memorizingthedigitsofpi (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
memorizingthedigitsofpi) wrote2021-06-21 06:43 pm
memorizingthedigitsofpi) wrote2021-06-21 06:43 pm
Entry tags:
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)
Ramble-y Thoughts
My first fandom community was on FFN way back when I was 11 or 12, where I befriended a few people through replying to their reviews and talking about all sorts of things. I spent more time sending PMs than I did reading fics. Even though we don't talk anymore, these people stayed in contact with me for years. We were around the same age, and we interacted with each other's stories regularly. Only when I started uni that I became too busy to talk as often. Most of these people are no longer on FFN, and some of them might have changed and we might not get along anymore. But it was a fun time back then.
Tumblr feel so....different from that. I'm starting to think that my feelings of low self-esteem were because I missed that feeling of having friends in fandom. My writing has improved, but I'm not as happy.(AO3 only began to feel weird when people started adding stuff like "if you ship X/Y gtfo" and "in this house we stan/hate X" in additional tags. Idk, it just makes me feel weird.)
I have some people on tumblr who interact with my posts about OCs and my writing, with reblogs and reactions in tags and all, but sometimes I just post when they're not online, and who knows if they'll ever see it. Self-reblogging feel....sad lol. And I can't just message them and ramble because the message box thing is so small and annoying on desktop, and rambling in reblogs is just me constantly throwing rambles on people's dashboards (One time I rambled with someone about my OCs, and they rambled about their OCs, and it was a very long post.)
And the Wank™. Boy oh boy, I've lost interest in so many fandoms because of the widespread hate towards certain characters on basis of applying morality to fiction, which we all know is the only valid way of interacting with fiction, because fiction affects reality and stanning a 'literal abuser' is way worse than taking the side of his son who is a murderer in canon. /s (I'm never gonna stop being super salty about the BNHA fandom. Like, I get if you (general you) don't like the character, but let others do their thing????) Not to mention how interacting with other people who share your views isn't a guarantee that you won't somehow find yourself dragged into discourse, because like you said, posts are public.
(I mean, I guess I can thank fanpol for motivating me to create my own original content. Can't have fanpol if what you write has no fandom. Problem solved! :D)
That being said, most of my social media experience is on tumblr. I don't have a lot of interest in social media.
Am I still even on topic? My brain is thinking of too many things at once.
Re: Ramble-y Thoughts
Re: Ramble-y Thoughts
But yeah. I made the "I should probably pretend this fandom doesn't exist" realization the moment I started hating Dabi for being a victim. It was a very foreign and unpleasant feeling. People acted like giving Endeavour the benefit of the doubt (like, early on in the series) was somehow erasing his bad actions like??? No?
It's like people couldn't grasp the idea that if I think someone could do better, I'm admitting, by default, that they're not doing good enough. I can't say "X can do better" and also deny they were doing bad things. That's just impossible.
Part of my fandom enjoyment is reading meta posts, because my own brain is usually too distracted to arrange my thoughts into something I could share with people, and that joy was taken away because most of my mutuals had these Black and White views, and I just started filtering and blocking people all the time and it was just so tiring. Even my headcanons blog is gone.
To sum it up, I have never cared about the morality of characters (my OCs tend to be problematic and aware of it, so expecting others' characters to be saints would be a huge hypocrite move). If something happens in canon that I don't like, I just shrug and accept it as it is, with the idea that it isn't my own story in the first place. I can always make mine, original or fanfic. The idea that I need to publicly criticize every little thing I don't like in a piece of fiction because I have to 'think critically' is just...a lot of work going into stuff that I don't care about.
Oops, I rambled again; it's very difficult to talk about that stuff on tumblr 'cause you just know it's gonna attract trouble.
Re: Ramble-y Thoughts
(Anonymous) 2021-06-24 02:31 pm (UTC)(link)I have several pieces of media where I love the subject deeply, but I absolutely hate the parts of fandom I can find in the standard social media spheres. I can't even bring myself to read their meta posts these days, unless they're from decades ago. It makes me hesitant to even check out the fan spheres in DW, even if they're active, because of the black/white thinking. And the highly political and aggressive posts, as well.
I'd like people to not take media so seriously as that it has to be completely morally pure, but also take the media with enough weight that they can't just rewrite all the characters to be whatever they want them to be, either.
Re: Ramble-y Thoughts
Yeah, same. I've been in my own corner for a couple of years now, keeping my fandom stuff to myself and only posting about original content. I want to find circles with people like me, but the fear of disappointment is always there.
I forgot to consider this but yeah. I think that weight is the difference between interpreting a character differently and making them an entirely different character.
Re: Ramble-y Thoughts
I used to find meta inspiring, finding interesting threads that made me go "oooh this would be so interesting to explore into a fic" but then I realised the BNHA ones were just making me miserable and I had to unfollow and filter too. I just wrote this on my journal a few days ago but, "My general philosophy is that I take the bits I like from canon and the rest, well, fanfic’s here to fix it." and that's it, really. Same!!
Re: Ramble-y Thoughts
Oops, I rambled again;
That is what Dreamwidth and other journal style sites are for! I think spending time on sites like Twitter and Tumblr makes you forget (I’m including myself in this) that rambling can be a good thing. Just writing your thoughts down (without the goal of needing it to be a structured essay on a certain topic) feels freeing.
Re: Ramble-y Thoughts
And it really is freeing! Taking thoughts out of your head and putting them down somewhere where you still can see them and think about them later if you want is such an awesome thing to have (especially when I forget things pretty easily)! I'm starting to think of DW like I do of my physical journal, except I can choose who sees it. I think it's the absence of 'notes' on posts. With tumblr, you can't help but notice when something hasn't been interacted with. But here it's just a post in a journal.
Re: Ramble-y Thoughts
Re: Ramble-y Thoughts