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

[krytella]

On the "engagement" aspect: recently I've written a few nonfiction/essays for an independent website that does journalism and opinion pieces about a specific subject area. The site doesn't have comments, so you have to search around on social media to see if people are posting and engaging with articles. I wrote one thing that was controversial and got shared around a lot, and one that for some reason didn't. And after the one that didn't get a lot of discussion, I found myself thinking, "maybe I should've found a way to make it more controversial so that people would get into arguments with it." I think similar dynamics come up in fandom on platforms where people don't have strong social bonds; it's rewarding to stir things up because that gets you noticed, while if you're in a community where people talk and know each other you're more reticent to say things just to start something because you don't want to get in a fight with your friends.

[osteophage]

I found this post via this Tumblr post, so I'm sorry if this seems out of nowhere, just thought I'd add some thoughts.

I think a lot of what you're pointing out here applies to how bad corporate social media is for communities generally. A while back, I read this post about how "Tumblr is ruining fandom," and it's part of what inspired me to compose my own writeup of how Tumblr is harmful to communities in general. Things like unmoderated tag searches getting used as a proxy for "community" spaces, the reblog-addition system, and punishing people for using links has an overall negative impact on what kinds of community dynamics can emerge.

There are other social media options out there -- datestamps, post privacy levels, proper threading, topic-based opt-in groups to share to, actual comment sections friendlier to full back-and-forth conversations, urls independent of usernames, basic community moderation tools, lack of intrusive algorithm, a slower site culter, etc., these all do exist in some places.... but yeah, those features tend to be found in the more niche places, not the big names. Because catering to users' needs isn't where the money is.

[mekare]

Hi, do you mind me linking to this over at fictional_fans?

I agree with so many of your points. I‘ve never experienced Twitter, but I am on Tumblr (after a great deal of wibbling and overthinking) because it is very good for visual media (I‘m a fanartist). But I was always aware that it would only ever be on the periphery of my fandom experience. I‘ve tried interacting with people in chats and reblog additions but it is a nightmare. I‘ve very clearly separated it now and only use it for posting my art (after first posting it here and on AO3), and looking for pretty pictures (sometimes there is good meta).

[(Anonymous)]

Here from tumblr!

If I can provide a different perspective, I was a lurker from when I first discovered fandom in my early teens (of the "old enough to know what a lemon is, too young when I learned what it is" generation). Fandom was mostly on livejournal at that point, and oh man it terrified me: I'm scared to talk to people online. It seemed that everyone had their friends already and while I completely understand locked posts, from the outside it made it seem like I could never join in. Fandom seemed cliquey to me. And I'm sure it was in some areas and wasn't in others, and other people did feel free to join! But it seemed unwelcoming. I know others felt the same way - I posted about this (https://undercat-overdog.tumblr.com/post/656907112902017024/i-reblogged-with-tags-this-post-about-making) and had a bunch of people reach out, mostly privately, and say that they too were scared to join livejournal too and only delurked on tumblr or twitter (and ao3).

Part of my fear was that I didn't think I could contribute anything. I considered trying to write fic but the thought of actually posting scared me too - this was also in the days when there were a lot of moderated archives and I know that some of them absolutely were cliquey (that may just be my fandom; the main "good" archive site had to have each fic evaluated for "quality" before it could be posted - unless you were a member of a certain crowd). It took until I up and decided one day to write fanfiction, and oh look, now there's an archive that feels safe to me and easy to use and here's a social media site that feels ok. In some ways the openness of tumblr and the lack of private settings made it easier? I didn't fear that I was missing out on the good content because people didn't like me; it was easier for my personal internet social anxiety. Plus I was older, and now had things - fic/meta - to contribute. But even then, had fandom and social media looked like it had in the 2000s (or if it were just twitter), I would have kept lurking.

Fandom in the golden days wasn't golden for everyone and I want to speak for that perspective.

(Also livejournal was absolutely terrible for finding fic. That is not a tumblr and twitter only problem. Tumblr is also the only social media site where I can get non-fandom material (art, long random posts about weaving or tombstones of roman dogs, etc - ok twitter can too but not the long posts and my non-artist understanding is that tumblr has good media hosting) on the same feed so I only need one account: a huge blessing! Well, a discord account too if that counts.)

-undercat-overdog on tumblr. And sorry for the link thrown in as text, but the hyperlink tag didn't go through when I previewed the comment.