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

[jelasdax]

I’m actually very glad that you’ve been reminding people about Dreamwidth, because I am one of those people who used to use it a decade ago and then stopped when it became clear that people were migrating to Tumblr. Looking back at earlier blog posts makes me glad that I started this account up from scratch a few years ago. It’s amazing what a decade will do for personal growth.

But I hate tumblr as a community space for fandom! I only use it to look at pretty gif sets, and when there’s discourse it all seems so exhausting to try and navigate. Actual conversations are challenging in that space.

[memorizingthedigitsofpi]

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.