memorizingthedigitsofpi | modern social media sucks for fandom

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modern social media sucks for fandom

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.

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oh I DEFINITELY vagueblog. a LOT. XD

but since I run a fandom/ao3 blog and the vagueblogs are all fandom/ao3 related, I've got plausible deniability that I was just thinking about a topic and just decided to post about it. That's also why I tend to frame my posts as independent thoughts, unrelated to other things that might be going on

that said, the times when I make it super clear that I'm responding to someone or something else, I only get a handful of people pick up on it (and those ones tend to think I'm funny, which is nice)

as for the ephemeral nature of modern social media? if I think about that and all of the conversations and debates and content and and and that disappears on a daily basis... I'd never stop crying.

I feel performative when I post anything personal to my tumblr blog

Yes! Especially after years of being conditioned that anything interesting you might want to say should be hidden in the tags. Making a post feels like climbing up on a rooftop and screaming PAY ATTENTION TO ME.

I have a semi-eidetic memory and I can remember a phrase or a keyword from an ask I answered 3.5 years ago but even when I search my own blog for it, it doesn't come up

you know what I end up doing? a google search for "keyword phrase" site:ao3commentoftheday.tumblr.com

I have to google my own blog smdh

yeah, the more I realize how broken the platforms are (at least for fandom, I can't speak for other subgroups), the more I realize that it's not completely their fault

when I found out that putting the tag #anti-ship or #ship hate would drop your post into the main ship tag? 😬 that's when I decided to either keep my thoughts to myself or not tag them at all

I'm wary of Fanexus. I want to see a more robust plan for how they're going to moderate and deal with abuse of their platform. Also, a lot of the stuff I've seen about tagging made me wince, if not cry. But then again, I haven't checked in with them in several months. They might be on a better track now than the last time I looked in.

the closest I've come to conversation in post format on tumblr is reblogging additions to my posts. And in that situation, I'm not actually participating in the conversation because I'm so aware of how long those posts get. I'm just hosting the conversation, presenting it for other people to participate in but never really doing anything myself beyond answering the initial ask.

Yes, and those so called rewards are one of the staples of modern social media, so it's basically impossible to run away from them. And since people get rewarded for drama, they're more likely to go after people's private tweets and spread them all over social media. The only way to stay away from that is to adopt a total passive stance, where you simply never show your opinions, and still, someone mind find a way to drag you into the dirt by accusing you of following someone who's "problematic", or liking problematic content, or whatever.

There's this trend in fandom where people will tag their mutuals (every time I see the word oomph I lose a few more brain cells) in a tweet saying something like "you follow this problematic person :/" and then you see a bunch of those mutuals apologizing for it on the replies, like they've made a grave mistake that must be immediately corrected, and my god if that's not tragic, people crawling on their knees to appease the OP lest they be cast out from the circle of The Good Ones. It's also an addicting power trip for the OP, which just reinforces the behavior.

I know I'm dunking on Twitter a lot, lol, but I think Twitter is a good showcase of everything wrong with social media today.

Yeaaah their moderation plan seemed... a bit optimistic? from what I saw. Not really a concrete plan in place. But I thought, it can't be worse that the current platforms XD;
Mainly though, I like that you'll be able to choose different privacy settings for your posts (a bit like here), that's something that is badly missing from the big T's.

What don't you like about the tags?

Mostly tbh I just like the idea of a platform by fans for fans. The main problem with Twitter and Tumblr (and instagram and facebook) is that they're big social media that fandoms just happened to move to, but were never designed to be for fandoms. I desperately want a "fandom first" place.

Dreamwidth is really nice, but it's missing the ability to reblog, which is so useful when you're trying to reach a maximum of people. And there's no one here anyway (speaking for my fandom in particular, others might be more active).

Fandom on Instagram is... well, when I was active, it was Reposting Without Credit : The Social Media. Big fan accounts rarely credited, and when they did, most people wouldn't go through the "trouble" of giving the actual artist a follow. That, added with the "art takes time to make", usually made reposting accounts more viable than art accounts unless you were able to churn out art really fast. (And as far as I know it's still like that, but I'm not on there enough to be certain). Couple that with the inability to put content warnings before they did their "slideshow" update, and... sometimes people attempted to put them in the "location" bit, but that didn't hide the picture.

Keeping up with the insane pace of things is hard yeah. For me also, I'm not in any US time zone, so a lot of stuff happens while I'm asleep.
For now at least I'm going to see how to customize the journal a little (even with my nonexistent coding ability it looks like there's some themes i can pick from ?) and go from there haha

I'm not familiar with Fanexus and their plans, but I feel like the ability to reblog is one of the issues with current social media because you end up having to perform/put on a public face on all of your posts, because it might end up pushed under the eyes of many, many people including ones you hadn't meant to reach.

Maybe if it was a special permission on some posts ("reblog allowed") though, or a community/board that if something is posted there, it can be reblogged...? Not sure if that's what encourages more passive consumption rather than actually forming connections either.

Hear you on not finding it hard to find people from your fandoms on DW though :')

Yeah, I was kinda away from fandom (just a reader on AO3) for about 10 years and it's been a bit of a culture shock coming back. I've seen people on private discords agonising about whether they were bad for liking something (a show, a fic, art, whatever) associated even remotely with someone "problematic" and it was heartbreaking to see them work themselves into a knot because they were so afraid that it meant they were "bad" themselves and/or would be thought bad by association.

Then they celebrated someone losing their job, after the person said they enjoyed darkfic and her (tiny) employer got targeted by the twitter mob, hah. Terrifying.

I block freely whenever I see someone anywhere saying "huh did you know that person is problematic" just for following someone or reblogging/retweeting something. Thankfully, I'm starting to find "my people" aka people who know how to use the back button, so it's easier not to worry about it as much, but damn. Yeah, Twitter sure is something else! We're not all meant to share the same pen like that, haha.

"I'm not familiar with Fanexus and their plans, but I feel like the ability to reblog is one of the issues with current social media because you end up having to perform/put on a public face on all of your posts, because it might end up pushed under the eyes of many, many people including ones you hadn't meant to reach."
It's true, but it's still an extremely useful feature for some things that are meant to be shared (for a personal example, I'm currently co-organizing a couple of fandom events, and having people reblog the promo posts has been invaluable in putting them under people's radar; participation took off beyond our expectations, which would probably never have happened if people didn't have an easy and effortless way to spread the word).

Privacy features that enable you to limit your posts' visibility to a chosen group of people should already (in theory at least) limit this need to put on a public face, since you can avoid random people seeing them. But being able to lock the ability to reblog would be the most ideal, I think. Doesn't Pillowfort have that? I made an account a while ago, but I must admit I haven't used it much ^^;

Basically, the ideal social media platform for me would be like a mix of DW and Tumblr: encouraging communities and discussions through comments, without completely doing away with reblogs (but having lots of options for privacy and limitations). Of course, even if the perfect platform were to magically appear tomorrow, it'd be no use if people didn't adopt it... So in the end, I'm just following the herd anyway XD

I enjoy Tumblr but it is terrible for actual conversations. Twitter is better for talking to people, but it is exhausting to keep up with.

I miss the Good Old Days of LJ when it was possible to maintain a conversation over the course of several days without losing it in the general flow of balderdash. But then I occasionally miss usenet, too, because I am a Fandom Old.

(Following from Tumblr.)

Just a random thought on the fandom spaces thing: I like to think where most of us are is at the online equivalent of a table at a foodcourt. Some conversations, even in public, are really only meant for just the ones at that table, but because we are in a public space, strangers can overhear what we say and join in, whether we want to or not. Which is a bit of a bummer when things are misunderstood due to lack of context because the context is on the other side of the court, or not even in that same mall. And in those instances, I at least have wished we could opt for a more private booth with the curtains drawn.

Legit, especially when so many tumblrites think that having differing opinions automatically means the other person is terrible 😩

I always want to rb nuanced pro ship discourse but some of my mutuals are so against it and also have no nuance in their brains

Everyday I wake up and think people will judge me for using tumblr as my own space. And honestly, some of them will

"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" big #mood for this. I'm usually therefore AWFUL at knowing how/if/when to interact with people on sites because everyone's expectations are really varied. If I put my thoughts on my own reblog of something, is the OP going to roll their eyes and wish that I had shut up? Are my own followers going to skip back to the previous post(s) to reblog from instead of what I added? Is the conversation even open to people that aren't already friends? It's such a wild west and I haaaate it.

Excuse my rambles. DW makes rambling feel easy.

My first fandom community was on FFN way back when I was 11 or 12, where I befriended a few people through replying to their reviews and talking about all sorts of things. I spent more time sending PMs than I did reading fics. Even though we don't talk anymore, these people stayed in contact with me for years. We were around the same age, and we interacted with each other's stories regularly. Only when I started uni that I became too busy to talk as often. Most of these people are no longer on FFN, and some of them might have changed and we might not get along anymore. But it was a fun time back then.

Tumblr feel so....different from that. I'm starting to think that my feelings of low self-esteem were because I missed that feeling of having friends in fandom. My writing has improved, but I'm not as happy.(AO3 only began to feel weird when people started adding stuff like "if you ship X/Y gtfo" and "in this house we stan/hate X" in additional tags. Idk, it just makes me feel weird.)

I have some people on tumblr who interact with my posts about OCs and my writing, with reblogs and reactions in tags and all, but sometimes I just post when they're not online, and who knows if they'll ever see it. Self-reblogging feel....sad lol. And I can't just message them and ramble because the message box thing is so small and annoying on desktop, and rambling in reblogs is just me constantly throwing rambles on people's dashboards (One time I rambled with someone about my OCs, and they rambled about their OCs, and it was a very long post.)

And the Wank™. Boy oh boy, I've lost interest in so many fandoms because of the widespread hate towards certain characters on basis of applying morality to fiction, which we all know is the only valid way of interacting with fiction, because fiction affects reality and stanning a 'literal abuser' is way worse than taking the side of his son who is a murderer in canon. /s (I'm never gonna stop being super salty about the BNHA fandom. Like, I get if you (general you) don't like the character, but let others do their thing????) Not to mention how interacting with other people who share your views isn't a guarantee that you won't somehow find yourself dragged into discourse, because like you said, posts are public.

(I mean, I guess I can thank fanpol for motivating me to create my own original content. Can't have fanpol if what you write has no fandom. Problem solved! :D)

That being said, most of my social media experience is on tumblr. I don't have a lot of interest in social media.

Am I still even on topic? My brain is thinking of too many things at once.

Absolutely!

I really wish that more of fandom would move back to spaces like Dreamwidth. I see a lot of people lamenting the loss of LJ as the space it once was, and how bad the site has gotten since. Or people who were never on LJ, but are longing for that sort of more personal connection and control over space. And every time I just want to lead them by the hand over to DW, lol.
(To be fair, I do understand a lot of people's reluctance to jump into a new site. I'm the same way with the various tumblr alternatives that were being proposed for a while, where I never really wanted to go to the trouble of trying to get used to them, so glass houses and all that. But still!)

Aw, man, I feel you so much on the bnha fandom wank, I know you're not using your journal right now but don't mind me following in hopes of maybe seeing BNHA mentions on DW someday too, haha! I had to filter out all bnha meta on tumblr because it made me sick to read. It's so weird because meta has so many nuances, and yet when it comes to some characters suddenly it's absolutely black and white, there is only Right and Wrong and whether that character is hated or not.

I'm thinking of using the journal for fandom stuff in the future. Just gotta get used to DW and figure out what I want to do. :D

But yeah. I made the "I should probably pretend this fandom doesn't exist" realization the moment I started hating Dabi for being a victim. It was a very foreign and unpleasant feeling. People acted like giving Endeavour the benefit of the doubt (like, early on in the series) was somehow erasing his bad actions like??? No?

It's like people couldn't grasp the idea that if I think someone could do better, I'm admitting, by default, that they're not doing good enough. I can't say "X can do better" and also deny they were doing bad things. That's just impossible.

Part of my fandom enjoyment is reading meta posts, because my own brain is usually too distracted to arrange my thoughts into something I could share with people, and that joy was taken away because most of my mutuals had these Black and White views, and I just started filtering and blocking people all the time and it was just so tiring. Even my headcanons blog is gone.

To sum it up, I have never cared about the morality of characters (my OCs tend to be problematic and aware of it, so expecting others' characters to be saints would be a huge hypocrite move). If something happens in canon that I don't like, I just shrug and accept it as it is, with the idea that it isn't my own story in the first place. I can always make mine, original or fanfic. The idea that I need to publicly criticize every little thing I don't like in a piece of fiction because I have to 'think critically' is just...a lot of work going into stuff that I don't care about.

Oops, I rambled again; it's very difficult to talk about that stuff on tumblr 'cause you just know it's gonna attract trouble.

I feel as though the likes/shares also end up making things into a competition because it's how you get seen. So instead of building community, it might just foster competition. How can you/your own thoughts reach a community if they're always pushed to the bottom by more popular users? I think that my desire for likes/shares just comes from a hunger for community, to be able to reach and talk to people and hopefully give them something they like. And that's the only metric that's the most available in fandom circles to rate how much people liked or saw my work. But it's isolating because all it is, is numbers. Not connection.

I agree with the "I'm going to pretend this fandom doesn't exist" feeling. And I'm also someone who likes reading meta, but also writing it. However I haven't done that publicly/semi-publicly in a long time.

I have several pieces of media where I love the subject deeply, but I absolutely hate the parts of fandom I can find in the standard social media spheres. I can't even bring myself to read their meta posts these days, unless they're from decades ago. It makes me hesitant to even check out the fan spheres in DW, even if they're active, because of the black/white thinking. And the highly political and aggressive posts, as well.

I'd like people to not take media so seriously as that it has to be completely morally pure, but also take the media with enough weight that they can't just rewrite all the characters to be whatever they want them to be, either.

It makes me hesitant to even check out the fan spheres in DW, even if they're active, because of the black/white thinking.

Yeah, same. I've been in my own corner for a couple of years now, keeping my fandom stuff to myself and only posting about original content. I want to find circles with people like me, but the fear of disappointment is always there.

but also take the media with enough weight that they can't just rewrite all the characters to be whatever they want them to be, either.

I forgot to consider this but yeah. I think that weight is the difference between interpreting a character differently and making them an entirely different character.

Ah, I don't want to bring the BNHA fandom wank here but I just want to say, I hear you, and I feel you!

I used to find meta inspiring, finding interesting threads that made me go "oooh this would be so interesting to explore into a fic" but then I realised the BNHA ones were just making me miserable and I had to unfollow and filter too. I just wrote this on my journal a few days ago but, "My general philosophy is that I take the bits I like from canon and the rest, well, fanfic’s here to fix it." and that's it, really. Same!!

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