This is what Tumblr does to your friend

The traditional Tumblr boyfriend is usually a celebrity, who sometimes (but not always) intersects with the more fictional trope of Tumblr sexymen. For now, however, Tumblr is more interested in the abstract concept of “your friend,” an entity currently undergoing an alarming array of anguish and hardship.

“Your friend” is the first sitewide meme of the year based on a simple text post formula. Imagine someone awkwardly apologizing for breaking a coffee cup, perhaps while ruefully rubbing the back of their neck. Only instead of a coffee mug, they apologize for harming your friend — maybe because they put your friend in a cashmere sweater and he got moth-eaten, or they accidentally threw him in the stone pot and “he’s shiny.” now. ”

One of the earliest viral examples came on December 30, when a Tumblr user expressed sympathy for your friend becoming public. Since then, your friend’s problems have only gotten more elaborate and surreal.

Your friend is really going through this right now. He’s escaped his enclosure, been dunked in teacups and broken in half, sold to One Direction – and since Tumblr launched a poll feature this week, he’s been trapped in a poll too.

Haunted by an endless series of dangers great and small, your friend is an avatar of hapless disaster. In fact, he may never recover from what Tumblr did to him.

Based on the typical durability of a Tumblr text post meme, your friend should be free walking around safely in a couple of weeks. But for now, it’s probably best to keep it in a safe place where it can’t be mixed, cooked, chopped up, or otherwise transformed into another physical state.