Though, to many of us, 2014 feels like yesterday, some young internet users are already nostalgic for that not-so-bygone era, one of indie pop, American Apparel, and reblogging moody gifs. It’s called «Tumblrcore» since the axis on which that nostalgia revolves is Tumblr, a social media platform that ruled a certain side of the internet about a decade ago. (It’s still running, but I don’t know anyone who is still active on it.) Beyond an aesthetic affinity, though, Tumblrcore reveals a yearning for a simpler time on social media—one that inspired us instead of simply distracting us.

Like many teens of the 20-teens (2012-2015), I logged a lot of time on Tumblr after school. The hours I spent browsing were mostly confined to my laptop (Tumblr was much more a desktop medium than it was a mobile one, at least in my experience). I sat in my bedroom, and rarely anywhere else, browsing my feed, hand-curating posts to re-blog to one of my various niche blogs. I started out following a few of my friends from school, then I would follow the blogs that they reblogged from, and so on, hand-selecting my feed to suit my interests. It didn’t show me anything I hadn’t signed up to see. My library of trusted sources (namely, other teenagers on laptops) rarely let me down.