memorizingthedigitsofpi | 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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Yeah, I've been thinking about this too after seeing one of your recent tumblr posts. I think twitter and tumblr and the modern social media platforms are inherently forcing people to be performative? Because you're never in your own space, you're always speaking in a big courtyard full of people where someone else might hear you and answer, and there's fun in finding new people like that but it's also exhausting in that you always have to be on. Unless you hide something carefully in a post with no tags on tumblr, I guess, which is like whispering into the void because it will be lost in two minutes since that's just the way the platform works, pushing new content on top all the time.

Like, in theory just as many people could be reading and listening here on DW... but I think that comes with more awareness that you are lurking, this isn't your space. And there's nothing for you to "win" here - you can't make yourself look good by reblogging/retweeting interesting content or by disagreeing outrageously with a Bad Take (which may be genuinely bad, or maybe just too easy to take in bad faith.)

And there's nothing to "win" in terms of engagement here either. There's no like or anything. If people want to interact, they have to pause and write some thoughts - and there's no internet points to win there either, just a quality connection.

Haha, I think I was going somewhere with this but I didn't sleep well and I have to scoot off to a meeting now 😂 I'm having a lot of thoughts about this too, and appreciate having yours to add to the murky pond swirling at the back of my mind as well.

Okay but same. I feel performative when I post anything personal to my tumblr blog, and I don't want to reblog some of my mutuals stuff to my bigger blog because idk if they want more people to see it.

I always feel nervous when posting my opinion too, because I'm worried about discourse, even if it doesn't happen much anymore on tumblr.

I think it might just be the general vibes/culture? Or my anxiety lmao

Right, I didn't think about the answer aspect as well. If you try to have a discussion with someone, you have to do it in public and bring their original post to the attention of strangers/your followers that perhaps the friend didn't really want to, or it's your answer that you don't particularly mean to shout across rooftops either... Everything is a proclamation, rarely a chat. Tumblr replies can help a bit with that but they're super unwieldy, have a tiny character limits, easy to miss answers, hard to have an actual discussion in there, etc etc...

I'm also worried about the discourse thing, as you've noticed with my BNHA post ;) I don't think they're gone. Some people I follow get some really unpleasant asks, but they have a tough skin so they're able to deal with them like it was nothing. I recall Pi having similarly unpleasant experiences when posting about controversial topics on ao3cotd as well.

Everything is a proclamation, rarely a chat
That's a really good way of wording it.

I think that's also why tags are so commonly used, and why prev tags is now used more than just screenshotting someone's post. It's quieter, and you're not taking up space in the post. Also, you don't know if the person whose tags you're screenshotting wants them to be seen and have the chance of it becoming popular

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 :(

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

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.

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

you're never in your own space, you're always speaking in a big courtyard full of people where someone else might hear you and answer

That's something I totally feel but hadn't really conceptualized like that yet. I do think of my tumblr blog as my own space (even though I only reblog stuff), but when others don't write their own posts, checking out their blog doesn't really feel like I'm checking out their space, it feels more like just a collection of posts. If that makes sense? And while posts have the username on them, I often look at the content without connecting it to a person. Which is on me I guess, but still.

The void/courtyard aspect is also what's keeping me from posting on tumblr or twitter. Right now I'm giving writing updates in this one discord's writing channel. Which is mostly dead, but at least the courtyard there only has a few active people that I actually know somewhat.

I think discord definitely has the smaller courtyard feel! And you can always delete your messages too, which isn't always possible once people have decided to take your post away on say tumblr. Like, the courtyard is the entire user base for twitter or tumblr... maybe even the entire world since everything is public by default. A discord server feels a lot more human-sized to me, in comparison...

Glad the analogy somewhat made sense!

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

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.

modern social media sucks for fandom

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