Why we can't stop romanticising the 2014 Tumblr era
Soft grunge, infinity scarves, and a very specific kind of melancholy are back. Or maybe they never left.
By Sarah Jenkins · May 13, 2026 · 5 min read
Open TikTok right now and you will, within roughly four scrolls, encounter someone in their twenties weeping nostalgically about a website most of them used between the ages of twelve and sixteen.
The diagnosis is easy: we miss the version of the internet that didn't try to sell us anything. The version where being weird in public was the whole point. Tumblr, for all its many sins, was that.