One of tumblr’s biggest advantages is how different different parts of the site can be from each other. The lack of algorithmic suggestion-based feed and the need to manually locate and follow anyone you wish to follow allows the creation of fairly effective sub-communities which, while technically not closed in any way as posts are public, mostly keep relevant content circulating among people who care about it and have context for it which is frankly fantastic because it reduces the commonly seen Twitter phenomenon of a fandom post suddenly reaching far, far beyond its intended audience to large numbers of people who lack any context for it and misunderstand it or get angry about it. Not to say that this never happens, but there’s a reason we have the phrase “breaking containment” - it’s notable when it happens as it’s GENERALLY not the rule. Nonetheless despite this ability to create semi-silos tumblr also has one of the most complete and homogenous Site Cultures of anywhere I’ve ever seen. Very few social media sites really have a true Site Culture in the way Tumblr does, in an anthropological sense. Every site has at least part of a culture, as general standards of behavior and the appropriateness of certain actions across an entire site certainly exist. But tumblr has a level beyond this because of how extensively we have a semi-homogeneous community culture, based around shared understanding of common references and holidays. People joke about tumblr having One Joke but what’s notable is that basically no other website save perhaps Reddit has “One Joke” because no other website seems to have such strong common universal points of reference and understanding. Sure there may be one or two legendary tweets that get occasional reference but there is no common reference that, say, all of twitter understands and remembers to such an extent that it’s re-referenced and riffed on daily. I know of no site-specific referential events that are communally understood by all of the users of Facebook. But here, it’s Neil Banging Out The Tunes Day! And everyone will understand and participate! Color theory, the ides of March, out of touch Thursday, Neil banging out the tunes, Bald Nuance, Vanilla Extract, etc etc etc. no other site has a whole entire set of common jokes and literal holidays like this and it makes it feel like we’re all in a common community, all in on something together. I love it here
