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Teens, Tumblr and the hidden worlds of the social web
Annie MacfarlaneOn an unproductive afternoon of idly clicking through interconnected blog posts, I recently found myself on a web page dedicated to the curious phenomenon of Jared and Savannah.
“The cutest couple on earth!” sighed the author. “I wish this was my life.”
Assuming for the moment that the “Javannah” phenomenon has equally passed you by, allow me to describe what I found down this particular rabbit hole. Jared and Savannah are a sometimes-couple of cookie cutter American high school kids who have achieved considerable notoriety through uploading cutesy videos of themselves doing adorable things, like playfully hitting each other in the face and staging skin-crawlingly uncomfortable, massively amplified public displays of affection. Like a shot in the arm of high-fructose corn syrup, their many and varied social media profiles are filled with BFFs, Florida sunshine and inevitably, the occasional impassioned drama.
From a breathless commentator on Yahoo! answers: “Savannah and Jared are a tumblr famous couple for uploading the cutest pictures and videos of them together... Basically they're no one special but well known for being the cutest teenage couple "on earth".”
A quick browse of Tumblr reveals that the clamour for new information, pictures and videos of them is seemingly insatiable.
Teens taking extraordinary steps to secure decades of excruciating embarrassment at family gatherings is nothing new, but what’s interesting is the level of celebrity these two have achieved, while simultaneously being off the radar of anyone who isn’t 16 and on Tumblr. A quick poll of my own friends and colleagues confirms that exactly no one in my age group is willing to admit to having heard of them.
But don’t underestimate the fan club they do have: Tumblr is now a legitimate social media behemoth, and it’s bigger among this age group even than Facebook. Outside of Tumblr, some of “Javannah”’s YouTube videos have raised well over 3 million views. Savannah’s personal Twitter account has topped a quarter of a million followers, and she’s angling for a verified account. It’s no wonder she is anxious to take some control of her identity, given the army of copycat Savannahs who have appeared, claimed her images, speculatively revealed the most intimate details of her personal relationships and fervently persecuted her supposed love rivals. The challenges of childhood celebrity are well documented, and it is troubling to think that there are school children navigating these waters without even the threadbare professional support that comes with more traditional paths to fame.
Leaving these two aside for the moment, the fact that hidden subcultures exist on this scale is fascinating in itself. Many of us forget how much the growth of social networks has led us to self-select the media we consume. It’s very easy to fall under the illusion that spending an afternoon on Twitter connects us with the rest of the world, but most of us are really listening to an intentionally-selected stream of commentators who share our interests, share our humour and rarely challenge our opinions. As our news sources become increasingly personalised, we are able to consume more information but our worldview shrinks. Like perpetually gazing out through an Instagram lens, we habitually crop the web down and apply a filter that’s as blue or as rosy as our character dictates.
The implications of this become apparent when our viewfinder chances to skim over one of the more extreme political blogs or social networks. While the increasingly connected digital world has raised the status of niche interests and provided unparalleled support for those who fear rejection elsewhere, it can also be rather like surrounding oneself with “yes-men”, perpetually reinforcing dubious opinions and creating the illusion of acceptance for ideas that would otherwise be soundly challenged.
As the cultural environment of the web becomes increasingly polarised, it’s wise to challenge our preconceptions about online behaviour and how social media is arranged and consumed. Digital marketers can be more guilty of these preconceptions than anyone, shouting into an echo chamber of like-minded connections and making lazy assumptions about how digital audiences behave, based on observation of the tech -savvy, non-representative group of their own connections.
Jared and Savannah’s time in the spotlight will no doubt pass, and others will take up the mantle. The social web looks very different to them and their peers than it does to any of us, and the way they consume it and the contributions they make to it likely make perfect sense within the confines of that view. I hope they are wiser than us about the way they appear from the outside looking in and that they’ll use that wisdom to anticipate and deal with any future issues that might arise from dubious videos they made as teenagers. I hope we’ll also learn to place our own activities in context and occasionally zoom out enough to see the wider view.
What’s clear is that however much we think we know about the culture of the social web, we can only ever be scraping the surface.
Annie Macfarlane is head of community management at Yomego
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Tumblr is the only social network site that prying, curious and intruding adults have not ruined. Teenagers are able to express themselves freely on tumblr and they are not judged or forced to conform with society there. Please back the fuck away from our site, cheers.
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Agree with the above comment. Tumblr users unanimously view it as a place for true expression, where the things they want or need to say, but do not want to expose to facebook or real life friends, can be said. Take, for example, a frustrated/depressed high school student. This student isn't overly social, they tend to prefer reading or simply being alone, to parties etc. They don't get on with teachers, and don't get on with their classmates, who would judge them for their obsessions, personality, views. On Tumblr, they can rage and rant, tell the world how much that one kid pisses them off, let out their frustrations and be themselves. I don't mean the plastic, smile-for-the-camera 'be yourself' that you, dear author, would assume (yes, I am accusing you of gripping that exact 'cookie cutter' personality you have tried to demonise) and I know that you would assume this because of how you have written this. You actually seem surprised that people would obsess over couples. Welcome to the internet. You clearly have yet to leave the confines of Twitter and Facebook. The kind of 'be yourself' I am referring to is indeed nothing like this sunny, artsy (let's face it, totes hipster) lifestyle you might imagine. I am referring to the serious nerds, the basement dwellers who spend all their money on merch and sit in the dark surrounded by it as they scroll through pages of KirkxUhura. The people who society do not really want to 'be themselves' without visiting a psychiatrist about their 'antisocialness'. On Tumblr, they can spend as long as they want reading fanfiction or looking at fan art for their favourite character or even real life pairings - WITHOUT FEAR OF JUDGEMENT. In this article you have brought this activity up in the light of being bizarre, unnatural, perhaps instigated by this new site. A far more accurate view on this - at least for Tumblr users - is that yes, these things are strange, but they're what Tumblr's for. Trying to expose this as some kind of weird unseen underworld of the site is simply demonstrating that you haven't been using it long enough. It's not big news. The thing is, spend a week or so on Tumblr - get properly involved, follow hundreds of blogs and keep updated - and you will see that it's normal. Want to see Captain America snogging Iron Man? Go ahead, the tag's 'Stony'. How about throwing Loki into the mix? Sure, why not. These, in fact, are some of the most popular pairings for the Avengers fandom alone. The point I am trying to make is that this article is trying too hard to class Tumblr as a social networking site on the same plane as Facebook and Twitter, when it's not. Those sites are about personal life, about telling friends that you baked a cake, or what you had for dinner. Tumblr is the opposite - rather than projecting their glamorous lives onto the internet, it is a place for like-minded, similarly interested individuals to form friendships, come together, and celebrate their fandoms without being judged for crying over Sherlock, or for wanting to take their roleplay character completely seriously, where they will face support and guidance when they want to replicate an object or costume without snide comments, without being called sad, or lonely, because in the end, for many users, it's the one place they can be truly happy, and come out of their shell.
I, myself, am a Potterhead. I mean, I am completely and utterly devoted to the Harry Potter fandom, and have been since my papa read me the books. I was 3. I am now 17. The thing is, I am deeply, truly a fan - to the point that I am not ashamed to say I have formed emotional bonds to the characters, I can say that I think of Neville Longbottom when I want to be brave, that I think up little theories on the bus home from school about how the Potter and Weasley families could have grown up together if it hadn't been for that fateful night of Oct 31st 1981, that I frequently look at the date or the time and think what a specific character would be doing. I'm sad, boring, and mentally ill for this - at least, I am according to my classmates. The thing is, some people ARE these things, and I'm not ashamed to be one of those people. There are over seven billion people on this planet. If you are truly surprised that, of these seven billion, there are ninetysomething million - that's how many Tumblr users there are - who feel the same way about their own obsessions (not just fandoms, also hobbies like sewing or cooking or fashion or anything, anything you want in the whole fucking universe, your wish is my command) and express their true feelings about these things online, my friend if you are truly surprised that such a site exists then you need to find out more about the human race before you try again to write about a part of it. Sorry for such a long comment, but I needed to get this off my chest. That is, after all, one of the joys of the internet. Have a good day.
-Edit: Awkward moment when the comment is longer than teh article...
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