fandom would see you if you were a fictional character. 3 (THIRD) POST YOUR PIC AND YOUR DESCRIPTION IN THE REBLOG!

Bastard (Good)

You’re a bastard. A wet cat, if you will. And we love you for it. You’re a little shit, but in the good way. You are the baddest babygirl. You killed a man, but you looked good doing it. You flirted with the hero and the enemy. All of Tumblr is madly in love with you. Congrats, I guess?

Tagging EVERYONE but especially @magicaltear, @the-beeses-kneeses, @wafflesrisa, @mykingdomforapen, @marbat, @scientistsinistral, @halberdierminister!

buggys-critter-cage

theonlyacceptableevalana

Running From Your Past

You have a past you’d prefer not to think about, but boy oh boy does it like to think about you. A bad parent, an old enemy, a job that ended in disaster. No matter how far your run or how well you hide, it will find you eventually.

lifians

I wanna try it, so here it is: