Dividing up eras of tumblr
It just occurred to me that I kind of arbitrarily started referring to “first age” “second age” and “third age” tumblr one day because I realized during a discord conversation that it really can be divided up very effectively between a couple major events that changed the fabric of the site’s culture almost overnight, but nobody but me ever refers to them that way, so by way of explanation:
First Age: everything before Dashcon. Art communities were still largely thriving on the internet and social media still mostly existed out from under corporate monopolies, and people were just wildly guessing about how to use it. We were in the last hurrah of the internet wild west and lolcats were still a thing. Tumblr was just a fun and quirky place, we were blissfully writing unironic posts about tumblr university and fandom vs hipster and the “I like your shoelaces” thing, Hank Green wrote a goddamn song about tumblr, we were all like Adam and Eve dwelling in Eden unaware of their sin. Potterheads grab your wands.
Second Age: post-Dashcon, but pre-Purge. We have all eaten the fruit of knowledge and there is no going back. There are no more secret code or tumblr university posts because everyone knows firsthand how badly that would go. Fandom culture is forever changed. We are now aware that we live in a hellish cringetopia but have absolutely no plans to leave, because by now a combination of monopolies and a sneaky rise in purity culture has the internet by the throat (but not in a kinky way, that would scare off advertisers) so there aren’t a lot of better options, and at least our relatives can’t find us here. A lot of artists now have their primary presence on tumblr. The lax policies regarding nsfw and controversial content mean it’s a good space for queer creators and sex workers despite the many shortcomings we’re now aware of. The porn bot plague really kicks into full gear to the point that every time our follower counts go up we’re ready with the block/spam button like the uncles from Secondhand Lions picking off traveling salesmen. The drama starts to get really fucking weird, with classics such as the human pet guy and the bone-stealing witch.
Third Age: post-Purge. After changing corporate hands a few times, the drive to make the internet safe for our Good Christian Advertisers and hypothetical children has finally reached us, and brings with it TERFs, purity culture, and the Porn Ban, which was allegedly a solution to the porn bots except that it clearly wasn’t at all. The large community of sex workers and artists that was keeping tumblr afloat as anything resembling a viable social media site have made a mass exodus and a lot of the rest of the userbase followed them, mostly to twitter or a few doomed attempts at tumblr copycats. Tumblr is now a mad max clown car full of people too stubborn to pack up and leave for a functional website. It’s a post-apocalyptic wasteland whose only remaining merit is that even without the ability to post porn we’ve managed to make ourselves such a complete anathema to advertisers that we’re mostly just left alone. We’re all just tired. Some people still run art blogs but nobody outside of tumblr ever sees them. Literally all we have going for us is that we’re not twitter and we have +5 resistance to capitalism. And Xkit.
