One of the main ways the users of Tumblr have affected my everyday life is by their warped sense of humor.
Sometimes, as I’m laughing hysterically at a Tumblr post, the people around me will ask, “What is it? I want to see!” With tears in my eyes I’ll turn my computer around to let them see the post. Often I’ll get a weak chuckle or a confused expression in response. I’ll try to explain the humorous aspect, but we all know trying to explain the joke makes it less funny. So thanks for putting me in so many awkward situations, Tumblr.
This post is the first of several dedicated to the many funny posts on Tumblr. Some of these everyone will laugh at. Some of them require background knowledge or knowledge of current events to get the joke. And some of them … I don’t even know, man.
Let’s start with something everyone can find funny, one of my favorite examples of Tumblr humor:
Here’s a great post that makes fun of the sentence structure. The commentators of this post choose to interpret the sentence as stating that the crayon will only burn for 30 minutes in an emergency situation. Naturally, one has to wonder what sort of emergency situations apply. I also personally love the aesthetic quality of a crayon on fire.
Now for some creative Tumblr humor. One of the most unique things about Tumblr is the way its users combine old and new media, a topic which will be explored in depth in a later post. This is one of my favorite examples, a combination of an older piece of literature with modern music.
I don’t even know what prompted the original poster to bring those two elements together. But in the Tumblr world, posts like this beg to be created. The second user actually took the time to sit down and puzzle out how Macklemore’s song “Thrift Shop” would be presented in the style of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven,” and they did it brilliantly. Not only is it hilarious, but it shows the intelligence and creativity of some Tumblr users.
Here’s one that pokes fun at some of the glitches of the new iPhone 6. Apparently it has a habit of bending when someone tries to keep it in a back–or even a front–pocket. So Tumblr had a little fun with that.
Okay, now we’ll get into the weird stuff. This is where I start to think my sense of humor has been permanently twisted by this website.
So here’s something interesting. All of the users who contributed to that post don’t exist at those URLs anymore. Maybe because their mere connection to this post means they were harassed with hundreds of questions about why it even exists. But really. Someone had this idea, managed to scrounge up several GameCubes (or maybe they just had a pile in their basement, I don’t know) and placed them among flowers. If I saw just the picture I would probably wonder what sort of recreational drugs the original poster was on, but the caption really makes this funny. Now I’m picturing a bunch of GameCubes frolicking in a field.
Maybe it’s the pun. Maybe it’s the absurdity of a dog sitting in a news studio. Maybe it’s his blunt reply and the clear indication that this dog has been through puns like this before and will not tolerate this sort of unprofessionalism any longer. Whatever it is, this post gets me every time.
Finally, I think this post sums up Tumblr’s sense of humor quite nicely. Often no caption is required to get the humor across, and this Tumblr user evidently did not feel the need to include one. But everyone once in a while, some person scrolling through their dashboard will come across a post like this and begin to contemplate what exactly led them to this website, to the moment in their existence when they must be subjected to this sort of awful humor.
In this situation, I think the profanity is entirely justified.
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