Both hands on the keyboard and one foot in the grave. I'm Cates and I work at Tumblr. This is a personal account, opinions are my own. @cates on bluesky. She/Her 🌱
I had a lovely chat with Mashable’s Lance Ulanoff about gifs and Tumblr the other day, and here’s his full report on the secret history the Graphics Interchange Format.
WRONG, SIR. WRONG.
But also this is a really interesting article, y’all should go read it.
See more posts like this on Tumblr
#gifs #gif #gif culture #internet cultureyeah ok but what does weaboo even mean
like who just said one day
“YUP AND THEY WILL BE CALLED…
…the WEABOO.”
and everyone else went along with it
ok quick history lesson
so on 4chan the word “wapanese” was used to refer to dumb anime nerds. white boy wannabe japanese. makes sense.
A mod got pissed at it being used so much and said that the next person to use it would get banned, so the boards decided to use a silly nonsense word to replace it.
by complete general consensus, the boards picked the word “weeaboo” from a perry bible comic.
henceforth, “weeaboo” was used in replacement of “wapanese”.
the end.
I have learned so much
this should be taught in history class
If you’re saying anons decided to replace “wapanese” with “weeaboo,” that’s not totally accurate! The mods instituted a word-filter (a pretty common tactic) that automatically replaced any instance of “wapanese” with “weeaboo,” anons adopted it, and it eventually spread to the greater internet. It wasn’t general consensus at all — it was mod intervention.
Emmy Cicierega’s Ariel vs Neil Cicierega’s Ariel
These two creators were siblings the whole time and none of you thought to tell me?
I read this guy’s thesis floating around on the web once that actually stated that the Cicierega family has basically singlehandedly shaped internet culture and are alone some of the most important figures in pop culture but literally barely anyone actually knows who they are. It’s interesting stuff
im gonna need that link, @from-mars-to-venus
In celebrating our 10th anniversary this year, we are paying tribute to the ten most influential memes that shaped and defined internet culture. Memespeople of Tumblr, we need your help! Vote now for the 10 memes to make the inaugural class of the Hall of Memes!
The poll will remain open until August 7th, Tuesday, 11:59 pm (EST).
GO VOTE
In Episode 178, Flourish and Elizabeth sit down with Kaitlyn Tiffany, an internet culture reporter at The Atlantic and the author of the book Everything I Need I Get from You: How Fangirls Created the Internet as We Know It. They talk about One Direction—the source of the book’s title and one of its central subjects—and Kaitlyn’s journey from 1D fan to covering fandom in the mainstream press, touching on ideas about writing for different audiences, personal versus collective perceptions of fannish conversations, and the dangers of credulity when writing about online subcultures.
Click through to our site to listen or read a full transcript!
buzzfeed articles talk about tumblr all the time as if the buzzfeed contributors are anthropologists observing us in our natural habitat
this hit 500k notes im so proud
This internet feels small, and it’s shrinking every day as its algorithms make everything feel increasingly the same. Amid all this, Tumblr has been a safe harbor of delightful, weird, and deeply human stuff, presented using the radical system known as reverse chronological order. This shouldn’t be rocket science, and yet here we are: Somehow, Tumblr is the only social media platform I use that just shows me the posts from people I follow, in order of when they were posted. The further I scroll, the older posts get. And that’s beautiful. Algorithms don’t try to anticipate what I want to see, and neither is my feed determined by the whims of a random group of people who can up- or downvote things into oblivion.
hey guys, i wrote some words about tumblr.
Hey there, followers. We’ve gotten a lot of messages over the last few days about Tumblr’s updated Terms of Service. I wrote my personal thoughts in the opinion piece above.
So well thought out and well worded. Bless this post.
thank you so much. i really appreciate the kind words.
i know my followers have probably seen this link a few times but i don’t do this often — i’d really appreciate it if y'all’d click through, read my piece, and give me some feedback either here on tumblr or in the comments on the buzzfeed post.
this is my first time writing a kinda personal essay to be published on @buzzfeed, the website that i’ve worked for during the last nearly 8 years. it’s about tumblr, the social media platform i’ve been in charge of delivering content both to and from in a professional capacity for the last 5 years. tumblr also happens to be my favorite social media site and the platform that introduced me to my partner. buzzfeed is my love and tumblr is my passion — i’m lucky to have these two things intersect.
the piece in the link above is a distillation of my personal and professional thoughts about this week’s tumblr news. i very much appreciate the comments and feedback that people have given me since this essay went live.
tumblr is a wonderful platform for building online communities and i’m grateful for the kind, supportive followers i have on my personal blogs. i am equally — if not more — appreciative of the followers who’ve chosen to be a part of the @buzzfeed community i’ve helped to build here on tumblr.
thank you.
I asked Jon to make me a GIF of this ridiculous video and the outcome far exceeded my expectations.
