Tumblr. Crystal Abidin

Acknowledgments

      Studying tumblr used to be a lonely endeavor, so first and foremost we thank our friends in the research community, who supported the development of our ideas and worked with us on fieldwork and thinking about tumblr – of course, rarely sharing their tumblog addresses, but supporting us nonetheless.

      We especially would like to thank: Kath Albury, Airi-Alina Allaste, Steven Angelides, Nancy Baym, Megan Lindsay Brown, Michael Burnam-Fink, Paul Byron, Earvin Cabalquinto, Alexander Cho, Edgar Gómez Cruz, Debra Ferreday, Robbie Fordyce, Ysabel Gerrard, Ben Hanckel, Matt Hart, Larissa Hjorth, Amelia Johns, Akane Kanai, Annette Markham, Anthony McCosker, Allison McCracken, John Carter McKnight, Kristian Møller, Susanna Paasonen, Daniel Reeders, Bryce Renninger, Brady Robards, Jenny Robinson, Julian Sefton-Green, Terri Senft, Frances Shaw, Daphanie Teo, Cindy Tekobbe, Emily van der Nagel, Son Vivienne, Katie Warfield, Rosie Welch, and Andrew Whelan.

      We are grateful to the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) for organizing the best conferences ever and allowing the three of us to meet, and for our talented illustrator River Juno for lending us her expert skills and sharing with us her love for tumblr too. Thank you also to Mary Savigar, Ellen MacDonald-Kramer, and Stephanie Homer at Polity Press for your encouragement and patience to help us write about tumblr with a small t.

Katrin. I am grateful for the opportunity to have worked and written with Natalie and Crystal: the nuances in your ways of seeing the world, of making sense of it and of expressing yourself in writing have enriched and educated me, as a human and a scholar. I want to also thank Tallinn University, for the rector’s grant that allowed me the privilege of writing time. My undying gratitude belongs to my research participants, in particular the open, kind, interesting, funny, and sexy people for NSFW tumblr, who let me in, shared their thoughts and lives with me, and helped nourish a research project that ended up spanning eight years.

      Natalie. My research was generously supported by the Young and Well Cooperative Research Centre and RMIT PhD Scholarship, and grants from RMIT University and Deakin University. I am grateful for the support of a number of mental health and education organizations and services; here, they remain unnamed so as to protect the confidentiality of my research participants. I would also like to acknowledge the support of RMIT through my Vice-Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellowship with the School of Media and Communication and the Digital Ethnography Research Centre. I am forever grateful for the nourishing writing support from Sarah Sentilles and the Right to Write community, and the tumblrs that introduced me to affect theory when I returned to studying after years away from theory. I especially thank my mother for unknowingly helping me get online in the first place, and Sam for helping me stay online through house moves, a new job, and a pandemic bedroom office, as well as Ida and Patrick for their warm welcome. Thank you, Sam, for sending me memes and bringing me dinners while I kept working late in the bedroom-office. Kat and Crystal, I still pinch myself that I was able to learn about writing and thinking for a book with both of you, during a pandemic nonetheless. Thank you both for caring, ranting, challenging, and rewriting together.

Crystal. I dedicate this book to COGY, in commemoration of our teenhood spent loitering publicly together in IRL places and gallivanting privately together on tumblr. I also write this book in memory of Carissa, who was my Super Cool Tumblr Guide. Thank you also to my precious anonymous digital penpals on tumblr, who have brought me much companionship and joy in the past decade, and to Sherman, for being in my life. I would like to acknowledge my colleagues in Internet Studies, and the School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry at Curtin University for their cheerleading, and the ARC DECRA Fellowship that supported my research and writing time. Finally, to Kat and Nat: I still cannot believe that we completed this book in the fragile months of the blessed year 2020. Alongside feeling tired and despondent from the state of The World, I was also coping with So Many Things, and could not have made these words without your companionship, comfort, and confidence. It has been an honor and a privilege to be enveloped by the rare combination of intellect and kindness inside both of you – I am so glad we are friends IRL (and maybe someday even mutuals on tumblr).