The Occupy Movement on Tumblr

When I'm not doing homework or playing video games, I'm generally on Tumblr. It's a (highly addicting) microblogging platform and growing social network. It's filled to the brim with gorgeous pictures and snarky comments, but I've also seen more about the Occupy movement on Tumblr than I have anywhere else.

The tumblr tag for Occupy Wall Street updates fairly frequently, which means people are always talking about it on tumblr. People post silly comics, their stories written on a large card, and serious discussions. People are bitter, and people are serious.

I would sooner trust the ordinary people blogging about their thoughts and experiences of Occupy Wall Street than the NYT (which completely changed its story about protestors being arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge on Oct. 1).

But why has Tumblr become the perfect place for people to discuss Occupy Wall Street? From my experiences, most people on the microblogging site are somewhere between 15 and 30 years old. Most are in college and going into debt, out of college and still in debt, or looking at colleges and already worrying about debt. Many supporters of the movement are young, and Tumblr is full of young tech-savvy people. Picture posts are an important part of Tumblr, which could be why so many posts in the past contained people writing their story and then writing "We are the 99%" at the end. People reblog the posts in solidarity, but they also then share their own stories.

I'm interested in seeing how this movement will grow on Tumblr. Will it be able to advance the movement, or will it be a place to vent about the 1%?