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

[(Anonymous)]

My first instinct was to defend the almost non-community aspect of Tumblr being more welcoming to people who aren't as comfortable interacting with communities. I'm a lurker by nature, and Tumblr allows for a more passive interaction with content and people that I'm more comfortable with on a day-to-day basis whereas forums and more community-oriented socials have the pressure of being somewhat active and seeking out other people to have conversations with. I tend to play my fic ideas close to my chest and don't do much in the way of meta and analysis, so I also don't feel like I have much to say.

But then, I started wondering a bit. I'm a fandom young, comparatively speaking. I wasn't on LiveJournal, I was late to FFN, and Tumblr, and Ao3. The only forums I've ever been even remotely active on were NaNoWriMo forums. A lot of my resistance to more community-based fandom locations is because of the drama, fighting, and how quickly things can just explode, and when it comes down to it, the unspoken social rules that I worry I might break are a small drop in a very large ocean.

I kind of wonder if that's in part because I've only ever experienced fandom "community" through Tumblr, and social media in general through the major socials, where everything is very out-there and you have to sacrifice interaction for privacy and any misstep is very quickly and harshly punished. IDK, just some thoughts really. Also a possible reason why places like Pillowfort and here tend to be populated with older fans than younger, community's scary when all you know is Tumblr

[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.

[fuzzybluemonkeys]

I definitely find tumblr "easier" in a lot of ways because of the passivity of it. I don't have to friend or even follow someone in order to reblog their post. But the downside of that is that it makes it that much more intimidating to try to add your own response or content.