Mole Interest

About

Mole Interest is a hashtag that began trending on Tumblr on September 11th, 2023 after user sabertoothwalrus inspired other users to post under the tag and make it trend as a test of how Tumblr's trending tags system works. The hashtag inspired numerous works of art and memes referencing moles and the specific phrase "mole interest" as it trended and managed to trend higher than the "9/11" tag on that day.

Origin

On September 10th, 2023, Tumblr^[1] user sabertoothwalrus posted, "the way tumblr tags trend is so funny, sometimes it seems like if ONE post gets popular the entire tag trends. I’m gonna do an experiment. let’s use the tag uhhhhhh," followed by a screenshot of a random word generator used to generate the words "mole interest," indirectly encouraging users to interact with the post and get "mole interest" trending on the site (shown below). The post gained over 63,150 notes in two days.

Shortly after posting, the user added to the Tumblr^[2] post, "I want everyone to know that I was curious and wanted to see the randomized words after “mole interest” and got “twin parking” and then I remembered it’s 9/11 🫢anyway wouldn’t it be funny if we got mole interest to trend higher than 9/11."

Spread

On the night of September 10th, 2023, Tumblr^[3][4] users began posting images, artwork and memes featuring moles and the phrase "mole interest" under the "#mole interest" tag in an attempt to make it trend. That night, Tumblr^[5][6] user beazlefox posted two pieces of mole interest art that gained over 4,700 and 18,000 notes respectively in two days (shown below, left and right).

Around 12:30 AM on September 11th, Tumblr^[7] user sabertoothwalrus posted an update about the tag, writing:

there was a point where I realized making ONE post tagged with “mole interest” probably wouldn’t get the tag trending because otherwise people’s bespoke art tags would trend every now and then, so I think the “one post gets the whole tag trending” only works for large, established tags with lots of posts already in them.

we also did not get mole interest trending yet and I am going to go to bed now so unless the europeans clock in and take over there might not being much more mole interest tonight but thank you to those who participated

Tumblr^[9][10][11] users continued to upload new examples of the meme throughout the 11th (examples shown below). At around 10:27 AM, sabertoothwalrus posted a screenshot to Tumblr^[8] showing "mole interest" trending in the number six spot.

At around 12:04 PM, Tumblr^[12] user sabertoothwalrus posted a screenshot showing "mole interest" trending just behind "9/11." At 12:52 PM, the Tumblr^[13] user re-blogged a post by bane-of-technology showing "mole interest" trending above "9/11" over a meme of the twin towers captioned, "WE FORGOT," garnering over 7,100 notes in a day (shown below, left and right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References