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Users who set up an account can “follow” other blogs, upon which the content posted to those blogs converges into their “dashboard” feed. Following is not necessarily reciprocal, although bloggers within specific communities do follow each other and refer to each other as “mutuals” (see Chapter 3). Further, “lists” of whom one follows are not automatically visible to others, but rather, one has to select a blog theme that allows for it and choose to publish the list. Posts seen on one’s dashboard can be “liked” by clicking the heart button (introduced in 2008), replied to by clicking the “reply” button (introduced in 2010), or reblogged by clicking the “reblog” button. Each user sees what they themselves have liked in the “likes” list, which is, again, hidden from others. All of the likes, replies, and reblogs of a particular post are summarily calculated as “notes,” which is the primary metric of how much attention a post has generated on the platform.

To reblog is to repost someone else’s post to your own blog, whether partially or entirely. Reblogging (and “following”) were tumblr’s original features from its launch in March 2007, preceding retweeting on Twitter¹ and sharing on Facebook. Reblogging has always been a central practice on tumblr, with less than 10 percent of content qualifying as original (Xu et al. 2014). Clicking on the reblog button opens someone else’s post in a new window allowing the reposter to add to it or reblog it as is. All post types are rebloggable, so one might reblog an image with a caption, a text post, a GIF set with comments, or a set of nested, cascading threads of previous reblogs, wherein every next reblogger has added a comment or a sentiment (see Figure 1.3).²

Initially, only text could be added to reblogs, but a 2017 update made adding images possible, which led to long intertextual image threads. Authorship of the original post as well as the content added in previous reblogs can be deleted from the body of the post. Perceptions of such deletion vary across users. For some it is an affront, while for others it is a perfectly natural aspect of curation. The source of the original post, as well the blog from which it was most recently reblogged, remains embedded in the code and visible at the top of the post even when the information is deleted from the body of the post.

Figure 1.3: Artist’s impression of an example of a cascading multi-reblog post on tumblr. Art provided by River Juno.

These features make authorship and curatorship visible, which has further social implications. Interacting with other people’s content via reblogging deincentivizes trolling and increases accountability for one’s words (Renninger 2014). Fieldwork across different user groups has shown that people tend to reblog content they agree with or appreciate, because reblogging out of hate publishes the disliked content on one’s own blog (Kanai 2015; Shorey 2015). Reblogging has taken on myriad additional meanings on tumblr. It fosters dialogue, consciousness-raising, and community creation (Connelly 2015; Marquart 2010), and allows the shy to express themselves (Salmon 2012). But it is also used to curate, reappropriate, frame, and remix – as one of media scholar Alessandra Mondin’s (2017) research participants said, “the way a lot of tumblr bloggers reblog things makes them feminist and/or queer” (see Chapters 5 and 6). Further, media scholar Akane Kanai (2019) has argued that reblogging is a form of phatic communication that articulates a sense of connection and retains sociability instead of, or in addition to, directly exchanging information. It is common for tumblr users to start a relationship by reblogging each other’s content with thoughtful commentary or funny compliments.

Reblogging is also an affective practice. Digital media anthropologist Alexander Cho (2015a) describes reblogging through Paasonen’s (2011) notion of “resonance” and his own notion of “reverb,” both of which highlight the sensation of intensity and affect involved in noticing and choosing to reblog posts, but also in demarcating the quality that makes some posts so rebloggable. Kanai (2017) adds “relatability” to the types of affect that drive reblogging. Relatability builds publics of like-minded users, who relate to each other’s daily experiences. All three – resonance, reverberation, and relatability – are experienced based on one’s life circumstance, thus bringing together people with similar experiences of, among other things, marginalization or discrimination, contributing to emergence of what we call silos (see Chapter 2).