I Need to Talk About What Tumblr Was Really Like
Make it stand out
There was a period of time when I wrote everything on a typewriter. You’d think it was some twee statement, casting off technology for the purity of art. But instead, I was 13 and miserable, on Easter holiday from school, and my mum had confiscated my devices after I wrote her a letter and slid it under her bedroom door to tell her I was self-harming and I had finally accepted that I needed support. I thought I was damaged goods, she thought the internet was poisoning me.
I think I resented her for years, still touchy when my parents need to borrow my phone or want to see what I’m doing online, but I get it more and more as the years go by. At 23, I’m getting close to what she must have felt, that understanding panging at me each time I scroll on TikTok and see pale thighs in American Apparel skirts, Skins clips discovered by a new audience and a fresh generation talking about Tumblr’s old toxic indie sleaze aesthetic without knowing what it was like.
We joke a lot about trigger warnings now. It’s a phrase that boomers love to mock, people’s parents love to roll their eyes at. But growing up in the age before the TW, I’m still processing how scary it was. Scary is the perfect word for it, ranging between terrifying and totally helpless. I’d spend all my evenings in my room scrolling and listening to dedicated playlists designed to sadden, built by other teens doing exactly the same. Friends talked about eating disorders and self-harm and suicide like they were this month’s micro-trends. The whole internet felt like a clique bouncing dangerous peer pressure round and round, reblogging worse and worse content with nothing to stop my eyes from seeing it. Effy and Cassie made it all seem so glamorous, promising that everyone would find it so hot. Damage felt so enticing when my entire Tumblr romanticised it in black and white gifs. I’d spiral myself every night like a ritual of youth without realising what I was getting into.
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I never imagined I’d grow up to adopt my parent’s internet scepticism; as I start to realise how she must have felt finding an endless scroll site filled with darkness and pain and everything you’d never want to connect with your youngest daughter. And when 16-year-olds on TikTok suddenly seem to be romanticising the youth I had to recover from - they find our old soundtracks and start thrifting the clothes we’d hate ourselves for not fitting into - I feel more like my mum than whatever my old Tumblr user was.
Maybe it’s our own fault for not speaking about it, realising now we maybe should’ve grown into the ‘internet older sisters’ we rolled our eyes at. As that cusp between millennials and Gen-Z, we’re the era that launched the trauma jokes, channelling bad memories into memes and viral content while still rewatching Skins routinely and never owning up to being affected.
We stayed on social media even after all the CAMHS sessions were done and recovery seemed complete, growing up to master platforms and never talking about how we were there to see the dark ages before the now puritanical censors. While we sign the petitions to tackle shadow banning in the name of feminism, do we also have a responsibility to younger users to talk about that time when literally nothing was blocked? When pro-ana was a click away, hashtags full of blood, text posts could teach you how to end it all. As Vogue declares that the 2014 Tumblr girl is back, twee returns and brands quietly drop their plus size ranges in favour of skinny girls and tennis skirts again I think we might have to talk louder about what it was like to actually be there.
It still feels embarrassing to admit that the internet had such an effect on me. When I was disconnected at 13, I felt genuinely wounded, craving those early versions of social media like the keyboard was my dealer and each scroll developed and satisfied new addictions. While we ebb and flow in conversations about whether the internet is evil or empowering, the Tumblr of my childhood has always stood in the middle like a giant wobbly scale I try to ignore, threatening to throw my opinion way off. I work in social media now, using my lengthy online existence as a pitching point for why I should be hired, selling the fact I’ve been raised online as all good Gen-whatevers do. So admitting that the internet birthed all the worst bits of my mental health feels like admitting that I’m still in active addiction. And how can an addict in the depths of it preach about the need to recover? How can I tell the 15-year-olds to be careful as I continue to log on and laugh along with them?
Still, in my lowest points, I find myself wanting to share emo memes on my finsta. Thankful to have enough distance between us, the face that once stared out of my iPhone 4 lock screen now feels like a villain rather than something to aspire to. I catch her popping up on my For You Page like a trespasser coming back post-eviction. I worry about the girls that haven’t reconfigured their view yet.
As all the things that once decorated my worst depression spiral back around in the inevitab;e trend cycle, I hope 2014 Tumblr can be en vogue without the need for it to be followed by eight years of recovery. Praying that this time a character can just be a character rather than a devil on their shoulder, a skirt just a skirt rather than feeling like a personal attack, a song not a testament - I find myself thankful for community guidelines like a mother, knowing my mum wished I had them back then too.
Words: Lucy Harbron
