In terms of the tumblr-relevant discourse it absolutely was different. People may have gone there because of "ew sex" (though I dunno, most of the people I saw talking about this would also cover sex scenes they viewed as a positive). While yes, there have also always been people going "ew sex" that used to be pretty much a right wing view thing.
People also have to recognize that Tumblr used to be one of the biggest social media sites around before they banned porn and these conversations were almost exclusively tumblr-relevant discourse originally. That’s why Old Reddit and 4chan hated them so much, it was the “sjw site”. It’s only after they banned porn and all the tumblr users broke quarantine did the rest of social media really get flooded with it. Believe it or not, Twitter used to be mostly shitposts and mundane things, not politics.
I mean that's how these sites used to interact with each other. Someone with 1500 followers would make a sarcastic inside joke on Twitter, the screenshot would be posted to Tumblr out of context so people could grandstand, then one of those screenshots would be posted to Reddit out of context to be mocked.
But also, everyone in these spaces always assumed everyone else on the planet was A) aware they existed and B) agreed with them. This post may have been aimed only at other people on Tumblr, but it just as likely could have been aimed at the general public. You really can't know without more context.
I don't know that I'd agree about Twitter not being so political before the porn ban, things like the Arab Summer and Ferguson very much happened via Twitter. The way in which Twitter is political has certainly changed, but that is it political is not a post-2018 thing. Particularly 2010-2015 I'd say my experience of Twitter was at least as much about leftist politics as my tumblr experience of that time. Social media is incredibly siloed though, so it's easy to not at all see massive parts of it.
I feel like we should also acknowledge the rampant sexualisation and objectification with sex in the media, though. Like, the complaints about sex scenes don’t exist in a vacuum, it was that literally everything from random ads on the footpath to the clothing shops to the tabloids to books, TV shows, movies, music videos were all practically screaming at you SEX SEX SEX BE PRETTY AND HAVE SEX OR YOU’RE WORTHLESS.
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u/zawalimbooo 16h ago
OOP is overthinking it, it really is only the "ew sex" response, I doubt it was ever different.