you know how whales die and drift down to the bottom of the ocean and all the shit that lives in the benthic zone feeds on the carcass? a creature they have never seen Alive before but nevertheless depend on for sustenance? in the wider internet ecosystem, tumblr is that whale

not just the endless stream of reposted screenshots of text posts, but like, how many funny internet memes can be directly traced back to random high schoolers from florida with unsupervised internet access?

I also need to stress here that I absolutely still use tumblr on a daily basis because after a literal decade I've rewired some core part of my brain to be dependent on a site where people used to call the CEO "daddy karp." it's like shrapnel forever embedded in my psychic wound.