This document defines and explains slang terms commonly used on the microblogging platform Tumblr. It provides over 30 terms with brief descriptions, such as "fandom" referring to a fan community for a show or creation, "GPOY" meaning a gratuitous picture of yourself, and "canon" being the original version of a show before fans add their own elements. The document aims to help readers understand the language used between Tumblr users.

1. Vea Cariño
Bachelor in Secondary Education
University of Santo Tomas

2. Short Background of Tumblr
• Defined by wikipedia
- is a microblogging platform and social networking
website founded by David Karp and owned by Yahoo! Inc. The
service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a
short-form blog.
• Defined by tumblr itself…
- Tumblr lets you effortlessly share anything.
Post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos from your
browser, phone, desktop, email or wherever you happen to be.
You can customize everything, from colors to your theme's HTML.

3. SLANG
•
Fandom - A show/creation always has a collection of fans with its own
art style and in jokes. This collection of said fans is called a fandom.
•
GPOY - Gratuitous Picture of Yourself. May be an actual picture of you,
or it could be anything that describes you in any way.
Example:
“When you love a character so
much you wish they were real.”
“Oh man, GPOY.”
•
Tl;dr - Too long, didn’t read. When someone makes a super long post on
something, whether it be stupid or not.
•
Canon - The original version of a show/creation before the fans get to it
and add their own spin and in jokes. There is always a canon, and most
choose to follow it, but it can be deviated from.

4. SLANG
•
Head canon - A slight alteration to the canon inside someone’s head that
adds their own spin to it. People often have head canons about things that
were not revealed or mentioned in the original book/movie/show etc.
Example:
In my head canon, Snape’s picture always followed the
descendants of Harry Potter around Hogwarts castle, and no-one else.
•
Ship - A pairing in your fandom(s) that you support/love.
•
Otp - One true pairing. That ship you love the most and will defend at any
cost.
•
HQ/HD - High quality/high definition.

5. SLANG
•
Perf – short for perfect. Word use to describe perfection that you can’t
actually spot anything wrong with it.
•
Preach - To agree with, strongly.
(Same as the slang THIS)
•
Spam - When someone posts a lot of the same stuff all at once.
•
Haters - People who post hate about a person or character/ leave awful
messages in people’s ask boxes.
•
Anons - People who leave anonymous messages in other’s ask boxes.

6. SLANG
•
Quality - Good / awesome. A blog may or may not be a quality blog,
depending on your opinions and taste.
•
TMI - Too much information. Often a tag so people can avoid personal
posts if they so wish.
•
Slash - A fanfiction term. Originally indicating a fanfiction about a ship,
ie; Harry/Hermione, Amy/Rory, etc. Be warned when reading slash; it is
not for the immature.
•
Smh - Shake my head.
•
RP - Role play. When two people write a story in turns, each taking the
role of one character.
•
Godmoding - When one takes control of another’s character in an RP.
Unless otherwise stated, this is a big no-no.
•
Dash - Your dashboard.

7. SLANG
•
Unf - Universal noise of f***ing. As much as I want to make this
presentation as clean as possible, but since we’re talking about tumblr…
we can’t really avoid it.
•
Meme - A collection of useless information that is nonetheless
entertaining. There are many different forms of memes, and even more
catagories of meme.
•
NSFW - Not safe for work. Things tagged as such should not be
looked at at work, for fear of being fired.
•
Hnng - A tumblr mating call. Very attractive people are often tagged as
such. Also a greeting to find fellow hipsters on Omegle.
•
Tumblr famous - A term used to describe some blogs that have
thousands of followers, and are generally very quality. Blogs are often
considered “tumblr famous” when they reach 1000 followers and stop
following back.

8. SLANG
•
Mainstream - The “popular” culture. Ie, the exact opposite and most
hated enemy of tumblr. Facebook is considered mainstream, and
therefore it is severely disliked.
•
Reposting - When someone saves a picture and reblogs it as their own.
It is basically stealing, and people hate it. The biggest no-no of all the
no-nos.
•
Notes - The number of people who have reblogged/liked something.
•
Ugh - A distasteful sigh, often said in frustration.
•
Me gusta - I like. Spanish.
•
Me no gusta - I don’t like. Also Spanish.

9. SLANG
•
Tags - The little pieces of text at the bottom of a post that allow you to
see similar posts when you click on them. You can “track” tags, letting
you see all posts with these tags. Tracked tags are kept above your
“search tags” bar on the right-hand side of your dash.
•
Dying. Usually means “dying from laughter”.
•
BB. Baby. Your favourite celebrities/people that you love and will
defend at any cost.
•
Angst. Fan fiction term. Sad or depressing fanfiction.
•
Rec. Recommended. Usually used in context of fan fiction.

10. SLANG
•
Queue - A list of tags that someone makes so that tumblr can post it automatically
for them when they’re not on.
•
AU - Alternate Universe. Fan fiction term.
A what if? Kind of story, that only uses
slight changes of canon to look at the
possible consequences.
•
Swag - Swag is an immesurable
quantity that is gained and lost, and can
be compared to awesome. The more swag
you have, the more awesome you are.
Some people, but very few, have infinite swag.
•
IRL - In real life.
•
Crack - Extremely outlandish ideas that fandoms come up with that are so wildly
bizarre that they appear to have been thought up whilst the author was on crack
cocaine.
Source : http://fivepips.tumblr.com/post/10513662622/a-guide-to-tumblr-terms-and-slang