If someone were to ask me what Tumblr is really for, I don't think I could answer easily. But one netizen on Reddit might have done so four years ago when they explained to another lost soul what Tumblr is and what people use it for. If Twitter was for short quips and Blogger and WordPress for long-form posts, then Tumblr aimed to fill in the gap in between.

Tumblr's simple interface allowed its users to share any and all types of content easily in their blogs. Whether it was text, video, pictures, or gifs, the site built a diverse and strong community where people shared and explored their interests like nowhere else on the Internet.

For me, Tumblr was about finding and connecting with the fandoms I enjoyed. Whether they were for TV series, anime, or music, it was a place to find and follow the bloggers and the fan art you find interesting. Granted, it's easy to veer into the weird side of Tumblr really quickly, but I usually stuck with the vanilla side of the platform.

Another great thing about Tumblr was its news feed: it was only the creators you followed in chronological order. Nowadays, most social media platforms have pretty annoying algorithms in that regard. But if you really worked on your Tumblr feed, you'd see exactly what you wanted. Most people say that one person's feed differs wildly from the next.

People like to say that nobody hangs out on Tumblr anymore. But is that really true? According to the statistics from Demand Sage, Tumblr still has more than 300 million active users each month. Users publish around 12.5 million blog posts every day, so can we really call it a deceased platform?

Recent Tumblr statistics are quite interesting, too. While its demographics are pretty young with 40% of its users being Gen Z and 30% being millennials, its gender divide splits exactly in the middle. The platform saw a jump in new users when Redditors migrated to Tumblr when Reddit began imposing fees on third-party developers. 

So, if Tumblr has that many active users, why do some consider it to be finished? Well, some people like to quantify a social media platform's success by how much money it's worth. And Tumblr's situation is quite sad in that department. In 2013, when Tumblr was at its peak, Yahoo bought it for $1.1 billion. In 2019, it sold to Automattic for a mere $3 million.

Many say that the reason why Tumblr didn't rise to compete with social media giants like Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat was because the higher-ups didn't understand what it was for. They tried to implement changes that would make it attractive to a broader audience while ignoring what made it special in the first place.

In her 2023 article for Wired, Elizabeth Minkel writes that one of the biggest charms of Tumblr is that it's like an improv space. Users on the platform seem to interact in a "yes, and" kind of way: one user posts a story and another comments with beautifully done art. If you're familiar with the Goncharov meme, you know that some Tumblr users even invent movies and others just go along with it.

At the moment, Tumblr is like a safe refuge for some. No crazy billionaire CEOs, no rampant misinformation; just art, vibes, and (silly)posting. Minkel discusses that the owners should perhaps stop trying to make Tumblr for everyone and trying to attract more users and focus on making it for those who want to be there. 

"Internet person" and expert in online communities Allegra Rosenberg agrees: "Tumblr can be difficult to navigate for the inexperienced, ridden with parasitic beliefs and dangerous memes. You can easily get lost in the tags, sucked into toxic subcultures," she writes.

"[But] the creativity of Tumblr visible from second-hand glimpses on other platforms is only the tip of an iceberg that encompasses enormous amounts of perpetual creative energy, generated by the affordances of the platform's much-loved functions, traditions, and communities," Rosenberg says, defending the platform.