The Ghosts Of Aesthetic Tumblr's Past

[@meri9511]

I have to admit, I had an entire mustache themed birthday party. Fake mustaches, mustache temporary tatoos, mustache cake, mustace everything! every time I see the photos I die a little inside

[@mileswiedmann4366]

Thank you for your bravery

[@blackbirddrawings1790]

It's camp, honey💅🏽💗

[@captaincaspian42]

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.

[@meri9511]

@@captaincaspian42 iconic 👏👏

[@pptenshi3900]

oh lord. I salute you

[@skaltops]

i owned a pair of those knee-high converse when i was like 8 and i broke my leg while wearing them and was later told that they were the only reason i didn't have an exposed fracture (aka the bone literally piercing through my skin) bc they kinda kept my tibia in place. so. point for the emos I guess.

[@moogleydoot]

💀

[@fermi-dirac]

lmaooo

[@RobinAlucard123]

Be Emo. Save bones.

[@Hastur876]

Exposed fractures are so preppy.

[@whatthedogisdoing5393]

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

[@chloee294]

A coworker of mine last year had a moustache tattoo and when I saw it I just gave her a look like 'holy shit i didn't know you were real', and she looked back at me like 'I wish i weren't'

[@GrrrlStyleNow]

Mustache theory: people who were into mustaches on everything were perfectly distributed across the population so that there was only one per every eight people, meaning that each individual mustache lover believed themselves to be Very Unique as they were the only one in their close friendship group, but globally were in fact an entire market.

[@sugarrookieart]

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

[@jellybean1528]

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

[@ReptilianTeaDrinker]

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

[@jessicacreed7773]

"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

[@emocrab7545]

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

[@pericatt]

I saw one person who responded to a "What happened to the girls who had moustache finger tattoos?" Tweet with "I'm a man now"

[@lisaradtke5669]

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.

[@shinekitten7669]

good for him

[@ahhh4117]

@@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

[@lisaradtke5669]

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

[@judo_ashtray]

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

[@sparkthegirl]

I remember being such a little hipster at 12 that I faked having vision problems so I could get glasses. Turns out I actually DID have bad eyesight and just thought it was normal for everything to be blurry lmaoo. When I finally put them on for the first time it was like being crowned or having a magical anime girl transformation, only to immediately be hit with the whiplash that everything is now HD and holy shit are you telling me you can see the individual leaves on a tree and not just a green blob?

[@tortis6342]

hahaha. At least it ended well.

[@Jirai_lamb]

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

[@adisonsmith2633]

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.

[@biggestastiest]

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

[@lenaofthevalley]

THE LEAVES ON TREES OMG IT WAS LIKE 🤯

[@REN_v5]

the hipster vs fandom drama WAS 100% just a fandom thing, everyone just wanted to feel "different" and "quirky" 😭

[@Ratman.Not.Batman]

even tho they all acted like the same person lol

[@fluffyfluffykatz]

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

[@weeaboobaby]

IT WAS LMAOOOOOOO, TUMBLR HIPSTERS COULDN'T CARE LESS

[@sethkatenkamp6705]

I feel like it has to be said that John Green’s intention with his pixie dream girls, especially Alaska, is not for the audience to think “oh yeah this is great, I should be like her.” His male protagonists’ failure to treat their love interests as people rather than aesthetic objects always causes harm to one or both parties by the end of the book. And by the end of Looking for Alaska, the reader should definitely not be impressed by Alaska’s self-destructive mentality. I think romanticizing the cigarettes and such is more wistful misinterpretation by the reader than John’s idea.

[@hanamiiiii7044]

Yessss thank youuuu

[@tortis6342]

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.

[@DioShiver]

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

[@kellis6645]

I think it's fair to say that this was his Intention but I also think it's fair to say it wasn't pulled off very well, especially since the majority of his readers were outcast teenage girls at the time.

[@LePezzy66]

The selfharm, drugs, depression and eating disorder side of these aesthetics is a different conversation in and of itself I think. Especially since it's still a big part of being a teenager on the internet today. Learning how to cope with trauma, and express more intense emotions is difficult. So I get why it exists (I took part in it in 2016), but it's so well hidden from adult (on purpose) that it's so hard to get actual help if you're struggling.

[@allyrose6437]

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

[@irradiated_woman8016]

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.

[@rosiejl2798]

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.

[@PestoPasta666]

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

[@_weasel]

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.

[@eddiejames4006]

In Australia, the shift from scene/emo to hipster was pretty evident in the stationery companies Smiggle and Typo. We had uniforms so we couldn’t express ourselves in fashion - instead we would use erasers, notebooks and water bottles. Around 2013 it became uncool to have hot pink strawberry-scented skull erasers from Smiggle, now you needed Typo notebooks with deer heads and ironic quotes on them. The “You’re weird. I like it” bold black arial font on white fabric pencil cases. Typo was ABSOLUTELY hipster - distressed brick walls, typewriter imagery, lots of 1950s advert-inspired imagery, deer heads, moustaches, owls, thick-rimmed glasses, ironic statements. I remember a girl in my class turned up to school with those square thick-rimmed glasses which were just 3D glasses from Event Cinemas with the lenses pushed out.

[@ameliaberthold7375]

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

[@laideyofthelake]

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

[@mimsilvernote]

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

[@sparkyblizz]

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

[@aposterous4126]

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

[@cookkeh]

can't believe this blatant pastel goth erasure...smh... but no seriously the psychic damage some of the photos chosen dealt me. i never got the mustache tattoo cuz i was 17-18 at the time but i 100% hand-made glittery mustaches on sticks for all of my friends at prom and there are definitely photos of all of us posing together with our mustaches. it was certainly A Time

[@tallymebanana8918]

Thought the same thing 😢

[@tallymebanana8918]

About the pastel goth thing I mean

[@Blue-zc9ro]

I’m a trans guy, I never did the soft boy trend so while I fully support people for who that is their aesthetic and vibe… what I really don’t like is there still seems to be this trend for fetishising of trans men and trans masc people (*particularly by cis girls*) as being the ‘soft boy / soft boi uwu cutesy smol bean’ type, and it can feel really infantilising and gross.

[@moeshrooms385]

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”

[@simonwinn8757]

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.

[@Schnort]

@@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.

[@androgynous_artist]

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

[@galaxymew5138]

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

[@davidceres4516]

I genuinely think that in retrospect “rawr” is actually pretty wholesome and i feel bad for finding it cringey for so long. Having a way to say I love you without saying it is a coping mechanism 😭

[@k_a_y_l_e_e]

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."

[@lifeunderthestarstv]

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.

[@Squibblefall]

@@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.

[@darkstarr984]

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

[@houraisheperd9721]

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.

[@lordfarquaad380]

The “Soft Boy” aesthetic is still definitely popular. It’s now 100% a straight guy thing though.

[@GraveyardMaiden]

Oh god, so I remember alot of controversy with the term "soft boy" being used all the time towards trans dudes / trans masc or non binary people just cause they were afab and physically didn't look masculine enough to pass as a cis dude, to the point where it was getting fetishy. Like a trans dude could be dressed in a completely different aesthetic and would get called a "soft boy" just cause he was trans. It was so bad.

[@millionsofmischiefs]

Even worse…soft boi

[@GraveyardMaiden]

@@millionsofmischiefs oh lord you killed me

[@flask223]

Soft boi, yes i remember the dark days

[@mystoken]

the smol bean era

[@Aeroductile1]

"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

[@rebeccabusi3844]

tumblr "grunge" made smoking (and eating disorders but that's a different story) look very appealing to 14 year old me and gave me a 10 year long smoking addiction so yeah screw tumblr grunge, but still I loved this video, made me feel so nostalgic for simpler times when you could be anyone you wanted online tbh

[@sunnybugz]

as a former tumblr grunge girl who is now having to beat back an eating disorder and nicotine addiction you are SO REAL

[@interrexclamacion]

I remember when I searched up the grunge tag, because I'm a fan of the music genre, and had no idea of the aesthetic, it was all just pro-ana posts and softcore porn and I was just like, "what the fuck this isn't Chris Cornell".

[@snakeeyes7973]

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

[@rotgutted]

@@snakeeyes7973 ok that's a good one

[@snakeeyes7973]

@@rotgutted Thank you, I try🥹

[@lifeunderthestarstv]

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

[@DrSlowpokePhd]

Ngl watching this made me regret my teenage years, not because I dressed in any of these styles, but because I made fun of these styles as a way of hiding my own insecurities. My whole anti-sjw phase literally ate me from the inside out all through high school. Thank god I'm trans now.

[@moeshrooms385]

I relate to this entire comment😭

[@gremloid]

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

[@MarcieIsForager]

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.

[@inthem8riX_]

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

[@genericsinger]

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.

[@itssteph263]

I'll say it again the Tumblr ecosystem is in fact a Venn Diagram. Also hearing my youngest brother, who is 14 yrs old, saying that he is into the soft boy aesthetic last year sent me into retrograde.

[@bishielurfer]

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.

[@kill4karma]

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

[@taylie673]

On tiktok they also had major aesthetics during Covid

[@VultureClone]

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

[@discox8967]

the soft boy aesthetic thing was helpful for some trans guys because it was 'feminine' enough that other people (eg parents) often wouldn't criticise them for it, whether they were out to them or not and it could act as a midpoint for experimenting between being fem to masc. however i definitely faced the problems with it personally, eg having the label slapped on me by others after coming out, specifically having a friend refuse to stop calling me a 'smol bean' and worst of all having people being creepy in dms of my aesthetic sideblog (yes, even when i stated in my bio that i was a minor and didn't want nsfw interaction)

[@catboyweirdal]

as a fat person it was so alienating trying to be "aesthetic" and "hipster". the ED rhetoric was rampant and people like me were never in the photos or outfits. same goes for poc im sure, these aesthetics were insanely white

[@gudematcha]

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

[@JessHull]

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

[@ixeliema]

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. ❤️

[@bluebelleberrybasket]

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.

[@nizhoni3339]

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.

[@draagonlavndr5829]

wow u including pics of black scene people did so much for my brain!! so much of internet culture history/mythos erases us from it despite black users pioneering trends and “aesthetics” in many online spaces (ie. art hoe and ‘cyber ghetto’ pre colonization)

[@joedyisonfire4903]

Something I find utterly terrifying, though, is that younger people are already romanticising the early 2010s. I’ve see twee pop up here and there, the Sad Girl trope is resurfacing, and I feel Stranger Things may be some sort of modern Supernatural fandom. It’s too early for this, dammit, it’s barely been a decade!

[@klitzy]

things go faster it seems

[@MiloKuroshiro]

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

[@av3stube480]

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

[@flawlix]

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.

[@chloe-fy4wc]

@@MiloKuroshiro Agreed

[@jmckenzie962]

Interesting that you brought up "twee" because that aesthetic actually has a much older and more interesting history than you might think. Like hipsterdom in general, "twee" originated with music. "Twee pop" was a sort of microgenre of indie rock/pop which originated in the mid-late '80's in the UK, with many citing a compilation album called "C86" from 1986 as being the origin of twee pop. If you want to know what twee pop sounds like, basically think "The Smiths but really happy and hyperfeminine" and you're pretty much there; the term "twee" itself was originally a British slang term to refer to something sickeningly innocent and sweet, and the twee pop bands were basically making bubblegum pop music for the indie scene. A lot of it was inspired by '60's "jangle pop" such as the Byrds and love songs made using Phil Spector's "wall of sound" production style, which in general was very influential to the underground pop scene in the UK at the time. Almost all the bands that made twee pop had women in them which was quite radical for rock in the '80's; they were often very leftist and feminist too, so much so that there was even a crossover genre in the early '90's with Riot grrrl dubbed "cuddlecore" - if you want to know what that sounds like, go listen to the band Tiger Trap. The original twee subculture was quite closely connected to the shoegaze sound and aesthetic as well - some of My Bloody Valentine's early records could be considered "noisy twee pop". But yeah, I thought y'all should probably know this since the original twee pop music genre is actually really good and you should all go listen to that stuff. Bands I would recommend include Tiger Trap, Lazy Records-era My Bloody Valentine (which unfortunately isn't on Spotify), Cub, the Primitives, and pretty much all the bands on Sarah Records.

[@erinniccoinn1gh]

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 :)

[@hairgod87]

this was so informative fr! thanks :)

[@jmckenzie962]

@@hairgod87 np dude!

[@sbee5645]

woah i enjoyed reading this! thanks for sharing

[@peterscrivens7868]

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 :)

[@Junior_Psychonaut]

Realizing that my preteen sister was absolutely trying to be a Tumblr Hipster Girl™️ back when I was 10 with all her flannel, thick glasses, neon green things with mustaches slapped on them, while I accidentally fell into the aesthetic because my love for space started to blossom at the same time the galaxy trend started happening jagxjwb Edit: Also, enby here, realizing that I currently kinda fall into the Soft Boy Aesthetic™️ gave me such gender euphoria that I had a dumb grin on my face for the rest of the video 💛

[@princesslisxx]

I really want a part 2 ngl. Also I feel like these aesthetics were a gateway to aesthetics now. I was a mix of fandom, hipster and a few other aesthetics when I was younger and now I'm an enby goth with a like for cottagecore and bimbocore

[@algabirdsen9599]

i really hate the association of trans men to "softboys" like feel free to be like that but the generalization of us as being softer or less masculine than cis men is nasty

[@SpookyDeerArt]

been on tumblr for over a decade and y'know what. i am so, so fucking tempted to make a blog dedicated to the weird combination of nostalgia that was 2010 hipster aesthetic. i was a broke teenager at the time and i STILL live very rurally but i think i could fake it. i think i could pull it off. im afab, have a weirdly extensive knowledge of this internet subculture, i saw bbc's sherlock once. my old prescription was a pair of hipster glasses. i might get a mustache finger tattoo.

[@SpookyDeerArt]

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.

[@SpookyDeerArt]

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

[@sta._rina]

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

[@mallarieluvsgirls]

OMG PLSSS i’ll follow 🫶🏼

[@thegreen1348]

Finger tattoos don't last like others do, thank God. They have literally faded out of existence

[@Tesseract_King]

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

[@someguy9893]

Kid named finger tattoo:

[@elenafriese891]

@@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?

[@Tesseract_King]

@@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.

[@elenafriese891]

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

[@ace_of_cakes]

One of my friends had a "mustache" themed birthday party way back in the day. There were chocolate mustaches for us to eat and we all drank through straws with mustaches on them and there were mustaches on the plates and napkins and such

[@madisonstoner7405]

I was literally too afraid to be an individual and was too intimidated by tumblr's Raw Energy to maintain a blog for any particular period of time. I thought "I shouldn't commit to anything because I'm a teenager and it's just a phase". Teens, please embrace being teens. You only get to be one once.

[@Ambertrine]

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

[@Maid_of_Spiders]

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

[@Anton15243]

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?

[@wolfzmusic9706]

Then you could just get made fun of or judged

[@alexpalex-banana]

This.

[@TehTeh911]

I finally convinced my parents to buy me the white knee high converse as a teen and they fell apart almost immediately! They were like $100 and I was so upset. Also I always feel like I hit the tumblr vibes late and missed most of good tumblr, but this video is really validating me haha. I think its because I was just a smidge young for the biggest tumblr highlights. Edit: THATS WHAT THE JOKE OF THE MUSTACHE WAS!? I spent so long confused about why everyone was obsessed with mustaches and what was so funny about a mustache.

[@amoureux6502]

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

[@TheDuchessFox]

My first thought at recalling Tumblr "grunge" is that it and "coquette" have a lot in common with 90s heroine chic. I don't know where I was going, but I think it's interesting to consider

[@d.lan3y]

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

[@Chxbearie]

The best thing to come out of being a barista for me was seeing people with mustache tattoos on their fingers. Like these poor ex-hipsters must've been in the TRENCHES to get that tattoo (btw the coffee shop wasnt pretentious it was literally Dunkin)

[@SpudMackenzie]

I have a handlebar mustache in real life and people still buy me mustache related items as gifts like all the time. I've got magnets, bag clips, paper clips, coasters, socks, soap. It's absolutely wild.

[@sylvieficco1320]

the fact that zoey descanelmor how ever you spell her last name is engaged to one of the property brothers is cursed in a weird way

[@isabelbelem9062]

I also struggle so much to spell that name 💀

[@ru_archer]

Always find it weird when people say they have something at their parent's house, and they know exactly where it is. My parents started knocking down walls two months after I moved out. (They're perfectly nice, just pathologically unsentimental.)

[@die_Haselmaus]

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 😂

[@ohmiasi2538]

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

[@julianacantu3402]

i went overseas after high school and they turned my room into an office. i was supposed to be gone for 9 months and came back to the living room

[@mellophonesheikah6223]

Part of why tumblr grunge is coming back I think is because it is so timeless and I kinda love it. I dreamed of being tumblr grunge as a young teen and now I finally have the money to. Without the ED, smoking, drinking, etc

[@Unstbecsta]

Absolutely insane the small years between us creates an absolute CHASM. Just because I spent the small amount of time in my mid to late teens on MySpace before heading to Tumblr in my twenties.

[@Wico90YT]

The Myspace years were formative for a lot of people

[@coconeaux]

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

[@ThemmeFataleKiva]

The sheer coincidence that this video was posted after I had a deep, in depth convo on the evolution of styles from traditional early 2000's emo to mid-2000's scene through to 2010's hipsters with a co-worker earlier today is honestly impeccable

[@Jeff_denHartog]

Back in the day my older sister was a hipster, flannel shirts, "artsy" photos, meanwhile i was trying so hard to be a soft boy, but for us being mestizos and from LatAm definitely doesn't help lmao!! Also, i just gaze back at all of this with nostalgia for "simple" times.. And damn i am becoming a zoomer 💀💀

[@sumlem]

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

[@freddie6307]

@@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 😭💀

[@carolinaherrera69420]

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

[@katmorrison6078]

As someone who was both a hardcore fangirl and also studying to get a photography degree during the peak of Tumblr I feel incredibly seen. Most of this instantly transported me back to late high school/early college years and I remember wondering if I wasn’t cool enough to be in my own major because I didn’t dress aesthetically enough. I’m happy to report that 6 years later I still dress like I rolled out of the garbage most days, I have a full time job as a graphic designer/photographer and I still attend anime conventions so Tumblr really shaped my ideals I guess.

[@Blwbelle]

Oh hey I want to be a photographer as well!

[@rice_frying_shrimp]

mr. aeons, you are my favorite female lesbian canadian tumblr related youtuber who's lungs keep collapsing :)

[@3vil0vesy0u]

So many of these brought back memories. You’re talking about… my youth 😭 I still wear the tattoo choker. Every day. I had dip-dye hair. My blog was mainly about Dan & Phil. I read John Green. I posted pictures of my hair. And made sunset quote posts. STOP CALLING ME OUT LIKE THIS 💀

[@peofun1]

there's something to be said for the way as these aesthetics become less about an actual lifestyle, they also become a lot more commercial. It becomes about shopping at particular stores or buying particular brands, and less about the way you actually live. old countercultures - goths, punks, hippies - had a certain philosophy behind them beyond just the way people would dress. but there's this change, between how emo/scene/goth was heavily tied in with a particular kind of music, and then fast forward to "tumblr grunge" being about shopping at American Outfitters or whatever. with the Tik-Tokification of everything, it feels more and more like these movements are purely aesthetic, just about whatever fast-fashion style you buy into. you don't actually have to live in that sub-culture, you can just put on an outfit for a tik-tok meme in a carefully curated space, and that's good enough maybe I'm just 'old man yells at cloud' over here, but at least that's how it feels to me. anyway, shout out to the ORIGINAL masters of checkerboard-print, the weird cousins of emo/scene, we PUNK SKA folks still out here ✌

[@transsexual_computer_faery]

Capitalism envelopes and assimilates everything

[@petrichorbones]

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 :/

[@peofun1]

@@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" 😭

[@transsexual_computer_faery]

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

[@dustyzoiveon6161]

@@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.

[@DukeDukeGo]

The Sims 4 was released in 2014 and features a Galaxy Leggins. I think that was already towards the end of the galaxy trend's lifespan, and now it's forever marked in this game they seemingly won't let die

[@DukeDukeGo]

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

[@lemonlord]

As someone who grew up on Tumblr pinterest (aka the recycled Tumblr posts and Fandoms side of pinterest in the mid/slightly late 2010's) this gave me whiplash. I remember that exact anti hipster/fandom blog feud story about a Fandom blogger and a hipster blogger meeting in a Cafe being pinned to one of my boards for some reason bc I thought it was a serious thing. Also all of the sanders sides, mcr and Dan and Phil soft boy fanarts and edits and Percy Jackson aesthetic headcannons haunt me.

[@MrR532]

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

[@alise6813]

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

[@buchelaruzit]

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......

[@anikabhuta1326]

I HATE THAT THIS ENTIRE THREAD IS ME

[@Speederzzz]

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.

[@codyrumbaugh]

I remember vague impressions of the mustache phase, and I was only a twelve y/o boy. I vividly remember the mustache duct tape, and decorative duct tape in general being very big.

[@berryjunmill9029]

I remember in high school I had a popular tumblr pastel goth/grunge fashion blog. I wish my mom didn't make me delete it back then bc I would love to look back on it now.

[@steviepeculiar2415]

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

[@berryjunmill9029]

@@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.

[@IgnisAurumProbat]

@@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?"

[@shakinglikemilk6222]

Have you looked on Wayback Machine?

[@Bee-0108]

realizing I was tumblr grunge in high school gave me whiplash. I went through every one of these aesthetics but like.. the grunge section struck a chord tbh

[@xsspydrgutzzx]

I tried so hard to be part of the "ukulele playing Steven universe stan soft uwu trans boi" aesthetic back when I was like 13, and it plagues me to this day. its been 5 years send help pls im begging

[@lulucool45]

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

[@xsspydrgutzzx]

@@lulucool45 sigh. unfortunately ur correct /j

[@aragogno687]

Fun fact, one of the people who created the finger mustache tattoo trend and the person who made the "I'm in me mum's car" trend came out as trans men a while ago apperently

[@sofiarocha9907]

I'm 21 so now I realize that strict rules for aesthetic are fake but I can even begin to DESCRIBE how obsessed I was with eventually looking like a Tumblr girl or some other defined style (which is hard when your defining characteristic is being "nerdy" and fandom obsessed)

[@transwithnoplans]

I had a roller derby teammate that literally named herself “Mustache” and put those dollar store fake mustaches on everything. Her helmet had two on it, her skates had little mustaches painted on them, and her laces were just white with mustache print.

[@chloe-fy4wc]

As a 18-year-old I have to say that your videos are highly educational. It’s nice to know the history of those who came before us. I had the fandom tumblr faze, except that I didn’t have Tumblr and got all the content from it second hand. Which I find really funny now. The mustaches were a crazy trend, but I loved it as a kid. We bought fake ones one time and I wore mine for like three days. I’m non binary now.

[@charlieleseman7847]

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.

[@riannaf927]

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

[@chloe-fy4wc]

@@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

[@lushfawn]

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.

[@mimsilvernote]

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 .

[@zillionalb462]

The Soft Boi™️ was my gateway into stepping outside gender norms and eventually helped me to understand myself as a trans individual. That aesthetic will always mean a lot to me - anyone else have a similar experience?

[@mxxem_AL]

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'

[@marcusrose5187]

My brother in law, who turned 36 6 days ago, has not just the moustache tattoo, but the lesser-seen accompanying glasses tatto on the adjacent finger

[@lukesterling2276]

When I was in the 10th grade, the mustache fad was at its height. I actually spent $25 on a three foot long mustache-shaped magnet and stuck it on my locker at school. Over the course of the year, other students would take it off the locker and stick it somewhere else in the school. The joke lasted for some months but then somebody ruined it by writing "can you dig it, sucka" on the mustache in green Sharpie and made it look stupid.

[@tortis6342]

A three foot long magnet? shaped like a mustache?

[@ensommeille5315]

I remember the anti SJW time cuz I was roped into it too, a self hating lesbian who desperately wanted to be "normal" and ended up being super far left and openly queer towards the end of my teens. I think a lot of queer people got roped into that kinda thing around that time :') I was more of a My Immortal dramatic fanfic writer emo but my mum did buy me an "I'd love to stay and chat but I really [moustache]" tshirt and I wore it more than I'd like to admit lmaooo

[@furfoxsake1175]

I wore a mustache shirt in my 7th grade yearbook photo, I cringe looking back, lol. Also bought a pair of galaxy vans in 2014 but I never wore them because I quickly realized they clashed with pretty much everything else I owned, sold them at basically new condition for $12 on Ebay a couple years ago...

[@AzureFlameVirus]

I had to quit tumblr cold turkey because it was so bad for my mental health. I loved the sense of community, the ability to easily share the things you like with others, etc. It also fed my depression, self hatred, and anxiety. I missy friends from that time but it was the best decision for my mental health.

[@geenskeen]

I also had to get out of there. The romanticisation of mental illness and self harm (to include smoking) was really rough for me. I participated in that romanticisation, too. Anytime I find myself inclined to go back to tumblr to post something, it's a big red flag for my mental health. Glad you got out of there

[@yeehaw4506]

Lowkey I'm still stuck in my Tumblr grunge era, and I don't think it's going to go away cuz I think that's just how I am lmfao- I didn't even realize it until I watched this and felt called out 💀

[@d.lan3y]

A really weird thing I've noticed, having been into dark academia about two years ago, is that DA seems to take a lot of cues from tumblr grunge. There's a similar romanticization of mental illness and smoking, some overlap in movies and music, and a lot of the fashion looks really similar. pleated skirts, those low-rise docs, etc. It's not exactly the same thing, DA focuses more on romanticizing schoolwork and whatnot, and certain areas of the community are more about the long coat, oxford blouse type fashion, but I think it very much has some roots in the grunge aesthetic.

[@EFO841]

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

[@flamingmonkeyheads]

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

[@flamingmonkeyheads]

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

[@charlieleseman7847]

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)

[@jasminv8653]

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.

[@TheMellbell13]

That grunge aesthetic just unlocked all my repressed memories from highschool and college. That fashion was so popular in the pop punk crowd and all my friends dressed like that IRL. I used to borrow chokers and those little silver pendants from my mom and grandma. I literally remember my friend quoting that John Green line about cigarettes, while also chain smoking. I saved my money for a whole summer to buy a pair of Doc Martens lol

[@hatemteirelbar9510]

But what you don't know is that his real name is Strange Aeons....

[@peskypigeonx]

KEEP 👏 IT 👏 GOING

[@Ratman.Not.Batman]

dun dun duun

[@gazingatsaturn]

this will never not be funny

[@transsexual_computer_faery]

@@gazingatsaturn holy shit it's NAS 😳😳😳😳

[@laraalvarezzz2]

HOLY MOTHER YOU'RE RIGHT

[@ashleybunny1884]

My face when u switched up the look 😱😱💜💜💜

[@DimeSpin]

The funny thing about the fandom vs hipster blog thing from my point of view was how one-sided it was. You're right that those were mainstream interests so a lot of hipster folks liked fandom-y stuff, but the ones who didn't like any of those things? They not only were not antagonizing fandom people they simply *did not know they existed* - they didn't follow even the fandom-adjacent aesthetic blogs, so their entire tumblr experience was boho fashion, coffee in cafes, the eiffel tower and pretty journals. They didn't even know there was a war.

[@drskelebone]

I have been battling friends who say my "low Doc Martens" are "dumb and ugly," and I've been so happy to just carry on buying new pairs as the old ones have their tread worn away to nothing. Well, up until the past 2.5 years, what with the never leaving the house thing.

[@montrealderogatory]

I was such hipster trash in my fashion and fandom trash online. I had suspenders that I wore often and I wore a lot of fake glasses and such. I was still very Mormon back then and very little about the hipster aesthetic clashed with that so my mom would let me wear it. I also got very into the moustache.I guess you could say I was hipster sun, fandom moon, and #justgirlythings rising. Later on as I started rebelling more I hit more grunge, especially as I read more john green

[@GraveyardMaiden]

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

[@montrealderogatory]

@@GraveyardMaiden it always gets gayer

[@cl5uo]

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

[@montrealderogatory]

@@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

[@GraveyardMaiden]

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

[@crayonoff]

The galaxy prints..Everytime when my bf sees a galaxy print on some product he says to me "look, you would have bought that in 2013"😅 and it's sadly true

[@scarletsapphic]

you can't violently pull memories from my subconcious as I was never on tumblr and instead have been corrupted by tumblr knowledge via youtube

[@alienrat-z3g]

oh same

[@flyingspagbowl6629]

The fact I watched this whole video like "hmmm yes those days" even though I was like 5-8 when this was all happening and I have no recollection of it whatsoever.

[@phantomology13]

fr I’m sitting here like “ah yes 2015 what a time to be alive” knowing full well I was not on tumblr during that time and I was in fact playing with barbies and shopkins and wondering why the sun followed me in my mom’s car

[@aaron4876]

I’m so happy u talked about the soft boy aesthetic and how young queers interacted with it bc as a still confused, young transmasc in 2016, seeing edits of “soft boys” on tumblr was the first time I felt represented and understood with my gender. And being able to confidently rock my first short haircut with a flower crown on my head, and still feel valid as a feminine guy was such a great memory, regardless of how cringy I probably was back then.

[@Bumblebearry]

My tumblr blog was a mixture of anime fandom and jfashion and it was always fun seeing how the stuff I was interested got incorporated into the wider tumblrsphere. Such as the influence Lolita fashion had on Pastel Goth, and Mori had on cottagecore.

[@catm1484]

I was big into Tumblr RP and aesthetic Tumblr was like revered by rpers to fill up their blogs, I still follow some of the aesthetic blogs I followed when I was writing characters and would reblog from them. I do remember a huge issue with the hipsters were more reblogging “in character musings” from RP blogs and the writers being annoyed about being followed by people who didn’t have any actual interest in their writing or interacting with them but that was the worst fandom vs hipsters I have ever seen lol

[@flawlix]

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

[@thehearthotel]

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

[@ShannonIonaFaith]

I definitely went through a vintage phase, pastel goth phase, dark aesthetic phase. I do miss tumblr sometimes.

[@kkatieloisxx]

Describing grunge as a combination of hipster and emo would have made my 15 year old self very angry, and that’s how 21 year old me knows it’s an accurate description

[@Zeffer32]

That picture of those belts with the rainbow nubbie lil spikes gave me a SENSE MEMORY MOMENT I had the exact same one in those times and you werent playin around, smacked in the face hard several times with the nostalgia bat, thank you

[@LiliyaPanina]

Growing up I really wanted to have the scene aesthetic, but because of school uniforms I couldn't dye my hair or get piercings so all I had were both my forearms covered in bracelets of different kinds and my dream of knee high converse that I never ended up getting

[@captaincaspian42]

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

[@myfeels]

while watching this i remembered like every relic i still have and exactly where it is.. like chokers, a 21pilots shirt, a panic shirt, flower crowns, button up shirts, even 7y/o hair dye

[@daeundances]

i didnt realize how close i was to the scene/emo boarder. i was the plastic bracelet, black eyeliner, invader zim, etc girly but i never listened to the music or labled myself as such 😂

[@RCZeta919]

I absolutely still have some mustache printed quilting cotton fabric in my stash. Huge fan of the costume changes, it really brought the whole concept together

[@Mel_Bat]

28:05 I cannot agree with you enough on this point. As someone who got depression around that time (I'm not sure when it was in the "west" where I live it was around 2016) it actually prevented me from telling anyone that I have this kind of trouble because I was aware that adults may think that Im trying to be quircky. It ended with me getting diagnosed just 2 years ago Also the same people that thought it depression is great bullied me for actually being depressed. To end this: PLEASE PEOPLE ON DO NOT MAKE ILNESSES TRENDY.

[@DogWalkerBill]

Your look around 21:00 is so reminiscent of ShoeOnHead!

[@catalynn6076]

I vividly remember in middle school a girl asked me if I had a "tumblr blog" i remember being like yeah?? And she said "you look like you would" I remember being confused but looking back I had a doctor who themed bday party sooo

[@BBXcompany]

7:48 DemiseMAN on deviantart was an artist i still very much appreciate (and he had many imitators because his stuff was so popular) just googling his name now you can see some incredibly detailed art as well as his very early works

[@KaylaNoelle1]

I was a nymphet girl and uhhh... it was ROUGH. But I also avoided some truly abhorrent fashion trends so I kind of don't regret it. A lot of old men tried to groom me ... or semi-groomed me so I just made them buy me things or send me money. Super toxic but they never got what they wanted in return so 🤷‍♀. I'm still friends with some of the girls and I have met them in person and that was amazing so I don't regret that either. The main downside is that people are trying to ressurect the "community" and they think they own me still. In my mid-20's. I never thought I'd be FIGHTING to be seen as irrelvnant by teenagers. Or at least relavent for who I am now!

[@kat-nd3un]

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. 😭

[@jessicastockton965]

Words cannot describe the feelings of pure joy and nostalgia when I watch your tumblr videos. As someone who was very much into a lot of these aesthetics for all of my early developmental stages. Scene/emo in middle school then tumblr grunge then hipster/ art hoe towards the end of high school. It makes me so happy to see these topics brought up again. I literally grew up with supernatural, and was a hardcore superwholock stan in hs. It’s like fondly remembering childhood lmao.

[@abbyehrenstein2550]

I participated in the moustache trend and it made sense to me at the time. I truly don’t know how. Also, what you call the tumblr grunge aesthetic i think has also been referred to as the tumblr sad girl aesthetic

[@pastel.whispers]

I’ve never been on tumblr before outside of getting custom content for my sims in more recent years, but you’d think I did with the way you just read me like a book. Went through phases of almost all of these aesthetics, guess you could say I lived on tumblr vicariously through google images lol😭😭

[@ritatajti799]

The mustache thing you were either literally graced from the Hungarian side of the Internet or it was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more popular there than in English for cultural reasons. Just look at "Scandinavia and the World" (yes, the webcomic), when the maker of that wanted to introduce a personification of Hungary the only request she got that he should have a magnificent 'stche!

[@LenaBlak]

Omg Scandinavia and the World! Truly iconic

[@abigel6457]

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

[@marmoth9786]

i'm only a LITTLE ashamed of the dan and phil galaxy backpack i bought at a clearance sale in like 2017 that i still use in public sometimes because it's big and good quality and i haven't found another backpack i like since. some time before that (i guess when d&p launched the galaxy merch) i saw SO many people wearing it, but i don't think i knew where it was from then

[@lillianoftheveil]

oh god the hipster look, I tried so hard to be hipster when i was in high school...I was also very religious at the time so there was a very specific "cool Christian" youth pastor vibe I tried to achieve. I cringe at the thought.

[@mjrrrrr]

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.

[@mjrrrrr]

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

[@starfrog1696]

I am having intense flashbacks due to the mustaches. Also I love your voice, makes the terrifying dip back into “grunge girl” culture much more bearable. I remember my friends and I going through that in middle school and man, that was unhealthy.

[@lunaakuma5044]

As a tween/teen with a tumblr account I didn't feel... confident enough to wear what I really wanted (except nerd glasses. I literally wore plastic Nerd glasses because I dislike the way my face looks without glasses) But now as young confused adult person, I find that I feel the best in those aesthetics I liked as a teen: flower crowns, glasses, pastel goth outfits.. Also button ups for more...gender neutral days. Button ups for days

[@Todomo]

i’m only 19 now but i definitely was all in the galaxy cats with glasses and moustaches thing. I don’t even know how?? I didn’t have internet? I bet I saw it in Justice and Claire’s.

[@ha_des]

16:35 i think a lot of that angst evolved/was mixed with the grunge aesthetic, especially the more "teenage angst" part of it (especially the edgy, depressed quotes spraypainted on abandonned buildings or slapped on a black background, i produced a lot of those myself lol)

[@sometimeslemons]

Omg I remember the mustache era all too well. My mom recently found a bacon necklace with googly eyes and mustache from my old stuff. I started having flashbacks.

[@caittastic]

you say that harry's razors arent aggressively gendered, but the google result page is full of "HARRY'S MENS RAZORS FOR MEN"

[@mikeymullins5305]

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

[@caittastic]

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

[@transsexual_computer_faery]

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

[@friedatheiling598]

how are these always SO accurate. Like getting dragged by the collar of your oversized denim jacket through a time portal