The userbase is actively hostile to the things everybody hates about modern social media sites. There's no algorithm, so your timeline is chronological and only shows you posts from people you follow so you have to actively seek out stuff relevant to you and then organically curate your blog based on your interests. It's a vestige of the old internet made by a guy who hated Facebook and wanted a site where he could simply post his photos and follow people whose photos he liked, and the userbase has fought tooth and nail to largely keep it that way.

The average Tumblr user has an account that's around 10 years old, and the website works largely the same way today as it did in the 2010s. It's a more "mature" userbase whose most problematic users left for Twitter during the porn ban. All the drama you see on Twitter was what Tumblr was like about 10 years ago.

The userbase is openly queer and unified in the goal of "becoming unmarketable." There are no brand accounts or "influencers." The only celebrities on there are people like the guy who made Cookie Clicker and Neil Gaiman. It's a weird little hellhole where popular users are often infamous for their bizarre posts.

Honestly, Lemmy is kinda like the Reddit equivalent of Tumblr. Except you're more likely to see news of current events in the form of that one Supernatural meme than you are to see actual news articles.