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

[yume_hanabi]

"I'm not familiar with Fanexus and their plans, but I feel like the ability to reblog is one of the issues with current social media because you end up having to perform/put on a public face on all of your posts, because it might end up pushed under the eyes of many, many people including ones you hadn't meant to reach."
It's true, but it's still an extremely useful feature for some things that are meant to be shared (for a personal example, I'm currently co-organizing a couple of fandom events, and having people reblog the promo posts has been invaluable in putting them under people's radar; participation took off beyond our expectations, which would probably never have happened if people didn't have an easy and effortless way to spread the word).

Privacy features that enable you to limit your posts' visibility to a chosen group of people should already (in theory at least) limit this need to put on a public face, since you can avoid random people seeing them. But being able to lock the ability to reblog would be the most ideal, I think. Doesn't Pillowfort have that? I made an account a while ago, but I must admit I haven't used it much ^^;

Basically, the ideal social media platform for me would be like a mix of DW and Tumblr: encouraging communities and discussions through comments, without completely doing away with reblogs (but having lots of options for privacy and limitations). Of course, even if the perfect platform were to magically appear tomorrow, it'd be no use if people didn't adopt it... So in the end, I'm just following the herd anyway XD