and reblogs of a particular post are summarily calculated as “notes,” which is the primary metric of how much attention a post has generated on the platform.
To reblog is to repost someone else’s post to your own blog, whether partially or entirely. Reblogging (and “following”) were tumblr’s original features from its launch in March 2007, preceding retweeting on Twitter1 and sharing on Facebook. Reblogging has always been a central practice on tumblr, with less than 10 percent of content qualifying as original (Xu et al. 2014). Clicking on the reblog button opens someone else’s post in a new window allowing the reposter to add to it or reblog it as is. All post types are rebloggable, so one might reblog an image with a caption, a text post, a GIF set with comments, or a set of nested, cascading threads of previous reblogs, wherein every next reblogger has added a comment or a sentiment (see Figure 1.3).2
Initially, only text could be added to reblogs, but a 2017 update made adding images possible, which led to long intertextual image threads. Authorship of the original post as well as the content added in previous reblogs can be deleted from the body of the post. Perceptions of such deletion vary across users. For some it is an affront, while for others it is a perfectly natural aspect of curation. The source of the original post, as well the blog from which it was most recently reblogged, remains embedded in the code and visible at the top of the post even when the information is deleted from the body of the post.
Figure 1.3: Artist’s impression of an example of a cascading multi-reblog post on tumblr. Art provided by River Juno.
These features make authorship and curatorship visible, which has further social implications. Interacting with other people’s content via reblogging deincentivizes trolling and increases accountability for one’s words (Renninger 2014). Fieldwork across different user groups has shown that people tend to reblog content they agree with or appreciate, because reblogging out of hate publishes the disliked content on one’s own blog (Kanai 2015; Shorey 2015). Reblogging has taken on myriad additional meanings on tumblr. It fosters dialogue, consciousness-raising, and community creation (Connelly 2015; Marquart 2010), and allows the shy to express themselves (Salmon 2012). But it is also used to curate, reappropriate, frame, and remix – as one of media scholar Alessandra Mondin’s (2017) research participants said, “the way a lot of tumblr bloggers reblog things makes them feminist and/or queer” (see Chapters 5 and 6). Further, media scholar Akane Kanai (2019) has argued that reblogging is a form of phatic communication that articulates a sense of connection and retains sociability instead of, or in addition to, directly exchanging information. It is common for tumblr users to start a relationship by reblogging each other’s content with thoughtful commentary or funny compliments.
Reblogging is also an affective practice. Digital media anthropologist Alexander Cho (2015a) describes reblogging through Paasonen’s (2011) notion of “resonance” and his own notion of “reverb,” both of which highlight the sensation of intensity and affect involved in noticing and choosing to reblog posts, but also in demarcating the quality that makes some posts so rebloggable. Kanai (2017) adds “relatability” to the types of affect that drive reblogging. Relatability builds publics of like-minded users, who relate to each other’s daily experiences. All three – resonance, reverberation, and relatability – are experienced based on one’s life circumstance, thus bringing together people with similar experiences of, among other things, marginalization or discrimination, contributing to emergence of what we call silos (see Chapter 2).
Tags
The only thing that does not automatically travel with a reblog are prior “hashtags” (usually called just “tags” on tumblr). Hashtags are user-generated, but machine-readable descriptive labels, which make content searchable, injecting it into the platform’s attention flows (see Chapter 3). But hashtags also have metacommunicative (Zappavigna 2018) and social functions, which allow people to gather around issues or affect (Papacharissi 2015; Rambukkana 2015). Special characters and spaces in hashtags are typically not allowed on other platforms. tumblr, however, has always allowed spaces and all non-comma punctuation marks within hashtags. This means that, on tumblr, a tag might be, and often is, an entire sentence. tumblr tags are thus uniquely multifunctional; they are used for self-reflexive, or emotional “behind the scenes” commentary, for making explicit LGBTQIA identity statements (Oakley 2016), for respectfully commenting on a popular post without cluttering it (Bourlai 2018), for avoiding conflict by making pre-emptive apologies (Neill Hoch 2018). Of course, as elsewhere on social media, there are plenty of keyword tags on tumblr (see Chapter 7 on mental health tags). These allow searchability, archiving, and filtering, as well as locating shared interests (Bourlai 2018; Mondin 2017).
Interaction
By 2020, tumblr had multiple features for users to interact with each other, developed and rolled out at various moments in time. In 2009, the “submissions” feature was introduced, allowing other users to submit posts for publication on someone else’s blog (staff 2009). Each blogger can choose which format they accept submissions in, and whether or not to publish sent submissions. When introducing submissions, tumblr linked the feature primarily to artists submitting their artwork; however, it has been used by many other groups, including the NSFW communities, where soliciting and sending nudes via submissions was common. Another early (2010) feature of interaction on tumblr was “asks.” tumblr users can set their asks to accept questions and comments anonymously or only from other tumblr users. At times, anonymous asks are used by those who read and follow tumblr blogs via a browser and do not have an account themselves. At other times, tumblr users choose to anonymize themselves specifically for using the asks, either to ask embarrassing questions, to joke, or (more rarely) to be mean. Because of the gray anonymous user icon accompanying such asks, the vernacular name for anonymous ask senders is “Grayfaces.” Asks are responded to by publishing them with an answer, or by responding to them in private. In both cases, the original message disappears from one’s asks, which complicates conversation. In the early 2010s, it was common for people to start interacting via asks and then move the conversation off tumblr, into email or a separate chat app. Asks was explicitly framed by tumblr staff as “a one-off Q&A, not a two-way conversation” (tumblr Help Center 2020a) linking it to their vision of tumblr as a space for creators, who are bound to have followers or fans. The latter brings us to yet another interactional feature, rolled out in 2010 – “fan mail.” This allowed users who had followed someone for at least forty-eight hours to leave feedback, which, unlike asks and submissions, could not be published, and, unlike privately replied asks, stayed in the receiver’s mailbox after being responded to. Fan mail was described as a “private commenting system between the blogger and the reader, that doesn’t involve other visitors” (Panzarino 2012). Finally, in 2015, after years of requests from users, “messaging” was introduced. Messaging is only possible between logged-in users and cannot be anonymous. Fan mail was later discontinued in favor of messaging.
In November 2019, tumblr rolled out “group chats,” which are only available on the mobile app. To some user criticism, group chats are public by default and cannot be set to private. Anyone can see messages within the chat, but to be able to send messages, one has to be approved as a member. Group chat messages expire after twenty-four hours, seventy-two hours, or a week, as chosen by the group chat “owner.” All mobile chat groups have to follow tumblr’s central Community Guidelines, although some have additional rules described in the chat description (e.g., “feel free to observe or participate, don’t worry, we don’t know what we’re doing either”; “DM your information to get accepted”). Group chats hold a maximum of two
