#Tubbler girls update#

' She would often update the theme to match the aesthetics of f(x)'s latest musical release. You could do a lot with the Tumblr themes back then, they gave me so much control with editing the HTML.'Īs a 14-year-old, 'I had no experience coding at all,' Hood says, 'so what I remember doing was copying the HTML from a different theme someone had posted and then going in and making changes to the color or trying to add plugins or APIs. I worked really hard to try to be the best Victoria fan page on the site. 'My youth was being a fan of f(x) and running this fan site specifically for Victoria (opens in a new tab).

It is coding.'įrom 2011 to 2015, Hood ran a fan Tumblr for South Korean girl group f(x). 'That's a ridiculous statement trying to demean teenage girls from getting credit for doing something difficult… HTML is a coding language. 'That's like looking at the sky and being like, 'The sky isn't blue. I asked Maxine Hood, a 25-year-old Software Engineer at YouTube, what she thought about those comments. The comments section bloomed with notes from women who credited Tumblr with jump-starting their careers in technology: 'I wrote my college app essay on learning to code on Tumblr and got accepted into college for a cs degree,' wrote one 'And now I project manage website design,' said another.Īs typical of most online discourse, there were also some replies sneering with disdain: 'Front end is not actual coding you know,' a user commented, alongside scornful remarks like 'Html/css isn't really coding just saying.' 'No, there were! They were just making pale blogs,' an emblem of the washed-out, soft-grunge aesthetic popular on the platform in 2014. 'People are like, 'Oh, there's no girls in STEM,'' she says, imitating the faceless internet mob. Last year, TikTokker Avery Steeves posted a video (opens in a new tab) asking why no one talks about how there's an entire generation of teenage girls who taught themselves to code HTML on Tumblr.

Tubbler girls