ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on fans' negotiative use of the visual microblogging site Tumblr, with special attention to the emerging aesthetic traditions that have evolved out of the friction between fan and interface. Fans use Tumblr in tandem with other sites, including Dreamwidth, Archive of Our Own, Twitter, YouTube, 8Tracks, DeviantArt, and many others. On Tumblr, many fans use hashtags in what often seems like purposefully illogical and incoherent ways. The exuberance and excess of fannish effect on Tumblr can also be understood as articulating a new mode of feminism. The aesthetic modes of the gifset and hashtag-set weave together into the collective authorship of the self-reflexive, multiauthored Tumblr post. Tumblr fans also use hashtags and gifsets to address an individual fan's relationship with Tumblr as a corporation and as an interface.
