In a way, I took on the Electra Heart persona – being “the only gay in your village” gives you the chance to be a ‘homewrecker’, but you’re also an ‘idle teen’ wanting better things than the life you live. I was just coming to terms with being a young gay teenager in a quiet town in the countryside. Baryn, 24, describes his discovery of Marina and the Diamonds through Tumblr as his “teen awakening. For many, the era coincided with that transformative period as a teen when you feel like you become a real person for the first time with your own interests and personal style. You’re just as likely to find TikToks made by users in their early 20s reminiscing over what they wore and what they listened to at the time. “It would’ve been cool to be a fan before they got really big, and I love that black and white Tumblr aesthetic with leather jackets and Docs.”īut it’s not just people who missed it the first time around who are feeling nostalgic. “I wish I’d been part of the scene then,” says the 1975 fan, Serena, 16. You only have to scroll through TikTok to see teens romanticising the music and aesthetics of Tumblr in the early 2010s. That’s one reason why so many teenagers are nostalgic for that era today. Many former Tumblr icons have gone on to become global superstars.
OLIVIA RODRIGO TUMBLR ICONS TV
Lots of people were reposting images and GIFs with no context other than the name, so it was like is this a band? A TV show? Performance art? Or what?”Ī decade on, it would be hard to find someone who hasn’t heard of The 1975. She associated the group with “a minimalist moody aesthetic. Jessie, 27, remembers discovering The 1975 through Tumblr in her first year of university. If it wasn’t enough to just listen to the record, you could dive deeper into your favourite band’s world by turning your blog into a mood board that looked like their album sounded. While sites like last.fm, Soundcloud and YouTube continued to be popular platforms for finding new music, Tumblr had a curated visual element that gave fans the space to expand on each artist and album’s aesthetic universe. It was where you could go after school to talk to people who loved the same music as you, even if no one you knew IRL shared the same obsessions. In 2012 Tumblr was a thriving community where fans could be found to span thousands of different interests. By the time these artists released their generation-defining records, their fan bases were already well established, as much in response to each artist’s singular aesthetics as their moody tracks. Each image was a potential portal into your next teenage obsession. Marina and the Diamonds with a heart-shaped cheek tattoo and lashings of mascara. Lana Del Rey pouting her way through ‘Video Games.’ The 1975’s logo flickering in black and white.
If you were on Tumblr in the early 2010s, you probably remember the GIFs.
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