The Legacy of Tumblr 2014
By Ally Wilke
The photo is a grainy Polaroid of a woman smoking a cigarette with black smudged eyeliner, fishnets, dirty combat boots, and a plaid skirt. Her middle finger is raised towards the camera and she has a look that screams I don’t give a fuck. It has been reblogged thousands of times by Tumblr users like myself. Tumblr was an essential social media platform for me back in 2014 when the app was at its peak. Being given access to the internet at such a young age, Tumblr posts such as these made a huge impact on the way I dressed. I started listening to Lana Del Rey, Arctic Monkeys, The 1975, and The Neighborhood, artists associated with the “alternative” Tumblr aesthetic. Most of the songs involved themes of depression, feeling alone, and the hardships of youth. I remember listening to “Pretty When You Cry” by Lana Del Rey for the first time, and as someone who battles with depression, it helped me get through my fluctuating emotions. The line “I am stronger than all my men” made me feel special.
As a young teenager, most of the information I absorbed was through Tumblr, and it was my main way to communicate with other struggling teenagers who felt like outcasts themselves. We would constantly reblog photos involving gorgeous skinny women with bruises wearing ripped jeans and a flannel, or pictures of friends riding in shopping carts in abandoned parking lots. Eventually, these photos began to make me feel self-conscious. I noticed a trend that involved model-level girls doing “youthful rebellion” activities like smoking, drinking, or stealing. Even though Tumblr users were seen as the “outcasts” of the internet, I felt like I was not as pretty or rebellious as the girls in the photos. I changed how I acted, just so other strangers on the app could think of me as one of the token grunge girls.
GIFs and quotes from shows like American Horror Story were common as the show often dealt with dark themes. Tumblr users would often identify with Violet Harmon, the main character from season one who struggled with self-harm and depression. In a way, it made self-harm seem cool — it was romanticized just like mental illness. This side of Tumblr had a “normal people scare me” vibe. Due to this, I found it hard to talk about my depression. I assumed it didn’t matter and that the world didn’t care about me, so I just hid within the grunge community on Tumblr.
My father, who grew up in the 90s, described a Mudhoney concert he went to when he was 14. He said the air was heavy with cigarette smoke and sweat. The walls and floor were hard concrete, and the floor was constantly wet from spilled drinks. A hoard of people wearing ripped jeans and dirty stained t-shirts thrashed around in the middle. He said this is where he felt most alive, as the music was fast and heavy with the vocalist screaming into the mic. He talked about how his ears would ring from the last song as people started to leave the party and took smoke breaks outside. It was a quiet night after the concert died out and everyone would talk about their day-to-day life, the bills that were due the next month, or how someone just got broken up with. He felt like an outcast at school and in his family, and he explained how the chaos of the basement shows and the loud music acted as a soothing voice telling him everything would be alright.
The word “grunge” is defined as grime or dirt, but it's also a style of rock music characterized by raucous guitar sound and lazy vocal delivery. It's often seen as alternative or nihilistic in a lot of ways. It was a popular lifestyle for young people in the 90s who were tired of the upbeat sound of pop music or mainstream society. This can be seen in media as the classic rivalry between the preppy popular kids vs. the outcast goths or “weirdos” — think Breakfast Club or Heathers. We often look back at the style and culture of the past as a way to remind ourselves how similar things have been. In my experience, I was idolizing an aesthetic that was defined by how perfect the picture looked or how edgy it was. Tumblr 2014 romanticized mental illness, and ultimately people related to the darkness or rebellion that lifestyle portrayed. After hearing my dad’s side of the story and how that was just his normal life, I realized people wanted to be greasy and dirty because they too did not feel like they fit in and saw it as an outlet for their angst. Regardless of how hard or fast the bands played, people showed up because of their need to belong. It shows the similarities between my dad and I, as both of us were struggling teens just trying to find our niche. We were both searching for a place to belong, and the “grunge” lifestyle helped us both in the end.
