Fanlore:Featured Article Archives/2021: Week 22

Doomed Tumblr blogs are depicted as the musicians playing on the deck of the sinking Titanic. In the movie the musicians' rendition of "Nearer To God Than Thee" takes up the entire sequence of the Titanic sinking. This sequence is used in its entirety for the fanvid.

"Tumblr Titanic Vid" is a shorthand name for a fanvid made by jackcrumsontheinternet comparing the final days before Tumblr's Dec 17, 2018 adult content shut-down to the final moments of the Titanic ship as depicted in James Cameron's movie Titanic. It uses a key sequence from the film that shows the reaction to, and ultimate fate of, a wide range of passengers as the ship sinks and then adds text overlays to assign each character to Tumblr users.

jackcrumsontheinternet posted the vid on December 13, 2018 with only one line of text: "The time draws near." By the evening of December 15, 2018 it had gathered 194,186 notes. By December 20, 2018 it had gathered over 400,000 notes.

The only words spoken in the vid are at the end of the sequence where the ship's violinist turns to the other musicians on deck seconds before dying and solemnly says: “Gentlemen, it has been a privilege playing with you tonight.”

The vid is now offline at the original link, though it can still be found on Tumblr thanks to its many reblogs. It was also reposted to Mastodon by @Sir_Boops.