On average, I figure that I spend at least 15 hours on the website Tumblr every week, which is, admittedly, too much. Even when I’m not using the blogging site, I keep a tab open in my browser for it, ready to pop in and get distracted for ten minutes before coming back to what I was on the computer for in the first place.
Spending this much time on anything is a serious commitment, and I’ve tried in the past to qualify to others this level of dedication for such an odd website. Tumblr is rife with strange people and strange humor, and, like many, I’ve found a niche on the site. Finding my place on the site wasn’t instant though; not only is the site massive with an approximately 110 million strong userbase, but it also has its own language to learn. This, in and of itself, is not unique to Tumblr; sites like Reddit and Twitter have their own learning curves for deciphering the terminology and the etiquette associating with posting and interacting with others. However, when it comes to Tumblr, the learning curve can seem slightly steeper than with other websites. The entire grammar and rhetorical techniques being used in posts on the site are specific to this singular site, not completely overlapping with other social media communication practices, and, while they might seem nonsensical or stylistic, there are actual rules to this language that a more veteran user can recognize; new users can sometimes stand out for misusing the dialect. What I didn’t realize until much later on the site, though, is that while this is particular to this site online, offline this isn’t the first time we’ve seen some of these very specific styles. I’ve now run into two similar posts on the site that reference the strange similarities that the posts on the site have to an art movement called Dada: |
Neither of these posts made much sense to me until other users jumped in to expand on the point. Dada, an art movement from the early twentieth century which relied on the idea of being anti-art, something that couldn't have meaning, still has a fairly particular aesthetic despite its tenants or randomness and nonsense-- not unlike what Tumblr users produce. As an example: |
The left is an image from 1920 from Raoul Hausmann, a dada artist. The right is from Tumblr user chimeriical. It’s not hard to see some odd parallels in the aesthetic of the collage-work, and this is one example of many with different types of mishmash art that share striking similarities. Despite the nearly 100 year gap between the creations of the two pieces and the vastly different media being used in the creation, it seems plausible that there’s something behind the art or the artists (intention? A rediscovered appreciation for a highly specific type of aesthetic?) that is creating a cycle; history repeats itself, and all. I’d like to get to the bottom of this. At this point, figuring out this weird website and its users might sound like more effort than it’s worth, and I’m not going to disagree, because I frequently shake my head at myself and wonder when I’ll escape the site. But that doesn’t negate the millions of users and the potential things that we can learn from the site about the development and spread of language, as well as get a more in depth look at what younger generations are interested in and how they express themselves. Decoding Tumblr linguistics could have implications for studying language, cultural studies, and marketing. Plus it’s just fun. (Or at least that’s what I’m telling myself. I haven’t found an escape route from the site yet and I believe I have some form of Stockholm Syndrome.) |