the man, the myth, the tumblr

notes on la dispute, tumblr depression culture and why it's cool to be sad on main

This essay is brought to you by Tumblr culture and TikTok. I saw a video earlier this week of a woman claiming she was addicted to heroin because of Tumblr and Requiem for a Dream. My immediate thought was: she clearly never watched the actual movie. As someone who was addicted to the internet and hiding in my room, I understand the allure of Tumblr culture.

My mother should have monitored my internet access a lot better when I was thirteen.

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Depression was cool. I know no one wants to admit that, but from 2011–2013, talking about wanting to unalive yourself, eating disorders, or self-harming was the “cool” thing to do on Tumblr. It was also peak Superwholock era — and as I typed that word I felt a chill run down my spine.

I spent most of my time online and inside. I had friends, but not really. I always hovered on the fringes of groups. Mostly, I just went to school and came home. My responsibility wasn’t to individuality but to my family.

Anyway. A very miserable introduction to one of my favorite bands as a depressed tween: La Dispute.

King Park. You and I in Unison. Nine. Andria. Nobody, Not Even the Rain. Edit Your Hometown. For Mayor in Splitsville. Extraordinary Dinner Party.

All of my favorite La Dispute songs listened to through the lens of a tween that felt ugly and unloved.

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There’s a Dropbox account of mine from when I was fourteen floating through the cloud, and it’s filled with Tumblr iPhone lock-screen downloads of artsy, very depressing song lyrics.

As I’ve said over and over again — because if I’m gonna do anything it’s beat a dead horse — I was very depressed, extremely lame, and incredibly annoying.

It would be 5:45 a.m. I would lie in bed for a few minutes, staring at the ceiling. Eventually I’d slink to the bathroom and, rather than marvel at the day ahead, the vibes were immediately piss-poor. For like three years, I woke up on the wrong side of the bed. I blew out dozens of $5 headphones blasting King Park on the way to the bus. I believe in cinematic vibe-setting, so if it’s a cloudy New England day, can you really be happy? I don’t know.

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I think back to the drama of transitioning from tween to teen and I laugh. There’s some quote about cringe that would fit so well in this essay. Things always feel so big when you’re a child.

And while these songs meant so much to me as a melodramatic teenager who felt fat, ugly, and invisible and had crushes that didn’t like her back or slept with her friends or whatever — they still mean something to me now, but like, in an adult way.

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Sadness has always been aestheticized. When I lurked Tumblr like a lonely creep — it was black-and-white curly-font sad-girl quotes, The Neighbourhood, eating-disorder threads, Superwholock, and Sky Ferreira. Halsey was also making her debut and everyone had to pretend to be a huge fan of Badlands.

I pretended to be really into Supernatural for a while, and I never actually got into it. “Carry On My Wayward Son” is a terrible song and I’m tired of acting like it’s not. Supernatural also introduced me to the subsection of the Internet composed of weird white women obsessed with shipping straight male actors.

I started listening to Front Porch Step and was really depressed until the singer got accused of touching minors and was subsequently canceled.

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I never had the will to starve myself. I hated myself, sure, but my mom actually cooked dinner every night and I forgot about my promise to starve by then. I was too scared to actually self-harm with, like, a razor blade, so I scratched myself with pen caps. Mind you, no one ever asked what the marks on my arm were, so it was a waste of time. And I had a lot of capless pens in my backpack.

Skins (UK) went triple-platinum on my tablet in the summer of 2015. Baby, I was depressed as hell. But so was Effy Stonem, so it made me cool. As my grandparents would say: “Oh, you think you’re a white girl.”

I sat inside that entire summer and binged Skins like a freak. Effy and Cook and Freddie and Pandora. Oh, the drama! The horror! I’m not sure if this was the summer before or after my close friend started dating the guy I had a crush on, therefore fracturing our friend group for the remainder of high school, but it felt very timely for my life.

Mind you, Effy was so tea. Her body was tea. Eyes, hair — all tea. Like, I wanted to be her so BAD. I absolutely attempted to dress like her the entirety of sophomore year and failed miserably. Watching this as an adult, British teenagers look like they stink and have way too much freedom.

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I’m going to leave you with a final thought and image. If you recognize this photo, you were locked in to Tumblr. I watched this movie in the early hours of the morning and sobbed afterward.

As the kids call it, Tumblr was brain rot before it had a name. There were fandoms, fan fiction, unregulated access to porn, the origin of Acacia Brinley. It was kinda that girl at the time. Then Yahoo bought it and its downfall was swift. If you were really good at coding, you could change fonts and add songs to your blog. It was Myspace for millennial hipsters who listened to Two Door Cinema Club and moved to Bushwick.

Now, as the resident adult at Your Local Emo Show, it brings me joy to know the kids are still sticking to the old Emo Texts. Young Gen Z has taken the core of Tumblr and morphed it into TikTok-core. Pilates Princess. Cottage-core. Mob Wife-core. Every one of them would’ve gone triple platinum on Tumblr in 2012 with 5k notes and a T4 filter.

Tumblr wasn’t deep. It was dumb, messy, and embarrassing. And yet, she was a cultural icon.