How 'Sapphic Twitter' Became the New Tumblr

@sapphicslike is leading the charge

This is the Sunday Edition of Paging Dr. Lesbian. If you like this type of thing, subscribe, and share it with your friends. Upgrade your subscription for more, including weekly dispatches from the lesbian internet, monthly playlists, and a free sticker.

Via this post from @sapphicslike.

The beloved blogging platform Tumblr was a place where, if you so chose, you could be inundated with gay content at all hours of the day. There wasn’t much rhyme or reason to the order of these posts (and certainly no algorithm deciding what you’d see), just images of lesbians and missives from lonely, horny gay people on the internet. Tumblr is technically still alive, though activity on the site is at an all-time low following the decision to ban adult content in 2018. 

For some, Twitter (now X) has taken the place of Tumblr, though changes in leadership and new features on the site have caused certain users to log off for good. The site retains its value exclusively through the effort of its best Posters – users who entertain with humorous, unhinged observations or HD gifs and videos. 

As for the account that’s doing the most to keep the climate of lesbian Tumblr going in the 2020s? That honor goes to @sapphicslike, a general fan account that posts, according to their bio, “what sapphics would like to see on their timeline.” @sapphicslike primarily traffics in videos, gifs, and images, though the source of these visuals can vary. Much of the content on the account depicts fictional lesbian or sapphic characters, along with some IRL sapphics as well. 

Many of these posts include lesbian couples, and recently, the account has been featuring a lot of content from “Girl(s) Love” series, a designation for content that features sapphic relationships in Asia. (Within Japanese media, this content is called “Yuri.”) Sometimes, @sapphicslike will repost relatable observations about what it’s like to be a lesbian, or give a shout-out to specific groups of lesbians, like trans lesbians or butch lesbians. Much of the media posted on the account originates in North America and Asia (with some exceptions), and the account’s 500,000 followers hail from all across the globe. 

With its large follower count and frequent posting, @sapphicslike takes up space on X’s timeline, which is significantly less siloed than Tumblr. We can think of the account as an archive of sapphic content, preserving the media and the sentiments that move people in cyberspace (until the site gets wiped from the face of the earth, that is). Following @sapphicslike on X is a guarantee that your feed will become significantly gayer, a desirable outcome for many queer folks online.

In a way, the pace and temporality of the account recalls the non-algorithmic functioning of Tumblr. Some posts on the account are timely, like videos from the recent Alien film or images from the new Sabrina Carpenter video, while others depict classic media, like Imagine Me & You or the telenovela couple Juliantina. The account is (presumably) run by a real person (or people), and the rate of posts is impressive, as @sapphicslike continues to amass sapphic content on a daily basis, like a gay snowball being pushed down a hill. 

Obviously, a single X account can’t be expected to represent all sapphics and their tastes, but it’s interesting to consider how @sapphicslike represents the community. The images on the account tend to fall into the categories of cute, sexy, or sweet, with some humor thrown in for good measure. Presented in this light and with so much repetition, lesbian and sapphics become aspirational figures for followers to delight in and yearn for. 

Indeed, yearning is often an emotional register the account (and accounts like it) operate within. The caption on the above photoset reads “being like this with a woman will save me,” and a similar photoset depicting women in bed together is captioned “need.” Another popular post depicting Simone Biles wearing several gold medals includes the caption “me if tweeting ‘i want a GF’ was an olympic sport.” Such posts recall the classic genre of Tumblr blogging wherein users would post about how much they yearned for other women or how lonely they were – the phrase “touch-starved” was a common refrain. The media included on the account tends to feed into this sentiment.

The reposted content is relatively international in scope, giving followers a chance to encounter media they might otherwise be unaware of. However, earlier this year, there was a minor controversy on X about The Color Purple, with several black lesbians wondering why ‘Sapphic Twitter’ wasn’t posting about the movie more. In response, @sapphicslike noted that they are not based in the US and the film wasn’t out in their country, potentially limiting their access to such content. The conversation highlighted an interesting point – how images of sapphics online and in media tend to skew white (or at least non-black), but also how location can dictate access to content, ‘diverse’ and otherwise. 

@sapphicslike provides a sort of service to its followers. Much of it is pure entertainment value, giving followers something pretty or hot to look at. Some followers also use the account to find new shows or films to watch, and the comments on many videos include things like “what show is this?” or “where can I watch?” There’s also a sense of connection, that communal, insular feeling that defined those pockets of Tumblr. The account’s goal – to post things that sapphics like – hails users from that community, promising recognition and in the process defining online sapphic culture. Though it’s unlikely every piece of content posted resonates with every single follower, that implied “we” is powerful. 

The page’s huge follower count indicates that people want an ever-growing repository like this. The way to keep your social media feeds feeling and looking good is to carefully curate what you see, and @sapphicslike does the work for you, providing gay images all day, every day. Isn’t that what sapphics like? 

---