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

[ms_katonic]

Indeed. Facebook has the filtered posts but has your real name and face attached to it so NO. Everywhere else has the lack of privacy and you feel more like you're performing than actually talking to anyone.

Still. Your posts are helping me forgive Tumblrites for being... well. The site they/we are on encourages the worst of fandom, not the best. Doesn't excuse the excesses and abuses, but the worst offenders would either learn to behave or not be able to do as much harm on a more humane platform.

[memorizingthedigitsofpi]

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