TUMBLR


LUV - This is a Tumblr site. You’d be forgiven for not realising that because it’s not called FUCK YEAH ARGUMENTS and isn’t plastered in photographs of Jared Leto, but it is a Tumblr site. I realise this may come as a surprise.


Or maybe it doesn’t.


Maybe you don’t even know what Tumblr is. Maybe you have a ridiculously outdated sort of life that involves sunshine and people and lingering in cafes and appropriate boundaries and notably few paeans to your own sense of social maladjustment. Maybe you don’t curl up in front of the glare of your computer screen at night, looking at women laughing alone with salad and crying. Maybe you only use the internet to book well-rounded citybreaks, you’ve never heard of Tumblr, and you’re just wondering where that extra vowel has gone.


God I pity you. Because Tumblr is awesome. It’s awesome. In fact, it’s OSSUM. It’s a revelation, a way of life, it’s a TRIBE.


Actually, it’s a blogging platform. But it’s not like BORING blogging platforms like Wordpress (for squares) or Blogger (all right GRANDDAD). Tumblr gets us. It knows we’re social - that’s why it lets us follow people. And it knows we’re busy. We have eyeliner to apply. We have fingernails to paint individual colours. We have motherfucking badges to pin to our hoodies and skate shoes to painstakingly scuff and unlace. We don’t have time to sit down, log in, then use words to describe how alienated we feel or how niche we are. I mean seriously. Words. What is this, Vietnam?


Who needs words to describe how lonely you are when a picture will do?



Who needs to say something original and funny when someone’s already done that in a cartoon you can just swipe off the internet? IT’S RECYCLING? ACTUALLY?



And who needs to have a single original thought when, with one click, you can reblog other people’s Doctor Who fan art and Adele lyrics that describe exactly how alienated you feel EXACTLY WHEN YOU FEEL IT? It saves precious eyeliner-application time AND allows you to degenerate into a brainless, sexually confused pink mush, constantly clicking the “reblog” button on arty photos of skinny hipster boys, girls in their pants and bunnies. It’s okay. It’s not porn. It’s content.


Oh whatever. YOU don’t understand. YOU’LL never love me the way Tumblr does; the way Tumblr loves all emo fangirls with borderline personality disorders. So let me explain Tumblr to you in words you will understand:


TUMBLR. IT’S BASICALLY LIVEJOURNAL.
- Robyn Wilder


HAT - Hey, who remembers what things were like before Tumblr existed? I do. It was bloody awful. Seriously, it was such a ballache back then.


Say you were a teenage girl and you fancied a pop star, like George Michael or the tallest one out of Blur. You had to spend hours looking for a printed photograph of them somewhere, and then you had to physically tear that photo out of wherever it came from, and then you had to attach it to your bedroom wall with a kind of blue adhesive gum, and then - on a separate piece of paper - you had to practice writing what your signature would be if you married them. And at night you had to kiss the photo on the lips. On a wall. You had to kiss a wall. What sort of poxy no-good life is that?


But now Tumblr has come along and things have improved dramatically. Now, if you’re a teenage girl and you fancy a pop star, like Justin Bieber or whichever of One Direction least resembles Princess Diana out on day release, you can just search the internet for a GIF of them looking into a camera and singing the word ‘shoes’, publish it on your Tumblr, write ‘JULIE BIEBER JULIE BIEBER JULIE BIEBER XXXXXXX LOL’ underneath it and then kiss that at night. Tumblr means that teenage girls now kiss looping images on screens instead of static images on walls. It is THE FUTURE.


And it’s not just pop stars, either - you can also use Tumblr to publish GIFs from Community. Or Arrested Development. Or Anchorman. Or The Mighty Fucking Boosh. Or Fucking Any Fucking Kevin Smith Film Ever. Or Doctor Who. Or Harry Potter. Or Just A Fucking Picture Of Someone’s Mouth. Or Some Kind Of Shitty Sub-Inspirational Motivational Quote From A Rubbish Film Or Deepak Cunting Chopra That’s Been Pasted Next To A Fucking Picture Or A Kitten In A Shoebox. Or Oh Jesus Kill Me Now. The world is literally your oh Jesus why won’t someone just kill me now.


Well done, Tumblr. Well done for liking the same slightly geeky, slightly culty, slightly alternative things as EVERYONE ELSE ON FUCKING TUMBLR. You’re such an individual. That photo of a cupcake that’s only been reblogged 995 times? Hardly anyone has seen that more than, say, 40 or 50 times. You’re right to reblog it. You’re doing the world a favour. You have such good taste. Admittedly you didn’t have any part in its creation, and you’re just dumbly human centipeding it down the internet because it’s easier than making something yourself, but pat yourself on the back anyway.


The other day on Tumblr I saw an animated GIF of (500) Days Of Summer (of course), where Joseph Gordon-Levitt (of fucking course) says “People should be able to say how they feel. How they really feel. Not, you know, some words that some strangers put in their mouths.” This was on Tumblr. It had been reblogged 200 times. I’d contemplate the irony of that, but I fear it might initiate some sort of horrifying anger stroke. Fuck you, Tumblr.
- Stuart Heritage