Privacy and Gender within Tumblr and Modern Blogging

In the 7 years that Tumblr has existed, it has evolved into quite the site for social activism and recording; it was a location for people to feel comfortable and secure partly due to the originally ad free environment.  Although I’ve come across a variety of discussions of social issues during my Tumblr usage, I’d like to focus on the rise of the LGBTQ community within and throughout the Tumblr-verse, specifically those who are collectively comfortable with admitting openly that they are gender queer, transsexual, or any other disposition that defies the binary gender domain of popular media. It was created for many reasons, but has become a place for interest driven groups of people to coalesce and throw together their vastly different individual backgrounds in one spot. As people find and view things they like (this may range from animated gifs of cats to news articles to transsexual porn and back to cute gifs), they either ‘like’ or ‘reblog’ a post with the click of a button, moving it to display on their dashboards (the homepage) along with the dashboards of any blog that follows them. Though this is the central form of communication, which functions in a fashion similar to a stream of consciousness, there are other ways to privately message blogs or people. The people that make it up have come a long way and the dynamic between them and the new media site becomes even more peculiar when one considers the fact that Tumblr was sold to Yahoo! in 2013, a corporation known for its policies of data collection (a method of advertisement that completely goes against the Tumblr first established in 2007).

Figure 1 – A comedic introduction to the website.

Throughout my high school life, Tumblr very quickly became popular among females around 2011 (my sophomore year), or at least this was when I first noticed its ubiquity. I myself had already created one because of my sister’s influence the year prior, but rarely used it until this time. As the feminist movement and LGBTQ life spread to the site, I started hearing the circulation of terms such as ‘Tumblr feminism(ist)’ and ‘SJW(Social Justice Warrior)’ being used in ways to deride the overt beliefs of avid Tumblr users. I’ve realized that these groups have retreated to this social media website in particular because of the safety and security it harbors from the prevailing society around them, which many of this type deem to be a ‘patriarchy’.  I don’t necessarily think this is true (though I do think males have clearly had the upper hand in society for far too long), and it seems more likely that many Tumblr users resort to generalizing men in society as being misogynistic and patriarchal because these incredibly broad terms provide a simple way to paint a group as the enemy. I think there is clearly truth in the assertion, but it’s much easier to point at the world around you and claim it to be the source of your problems and insecurities than it is to take responsibility for those issues yourself.

In the Tumblr domain, “queer trans tumblrs have facilitated collective departures from cis and trans norms in ways that illuminate the range of possibilities online” (Fink and Miller 621). What these authors meant was that Tumblr provided a place for people to incorporate sexuality, and very individual interpretations of gender, into normal daily life and interests and simultaneously “in the intertextual spaces carved out by the links between tumblrs, genderqueer and queer trans self-representations integrate seamlessly with lesbian, gay, bi, pan, poly, and asexual culture” (Fink and Miller 621). This goes hand in hand with the concept of ‘NSFW’ or ‘Not Safe For Work’, which categorizes mostly sexually explicit content that could be littered within other random images and content. Considering the lack of corporate intrusion upon Tumblr users and the design aesthetic of the site, which promotes intimate yet momentary posting of ones thoughts, ideas, or interests, it only makes sense that this specific community has been built in this specific habitat. They now have a home for content that outsiders (who would otherwise outcast them as sexual miscreants) can no longer find unless they truly want to understand the LGBTQ community and become a helpful part in it.

Another important factor in the construction of a home for trans and gender queers within Tumblr had to do specifically with how the website itself was built and the way people view other people and make a name for themselves. I know from experience with the site that it’s difficult to make an impression unless you really devote time to getting involved in your interest areas (or what you make them seem to be). You cannot become an essential cog in the machine of a Tumblr community by simply reblogging and liking random posts. To delve into gender related groups, or anything for that matter, you must normally post authentic content, which can range from picture sets to videos to (often) short text posts. Depending on who likes or reblogs your post, and what they like and post, and what their followers like and post, it’s a long and intricate map of tangential connections based solely on interest and paying attention to who’s who. As said by Fink and Miller, “these elements make tumblr’s taste-based subcultures different from the profiles on a site like Facebook in that, to thrive within Tumblr’s format, you need to labor and gain credibility according to particularly intense systems of distinction” (615). I believe the secret to Tumblr’s intimacy lies in this delicate mapping of individuals who are hopefully accepting and in similar situations to you. By looking through another blog, you’ll sometimes find deep, insightful knowledge, heartbreaking tales of struggle, or perhaps hilarious internet memes. Whatever it is, there’s often a close bond that forms just by looking through someone’s posts, which happens to be something that’s much harder to find on sites such as Facebook and Twitter. The next step comes with the Ask function, which works on the surface as a private messaging system, yet can be sent anonymously and in order to respond, the blog owner must either choose to ignore it or post a response publicly, and with that the deep web of connections is fertilized even further.

As an essential aspect of the information era, social media and social networking have been labeled by some as “the most revolutionary technological [developments] since the invention of the printing press” (Blakely 343).  As of right now, Tumblr is at the forefront of the social networking scene, along with Facebook and Twitter, being one of the most popular blogging platforms. Robert Scheer states it quite clearly and concisely when he says that the appeal of Tumblr comes from the fact that it is “a six year-old social blogging service that has yet to earn much money because it has shunned advertising, thereby gaining the trust of its users, who willingly share massive amounts of private data”. Although it’s hard to believe that Tumblr strayed away from all forms of advertising, this was true in reference to the design and aesthetics of the actual site. It’s almost never cluttered on the sides except for the main dashboard, which constantly refreshes with posts from blogs that you follow. In my usage of the site, I rarely discovered any ad material except from commercial blogs, but sometimes I will also find content which I doubt is real. “This sneaky fake user-generated content proliferates on other corporate owned sites like Facebook, and issues of where content comes from and in whose interests content grows now comes further to the fore” (Fink and Miller 613). Even so, my generation has been bred to look past this and look past the entirety of demographical data collection as we are so intimately comfortable with the internet and general sharing of what was once private information. We have grown idle and instead of making something like encryption required learning for all, we “readily allow others to trace [our] movements, purchases, reading and viewing practices, as well as contacts with friends and associates” (Scheer). Corporations and web companies like Yahoo! will easily take advantage of this, and as it’s been shown before, “data is at the heart of Yahoo!’s ability to sell online advertising across its sites, based on what it knows about its people’s interests,” (Scheer). Though this sense of false security is the catalyst for Tumblr’s success with groups of individuals who have never had the notion of a collective before they created their tumblr blog, it could also be frighteningly detrimental when keeping in mind what Yahoo!’s been known to do in order for commercial success.

Tumblr as a social media and blogging device provides the perfect combination of privacy for intimate thought and information with interpersonal connection and it is this dynamic duo that so healthily fostered the growth of not only an LGBTQ community in recent years, but specifically the growth of a trans and gender queer population that is no longer afraid to be open about their unique sexualities. Throughout my research, I have discovered the key to this as being the development of the site with the lack of corporate ads, but unfortunately that may not be the case anymore as Yahoo! has taken over in the past year. It was apparent to me the last time I logged on to my Tumblr that not too much had changed, but of course there was no way for me to tell for sure if data harvesting and collection had become more prominent there (as there has been no significant evidence released to point to this fact). No matter what the case, I’ve decided the only information I want to leak about myself will be from messages, and now I rarely post openly on social media sites. I appreciate Tumblr for what it is, but it’s no longer for me and I think it’s time more people stop asking “well why is it a problem if corporations know everything about me as long as I’ve done nothing wrong?” and begin to be more vigilant about protecting their personal freedoms, because there’s no telling what a business or government agency will do with your information.

Sources

Blakley, Johanna. “Media In Our Image.” Women’s Studies Quarterly 40.1/2, VIRAL (2012): 341-50. JSTOR. Web. 18 Oct. 2014. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/23333465?ref=no-x-route:9c371754d96262a78a61ef52c61c56fe>.

Fink, Marty, and Quinn Miller. “Trans Media Moments: Tumblr, 2011–2013.” Sage Journals. SAGE, 23 Oct. 2013. Web. 9 Oct. 2014. <http://tvn.sagepub.com/content/15/7/611.full.pdf+html>.

Matteson, Adrienne. “Do You Tumble? Tumblr could Change the Way You Blog.” School Library Monthly 27.5 (2011): 54-6. ProQuest. Web. 18 Oct. 2014.

“Reddit and Tumblr among Websites Protesting NSA Surveillance.” Telegraph.co.ukFeb 11 2014. ProQuest. Web. 18 Oct. 2014 .

Scheer, Robert. “Tumblr’s Exploitative Potential Sells.” Columbia Daily TribuneMay 23 2013. ProQuest. Web. 18 Oct. 2014 .

Figure 1 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m-e4PgiVfM

Figure 2 – http://cnet3.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/2013/05/30/b4a33040-f07b-11e2-8c7c-d4ae52e62bcc/5694d30097531c5efe85acc68d117933/tumblr_2.png