welcome! I'm here to talk about four tumblr aesthetics that were era defining I'm my opinion. this review of each aesthetic is entirely based on my own research aswell as my own experience in the site around this era. it has to be noted that old Tumblr aesthetics cannot be put into tight neat little boxes as todays '-core' suffix aesthetics, since these aesthetics had no name or proper designation back then, so lots of them merged with eachother in various aspects. now that that's clear, lets begin?

1. basic tumblr girl

basic tumblr girl, as I call it, was the vsco girl aesthetic of the era. some of the influence of it came from kawaii fashion, pastel goth and the one direction craze, aswell as the very beggining of youtube as a way to earn money. the most common imagery for this aesthetic consisted in baby lips products, iphones, fast foods like donuts and fries, starbucks drinks, polaroid cameras, john green books, and very bright colors. sometimes, when bouncing into a more pastel-dolly aesthetic, it implemented pastel colors. this aesthetic was the Consumerism Olympics.

important music for this aesthetic was almost anything top 50 global and most of the trendy artists of the era. ariana grande, one direction, 5sos, little mix, etc.

2. soft grunge 

soft grunge sometimes mixed itself within hipster and pastel goth aesthetics. it was the dark moody one everyone remembers, easily defined by the glamourization of the depressed lifestyle and sometimes party-going lifestyle, but not to be confused with indie sleaze, since sleaze saw parties as something positive, soft grunge only saw it as a way to escape this world of eternal turmoil you were in.

common visuals amongst this aesthetic were dark colors, square lined patterns, minimalism, neon lights, creeper shoes, vinyls, cds, cigarettes, eyeliner, chokers, the tear emoji and the withered rose 🥀💧, and music was ESSENTIAL if not the whole thing this aesthetic revolved around (besides effy stonem and depression).

important artists to this aesthetic were arctic monkeys, the 1975, sky ferreira, the neighborhood, the xx, lana del rey, lorde and halsey. to a lesser degree and more present in other aesthetics that seemed to bounce off this one, marina and the diamonds, melanie martinez and panic at the disco were relevant. 

3. galaxy hipster

the galaxy hipster aesthetic is my favourite, and I'm sure it doesn't have a specific denomination in the aesthetic wiki due to the fact that it bounced off in many others, like the swag aesthetic, pastel goth and normcore of the era, with every galaxy being different according to the aesthetic. still, it's a subgenre of the hipster aesthetic as the name suggests.

normally, ignoring the other aesthetics it influenced, galaxy hipster featured purple, blue, teal, white, pink galaxies. the imagery ranged from cats and fast food to triangles, mustaches and glasses. it centered around the idea of being an unicorn and being weird or just out of this world. galaxy clothing was VERY popular, often paired with black clothes or a boho style. less commonly, you could see this paired with owls, wolves and feathers.

important music for this aesthetic seems to be passionpit, mgmt, m83, tame impala, capital cities and in less impact but present nonetheless, miley cyrus and her album bangerz, aswell as miley cyrus and her dead petz.

4. Indie sleaze

indie sleaze was an aesthetic fixated on the idea of being the life of the party. this is a /very likely/ theory of mine, but to me it feels like a direct result of the 2000s obssesion with party culture. jersey shore and kesha being big influences.

in this aesthetic, you were drunk, high. it's 4 am and you've been dancing since 8 but the party's just getting started. you have a tshirt with quirky text in it, and you're really sad— but who cares? you only live once! and you also just puked a ton of glitter. 

common imagery was drinks, sunglasses, shirts with quirky text, messy hair, messy eyeliner, glitter vomit, glitter toilets, glitter tears, sunglasses, necklaces, alcohol. parties. important artists of this era were sky ferreira, charli xcx, lcd soundsystem, peaches and santigold.

did you know this aesthetic is making a slight comeback? yup, thanks to charli xcx's brat, the dare and the promotion of party culture due to the incoming economic recession, we are drifting back to it.

well! this is the end of this blog, sort of. if this gets popular enough, I might add to it by talking about pastel goth and vintage americana. I hope this helped some curious younger souls obssesed with the internet of the olden days, or it caused happy nostalgia to people around my age or older. <3 please leave kudos and/or comments to know you liked it and if I should keep writing about these aesthetics!