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

[vriddy]

I wouldn't worry about the date, you bring a lot of good points!!

Thinking of my LJ experience, I never really interacted much with writers. Definitely a lurker for fic. My fandom was SGA and I don't remember many cliques, there were a couple of closed communities for some nsfw content I think and it was really hard to get over my shyness to ask to join just to read the stuff in there, so I usually didn't.

I never formed connection with writers because I could see they already had their friends in the comments, and I was way too starstruck and thought they wouldn't be interested in anything I might have to say anyway - look how awesome they were being already ;)

However, I did make friends with other readers, people who posted fic rec lists in their journals, and shared their thoughts and hype whenever a new episode came out. Everyooone was on LJ at the time so I even managed to meet a couple of fellow fans at my university deep in the countryside, haha. We've long lost touch, but that was nice. I was a bit older than you, though. There might be a stage of life thing going on there too, with regard to feeling like you have something to contribute...

I think searching for "interest" keywords and/or communities was how to find the spaces where people shared their fic and meta and vids? It's not that much different than going through tumblr tags now.

Since last year, I write fanfic, and through mutual comments ended up befriending a bunch of other writers over time... I feel like "breaking in" to that circle must feel just as hard for lurkers today than it felt for me then. People see groups that seem already gelled and feel left out, don't know how to connect unless they have art or fic of their own to contribute. I see it a lot, in twitter spaces and things like that.

I wasn't writing during my LJ days so I don't remember how difficult it was to "break in," I'm fairly sure I found all the authors I liked through sga slash communities. I'm glad we have AO3 now!!

I just can't get over the feeling of having to be "on" and public speaking I get from tumblr, twitter, discord. It's interesting to see from the perspective of people who find it more freeing, thanks for taking the time to share!