modern social media sucks for fandom

[memorizingthedigitsofpi]

Sometimes you just need to make a bulleted list.

• all posts are public, leading to epic levels of wank
• people reply at different points in the conversation, also leading to wank but more importantly, obscuring parts of the conversation and also making the full conversation only viewable to the initial poster
• sharing anything automatically shares it with everyone you know on that platform because you can't have subgroups for your content unless you make multiple accounts
• real fucking names
• constantly changing usernames (looking at you tumblr) makes it impossible to know who you're even following/who's following you. it also makes it hard to keep track of friends
• platforms are maximized for "engagement" not for community, so it's all about getting the likes and shares and who cares about deep diving anything
• priority is mostly given to short form content which makes nuance difficult
• everything moves so fast that it's difficult to have a follow up conversation on anything you post because people can't find the initial thought
• everything is presented without the context of the posts that came before and after them - especially on sites that don't give you a date/timestamp
• tags are communal rather than personal, so you never really know what you'll find in there. Everyone wants to organize their own space, but the items they put in their containers might be something you're allergic to (to stretch a metaphor)

I can't do twitter. Tumblr makes me feel more like either a spectator or a performer. Tiktok is every social media experience I've ever had, played through at 100x speed. No option is perfect, but some are way less perfect than others. At least for me.

Comments

[feast_of_regrets]

Oh, yes. My flirtation with Twitter was brief and painful, and the difficulty in getting back to an original thread and finding it intact was part of that. It honestly stresses me out that so many really talented people are writing Tweet fic (and Tweet meta for that matter), because the nature of the platform is really that we're going to lose all that beautiful work. Even beyond user deletions; I fully expect Twitter to just make a random policy change that will break old links.

[pegasus143]

I don't really use twitter (I deleted the account that I had ages ago, and now only go there to check for updates on people I watch on youtube or if I'm following a specific link for something fandom-related). But yeah, I can see just how easy it would be to lose a ton of stuff there.

[razia]

Pillowfort seems to have an interesting way of dealing with deletions. If OP deletes it, the whole post goes with it. I have a PF gathering dust, so not sure how well it's been implemented, but it's an interesting feature. Of course, the downside is that you lose your reblogs of it, but I don't think we can have robust privacy settings without some drawbacks like these.

[pegasus143]

Yeah, that feature was actually one of the ones that seemed like a good idea. I've looked into pillowfort a bit using the test/preview account that they have, but I wasn't a huge fan of other aspects of the site design. The task of rebuilding a community there, especially when you fall into a niche portion of something that's not an uber-fandom, is also quite daunting, and something I feel like I'd probably be doing on my own.

[wolfish_willow]

Not Having An Opinion seems like a safe bet for sure! Though the same can definitely be said of tumblr as well. Lots of jumping to conclusions everywhere, I guess.

The algorithm is so strange! I don't know what makes Twitter think I want to read a tweet from some random person that has nothing to do with any of the accounts I do follow haha.

I've got a friend who does a lot of fandom stuff there, though, and it seems to work well for them. I think I'll stick to movie news myself XD

[wolfish_willow]

Man, so many of them have probably never even *heard* of Dreamwidth tbh. I bet I could mention this place on my tumblr and a decent amount of people in my current fandom would have no idea.

I *do* enjoy that Twitter has allowed more of the nsfw stuff even if I don't ever go looking for it. People should just be able to share their work ;_;

[xmarksthespotwhereistand]

Let's keep in mind that archive of our own is not a social media and regarding it as such can lead to some unreasonable and not really constructive expectations. Archive of our own is very good at being an archive and doesn't want to also be the next big fandom social media and i give thanks for that everyday.

[jelasdax]

I’m actually very glad that you’ve been reminding people about Dreamwidth, because I am one of those people who used to use it a decade ago and then stopped when it became clear that people were migrating to Tumblr. Looking back at earlier blog posts makes me glad that I started this account up from scratch a few years ago. It’s amazing what a decade will do for personal growth.

But I hate tumblr as a community space for fandom! I only use it to look at pretty gif sets, and when there’s discourse it all seems so exhausting to try and navigate. Actual conversations are challenging in that space.

[memorizingthedigitsofpi]

The speed also discourages you from taking time to think before you reply.

I actively use the drafts feature on tumblr and this is still true. And it gets worse when you see something but the page refreshes and you haven't even had time to process it and your reaction to it and you're already seeing something else.

You've got a great point about that speed also leading to harsher interactions. Not only is there no space and no time but people are also under pressure not to say the same point as someone else and be labelled a copycat or wait too long and the conversation has moved past what you want to say.

I only use twitter for animal crossing screenshots XD but the tumblr thing, oof. I feel that. I'm at the point now where I just make a fresh post with whatever point or counterpoint I want to make because I don't want to spread the horrible idea, but then I either have to be careful about including context or I have to deliberate exclude context. More often than not, I choose the latter and I think that's to the detriment of the broader conversation.

[memorizingthedigitsofpi]

the time really is the thing that I enjoy the most about DW. tumblr is a pretty big source of guilt for me because my inbox is never ending and I wish I could catch up, but I also find it overwhelming so catching up is an impossible dream

I can see a future where I eventually post here more than over there. I don't need notes and reblogs. I need other people, as few or as many want to hang out.

[memorizingthedigitsofpi]

that lack of a private, personal space is so HUGE and I can't believe it took me this long to notice it. Back when I was just a random tumblr user interacting with my friends in fandom, there were definitely things that I thought about posting and decided not to for that very reason. It's only gotten worse since I've let that blog lapse and have been blogging mostly from the COTD account.

[memorizingthedigitsofpi]

oh man, I totally get what you mean about not wanting to reblog things to the popular blog. There have been so many posts that I thought would be great things for me to share out, but then I thought about what happens when the larger audience I have share it out to their audiences and how the ripple inevitably leads to anon hate :(

[memorizingthedigitsofpi]

we're all visiting each other's curated libraries but none of us are talking to the librarian

[vriddy]

Ah, yes, I really feel that: having to be in public mode all the time, and always thinking about how anything you write could be misinterpreted if it gets out of the small circle you meant it for. "Rewarded for drama" is definitely the antithesis of anything meant to enable community building...

[memorizingthedigitsofpi]

The Algorithm shoving stuff in people's face that they don't want to see, so they decide that whatever ship or whatever it is shouldn't exist at all since they can't otherwise escape it

when it comes to the rise of antis/puriteens/fanpol or whatever you want to call them, I think this right here is the prime cause

[memorizingthedigitsofpi]

there's a reason why I'm flogging a dead horse over on tumblr about this place XD

(blogging a dead horse? nah)

[memorizingthedigitsofpi]

SO MUCH THIS

[memorizingthedigitsofpi]

it wasn't obvious to me either until I had an epiphany the other night while lying awake in bed at 2am. everyone is so desperate for ao3 comments because they don't have anywhere else to have a conversation with someone. I think that's also the reason why everyone tries to treat ao3 like social media when it's not. they need a platform that allows for this style of conversation we're having right here, and the closes analogue to a lot of people seems to be ao3 - because they don't know other options exist

[vriddy]

Wise! 😂

[memorizingthedigitsofpi]

don't even get me started on how capitalism has screwed up fandom


... I'll probably post about that at some point too XD

[memorizingthedigitsofpi]

I never participated in the forum parts of fandom (well, only as a lurker) but you're definitely not wrong

[memorizingthedigitsofpi]

I've always been one to sort of stay mostly in my little corner of a fandom with my friends and my ships or fave characters. I've never tried to keep up with the actors or the behind the scenes or the powers that be etc. If I see that stuff, that's fine but it's not something I actively seek out. I wouldn't even know how to do so if I wanted to :(

[memorizingthedigitsofpi]

I also tend to play things fairly close when I'm in a fandom. I follow people and reblog stuff, and I try to be generally friendly. But I also only have in depth conversations with a dozen people out of the several hundred I might follow. And those conversations happen on over text or DM or private discords.

For me, tumblr is where I can find the people. Group chats are where I can get to know them and have conversations with them.

Like you say, everything on the modern platforms is public and while drama definitely did happen in the forum and LJ days, it was always more contained than it is now. You might here the rumblings far off or you might be completely unaware, but it wouldn't explode all over your timeline unless you were fairly directly involved with it or were friends with someone who was.

[memorizingthedigitsofpi]

I can't even imagine fandom on Instagram. And the fact that there are people who do it on pintrest and tiktok just blows my mind. I get that humans are great at adapting things to serve their own purpose but... damn.

I hope you like it here on dreamwidth. It's a very different kind of space to the major socials. Much slower and quieter which is good for someone like me who needs a bit of asynchronous communication and can't keep up with the pace of things. :) Also, I can't tell you how much I've missed having a place that is mine

[sarken]

I'm at the point now where I just make a fresh post with whatever point or counterpoint I want to make because I don't want to spread the horrible idea, but then I either have to be careful about including context or I have to deliberate exclude context. More often than not, I choose the latter and I think that's to the detriment of the broader conversation.

Are people on Tumblr weird about that? I know if you do that on Twitter, you risk getting into subtweeting territory, which can cause its own sort of drama.

I do wish it were more acceptable to just link to the discussion so you aren't spreading it directly, but you are still giving context and and people can confirm you weren't misrepresenting what was being said. However, links are super impermanent on modern social media, where URLs are often name-base and name changes are common. (We won't even discuss the problems posed by the discussion being spread over reblogs, replies, and tags, making it hard to get a good picture from one link. Comment sections on more blog-like sites are often terrible places, but at least the terribleness is collected in one place!) I honestly don't know how many people bother to follow the links if you do provide them, either because the experience of following links in social media apps is often deeply unpleasant, or just because people are kind of lazy and won't read things that aren't placed directly in front of them. 😩