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

[osteophage]

I found this post via this Tumblr post, so I'm sorry if this seems out of nowhere, just thought I'd add some thoughts.

I think a lot of what you're pointing out here applies to how bad corporate social media is for communities generally. A while back, I read this post about how "Tumblr is ruining fandom," and it's part of what inspired me to compose my own writeup of how Tumblr is harmful to communities in general. Things like unmoderated tag searches getting used as a proxy for "community" spaces, the reblog-addition system, and punishing people for using links has an overall negative impact on what kinds of community dynamics can emerge.

There are other social media options out there -- datestamps, post privacy levels, proper threading, topic-based opt-in groups to share to, actual comment sections friendlier to full back-and-forth conversations, urls independent of usernames, basic community moderation tools, lack of intrusive algorithm, a slower site culter, etc., these all do exist in some places.... but yeah, those features tend to be found in the more niche places, not the big names. Because catering to users' needs isn't where the money is.