What Is Going On With Tumblr Right Now, And Why Does It Seem So Cringe?

Newsflash from 2014 (and also right now): Tumblr is extremely cringe. You can hardly go two posts without seeing David Tennant or Benedict Cumberbatch looping in a slow-motion GIF or warnings to readers that any visitor to the site is getting introduced to the F-ed up twisted mind of its deviant posters (who all seem to like Supernatural).

If you haven't been on Tumblr in a few years, the site right now looks like a parody of every negative stereotype applied to it for over a decade. It's extremely geeky, obsessed with quasi-edgy baby talk and fictional nerdy white men and otherkin culture. If you want to close the site and never come back, then congratulations, you've been played, because this cringe is also part of an elaborate scheme to keep newcomers out.

What's Going On With Tumblr?

Since Elon Musk seems intent on speedrunning the complete collapse of Twitter, many of the platform's users are pondering where they'll move should the site become a nuclear wasteland. One possible destination being discussed is Tumblr.

Tumblr, you'll remember, was once a prominent social media site with an infamous niche on the internet. It was obviously less family-friendly than Facebook, more honest than Instagram, more creative than Twitter, and it was, by all accounts, very dorky. Then in 2018, they banned nudity to supposedly appease Apple, which everyone hated, and the site spent the next few years circling the drain, worth just a few million dollars after once being valued at over a billion.

While the neutering of Tumblr caused a perceived exodus of many of its most prominent users to Twitter, the site kept the lights on with some stalwart posters who stuck through its darkest years. Now that Twitter users are poking their noses back into Tumblr, those posters aren't taking too kindly to deserters and newbies suddenly wanting back on the dark blue website. Thus, they've set up a sort of hazing ritual for the uninitiated: cringe.

In proper Tumblr fashion, users have initiated a practice they're calling "rent lowering gunshots," based on a meme about intentionally making it look like one's "neighborhood" is dangerous to keep out gentrifiers, by firing off the most stereotypically "cringy Tumblr" posts they can think of. For those uninitiated in the Tumblr style, it seems to be working. For everyone else, it's brilliantly hilarious.

So, how long is it going to last? Almost certainly not much longer. Tumblr memes have a history of being extremely flash-in-the-pan, which is part of their appeal. Some of Tumblr's best memes dominated the site for a week before the site collectively moves on to another wild meme that captures their imagination.

However, Musk's ridiculous and swift changes to Twitter may keep an exodus to Tumblr at the top of Twitter users' minds, and if that's the case, Tumblr users may continue to "fire gunshots" to keep them out. Whatever the case may be, don't get too intimidated if Tumblr overloads you with cringe if it's your first visit in a while. Just roll with the punches and you just might find the good stuff.

For more information about the current situation of Tumblr, check out the KnowYourMeme entry for firing gunshots to keep the rent down.