The Ghosts Of Aesthetic Tumblr's Past 

💀

lmaooo

Be Emo. Save bones.

Exposed fractures are so preppy.

On the flip side my friend broke her leg BECAUSE of knee high boots lmao

Thank you for your bravery

It's camp, honey💅🏽💗

As did I, for my 10th birthday I had a sparkly purple fedora and mustache cutouts that were posed around an extra large poster of a photo booth, and I had a "kawaii uwu pastel unicorn galaxy" type of sweater on in the picture, with my bangs pushed to one side and showing off my dc skate shoes and my studded dark blue jeans. I think I had purple fingerless gloves as well.

@@captaincaspian42 iconic 👏👏

oh lord. I salute you

Even worse…soft boi

@@millionsofmischiefs oh lord you killed me

Soft boi, yes i remember the dark days

the smol bean era

"uwu soft boi smol bean" shit used to drive me up the wall when i first came out. went from being percieved as a tomboy or a butch lesbian (which was apparently a bad thing to other people but thats the lesbophobia i guess) to being percieved as this tiny innocent baby boi soft smol bean all because i changed my name and pronouns lmao i've never been a particularly Manly Man kind of person, but i'm definitely not this infantilized soft baby boy or whatever the fuck just because im trans lmao

hahaha. At least it ended well.

I misread that as “I actually had DID” and I was so fucking confused

I had the exact same experience with the trees man. I was 13 and had no idea, i cried. The world looks so nice, sometimes I delay cleaning my glasses to get that fresh feeling every now and then.

wait i am now invested please tell me how you fake having vision problems when you normally have vision problems

THE LEAVES ON TREES OMG IT WAS LIKE 🤯

I was looking for this comment, lol. It’s true, the mustache obsession was a very trendy case of gender envy for a lot of afab trans people.

good for him

@@lisaradtke5669 When I was 10 I was just so convinced I would grow a mustache someday, How i didn't realize I was trans until I was 15 is astonishing

@@ahhh4117 Fifteen?! I didn't realize until I was twenty!

@@lisaradtke5669 Twenty? That's so young! I didn't realize until my late thirties.

Yessss thank youuuu

exactly. Alaska is very clearly a girl with a lot of mental problems and Pudge can't see that because he sees it as cool and different. She basically tells him that to his face and he doesn't really take it in.

I think this idea will be pushed further if you'll see his current yt shorts/tiktoks, he's just.... you see it

I think about this exact phenomena for different subcultures pretty often, there's somethin to it

At least in my school everyone was obsessed with the mustache thing

They were onto something, tbh. lol They had the right idea.

"1 out of 8 people is a mustache lover" factoid actually just a statistical error. Average social circle has zero mustache lovers. Mustache Georg, who lives in a cave and says "I mustache you a question" over 10,000 each day, is an outlier and should not have been counted

@@jessicacreed7773 I mustache you a question... but I'll shave it for later 🥴

Agree completely!! Watching the grunge section was a trip, because that was the time in my life in highschool where I had unhealthy thoughts about my body and food, and all the other things you mentioned too, while being on this side of Tumblr and contributing to it as well

Yup, that's what I was doing on tumblr around 2010... bad side, my eating disorder festered into this consuming thing that lasted a decade. On the good side, i made a (blank)things blog around a very specific compulsive disorder, got up to 500 followers, and accidentally built a very supportive community that comforted myself and other people. Weird times.

Yeah it was a huge part of tumblr when I was on in 2012-2014 and absoluetly helped fuel my depression, self harm and eating disorder that developed in my first year of uni in 2012. Would I have developed mental illness without tumblr? undoubtaby. But the glamorisation/astheticisation of self harm and EDs did contribute to the destructive behaviours it was expressed as.

As much as I agree about tumblr's ability to fuel those issues I personally (and I'm not even kidding) found it weirdly helpful and comforting? I don't think I would've realized that I was depressed without stumbling across actual factual advice among the 70 billion "I'm ready to d*e" posts and consequently in my own tumblr venn diagram found my one true comfort anime which basically just told me to go outside and touch grass lmao

As an old crusty millennial who uses tumblr to host my poetry, I had to stop sharing any poems related to weight loss (on a healthy weight loss journey) because ana blogs would always find it. It made me really upset to see I was being made to play even a tiny part in someone’s disorder. It’s definitely still there.

even tho they all acted like the same person lol

Off topic, but it was sooo satisfying to be this comment's 1000th like

IT WAS LMAOOOOOOO, TUMBLR HIPSTERS COULDN'T CARE LESS

I see it a lot on TikTok unfortunately, lots of trans guys being called babies or soft or smol or whatever :/ it kinda rlly sucks. Especially when they’re confronted about it most often their response is “it’s just a compliment”

Maybe it's that the tom boy style predates the trans masc style. Cis women have been playing with masculine styles as a way of counterbalancing the dominance of men in the workplace i.e. the 80's power shoulders. They aren't fetishising that group, you're just being swept into a much larger group that has existed for a long time.

@@simonwinn8757 nobody goes up to a tomboy and goes "aww you are such a cute lil' small guy! You're just a lil babie Uwu" Maybe I'm misunderstanding your reply, but i think you misread the original comment.

As a trans guy who did participate in the “soft boy” aesthetic, I never entirely associated it with the title “soft boy” it felt like more of my aesthetic move from alt emo with a dash of scene to a camping/outdoorsy almost hipster aesthetic but still with just a bit of emo aesthetic and “grunge” music taste. The flowers and the pastels just felt like my main “look. I like pastel and flower crowns, I am fem. It just so happen that I also want short hair, a flat chest, and scruffy facial hair-“ gender denial faze lmfao (TW? Idk I’m still figuring out what needs trigger warnings, but I mention child diddlers, so I think this counts for one) I think it’s also a hard thing for me given I agere due to trauma (I find sexualization of age regression gross given it’s a defensive mechanism that stops me from understanding certain things around me to protect me from trauma. Meaning I’m literally not processing things like an adult. Holy fck, it’s so p*dophilic to sexualize that inability to properly consent- sorry wanted to clarify cus a lot of people do think of it as that “aww so cute” and “baby X3” sort of “soft boy” shit when it’s not cute. mfer it’s unbelievably dangerous and confusing when pushed into a childlike state of mind that can’t comprehend things like you usually would). The pastels were more, for me, like small child association colors, photos of guys with plush dinosaurs, and stuff that was relatable in a way I think it wouldn’t be to most… Idk. I guess it was helpful and harmful all at once in my gender exploration, but I also think that peak gender denial is what pushed me to figure out I am Transmasc, so I’m not sure it was the worst thing for me. However, I’m lucky in the sense that even pre-T or anything, I have a more masc build, and just cutting my hair got most people to refer to me as “sir” the only issue post-top surgery and pre-testosterone was my voice which started so high pitched I don’t think it’ll ever fully suit me, but it’s getting better with time on testosterone; considering that, I never had to deal much with being referred to as a soft boy cus I went from cis people referring to me as “Tomboy” to “I’ve never seen you look so girly but also you look like a gay man, so I’m confused-” to “i CaLLeD iT!1!!1! i kNeW yOU wEre tRAnS.” (That one was genuinely someone’s reaction to overhearing me coming out to a friend.) but also mostly “sir” to people that didn’t know me before transitioning. Yeah, I’m sorry if this word vomit is hard to read… I just kept typing my thoughts on it so hopefully it’s not too all over the place

I hate people infantilising anyone, it just feels so gross and weird..

I relate to this entire comment😭

this exactly. thankfully i was a lot younger when I went thru that phase so I've been able to live 2-3 years of my teenage years in relative peace

I dunno how late to the game i was, but i remember that time, started out over at that camp and happily made my way out.

ahhh yes the leafyishere-fan-to-blatant-leftist pipeline

Hey can i ask what sjw means please? Ive seen it around but i dont know what it means and i cant figure out from context. If you could help i wpuld very much appreciate it please.

the early 2000s internet was definitely very hostile towards anyone who wasn’t White and Skinny or Fit. It still is in various aspects, and i can’t speak for POC but it seems to be getting better slowly

exactly, and don't even think about being a disabled person in a wheelchair, you're persona non grata at that point, lol.

You have my sympathies, I was there as well. Definitely worsened my body dysmorphia and nearly landed me in an ED of my own. Love you. ❤️

HUGELY relatable, i was always wishing to look "aesthetic" in this way but nothing was sized big enough for me to wear it. i still feel insecure about having never gotten to participate in fashion trends that happened around me to this day, they just don't make room for people our size.

omg thank you for this. im a fat native person and i just felt so alienated when i tried to fit into these aesthetics (my main ones i was super interested in was grunge), and it was hard being chubby with big arms and big legs and being native with big eyebrows and small eyes and just trying to be a pretty skinny white girl like them. it made me feel really bad about myself.

hindsight is 20/20. i can only imagine some the shit teens now will look back on and go "i can't believe i did that" or "wow that actually wasn't as stupid as i thought it was."

I didn't know that's what it was and that makes me hate it lol. Wth. If your saying the thing as a coping mechanism... changing the word doesn't change the meaning.

@@lifeunderthestarstv It's coping with being unable to express emotions that openly by disguising it behind something else, so that only others who are more understanding or the target for such a comment will understand it. Or just for personal use because they like it.

I’ve never gotten out of the Rawr XD and still very rarely understand anything being seen as “cringe.”

Having a new sort of rawr where people just get it like in ye olde daze would be super helpful. I'm mega abrasive and would greatly benefit from a way to show affection without having to let my guard down.

Oh god the event cinema 3D glasses bring me back. I rennet being 11 in year 6 and EVERYONE was wearing 3D glasses with the lens popped out, silly bands and traded those smiggle rubbers that looked like paddle pops

This is SO TRUE. I’m also from Oz- I’ve never thought about students who wear uniforms needing to express themselves through stationery before, but absolutely spot on

Watching the aesthetic changes of Typo was interesting. I just missed out on that specific 2013-2015 era of Tumblr, but Typo nailed that aesthetic so I remember it well. Still got all my vintage-esce Star Wars notebook

oh yes the Aussie experience, Typo still has all that stuff, it feels really like 2010s and millennial and not so much gen z 2020s in my opinion

I'm a bit too young to have seen this happen in real time, but it makes a lot of sense when you see Typo today. Smiggle has moved on I think, but it's been a while since I've been there

I came here for Alice in Chains... I didn't know I was getting Alice IN chains.

@@snakeeyes7973 ok that's a good one

@@toll_ Thank you, I try🥹

Ye capitalism ruins every genre man. Same with emo. Then kids wanted to be black and lame

Thought the same thing 😢

About the pastel goth thing I mean

i love twee music. can i just add beat happening and bunnygrunt as two amazing american twee bands that were active mostly in the 90s. bunnygrunt played at my undergrad in 2008... both bands bring me RIGHT back to memories of college, friends and coffee and drawing, etc etc :)

this was so informative fr! thanks :)

@@hairgod87 np dude!

woah i enjoyed reading this! thanks for sharing

the pastels were another cool twee band I really enjoy the song nothing to be done as it fits in nicely in my shoegaze playlist whilst giving a needed break from the noise :)

The current fashion trends in Kpop are very similar to the soft boy aesthetic, and given how popular Kpop has become worldwide in recent years, it's not surprising for it to pop up again.

I had a similar experience when my own 14 year old brother started listening to nightcore and reading fan fiction. The only way I can describe my emotions are "oh god". I feel so old sometimes

On tiktok they also had major aesthetics during Covid

My little brother likes the old tumblr emo look, and my only response was, "But why?"

things go faster it seems

Nah, supernatural and stranger things couldn't have a more different demographic, presence and type of fandom. The only thing you're seeing is kids on their first fandom space, that's all

The current 15 year olds were 5 yo a decade ago. A decade is a long time...

I mean, there was a big cultural shift that happened in the mid-2010s that makes the early 2010s feel like an entirely different decade.

@@MiloKuroshiro Agreed

hiding this in the replies bc idk their watching habits and the idea of them reading this fills me with dread. prepare for a story. in my last two years of high school i was steadily growing more comfortable with myself and embracing being extroverted. i still had a long way to go until i got to where i am today, but i was the oldest openly queer person in my bible belt school and since the first wave of teens not scared into the closet were the freshmen of my junior year, i ended up sticking up for a lot of them to other students and teachers. this helped with my social anxiety an incredible amount. our story truly starts my senior year, after my junior year being full of finding my voice and my trades business teacher basically deciding that since i was so good at graphic design (this is during hipster tumblr era, hence 🤷) and i knew photoshop, if i took her class a second year, i would not only have to do ALL THE SAME MATERIAL a second time, but also be her teachers aid and her secretary. and do graphic design work, printing, and laminating for the other teachers. this was very not legal. i come into my second year of her class a little late, the trade school was situated between two school districts and both schools ran a bus of students to the trade class and back each day. the other school's students are there and i'm one of the only people to retake the class that year. the other had taken it four times and did it specifically to annoy the teacher, good for her honestly. i head into the classroom and am greeted by a handful of people from the rival school who i had met when we all did a christian college program as freshmen. first time in my life to have people cheer my name as i come into a room. wild. one of these people, for the sake of this story they are named jazz, was one i knew from that college program. they were very touchy feely, something i wasn't super used to. at least twice a week they would wear a "normal people scare me" shirt and throughout the entire school year they implied they wanted to date me. i had a boyfriend at the time, and for some reason i was the most outgoing of the class, literally everyone was listening to me when i was telling the teacher that we had broken up. the teacher asked about it, it was just a weird class overall. i hear a chorus of "aww's" and yeah, very strange to experience an "and everyone clapped" moment like that irl, but it wasn't my first and absolutely wasn't my last. because my life is a sitcom, jazz was standing closer to me than the usual and hugged me after this announcement. they then immediately implied they wanted to date me (it had been less than a week since my breakup). from the look in their eyes, i could tell they were about to ask me and i immediately turned to another classmate and said, "yeah, it was pretty rough so i don't think im looking for anything else soon," and saw jazz deflate a little. saved that one. the breakup wasn't rough, we're still incredibly close. as an aside, it's a funny memory because i was running a high fever and had the flu so i was sitting in a lukewarm bath while my (as of that point ex) boyfriend texted me about how sorry he was and that he wanted to remain friends. i just said okay. i went back to watching youtube, too mentally exhausted to feel any emotion. then *three years later* i'm at a friend's house, it's me, him, his partner, and his step sibling. we're all very close friends and we were just reminiscing since his partner and i went to the same school while him and his step sibling went to the rival school. through this, i find out that jazz had spent their entire school career they had together (friend moved in their junior year i believe, jazz's sophomore) trying to convince him to date them. telling him how much they love true crime and serial killers, that they knew how to hide a body, and then "joking" about how much they wanted to r word and k word him (idk what all youtube comments get auto modded for). just... did that to him for the entire time they had school together until he graduated. they then dated my friend's step brother and a*bused him and then just left him one day after making a bunch of threats? this is an (even more) uncomfortable turn of the story, sorry; a few months later, i'm on facebook and i see a post from one of their accounts about ABDL. it's a comic of a grown man laying on a baby changing table with a woman blocking his crotch by standing just in the perfect spot, with either him or the woman saying something along the lines of "what's wrong with us doing this? it's a free country!" and i would have thought it was parody if that winter they didn't send me a message about an art commission. the outfit was one of those poshmark lookbook pngs. it had a pacifier and diapers on it. i did the art, minus ABDL, and got paid for it. 🤷 fast forward another year or two and its 2020. i'm working at a warehouse and as i walk to the front entrance, someone shouts my name. i snap my head to the side and it's jazz. the place we worked was VERY strict about social distancing so from across the smoking area they shouted to me, "I'm giving you an air hug because of the six foot rule!" i had no idea they worked there. apparently they worked the opposite shift to me, i don't think i saw them again while i worked there. i did see the person that tried to hide behind an anonymous account to ask me for n*des after buying some from my SW friend... who people have said i look like. story for another time. it's now 2022 and i'm at a nutritional drink place with one of my other friends, getting their order. im just fucking around in the shop and keeping out of the way, looking out the huge windows onto the parking lot. someone locks eyes with me through the glass. its jazz. they wave and then head into the vape shop directly next door. i lock eyes with them again as i leave and feel a little bad because thinking back on it, they probably thought i would come talk to them. we get to my friend's car and he says, "wow, i had no idea you knew jazz!" and starts telling me how they're partners with his cousin and they have a kid together and they're the one who sold my friend their vape and more details than i feel comfortable typing out here. jazz isn't fully my story, so i tell them in brief why i don't really associate with them anymore (vagueness about my friend being harassed, we've since talked about it in more detail. since im keeping the names anonymous, i don't feel as bad sharing it here). this doesn't cover everything that happened, and i changed a handful of details just to keep it removed from everyone im writing about. whenever i see "normal people scare me" i think of them. vapes and melanie martinez and abdl/ddlg/ddlb are all things my brain associates with them. i have another person i also associate with melanie martinez (even more so), but aside from them pissing me off, i don't feel like i should tell it. jazz is and was a very interesting person to experience in the way i managed to experience them. i was like a fly on the wall for half of this and more. i hope, wherever they are now, they're in a better place mentally and, despite it all, are happy. "jazz," if you're reading this, i don't tell this story in bad faith. you're an interesting person and i hope you're doing well for yourself. i hope you're in a better place than any of us were in highschool. i hope you understand where i'm coming from by telling this story. you made my life much more interesting by being in it, and we've all done shit we regret. thanks for keeping things interesting.

made a homestuck rp blog instead for now. these plans are the next step tho

@@SpookyDeerArt im gonna sound so twitter user but i wish u put a tw on that story cuz DAMN

OMG PLSSS i’ll follow 🫶🏼

which is good for people with embarrassing ones but I keep having to get my wedding ring tattoo touched up and it hurts like a bastard

Kid named finger tattoo:

@@Tesseract_King could there be some way to turn it into a wrist tattoo? Like, two bands of the same (possibly intricate?) design that match one another?

@@elenafriese891 oh there's all kinds of things you could do, I just liked the slight nod to traditionalism of having it on my ring finger. Honestly I don't mind getting it touched up that much. It's kind of a "yup, still love you enough that I want it etched on my body" thing.

@@Tesseract_King ok, yeah, that legit makes sense (Especially since I'm assuming the tattoos fade at roughly the same rate)

I also struggle so much to spell that name 💀

KEEP 👏 IT 👏 GOING

dun dun duun

this will never not be funny

@@nas6246 holy shit it's NAS 😳😳😳😳

HOLY MOTHER YOU'RE RIGHT

I think for a lot of us there was a sort of humor in "cutesy tween girl who pretended to have such a traditionally masculine thing as a handlebar mustache" as well

I was literally too afraid to be emo or goth even though I LOVED the aesthetics to both. 😅

Same exact thing. I'm in my late 20s and wish I leaned into the aesthetics. Do the crazy shit while you're young!

It's a bit too late for that now. The most I did in my teen years is be overly formal in some of my behavior. Though, my aversion was less so due to being intimidated by the unabashed quirkiness (though this was a factor) and more so because on the Internet, whenever you start getting into anything you will inevitably run into a video/post about how that thing is cringy/problematic/whatever. So, why commit?

Then you could just get made fun of or judged

This.

that might be why it was called "grunge". i mean, heroin chic was heavily influenced by bands like nirvana, right?

this is true for me, it was a very direct chain of evolution of Emo to Tumblr Grunge to Dark Academia

they're the same except grunge is dirty and DA is clean

i mean that in the most respectful way possible both r cool aesthetics

Yeah, I feel like I just kind of went back and forth day to day with those two aesthetics specifically. I think my goal was to be a pretty boy or a fucking HANDSOME girl. (I'm enby)

It's a very weird 'take grunge but make it posh' kind of fusion where grunge very specifically used to almost be about a kind of 'poverty-core' if you will. DA is like, old money grunge.

you have a homestuck pfp. sorry but you're beyond help /j

@@lulucool45 sigh. unfortunately ur correct /j

The Myspace years were formative for a lot of people

I’m right there with you. I was a MySpace kid and a brief tumblr girl from like 18-20

Yesss.. I have tons of stuff still at my parents house but my room literally doesn't exist anymore and my brother moved into the space where it was before. I sleep on a sleeping couch in my mum's office. People who can go home to their childhood bedroom have it good 😂

Lol yes my mum moved across the country and into a one bedroom flat like three months after I left. I think there's like... A stack of books and two old stuffed animals still at her place. Much prefer visiting her in the city and sleeping on the couch over going back to my hellhole of a hometown tho

Oh hey I want to be a photographer as well!

NOOOO is it okay if I ask why she made you delete it? D:

@@steviepeculiar2415 she said it was demonic. her being really religious and strict anything that had skulls or dark aesthetic she's against. and at the time I was a scene kid.

@@berryjunmill9029 and parents like yours will have the audacity to wonder "Why do my kids not talk or share their hobbies/interests with us anymore?"

Have you looked on Wayback Machine?

I'd like to hold my candle out for all the brown folks who tried the "white centered aesthetics". I'm Mexican and I was a full on hipster lmaoo

@@sumlem lol my black ass trying on skinny jeans in the Hollister store bc that's what the tumblr white girls wore and not being able to fit 😭💀

Duuuude omg!!! My area is like 90-95% Hispanic and we all wanted in on the white people aesthetics too! We had a lot of goth and emo kids (who didn’t have to dye their hair black for the look), hipsters, soft boys, and “basic” girls who had caramel highlights 😭 this entire video made me so nostalgic

A three foot long magnet? shaped like a mustache?

Capitalism envelopes and assimilates everything

yeah even as someone who never could wear any of the fashion i Really wanted to, it has bothered me for a while when i see people say "i wanna dress goth but i don't have that kind of money" when so much of goth was originally DIY and people just don't know that anymore bc they see all the expensive brands with full on goth clothes they think thats all there is :( DIY subcultures connected to music is one of my fav things. i remember a lot of emo/scenmo stuff being DIY too, but less so. stuff like using koolaid to dye your hair, painting your nails, taking a sharpie and/or printed duct tape to your converse or vans shoes, the bead bracelets were all handmade... diy-ing holes in your skinny jeans etc but over time it all becomes something you have to go out and buy :/

@@petrichorbones oh my god YES the DIY sharpie stuff!! this unlocked deep memories, I remember people drawing all over their cheap jeans and sneakers! even old punk jackets were usually DIY, with hand-sewn patches and studs. but now brands are selling that stuff for hundreds of dollars for the "aesthetic" 😭

@@petrichorbones lol I did an EMP haul yesterday 🤣🤣🤣

@@petrichorbones YES This!! Can relate hard to the goth thing. It's like people forget that even the Addams Family's outfits are.. kind of as simple as they could possibly get. The Addams Family are a huge part of goth culture while wearing just. Regular Clothes But Black-And-White. Meanwhile someone else wearing black clothes "isn't dressed goth enough" just cause it's simple and inexpensive. It always baffles me to think about.

This was literally me! I feel like I was immersed in the Tumblr culture but more so like as a benchwarmer. I had Pinterest board with literal thousands of pins relating to every fandom obsession and aesthetic that I was into. Some times I scroll through them just to be amazed at younger me and have a good laugh

Ohhh man I was so immersed in tumblr posts via pinterest. To this day friends show me tumblr posts they found and I get whiplash back to 2014 when I first saw them. I have a tumblr now and it seems like a completely different experience than what it used to be. On one hand I'm relieved I wasn't on it earlier because I didn't have the internet smarts that I have today, but on the other hand I feel like I missed out on the epicenter of fandom when fandom culture was at its peak

ha same. now i have a word for it. it's a weird experience isn't it? because this pinterest space was like a lag of tumblr. in reality i wasn't on tumblr during the early 2010s, yet i essentially had and can relate to the experience. to this day when for some godforsaken reason i find a crusty classic tumblr post on pinterest, there are recent/current comments of people who are practically going through the same thing, just even more years late. it gives you a specific, unnamed emotion......

I HATE THAT THIS ENTIRE THREAD IS ME

Omg yes, I used to look at Tumblr Pinterest from ~2013-2017 every day. Id use it to find funny posts to show my friends.

oh same

Yes! I was never on Tumblr, but the soft boi trend was still very popular! I really liked it even before i realized i was trans, and that got me into acting more masculine, trying new styles, n all that! I only realized i was trans in 2020! But the downside of the fetishization of trans people back then still sucked with the silly 'uwu soft boi trans bean'

Honestly, same. I mourn not having experienced the Tumblr Era firsthand. I feel like I went through the Tumblr Experience TM on my own later through Pinterest.

it's so weird to see someone the same age as me who wasn't experiencing a lot of this firsthand! I've been on tumblr since around 2015 so some aesthetic stuff had passed, but fandom tumblr was still in full swing

@@riannaf927 Oh, I guess the difference is that I’m not from an english speaking country and got all my content from our local social media. Tumblr was too hard to navigate lol

right! i joined tumblr in late 2015, so the expiration date for the glory days of the platform was nearing. i mainly joined it for steven universe, as 11 year old me was highly obsessed with it, and subsequently i ended up discovering undertale. i had already experienced a mainstream fandom for a few years now. eight year old me getting into the super mario fandom back in 2011-2012 prepared me for the life that i unsuspectingly chose for myself. as time went on, i would use tumblr for various different things. some perfectly normal, some kind of questionable, and some downright unhealthy.

I feel like us 18- early 20 year olds caught the tail end of that era (if we hopped on the Internet at an early enough age) , and we definitely caught the remnants .

Also, John Green has spoken multiple times over the years about how he was a cringey, angsty, horribly depressed and pretentious teenager who wore a trench coat all the time and smoked like a chimney. I feel like Alaska is definitely a self-insert

I agree with this 98% (I don't feel like explaining the 2% rn). There are definitely things to criticize about John Green's work, but I feel like a lot of the criticism I see comes from, like, second or third hand accounts of his books. I remember one tumblr post that had a screenshot of John Green from crash course where his laptop had a "This Machine Kills Fascists" decal on it. The screenshot was captioned "Why does he say his computer kills fascists when all he does all day is write about teens having sex." Which is just bizarre because they didn't know the origin of that decal and seems to think that his books are just pornography? Like, the sex "scenes" he writes are all like "And then we had sex. It was cool." Sorry if that's, like, totally unrelated to what you're talking about I just remembered that post and had to get it off my chest. Have a good day 😊

THANK YOU. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

@@hexeddecimals I'd be very interested in your 2% of additional thoughts.

@@petermazug7704 Oh, sure! OP stated that Alaska killed herself unambiguously. This could be a case of me reading the book too literally, but I thought the whole point was that _we don't know_ if it was an accident or a suicide. It was this mystery that kinda consumed Miles before his friends convinced him that it ultimately doesn't matter.

original The Sims cane out in 2000, ts2 in 2004, that's 4 years difference. Ts3 in 2009, so 5 years, ts4 in 2014 so 5 years again. And now it's been 8 years since ts4. Just like GTA V, they'll keep on pumping out DLCs

Same, I used to sell kandi singles and one row rainbow loom bracelets under the slide at the playground in late elementary 😭

I still have a playlist full of music from one of those in-character RP blogs. It’s great music!

Ah, a fellow veteran from the trenches of tumblr rp,

yeah... apperently they have a ‘women’ spinoff that comes in like Lavender?

@@mikeymullins5305 thats toatally ungendered there, 10/10 not gendering your product needlessly harry's (this is sarcasm)

@D's Animation Yard or just you know.... The current era of RU-vid where RU-vid is slowly turning into infomercial hell

oh my god same! my peak hipster/twee days coincide with my heavily religious days. it was the most modest (and mentally stable [maybeee??]) every now and then one of my 2010 hipster christian posts pops up to taunt me, this alone has me questioning the mentally stable thing lol.

wait i just remembered i bought a ukulele during that time period also so DEF not mentally stable 😶

Honestly same, though my parents weren't religious. Though once I left the church i started to dress more liberally and got gayer

@@GraveyardMaiden it always gets gayer

YEAH okay so the hipster-Mormon correlation wasn’t something that just happened to me, it was like the only “acceptable” aesthetic for a kid like me who was still forced to go to church every week

@@cl5uo yeah totally. I was willingly going to church, but I definitely felt different from everyone else (turns out I was gay) and the hipster aesthetic was a way to explore that

@@cl5uo quick question, were the girls in your ward also obsessed with Tangled or just about anything disney

Omg Scandinavia and the World! Truly iconic

Ah yes, the Hungaromemes with moustaches edited on everything... simpler times

hello fellow nymphet 👋😂 did you spend forever trying to take photos that looked like the screenshots from lolita as well? there was such a huge community around that. i was always upset that my photos never performed well. 😭

Oh god this. If i was a few years older that would 100% have been me

Flip a coin; it's either soft boi or punk :P

I love that the soft boy aesthetic was embrace by gay men, sapphics, non binaries, trans men AND trans women. Maybe deep down we all want to be a soft boy (gender neutral)

Always envied it, never thought I could pull it off. :/ Stuck to the horrid graphic tee / cargo shorts "I have given up" look until I transitioned and actually developed a sense of fashion (whether it's a _good_ sense of fashion is left as an exercise for the reader)

@@artemiswolf4508 jddndn absolutely! XD