Remembering Tumblr

I should say I'm not really a Tumblr refugee – I hadn't been using the site for some time by the NSFW crackdown of last month. I am still happy to take advantage of the uptick in activity on, and enthusiasm for, Dreamwidth. As LiveJournal declined I'd always hoped my circles would want to follow me over here to DW, but no one really did, and when people finally did stop using LJ it seemed to be more modern social media sites they moved to – including Tumblr.

So, I really started using Tumblr in 2011. I'd had an account before that, but… eh. Never used it. Until I did. As a platform, clearly, it always left something to be desired. My experience was that it was only ever barely usable once browser-extension'd to within an inch of its life. I mean, there weren't even timestamps on the dashboard! Replying back to replies was a pain. The same post could appear on your dash 657458745684 times – sometimes with slightly different commentary – if everyone you followed kept reblogging it.

Yet nonetheless, for me Tumblr became a fantastic space to indulge my fannish side. I've never considered myself a “big fandom person”, but Tumblr made it accessible. People would post gifsets of the best bits of all my favourite shows, and I could reblog them and enable everyone else to relive the joy. There were loads of interesting discussion posts, on things like character archetypes and tropes and whatnot. In terms of music, people would post loads of obscure B-sides, live performances, covers and fan-made mash-ups which could be a real treasure trove of previously-unknown stuff. ( Plus, there was lots of great non-fandom stuff on there too… )