Tumblr Free Day

[kitewithfish]

Last night I had the bright idea of removing the Tumblr app from the homepage on my phone (not deleting it! Just moving it out of sight) and man, I am glad I did. I keep reflexively looking for it when I have a minute to myself, because Tumblr was good for distractions and new stuff and pretty pretty art, but not for community. 

Whereas anytime I open up a DW window I end up with nine tabs and three replies to write because To Be A Fan On DW is to be a chatty, chatty human being. XD

Does the social media you're using effect who you are on that platform?  I tend to think it does, but I am betting people have other experiences.

I have tried to establish Kitewithfish as Who I Am in fandom with little IRL crossover, so most of my online stuff is as a version of myself slightly detached from people who might google my name. Who I am online with fannish folks is different than I am with people on, say, Facebook, but it's pretty close to who I am in person. I have mostly kept FB a Fandom Free Zone for me, since god, that site gives me the Heebies AND the Jeebies, but I happily chat about fanfic with people who know me in life, tho I am coy about usernames. 

Comments

[kara_mckay]

Oh, I'm definitely a better person on DW than I am on FB, and on Tumblr, I'm somewhere in between the two. On DW and LJ before it, it's always felt easy to just be a person doing my own thing. On FB, it feels like there are always hordes of roving assholes looking for something to be pissed off about. Tumblr isn't so bad in that regard because I'm not even a little bit reluctant to block, and my experience has been that reblogging, with or without additional comments, is not at all the same as commenting on a FB post. Sometimes I think FB is designed to create confrontational behavior.

[kitewithfish]

"Roving bands of assholes" is very much a thing. I feel like blocking is a profoundly important thing to normalize - just remove the capacity for something to distract you from what you'd like to be doing.

[kara_mckay]

I think there's a holdover in thinking from when people who blocked were viewed as dramatic, narcissistic, or overly sensitive. Times have changed. Blocking isn't about being unable to handle criticism or differences in opinion, or being unable to engage in discourse. There is no discourse. Hell, "discourse" now seems to be an ironic term for an online interaction with someone who argues by accusing people of criminal behavior. In light of that and other, similar behaviors, blocking is now an important part of taking responsibility for how one experiences fandom.

[astolat]

You know, this is an example of the number one difference between here and Tumblr: this discussion of how blocking now functions is completely sensible and obvious to me; on Tumblr I literally never saw anyone articulating it, and on DW it's the first thing I see posted on the topic.

That sensation--never seeing moderate and sensible ideas, and also of seeing dumb extreme ideas shared as some kind of profound truth--was unbelievably common on Tumblr.

[kitewithfish]

A function of Tumblr v DW different methods of getting media in front of your eyeballs, I think.

On Tumblr, this is The Discourse: only the most controversial opinions got widespread bc the posts were reblogged by the True Believers, the Moderates Softening the Position, and the Absolutely Opposed. The fight makes things *more* visible. To avoid it all, you'd have to end up blocking even the people who are commenting to register their opposition - which, hell, sometimes I did.

On DW, the wankery has to be hosted by someone at their journal or community, and it's more contained - you have to go looking for it. It spills out, yes, but to get the full details you have to go back to the source of the wank, and blocking one person can really effectively remove a lot of fanwank from your life.

Honestly, my view on blocking was honed by Facebook. I block people and delete comments with gleeful abandon and I've ended up with a reasonably civil bunch of folks who I like to hear from. Fandom, learn to block. It's fine.

[alchemistdoctor]

Also, the lack of 'spreading' information by reblogs means that when you see an opinion blogged by someone, it's their opinion, and their responsibility. I think DW has a lot more responsibility involved about posting things you can stand behind.

[kitewithfish]

oh, yeah, I totally buy that. Even if you are linking to drama, you have to choose to do that with a new post and then probably add original commentary on it - no shortcuts, all our linking is artisanal, hand coded links.

[kitewithfish]

Sigh - yeah - but drama will find you and the internet is, in fact, real, so why let the bastards get you down.