The person behind “Your Fave Is Problematic” Tumblr blog, which listed regrettable actions by celebrities, says she looks back on her blog with shame and regret
What was I trying to accomplish with my anonymous Tumblr? — If you were on Tumblr in the early 2010s … Tweets: @kattenbarge , @bafeldman , @mathewi , @michkeenah , @thelindsayellis , @iguanas_ , @starkillerqueen , @karnythia , @nytimes , @timeforjaya , @ameliabeing , @phoebewbridg , @coolmomfriend , @kwontent , @xandrei , @juliabainbridge , @devincf , @achillesteeth , @officedyke , @scottnover , @dan_dresdner , and @satiricole See also Mediagazer Tweets: Kat Tenbarge / @kattenbarge : The Tumblr user who popularized the word “problematic” (and who basically invented modern celebrity cancel culture) was a grieving, irrational high school senior at the time they ran their blog. Which basically sums up the entire state of internet culture. https://www.nytimes.com/... Brian Feldman / @bafeldman : it really can't be overstated how everything happening on twitter now is just tumblr from 8 years ago — except it's more embarrassing because now it's adults doing it, and it's algorithmically juiced https://www.nytimes.com/... Mathew Ingram / @mathewi : Great piece by the author of the Tumblr “Your Fave Is Problematic” https://www.nytimes.com/... Michelle / @michkeenah : this blog was a key player in the radicalisation of my 16 year old self https://twitter.com/... Lindsay Ellis / @thelindsayellis : Funny thing is compared to the current tumblr problematosohere YFIP is downright quaint https://www.nytimes.com/... @iguanas_ : She changed tumblr and the world with that blog https://twitter.com/... @starkillerqueen : I don't fully blame her for this, but that whole “your fave is problematic” thing taking root, especially on Tumblr, is why a post that was 2/3rds lies was able to poison K-pop fandom against Super Junior for the last like...decade. https://twitter.com/... Openly Black Mikki Kendall / @karnythia : If I read this will I find a strange erasure of every pre Tumblr platform? I feel like I will. https://twitter.com/... @nytimes : Your Fave is Problematic, a popular blog dedicated to “canceling” celebrities, counts Lena Dunham, Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga among its targets. Liat Kaplan, the blog's creator, reflects on her quest to punish the untouchable — and why she regrets it. https://www.nytimes.com/... Jaya Sundaresh / @timeforjaya : This moved me. All of us raised by Tumblr went through this, this period of hyper vigilance about other peoples' perceived flaws and “refusal” to conform to a standard of woke behavior that we were just beginning to articulate the boundaries of. Many of us regret it now. https://twitter.com/... Amelia / @ameliabeing : dissociating thinking about how this tumblr blog i remember from my adolescence changed the course of of the last 5 years of culture and discourse dramatically https://twitter.com/... @phoebewbridg : This is present day twitter, labelling people as problematic for everything ranging from ignorant stuff to sexual abuse really flattens the awfulness of really terrible crimes. https://twitter.com/... Iman / @coolmomfriend : this blog was emblematic of how online discourses were shaped and informed what they look today, critical reflection and denouncing its practices? tumblr diaspora pay your respects! https://twitter.com/... Wife Guy Wonu / @kwontent : it's so insane how u can trace the roots of today's internet back to this blog and i think people in internet communities have a lot of healing processing and self reflection to do! 💖💖💖 https://twitter.com/... Xan / @xandrei : Well this is a plot twist i didn't expect. Author of “your fav is problematic” recanting on the blog https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/... Julia Bainbridge / @juliabainbridge : “[T]eaching myself about social justice on Tumblr while also posturing as an authority on that very subject, thinking I was making a difference while engaging in a bit of schadenfreude... Looking back, I was more of a cop than a social justice warrior” https://www.nytimes.com/... Devin / @devincf : The woman who ran Your Fave Is Problematic looks back and realizes her social justice crusade was in fact about resentment and personal pain unrelated to the issues at hand. Incredible piece. https://www.nytimes.com/... @achillesteeth : I think blaming a singular child for the popularization of a word/movement she didn't actually create is like. missing the point here I would say there's a lot of value in looking into how young kids use aggression as a coping mechanism and how the Internet makes that easier https://twitter.com/... Jaysen / @officedyke : this summary and the follow up tweet are pretty reductive & inaccurate, but the essay itself is actually an interesting, personal, and nuanced reflection about an individual and their experience w grief and coming into social consciousness as a young person on the internet! https://twitter.com/... Scott Nover / @scottnover : “My brain wasn't ready for nuance. I was angered by hypocrisy and cruelty; what I did about it was apply a level of scrutiny that left no room for error.” https://www.nytimes.com/... @dan_dresdner : Many of us were like this as teenager: hyper-judgemental, seeing the world in binary terms of good/evil. But there was no platform that would publish and preserve hate on total strangers. This article shows: teens evolve but now the words remain & spread. https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... Nicole Jones / @satiricole : I remember this blog and have been waiting for it to be written about. I didn't expect the author to be the one to do it: “My brain wasn't ready for nuance. I was angered by hypocrisy and cruelty; what I did about it was apply a level of scrutiny that left no room for error.” https://twitter.com/... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
A decade after Twitter amplified young and marginalized voices in the 2010s, one of that era's defining anonymous accounts is publicly disavowing its own work. Liat Kaplan ran "Your Fave Is Problematic," the Tumblr credited with popularizing the word "problematic" and cataloguing missteps by stars like Lena Dunham, Taylor Swift, and Lady Gaga — an archive that helped write the playbook for modern celebrity call-outs.
Her regret lands in a lineage the coverage has been tracing for years: the Justine Sacco public-shaming interviews documented the human cost of viral pile-ons, while recent reporting on forums like Tattle Life, where users dox and dissect influencers shows where the call-out format has drifted. Kaplan's reappraisal matters because it comes from inside the machine, not from its targets.
First-order effects
- Kaplan joins her own former subjects on the other side of the ledger — the person who set the template for celebrity call-outs now frames the project as something she is ashamed of, complicating the archive's legacy.
- The named celebrities and the fandom communities around them get a fresh frame for reassessing posts that once read as accountability but now read, to the blog's own creator, as harm.
Second-order effects
- The confession feeds directly into the open question BuzzFeed News raised about whether Facebook and Twitter — the self-described new public square — should answer for their role in cancel culture, since Tumblr-hosted call-outs traveled through those same networks.
- It sharpens the contrast with successor formats like Tattle Life: when the original call-out author repudiates the genre, the newer, harsher forums lose even the activist justification the early Tumblr era could claim.
Third-order effects
- If the arc holds — from activist Tumblr catalogs to commercialized gossip archives — accountability culture is consolidating into permanent, searchable shame records that outlast their creators' intentions and resist individual retraction.
- The episode points toward a structural split in online norms between genuine accountability mechanisms and archival shaming, with platform governance choices deciding which one anonymity-powered formats become.
The trend: The 2010s call-out economy built on Tumblr and Twitter is entering a reckoning phase in which its own architects disown it while successor forums industrialize the format they invented.