Occupy Wall Street, Notorious RBG, cottagecore. These and several other lasting internet trends and IRL movements of the 2010s were born not on Twitter, on Facebook, or in the mainstream media but on Tumblr. You might remember it as the blogging platform that became one of the most hyped startups in the world before fading into obsolescence — bought by Yahoo for $1.1 billion in 2013 (back when a billion still felt like a billion), then acquired by Verizon, and later offloaded for fractions of pennies on the dollar in a distressed sale. That same Tumblr, a relic of many millennials’ formative years, has been having a moment among Gen Z.
Zoomers have gravitated toward the pseudonymous platform, viewing it as a safe space as the rest of the social internet has become increasingly commodified, polarized, and dominated by lifestyle influencers. As in its heyday, Tumblr is still more about sharing art, culture, and fandom than individual status. More posts about anime and punk rock than bridal trends and politics. In 2025, 50% of Tumblr’s active monthly users are Gen Zers, as are 60% of new users signing up, according to data Tumblr shared with Business Insider. And several of Zoomers’ icons, from the “Fault in Our Stars” author John Green to the pop superstar Halsey, have come back to the platform.
“Gen Z has this romanticism of the early-2000s internet,” says Amanda Brennan, an internet librarian who worked at Tumblr for seven years, leaving her role as head of content in 2021. She still uses her own Tumblr regularly as the internet’s resident meme librarian. “It allows for experimentation that’s not tied to your face.”
So, on the plus side that means they’ll be on the Fediverse soon.
On the negative, by now I fully expect Matt Mullenweg to flip out over some perceived slight or rivalry and ruin Tumblr for everybody 🤷
How will https://sh.itjust.works/c/curatedtumblr work when Lemmy is Tumblr?
Lemmy won’t be tumblr, it will just federate with it 🙂 So I guess c/curatedtumblr will work even smoother when it becomes possible to just cross post over ActivityPub.
I mean looks around
Are we invisible?
Hello! Fediverse over here!
Community maintained!
Fresh memes!
rings bell
Come and get it!
Fresh memes!
My theory is that the primary reason why the fediverse isn’t more popular with young people is cultural. For instance, I don’t think anyone in generation z would use the term “fresh memes” :)
But yeah I also think that tumblr has a nostalgia advantage. It represents the internet before it “turned bad”, while the fediverse represents a possible future for the internet. Both have different appeals, but I think that nostalgia wins out for a lot of people.
I think it does too, but the problem with nostalgia is that you forget about all the shitty parts and just remember the good bits. Tumblr is still owned by big tech oligarchs even if it is smaller than the other platforms, and is still vulnerable to the kind of enshittification that the fediverse is more insulated against. Enshittification actually came for Tumblr long ago but it looks positively tame in comparison with other platforms.
It’s funny because, while not a 1-for-1 cultural fit, Mastodon’s site structure has felt much closer to Tumblr’s. I feel like the reason Twitter people keep saying Mastodon’s insufficient (while, eventually, flocking to BlueSky) is that BlueSky offers a more similar UX, in terms of shunting you along algorithmically. I don’t think there’s any issue with Mastodon’s UI (other than maybe PixelFed, I think it’s the closest Fediverse project to other mainstream social media UI) but I suspect the UX isn’t quite right for people expecting Twitter.
However, I, as a Tumblr transplant, felt right at home.
I don’t know that it’s the “algorithms”: a lot of people just use their following feed on twitter and although it changed a while back that was the default feed on bluesky for a long time. I think that there is a fairly large portion of bluesky users who mostly just look at following and still don’t really like mastodon.
Imo, a big reason why bluesky has been a more successful twitter competitor than mastodon is cultural: mastodon has been around for years before musk bought twitter, and a big selling point was that it wasn’t like twitter, for example that its “less toxic”. A large part of mastodons userbase never liked pre-musk twitter that much and will tell you of for acting like you would there. Bluesky on the other hand has a large portion of users who liked pre-musk twitter and are happy to follow pretty similar social norms as they did in pre-musk twitter.
This is to some extent reflected in the functions of the different sites as well, for example you can’t quote retweet on mastodon which iirc is deliberate because qrt dunking is “toxic”. Bluesky has quote retweets (although they allow you to untag yourself from a qrt).
Early 2000s, pre-smartphone internet was better. That isn’t a romanticized claim.
Pre-plattform was better i would say. The problem are all these plattforms they have to much power and dictate markets, opinions and life in generell for to many people.
In many ways it was better. More organic and even the big names like google and amazon were more quirky upstarts rather than the evil megacorporations they are today.
That said lets not sugarcoat it too much. The early 2000s were edgelord central and message boards like 4chan and something awful were quite influential. Then you had gaming message boards like gamefaqs and the like. Woof so much bad trolling. Some of it funny and well done to the point of art but most just abrasive and annoying. The small message boards and communities were amazing though.
Back then the internet was a bunch of coffee shops. Not literally, of course - but for me it was about 30 people on messenger, my favorite chatroom, a random message board, a small but far flung group of people on LiveJournal, and sometimes even my Neopets guild.
Each was my own retreat. The weird and funny stuff we shared there was created and shared because people had a passion for whatever. It also was great in that you could learn about something, and share it with another group that had not seen it yet.
Today the internet is the infinite cul-de-sacs of meme pages, political messaging groups, and disinformation rings on Facebook, along with approximately 6 people that keep showing up from your friends list of hundreds. Or it’s the screaming gladiatorial stadium of Reddit, where the sheer volume of noise smothers any particular voice. Maybe it’s the infinite lawless Walmart of X or even the carefully manicured Target that is BlueSky.
From mining your attention, to hawking trinkets amidst the spectacle, or attempting to sell a little bit of everything to anyone, the new internet lacks third places. It’s all business, all the time, and you can feel it. Every meme is created to engage with that platform’s broadest audience. Everything is homogenized and lacks uniqueness. All the content has been aggregated and reshared, and in the endless and futile search for validation from the algorithm it’s lost something that makes it meaningful.
And that’s why I like Lemmy. It’s a digital third place.
You underestimate how much interface and algorithms impact how people interact with eachother.
I agree with this. I 100% believe the lurch to the right’s acceleration in America was fueled by social media algorithms.
It started with billionaires buying up all the media, but was further accelerated by the algorithms.
Yep. Yesterday I stumbled across a few old Reddit threads back when TikTok initially get banned. specifically subreddit drama posts.
Reading through it, and seeing how gen z moaning about how they won’t be able to connect and find new people and info. I still think they are addicted to the algorithm but I also am able to empathize somewhat in the connection part. Facts are they were born into and grew in near total “antisocial” environment. Constant connection to the internet so it’s easy to forego face to face meeting, leading to a cycle of not hanging out physically like older generations did.
Then there were the COVID lockdowns helping itself to the pile of shit.
Peer influence going to TikTok, and then getting fed constantly with their algorithm using the short form content TikTok is infamous for.
It really is tragic when I look at it honestly.
What good did the increased face-to-face meeting do for previous generations?
From what I can tell Gen Z have lower teenage pregnancy rates, lower rates of alcoholism, lower rates of violent crime and are the most “educated” generation ever.
Facebook has spent millions figuring out how to make your feed as divisive and confrontational as possible. I don’t think it’s had a good outcome for humanity and I think it’s more in the powers-that-be’s hands than the above person thinks it is.
Damn people… They ruined humanity!
If you’re talking about zuck, elmo, and pals, then yes the problem is people.
But it’s not “people” who’re flooding my feeds with fascist advertisements, etc.
I left every single western social network because they’re all filled to the brim with angry, asshole people. America has a ton of miserable people that will go out of their way to be rude to others on every social network. I’m sick of that energy.
If it’s not rude people, it’s ad after ad.
The only things I use now are Xiaohongshu (Rednote) and Lemmy (my own instance).
This comment is going to piss just about everyone off, but tik tok was actually amazing for the couple hours America was banned. That’s not an endorsement of tik tok just an observation.
Funny enough, this is why I’ve enjoyed Rednote a ton. I’ve found that a lot of western folks are there as a reprieve from how insanely volatile Meta and other platforms have gotten. It’s a different vibe and the platform was specifically built for people to learn and grow together. The audience there very much strives to keep a good vibe and will call out anyone that tries to disrupt that.
Besides a bit of the fediverse, I’m back at reading blogs via RSS. I’ve never stopped using RSS and it’s just so nice.
