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ICYMI

The Subreddits That Ruined the Internet

ICYMI

Slate Podcasts

Entertainment News, News, Tech News, Society & Culture

3.8678 Ratings

🗓️ 1 December 2021

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The subreddit r/TumblrInAction started out in the early 2010s as a place to mock the sorts of oversimplified social justice posts all over Tumblr, but it quickly became a breeding ground for online hate. On today’s episode, Rachelle and Allegra discuss their own history as Tumblr teens, the simplified and misguided ways Tumblr posts tried to share progressive ideology, and how the culture of one subset of Reddit forums that made fun of those posts eventually led to GamerGate and all sorts of online harassment tactics. Podcast production by Daniel Schroeder and Derek John. Support ICYMI and listen to the show with zero ads. Sign up to become a Slate Plus member for just $1 for your first month. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

All right, I found something good already and I think I'm getting a sense of what kind of

0:10.0

subreddit this is.

0:13.0

Hi, I'm Rachel Hampton and you're listening to I see why am I.

0:16.5

In case you missed it, Slate's podcast about internet culture.

0:20.1

And as you can tell, Madison is not

0:22.7

here. I have finally become the Supreme. No, she is actually on vacation. Everyone take your

0:29.5

PTO before it runs out at the end of the year. So today, we're joined by one of our editors,

0:34.4

Allegra Frank. Hi, Allegra. Hi, Rachel. Thanks for having me. I'm so glad you're here,

0:41.2

not least because every single time the cat's away, the mouse gets to play, aka Madison's Away,

0:47.4

and we're going to talk about Tumblr. I honestly feel like any time I come in, it's to stop you from having your

1:00.3

Joker moment of like the longer I'm not allowed to talk about Tumblr, the more likely

1:06.5

I'm going to go rogue and destroy this podcast from within.

1:09.8

Exactly. You're really kind of a

1:11.4

backstop to keep me from going full joker on the podcast and like fully just ripping our team

1:17.7

apart. So thank you for that public service. I'm happy to be the glue. So we're talking, of course,

1:25.8

about Tumblr, but specifically social justice Tumblr.

1:29.6

Because what a wild and weird place that raised me.

1:33.8

Sorry, Mom.

1:36.9

So I'm going to start off light because shit gets a little dicey on social justice Tumblr.

1:41.6

But Allegra, what's the most ridiculous social justice post you saw

1:45.8

in your days on the platform? Yeah. So we were talking about this and I was trying to rack my brain

1:51.3

of all the things I had deleted from it of my, like from my days of sifting through people

...

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