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a tumblr book: platform and cultures

Allison McCracken, Alexander Cho, Louisa Stein, and Indira Neill Hoch, editors 2020 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license This Open Access edition is made available through financial support from Depaul University, Middlebury College, and the University of California President's Postdoctoral Fellow's Research Fund
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This book takes an extensive look at the many different types of users and cultures that comprise the popular social media platform Tumblr. Though it does not receive nearly as much attention as other social media such as Twitter or Facebook, Tumblr and its users have been hugely influential in creating and shifting popular culture, especially progressive youth culture, with the New York Times referring to 2014 as the dawning of the "age of Tumblr activism."

 

Perfect for those unfamiliar with the platform as well as those who grew up on it, this volume contains essays and artwork that span many different topics: fandom; platform structure and design; race, gender and sexuality, including queer and trans identities; aesthetics; disability and mental health; and social media privacy and ethics. An entire generation of young people that is now beginning to influence mass culture and politics came of age on Tumblr, and this volume is an indispensable guide to the many ways this platform works.
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ISBN(s)
  • 978-0-472-07456-3 (hardcover)
  • 978-0-472-05456-5 (paper)
  • 978-0-472-90129-6 (open access)
Subject
  • Media Studies:New Media
  • American Studies
Citable Link
  • Table of Contents

  • Resources

  • Stats

  • Cover
  • Title Page
  • Copyright Page
  • Contents
  • Acknowledgments
  • Chapter 1. You Must Be New Here
  • Section 1. #The Rules of Tumblr
    • Chapter 2. Lost in the “Dash”
    • Chapter 3. Going Down the Rabbit Hole
    • Chapter 4. Blackout, Black Excellence, Black Power
    • Chapter 5. Under the Radar
    • Chapter 6. Reblogs, Monsters, and Erotic Amphibians
    • Chapter 7. Divine Fools and Ridiculous Mystics
    • Chapter 8. Tumblr Time
    • Gallery: @Staff
  • Section 2. #Privacy and Ethics
    • Chapter 9. Screaming into the Void
    • Chapter 10. The Challenges of Doing Qualitative Research on Tumblr
    • Chapter 11. We Are More Than Footnotes
  • Section 3. #NSFW
    • Chapter 12. Walled Gardens, NSFW Niches, and Horizontality
    • Chapter 13. NSFW as an Intervention
    • Chapter 14. Fandom Surgery
    • Chapter 15. TumPorn Is Dead, Long Live TumPorn!
  • Section 4. #Fandom
    • Chapter 16. A Roundtable Discussion about the Cultures of Fandom on Tumblr with Flourish Klink, Rukmini Pande, Zina Hutton, and Lori Morimoto
    • Chapter 17. Kitten Thinks of Nothing but Murder All Day
    • Chapter 18. Lesbian One Direction Fans Take Over Tumblr
    • Chapter 19. Ships, Fans, and #beatingthedistance
    • Gallery: #Fan Art
  • Section 5. #Activism
    • Chapter 20. A Social Good Brand
    • Chapter 21. Tumblr, XKit, and the XKit Guy
    • Chapter 22. Digital Decolonization
    • Chapter 23. Queer Tumblr IRL
    • Chapter 24. Behind the Scenes of a Popular Trans Youth Resources Tumblr
    • Chapter 25. Queer Tips
  • Section 6. #Identity/Affinity Networks
    • Chapter 26. Tumblr as a Space of Learning, Connecting, and Identity Formation for LGBTIQ+ Young People
    • Chapter 27. A Conversation about Gender/Sexual Variant and Transgender Labeling and Networking on Tumblr with Abigail Oakley and Avery Dame-Griff
    • Chapter 28. Developing a Black Genderfluid Feminist Critique via Tumblr
    • Chapter 29. #Spoonielife
    • Chapter 30. New Ways of Seeing
  • Section 7. #myAesthetic
    • Chapter 31. On the Value of the Social
    • Chapter 32. Unofficial Archives of Urban Life
    • Chapter 33. Beyond the Pale Blog
    • Chapter 34. Tumblr’s Gallery of Loops
    • Gallery: #Original Art
  • Index

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A GIF set of 5 horizontal media images depicting scenes from the film The Shape of Water

The Shape of Water gifset - 1

From Chapter 6

Page 72 →Fig. 6.1. The Shape of Water GIFset by gayjamesmcgraw

A GIF set of 5 horizontal media images depicting scenes from the film The Shape of Water

The Shape of Water gifset - 2

From Chapter 6

Page 72 →Fig. 6.1. The Shape of Water GIFset by gayjamesmcgraw

A GIF set of 5 horizontal media images depicting scenes from the film The Shape of Water

The Shape of Water gifset - 3

From Chaptter 6

Page 72 →Fig. 6.1. The Shape of Water GIFset by gayjamesmcgraw

A “text-post meme” where a user has posted a media image of Marvel character Bucky Barnes superimposed with another user’s written text

Onion headline

From Chapter 17

Fig. 17.1. Tumblr user buckybarnes’s Onion headline addresses two character traits at once

Two “text-post memes” where a user has posted media images of Princes Leia and Mad Max’s Furiosa, both superimposed with another user’s written texts

Princess Leia “text-post meme”

From Chapter 17

Figs. 17.6–7. Some female genre characters expressing indifference to both conventional standards of prettiness and male interest in same: Leia Organa from the original Star Wars trilogy (squiddleprincess), and Imperator Furiosa from Mad Max: Fury Road (mattymurdockss)

Two “text-post memes” where a user has posted media images of Princes Leia and Mad Max’s Furiosa, both superimposed with another user’s written texts

Furiosa “text-post meme”

From Chapter 17

Figs. 17.6–7. Some female genre characters expressing indifference to both conventional standards of prettiness and male interest in same: Leia Organa from the original Star Wars trilogy (squiddleprincess), and Imperator Furiosa from Mad Max: Fury Road (mattymurdockss)

A “text-post meme” where a user has posted a media image of the Marvel character Black Widow superimposed with another user’s written text

Black Widow “text-post meme”

From Chapter 17

Fig. 17.8. User rhymeswithmonth here screencapped Romanoff showing actor Scarlett Johansson’s characteristic lack of facial expression in the role

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