Blorbo from your shows… Scrungly from your bands… What about Me? From The Internet?
You may have seen some fresh slang spreading across the internet over the past week or so, consisting mostly of noises you’d expect to hear coming out of claymation characters from a children’s show, a-la Pingu or The Clangers. Blorbo this, Scrungly that – but what exactly does it all mean?
The phrase originated from a Tumblr post (naturally!) about people tagging posts with the names of their favourite characters. For those of you who’ve been away from Tumblr for a good few years now, like myself, Tumblr now helpfully shows all tags to the original poster in their notifications bar, same
as they would a reply or comment. Not ideal.
Example:
“God fucking dammit I just want to fuck Godzilla so bad”
(reblog) (like)
#omg this is just like Newton Geiszler from Pacific Rim
In this instance, Newton Geiszler would be the “Blorbo”.
The phrase blew up as a meme after a post by Tumblr user thelustiestargonianmaid saying “Bitches will be like ‘prev tags omg’ on my post and I check the prev tags and it’s like ‘blorbo from my shows.'” After this, the phrase began its gradual ascent to meme status – as Tumblr wants to do. The posts could deal with anything, from song lyrics, to lines of poetry, to memes.
In a sense, Blorbo blowing up (not literally, unless maybe your Blorbo is from Grey’s Anatomy) is the fault of the Tumblr Staff and their endless changes to the platform. Tagging posts with character names and having blogs dedicated to content that seems relevant to your favourite character (or, your Blorbo) is far from being a new phenomenon. It’s just that now, when you tag Blorbo, everyone gets to – or has to – see it. Time to turn the spotlight on your Blorbings…
Furthermore, recently Tumblr has cocked up entirely by banning a whole swathe of random tags in an attempt to block “adult content” from the iOS app. In theory, this is so that the site fits in with the Apple Store’s T&Cs, but that doesn’t… Exactly make the website any more usable. Tags that have fallen victim to the great Tumblr Ban includes “#Girl”, “#Baby Boy”, and “#Knot”. Okay, so I know why that last one is banned, but that doesn’t make it any better. Maybe Tumblr users inventing their own dialogue is their only way of circumnavigating the absurdly broken website’s even MORE absurdly broken tagging system these days.
Toni Oisin H.C. is the Head of Audio at QSO Media. Read more of his writing here.
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