I messed up, and I scrolled through my old tumblr

I'm not going to give my URL.

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I was recently writing a review of Arm’s Length’s new record, and I was trying to remember some of the emo bands that I enjoyed in my late teens and early 20s. I was drawing blanks on bands that may have felt very meaningful from 2012 to 2017, but have not remained in my regular rotation now. While I tried some usual avenues to try to respark my memory, I thought of something that I haven’t really considered before. I revisited my tumblr account.

Like a lot of people from about age 26 to 35, I passed a lot of time on the microblogging website during high school and college. While I spent a reasonable amount of time on the site, I really can’t remember when I last really interacted with the site in a meaningful way. When I scrolled through my tumblr, I do think that I was using it through 2017, but I think that 2018 was about the time that I stopped.

I remember when I first made my tumblr account. I was in a computer lab during junior year of high school. One of my friends told me that I would love the site, and she helped me set up an account. I didn’t really see the appeal from the jump, and my blog mostly sat dormant. When I looked back through the 637 pages of things I’ve reposted over the years, I found my first ever post was a picture of a fortune cookie with the paper slip reading, “If your cookie is in 3 pieces, the answer is no.”

I also remember when that picture was taken. It was over the summer, while my parents were away. A friend and I had Chinese food for dinner, and I intentionally broke the cookie in 3 parts for the photo. I’m sure it was sitting in my phone for a long time, before I posted it on tumblr.

While I had a faction of friends who enjoyed tumblr when we were in high school, college was where it felt more like a regular part of life. I had more friends with niche interests, like nerdy books, pop-punk, etc.

I also thought that the things I liked were more interesting than they actually are. Plenty of people enjoy Tarantino movies, How I Met Your Mother, and emo music. Still, when you’re in college, you feel like you’re more special than you really are. Everything that you love feels like it belongs to only you. Tumblr was a place that I could curate on the internet to suit all my interests and the aesthetics that I enjoyed.

At some point, it just felt good to curate a wall of vibes that I enjoy on the internet. I rarely commented on things that my friends would reblog. My friends never commented to me. In fact, there wasn’t really any means for me to get followers. Occasionally, a post would do okay, but it didn’t lead to anything. As I began doing comedy, it seemed like a waste of time to scroll and repost things.

After scrolling through and trying to find some other emo bands, I ended up getting curious about when I last went on tumblr. I remembered my fiancée and I showing each other our respective tumblrs while we were still dating in 2020. She told me that I did reblog a few things when we scrolled. I don’t recall. I thought maybe I’d scheduled things to post in 2020 during my most active days, because it seemed like a date that was far off and interesting enough.I was surprised by how many timely things were in 2018 and 2019. Still, I’d say that the period I most associate with tumblr was between 2012 and 2019.

I was a little surprised by what I found when I scrolled through my tumblr. Occasionally, there were memes and laughs. Yes, there were screengrabs from movies and TV shows I liked, and live shots of bands playing songs I loved.

I also saw a lot of depressing posts. Some of them were disguised as Brand New lyrics or a sad moment on How I Met Your Mother, but there were also a lot of bleak posts, focusing on drinking, loneliness, heartbreak. To some extent, I pity the version of myself from ages 17 to 22.

I suppose that looking at my old posts reminded me that maybe things aren’t as bad now as I think they are. I don’t really wallow quite as much as I did. I’m not looking for the self-pity quite as much as I want to. This year has been challenging, and I’ve let everyone around me know that. I do think that maybe I owe it to that version of myself to try to be more positive.