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

[mistressofmuses]

AMEN.

The metric of success (and design) being "engagement" is ABSOLUTELY a huge deal. It removes so much nuance or in-depth exploration, because getting notes/shares/retweets/likes/whatever is easier done with something short and emotional, which isn't great for a lot of complicated topics.

Also, algorithms can fuck far, far off. I want options to find new content and people and groups... on my terms and when I'm interested. Not when a site decides a person/page/group has paid enough to show up on my feed.

The way things like tumblr (and maybe twitter, idk, I've never figured it out) work with people engaging with different parts of a convo is REALLY hard for community. I don't know that I'd thought about that particular thing (a particular reblog chain taking off, even if it misses some really interesting and insightful parts of the conversation) as part of what makes *fandom* hard on tumblr, but it's kind of obvious now that you pointed it out.

[memorizingthedigitsofpi]

it wasn't obvious to me either until I had an epiphany the other night while lying awake in bed at 2am. everyone is so desperate for ao3 comments because they don't have anywhere else to have a conversation with someone. I think that's also the reason why everyone tries to treat ao3 like social media when it's not. they need a platform that allows for this style of conversation we're having right here, and the closes analogue to a lot of people seems to be ao3 - because they don't know other options exist

[mistressofmuses]

Absolutely!

I really wish that more of fandom would move back to spaces like Dreamwidth. I see a lot of people lamenting the loss of LJ as the space it once was, and how bad the site has gotten since. Or people who were never on LJ, but are longing for that sort of more personal connection and control over space. And every time I just want to lead them by the hand over to DW, lol.
(To be fair, I do understand a lot of people's reluctance to jump into a new site. I'm the same way with the various tumblr alternatives that were being proposed for a while, where I never really wanted to go to the trouble of trying to get used to them, so glass houses and all that. But still!)