When Jessica N. first signed onto Tumblr, he had no idea who he was.

Sure, he knew some of the things he liked — Dr. Who, introversion — but at the time he didn’t have the vocabulary to describe himself. He was young and lived in a small city.

Now in his twenties, the words come easier: transsexual, non-binary, pansexual. They weren't handed to him on a silver platter. Jessica reached out through Tumblr, then learned them with love.

Most teenagers, at some point in their development, feel "alone in this world." But couple that feeling with the words “queer” and “trans,” and that sense of isolation only deepens. Teachers might teach you how to put a state-sponsored condom on a store-bought cucumber, but only a few will tell you what it means to be trans or how it feels to be gay. While cis and straight kids have (something of) a dating pool, LGBTQI youth often scramble to find just one more kid who looks like them.

Coming out and gay marriage may dominate the national conversation, but for many queer and trans youth, those issues can feel secondary, even cosmetic. For much of this population, at heightened risk of homelessness and harassment, meaningful relationships can be the bridge to safety. Make fun of teenage romance all you want (I mean it — full speed ahead), but when “no one understands you”—it’s love that makes you feel okay.

In comes Tumblr. The social platform responsible for cat memes and horrifying Disney Princess art has become, in many ways, an informal dating site for queer and trans youth. While adults have access to Tinder and OkCupid, LGBTQI youth are left in the digital dark. Facebook requires people to use their real identities. Twitter relies on 140-character soundbites. Tumblr — more visual than Twitter, more private than Facebook, less horrible than Reddit — lets youth create new screennames, craft new identities.

Online safety is never guaranteed, but when you're LGBTQI, your Internet family can feel safer than your actual family. Tumblr sometimes becomes the easiest way to reach out.

tumblr is the greatest lesbian singles bar in the world — Lane Moore (@hellolanemoore) April 6, 2015

"It feels safer to just exist when you can easily log on or log off at your own discretion," A. Jordan, once a queer teen who found love on Tumblr, told Mashable.

For 18-year-old Autumn S., Tumblr provided more than anonymity. It was the ticket to family: “As a thirteen, fourteen, fifteen-year-old trans person, I felt pretty isolated locally, so interacting with other queer teenagers on the Internet became super important for me. I ended up using Tumblr all the time - it was how I met friends who lived nearby in NYC, where I learned about politics, where I expressed my own experiences being queer, etc. Come to think of it, all my significant relationships came off of Tumblr,” Autumn S. told Mashable.

Luddites might whine that “the Internet is tearing people apart,” but for people in the LGBTQI community, sites like Tumblr can close emotional distances. One survey found that 61% of gay couples met their partner online in the past couple years, compared to 22% of heterosexual couples. For some LGBTQI youth, love happens at login. Hear the stories for yourself.

“No one taught us about trans anything.”

Jessica N. was 17 years old the first time he signed onto Tumblr. At the time, Jessica was living in a small city, twenty minutes away from Boston. Asian-American and trans, Jessica often experienced “cultural and language differences” with his surrounding community. “It was really difficult to find anyone who was willing to be open about being trans or gay,” Jessica said.

A “social media introvert,” Jessica joined Tumblr, a platform that — compared to Facebook, at least — afforded him both privacy and space. And while he wasn't really looking for romance, he found it with a reblog.

“I was 17, 18 years old. … We were reblogging from the same mutual sites. They had a side poetry blog as well. I think I messaged them first. They didn’t have a picture of themselves. I didn’t have a picture of myself … But I knew they were a really nice person. I knew they were trans … There were sparks definitely," Jessica said.

Jessica didn’t quite have the words to describe who he was, and neither, it seemed, did his partner. But even though they couldn't vocalize some of their feelings, or precisely articulate their needs and identities, the connection felt real.

“There was definitely a block between the both of us, because we didn’t know how to express ourselves … We liked the idea of each other, but we couldn’t vocalize it. … Being seventeen or eighteen years old, we didn’t know how stand on our own two feet. We couldn’t say we liked this other trans person, queer person. We were afraid to be open about things and deal with the judgment that came along with it,” Jessica said.

The two never met in person. And the relationship, like most teenage relationships, folded. But the connection mattered, and mattered deeply. Now in his twenties, non-binary, pansexual, and a college student, Jessica credits the relationship with helping him become the person he is today: “I choose my language. I am what I am. There’s nothing wrong with me.”

“Online was this place where I didn’t really have to represent myself.”

While others turn to Tumblr for cat memes and Ryan Gosling gifs, A. Jordan signed up to find help. Jordan has historically struggled with depression and would often spend her days “looking through suicide tags, and try to send positive or affirming messages to people who were struggling as well.”

“Regarding my former partner, she responded and I responded back with anonymous messages and that went on for a week or so. We became friends, exchanged actual information and began messaging each other off anonymous. I wasn't looking for love. It was such a strange way to meet someone who I could easily talk to,” Jordan told Mashable.

At the time of her Tumblr relationship, Jordan was just 18 years old, and struggling to come to terms with her sexuality, as well as her mental illness. While she grew up in an area that was otherwise queer-friendly, Tumblr allowed her to keep her struggles private and safe. Her relationship became a refuge.

“Part of that was just having someone to talk to, and part of that was having someone outside of my immediate situation, someone who was removed from my everyday experience,” Jordan said. The relationship blossomed because Jordan felt safe.

“Online was this place where I didn't have to really represent myself. There's a sense of agency and control there that I think I really wanted at the time.” Despite their distance, “It all felt like that kind of young love we romanticize about.” And while Jordan's story may sound like the heartwarming exception, her experience was shared by others, and backed by data.

"What originates here in our fringes eventually makes its way to the mainstream."

Currently, Tumblr only asks users to confirm their email address and age. That makes it difficult for the site to precisely count the number of young LGBTQ users, but the anecdotal evidence is abundant, and the site has started to notice patterns in other ways.

"LGBT queer topics and identities are among the most used terms on the site. Notably, when we look at terms associated with sexuality and identity, we see less mainstream language being used. We see tags around being asexual, pansexual ... What originates here in our fringes eventually makes its way to the mainstream," Lisa Rubenstein, Director of Social Impact at Tumblr, told Mashable.

Julian Gill-Peterson, Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, agrees. Gill-Peterson, who studies LGBTQI youth and digital cultures, isn’t surprised that groups of youth have come to rely on Tumblr to form meaningful relationships. The platform’s relative anonymity allows users to take big romantic risks that don’t (necessarily) compromise their personal privacy.

“It moves fast and it doesn't require everything to be attached to your name and face. That seems to me to be an advantage for LGBTQI youth who are not interested or comfortable being more public about their online presence,” Gill-Peterson told Mashable.

But Tumblr offers more than just secrecy. While sites like OkCupid require users to list their sexual preference and gender identity, Tumblr let youth use and invent their own descriptors. By scrolling through pictures, or skimming reblogs, users can discover what desire and identity mean to them.

“On Tumblr, the social model is less structured and defined, which I suspect means queer and trans youth who don't fit simple definitions to begin with have some space to be different, together,” Gil-Peterson said.

“There was no community in my daily life. It was hard."

Anne Z. spent her college years in a small Midwestern city, with few other openly queer people. While Anne was old enough to join a dating site, she didn’t think she’d have any luck there.

“I knew they were sparsely populated and also had many people who just wanted threesomes,” Anne told Mashable.

At home, where there were few other LGBTQI people around, Anne could often feel isolated. “There was no community in my daily life, and I didn't feel safe being out at work, so it was hard.”

During the fall of 2011, Anne signed onto Tumblr, and found Kate, who was blogging about law school. She started following her, and while nothing — quite seriously nothing — sounds less romantic than tort law, the two immediately formed an intimate connection. They began to message each other.

“She started to talk about her life, too. How she was bisexual but not out because of a conservative Baptist family, what being bisexual was like,” Anne said.

After a period of time, the two exchanged phone numbers. But living nine hours apart from each other, it took nearly half a year before they finally met in person. While first dates are historically painful, the intimacy they spent months building over Tumblr exploded in real life.

“We felt so close from constantly talking … when we finally saw each other, I just started laughing because I was so happy to see her," Anne told Mashable.

Five months later (and after only five official "dates"), Kate proposed. “Same-sex marriage wasn't legal in either of our states then, and we didn't have a song, a flash mob, or a big ring. We were just standing in her kitchen, and she asked me,” Anne said.

Despite their parents’ opposition, Anne and Kate married. “We rented my apartment’s common room, made the food and decorations ourselves, wrote our own vows, and wore what was in our closet already.”

Five dates might not sound like the recipe for success, but it worked. Tumblr worked for them. Four years later, the couple remains married. They started alone on the Internet, crafted a date out of a text, made a wedding out of a closet. Their families weren’t always there. A community didn’t appear out of nowhere. They built it themselves.