Substack is not the new Tumblr

and it never fucking will be

First of all, some of you people are playing identity politics in your bios. If this platform resembled Tumblr in the slightest, y’all would constantly stand the consequences of being confronted with complete strangers passing judgement based on those identities. That’s not happening for the most part – everyone here plays nice. Almost too nice. The algorithm prioritizes notes of a certain romantic tone. You know the ones. They have a little edge and a suggestion of substance. This part of the notes-realm feels neutered. It is also the only place where I have seen the claim that Substack is the new Tumblr. If anything, Substack approximates Thought Catalog before it can ever approach the level of legend of that cursed blue hellsite.

an incomparable mythology

Nowhere on Reddit or 4Chan – or whatever other website you sick fucks know of – can one person find so much human dialectical dynamism as they might find on Tumblr. And yet, Substack’s notes-realm will have you believe Tumblr’s charm was in the aesthetics, the collection of images, the circulation of visuals. Although that is an important part of the equation, tumblrinas are proof that the real Tumblr experience is the inevitable human interaction. Tumblr is ridden with eloquence in all her variables – silly, serious, flabbergasted, righteous, sarcastic, horny, ironic, idyllic – it really is incomparable. It’s not about the prototypal call-out posts. There’s a beautiful and confrontational vibe to it. That’s the real reason for its enduring success. The tension between humans exchanging thought.

I have been a regular Tumblr user since 2009. Me and thousands of other adolescents were chronically-online before the term even came up. I am fortunate to say I have made lifelong friendships on Tumblr. My wife and I would have never met had it not been for the hellsite. But more on that later. There has always been something really organic about the Tumblr homepage. To be frank, the biggest change from then to now is the format of the advertisements, which now take an annoyingly large part of the screen.

Phlemuns and Erika Kamano are still on my dashboard. Back when I first joined, Erika’s username was ‘poisoned candy floss.’ I still remember when James Flemons first posted he was doing a project for Solange. Fashion icons like Rian Phin and Dara Allen had immaculate Tumblrs. That’s on the art side. There is still a lot of internationalist and anti-imperialist perspective on there. There is just as much news and commentary on Palestine, Yemen, Sudan, Libya, China than there was ten years ago. When the tone wasn’t specifically political, it was mega informational. You can still find masterposts about any topic in the world.

When I moved to the United States all I did was go to school. Not all of the classes I took in Mexico counted towards a credit, so I enrolled in remedial classes, night school, summer school. From the time I was 15 years old, I would be in school for maybe 12 hours a day – I graduated both high school and college a year early. I didn’t hate school but I hated living in the USA. Tumblr was my refuge. My additional education. Knowledge that is embraced rather than imposed. I distinctly remember this masterpost about Obama’s 2012 drone strikes. I would come home and study each link religiously. It was my important and daily ritual to log onto the computer and learn to research for the sake of knowledge. It affirmed and sharpened my anti-imperialist sentiment. It was beyond formative.

There was also some actually bonkers site-wide drama that left the enclosure and reached the mainstream in a big way. A couple highlights:

• That one pagan who was digging up bones.

• The fake superstar Lucia Cole exposed by actual genius and archivist wonder Popculturediedin2009 (his site is private right now but the twitter account is up).

• Pizza selling diet pills.

fateful encounters

Aside from the characteristic antics of my mentally-ill kin, most of my time on there, at least up until I graduated college, was mostly spent on finding new music. By the time I was a senior in high school, I was downloading all my music straight from Tumblr so it could be easily uploaded to my iPod. This method worked for me until about 2015, when the plugin stopped working.

To be confronted and confrontational is part of the thread of amity on Tumblr, but it's not to say you can't carve out your own corner and connect with whomever you want however you like. I used to spend hours browsing the tags of the musicians I was currently into. That’s how I met Tawnya, who lived in SoCal and was into the same punky surfer shit I was into. I met Liv, author of alive and well, my dear friend who loves fashion and anime and has a thousand more interesting stories about Tumblr than me. Not only did Liv introduce me to the only video game I have ever deigned to play – Katamari – they were also present the night Tawnya introduced me to the bona fide love of my life.

Che, now my wife, was friends with Tawnya in real life. She and I had never perceived each other on Tumblr in spite of having grown up there. Liv and I were both visiting NYC and went out to a gay karaoke Tawnya invited us to. Che wasn’t even going to go, but she had to return Tawnya’s wallet and, unbeknownst to both of us, seal our fate. We have been happily married for over five years. Six years this summer, baby. We love telling the story of how we met: incidentally, in person, in New York City, oh yeah and that bit about our longtime Tumblr mutuals. We are so fucking lucky.

The notes-realm wants you to believe Substack has the potential for this type of connection. I am sure they are out there, but I have yet to find any anecdotes of this platform being involved in any fateful encounters like that.

innate inadequacies

Purportedly, Substack is for writers. Everyone knows many of the best writers are also the most earnest readers. It’s not incidental. In spite of the claims that this platform is for writers, the tools to read and write fail the users immensely.

They’re not making the reading and cataloguing of articles any easier. I may be able to see what articles I have read, but I cannot create my own tags, I cannot make my own folders and I cannot save my highlights. No. I have to share them in the notes-realm as a quote. It’s insufferable. There’s so much to read here! And I read so much of it! And I cannot understand how the fuck $29 million in revenue doesn’t add up to new writing and reading features. I cannot center-text anything that is not formatted as poetry or a button of some kind. It is all very ridiculous. I won't even touch the reels-realm. Seriously, I haven’t clicked the button.

Let’s be real. Substack is not in the business of independent publishing. It is a credit card processor. It really is that simple. They earn money, pay the executives the big bucks, and spend much on subsidizing writers like right-wing mommy-blogger House In Habit.

Substack wants you to pay to interact with creators. I am spoiled. I grew up collectively and repeatedly dunking on people like communismkills – which hilariously culminated in an invitation to pay her to shut up. That would literally never happen here.

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My zine COMPUTER USE is a screenshot fever dream of my time growing up on the internet. There’s snippets of over 10 years of my deleted tumblr accounts and more corners of my digital life. It’s available in sliding scale. Oh! and if you sign my guestbook, I’ll stuff your envelope with many freebies.