Ten Little Chances to be Free (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tenlittlebullets) wrote2019-04-20 09:46 pm
tenlittlebullets) wrote2019-04-20 09:46 pm
I miss LJ comm culture
Was thinking earlier about why I read my Dreamwidth friends list regularly but never seem to participate. Part of it is that I have some notion I'm supposed to post, like, life updates and "things I accomplished this [time period]" roundups and mini-review catalogues of Things Read/Watched/Played. Which seems to be what most other people on my flist use theirs for. But Christ that sounds like homework to my brain, and also a great way to kick off a depression spiral even though RL is going fine right now, so I lurk rather than show my face without having done the homework.
I realize, rationally, and also in my gut now that I've written it out, that that is dumb. Blogging is freeform. I could hit-and-run with random shower thoughts every two weeks, say nary a word about life or activity roundups, and pass it off as ~maintaining my mystique~ if anyone says anything, which they won't. But the other thing I'm realizing as I haunt various platforms in the wake of the Tumblrpocalypse is that the culture of a platform matters. You can post whatever the hell you want, but you get more out of the space if you use it in dialogue with what the existing userbase is doing there.
Back when the Tumblr exodus was still actively underway, I found myself in various Discord servers trying to Explain Dreamwidth to stressed-out Tumblr users. These were smart people who were happy to explore the features, but unsure how those features translated into norms of interaction, content discovery, and what-to-post-where. And I remember being baffled by how intimidated many of them were about posting to communities. To them, friending individual blogs was the natural first step, but comms were A Whole Fucking Thing they were wary to intrude on, like submitting yourself for the approval of judgemental classmates. And I was going "?!?!?!" It's a complete inversion of how seriousness and intimacy worked on LJ, right? Your journal was your combination front porch/living room/blanket fort in the bedroom, a personal space with varying degrees of privacy and choosiness about audience, because it was About You. One of those degrees was "public," but a version of "public" that rude guests would still be intruding on. A "public" where introductions weren't really required, but it still wasn't uncommon for random strangers who'd stumbled across your post to preface their comments with "Hi, I found you through X, hope it's not creepy that I'm butting in," and in fact friendships were frequently made that way. Comms were where you slapped your fandom shitposts and casual discussion about topics of common interest, where random people with no prior acquaintance could interact with it on the basis of shared interest alone. Where it wasn't About You, it was about the thing everyone was there to talk about.
But then the shitposts, and memes, and shower thoughts, and reactions to newly-released canon, and casual discussion threads... moved to Tumblr. And the people who were attached to LJ-style fandoming moved to Dreamwidth. And trickled away by attrition as more and more fans sucked it up and moved to where the center of gravity was, no matter how hatefully obtuse Tumblr-as-a-platform was for their (okay, our) purposes. The more this happened, the more overwhelmingly DW got skewed towards people and activities that relied heavily on the LJ features Tumblr lacked. And the more that happened, the less DW actually resembled old-school LJ in the ways it was functionally used. Which I didn't notice, or didn't see the full implications of, even as it happened under my nose.
So those stressed-out Tumblr refugees were reading the room way better than I was. If all the low-friction, casual fan activity has migrated to Tumblr, what's left in Dreamwidth communities? Mostly things that Dreamwidth has the infrastructure to support and Tumblr is iffy for:
- Events with lots of logistics and participant-wrangling: fests, bangs, exchanges, etc.
- Structured mod-run activities like weekly prompt challenges and roundup newsletters.
- "Submit stuff on a particular theme in a specified format" communities like![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomsecrets and scans_daily that had built their momentum in the LJ days.
- (Kinkmemes and anon memes, which depend on unorthodox use of a very specific set of comment features. And also need to be checked on their own rather than having their activity integrated into your feed, so even though they're major activity hubs, they don't really function as comms.)
- And promos. Promos for comms, for events, for fic and fanart and graphics, for friending memes, always for ways to find and produce content somewhere else than the comm they're posted to.
Dreamwidth comms are a communal noticeboard and sign-up sheet for structured, supervised activities. Of course Tumblr-native fans were intimidated and clocked them as a formal, official Thing. I missed it, because LiveJournal comms skewed more towards rowdy after-school sci-fi clubs. But the culture of a platform resides in how it's used.
I don't know where I'm going with this, except that I miss LJ comm culture and it doesn't exist on DW. The features exist, but the critical mass of people using them that way doesn't. And the old LJ norms of public/private, intimacy, openness to public comment, what to post where, and where to look for what... just don't apply anymore. They haven't for a long time, thanks to modern social media. It's seductive to assume DW is a holdover version of oldschool LJ culture because it looks and sounds familiar, but the surface continuity masks huge changes in the norms of everyday usage.
My point here is not that any particular group of fans--Tumblr natives, DW holdouts, LJ-to-Tumblr migrants, Tumblr-to-DW migrants--is "to blame" for the most off-putting differences between the various platform cultures. People went where they went, and usage was most heavily shaped by platform features in combination with what kind of activity was concentrated there. I guess it's more... wistfulness, that LJ along with forums were my native mode of fandoming, to the point where following the center of fan activity over to Tumblr and adapting to its alien methods of interaction was extremely painful and frustrating. And now the DW mode of fandoming that evolved away from the center of activity turns out to be just as alien to me.
I can't do activity round-ups and regular mini-reviews of my Recently Read/Watched list. I'm not up for RL updates that are actually meant to keep anyone up-to-date. I can't do structured fanwork exchanges. I'm not wired for it--it's the most efficient way to turn what I do for fun into one massive stress/guilt/inferiority complex. Yeah, blogging is freeform, be the change you want to see, etc, and believe me if I end up with a project burning a hole in my head that's suited for Dreamwidth, I'll be delighted to post it here. If half a dozen other people want to make a DW comm just for fandom shitposting and casual discussion, I'll give it a go.
But I'm starting to accept that there's a reason I don't post here anymore. I don't like that that's so--I want a fandom home. Discord as the emerging hub of casual discussion is an ephemeral, undiscoverable nightmare, even though it's a really good chat system. Dreamwidth is open-source, self-funded, somewhat interoperable with other sites, has both personal and moderated-communal spaces, balances discoverability with privacy controls, is fantastic for durable threaded discussion... but I can't do fandom the way it seems to be done here right now. And I'm not sure how hard I want to swim against the tide.
(Comments welcome, you are not butting in, etc. But bear in mind that this is more personal musing than any kind of coherent declaration about fandom cultures. If it gets linked to as meta, so be it, but indignant attempts to rebut whatever axe you imagine I'm grinding will be accorded exactly as much patience as they deserve.)
I realize, rationally, and also in my gut now that I've written it out, that that is dumb. Blogging is freeform. I could hit-and-run with random shower thoughts every two weeks, say nary a word about life or activity roundups, and pass it off as ~maintaining my mystique~ if anyone says anything, which they won't. But the other thing I'm realizing as I haunt various platforms in the wake of the Tumblrpocalypse is that the culture of a platform matters. You can post whatever the hell you want, but you get more out of the space if you use it in dialogue with what the existing userbase is doing there.
Back when the Tumblr exodus was still actively underway, I found myself in various Discord servers trying to Explain Dreamwidth to stressed-out Tumblr users. These were smart people who were happy to explore the features, but unsure how those features translated into norms of interaction, content discovery, and what-to-post-where. And I remember being baffled by how intimidated many of them were about posting to communities. To them, friending individual blogs was the natural first step, but comms were A Whole Fucking Thing they were wary to intrude on, like submitting yourself for the approval of judgemental classmates. And I was going "?!?!?!" It's a complete inversion of how seriousness and intimacy worked on LJ, right? Your journal was your combination front porch/living room/blanket fort in the bedroom, a personal space with varying degrees of privacy and choosiness about audience, because it was About You. One of those degrees was "public," but a version of "public" that rude guests would still be intruding on. A "public" where introductions weren't really required, but it still wasn't uncommon for random strangers who'd stumbled across your post to preface their comments with "Hi, I found you through X, hope it's not creepy that I'm butting in," and in fact friendships were frequently made that way. Comms were where you slapped your fandom shitposts and casual discussion about topics of common interest, where random people with no prior acquaintance could interact with it on the basis of shared interest alone. Where it wasn't About You, it was about the thing everyone was there to talk about.
But then the shitposts, and memes, and shower thoughts, and reactions to newly-released canon, and casual discussion threads... moved to Tumblr. And the people who were attached to LJ-style fandoming moved to Dreamwidth. And trickled away by attrition as more and more fans sucked it up and moved to where the center of gravity was, no matter how hatefully obtuse Tumblr-as-a-platform was for their (okay, our) purposes. The more this happened, the more overwhelmingly DW got skewed towards people and activities that relied heavily on the LJ features Tumblr lacked. And the more that happened, the less DW actually resembled old-school LJ in the ways it was functionally used. Which I didn't notice, or didn't see the full implications of, even as it happened under my nose.
So those stressed-out Tumblr refugees were reading the room way better than I was. If all the low-friction, casual fan activity has migrated to Tumblr, what's left in Dreamwidth communities? Mostly things that Dreamwidth has the infrastructure to support and Tumblr is iffy for:
- Events with lots of logistics and participant-wrangling: fests, bangs, exchanges, etc.
- Structured mod-run activities like weekly prompt challenges and roundup newsletters.
- "Submit stuff on a particular theme in a specified format" communities like
fandomsecrets and scans_daily that had built their momentum in the LJ days.- (Kinkmemes and anon memes, which depend on unorthodox use of a very specific set of comment features. And also need to be checked on their own rather than having their activity integrated into your feed, so even though they're major activity hubs, they don't really function as comms.)
- And promos. Promos for comms, for events, for fic and fanart and graphics, for friending memes, always for ways to find and produce content somewhere else than the comm they're posted to.
Dreamwidth comms are a communal noticeboard and sign-up sheet for structured, supervised activities. Of course Tumblr-native fans were intimidated and clocked them as a formal, official Thing. I missed it, because LiveJournal comms skewed more towards rowdy after-school sci-fi clubs. But the culture of a platform resides in how it's used.
I don't know where I'm going with this, except that I miss LJ comm culture and it doesn't exist on DW. The features exist, but the critical mass of people using them that way doesn't. And the old LJ norms of public/private, intimacy, openness to public comment, what to post where, and where to look for what... just don't apply anymore. They haven't for a long time, thanks to modern social media. It's seductive to assume DW is a holdover version of oldschool LJ culture because it looks and sounds familiar, but the surface continuity masks huge changes in the norms of everyday usage.
My point here is not that any particular group of fans--Tumblr natives, DW holdouts, LJ-to-Tumblr migrants, Tumblr-to-DW migrants--is "to blame" for the most off-putting differences between the various platform cultures. People went where they went, and usage was most heavily shaped by platform features in combination with what kind of activity was concentrated there. I guess it's more... wistfulness, that LJ along with forums were my native mode of fandoming, to the point where following the center of fan activity over to Tumblr and adapting to its alien methods of interaction was extremely painful and frustrating. And now the DW mode of fandoming that evolved away from the center of activity turns out to be just as alien to me.
I can't do activity round-ups and regular mini-reviews of my Recently Read/Watched list. I'm not up for RL updates that are actually meant to keep anyone up-to-date. I can't do structured fanwork exchanges. I'm not wired for it--it's the most efficient way to turn what I do for fun into one massive stress/guilt/inferiority complex. Yeah, blogging is freeform, be the change you want to see, etc, and believe me if I end up with a project burning a hole in my head that's suited for Dreamwidth, I'll be delighted to post it here. If half a dozen other people want to make a DW comm just for fandom shitposting and casual discussion, I'll give it a go.
But I'm starting to accept that there's a reason I don't post here anymore. I don't like that that's so--I want a fandom home. Discord as the emerging hub of casual discussion is an ephemeral, undiscoverable nightmare, even though it's a really good chat system. Dreamwidth is open-source, self-funded, somewhat interoperable with other sites, has both personal and moderated-communal spaces, balances discoverability with privacy controls, is fantastic for durable threaded discussion... but I can't do fandom the way it seems to be done here right now. And I'm not sure how hard I want to swim against the tide.
(Comments welcome, you are not butting in, etc. But bear in mind that this is more personal musing than any kind of coherent declaration about fandom cultures. If it gets linked to as meta, so be it, but indignant attempts to rebut whatever axe you imagine I'm grinding will be accorded exactly as much patience as they deserve.)
Thoughts
I miss that too, and also, how lively and welcoming DW comms used to be.
>> Was thinking earlier about why I read my Dreamwidth friends list regularly but never seem to participate.<<
I make a point of commenting on friends' blogs because it encourages connections. In particular, most writers run on feedback, so that gets me more of content I love. If you need low-effort interactions, look for people who say things like, "Comments with Like or +1 are welcome!" because some of us use the amount of feedback to decide which things to make more of. I have at least a couple of folks who just post emojis. Also fine.
>> Part of it is that I have some notion I'm supposed to post, like, life updates and "things I accomplished this [time period]" roundups and mini-review catalogues of Things Read/Watched/Played. Which seems to be what most other people on my flist use theirs for. But Christ that sounds like homework to my brain, and also a great way to kick off a depression spiral even though RL is going fine right now, so I lurk rather than show my face without having done the homework.<<
Sure, those are fine things to include, but a blog can be anything you want it to be. I know folks who do Three Things Make a post, or quote-a-day, or picture-a-day, or other quick things. I also know people who post fiction, poetry, long essays, etc. It takes all kinds.
I made an entry on Recurring Posts, because many of these are very easy ways to make content. My Monday Update is definitely work, but I have two others -- currently Philosophical Questions and Coping Skills -- where I literally just copy and paste one item from a list. They start interesting discussions.
>>I realize, rationally, and also in my gut now that I've written it out, that that is dumb. <<
It's not dumb. Feelings matter; especially, time and energy matter. I have recurring posts precisely because there are weeks when I'm too busy or tired to do long posts -- or conversely, people have bought a boatload of poetry that I need to post. Fast, easy, interesting tidbits maintain activity for minimum effort.
>>But the other thing I'm realizing as I haunt various platforms in the wake of the Tumblrpocalypse is that the culture of a platform matters. You can post whatever the hell you want, but you get more out of the space if you use it in dialogue with what the existing userbase is doing there.<<
That depends a lot on your goals. If you want to attract attention and be liked, mimicking the context is helpful. But that can turn into "more of the same," then people get bored and leave, so the platform dies down. Novelty is important too.
If you have something you want to make and share, you can just do that. Start with a few like-minded friends, and probably new folks will drift in too. Just because there's a norm doesn't mean that's all anyone wants. However, you do need a more coherent concept of what you want to accomplish if you do your own thing than if you just follow other people.
>> Back when the Tumblr exodus was still actively underway, I found myself in various Discord servers trying to Explain Dreamwidth to stressed-out Tumblr users. <<
I'm a writer. About the second or third time I find myself saying the same thing to different people, I write it up. Then I can just point to that post or webpage whenever I need it. Other people can stumble across it in searches. I get a steady trickle of people thanking me for things like the Nonsexual Intimacies set. Anchor posts like that add up over time and make your blog more interesting. And yes, I've done a handful of them inspired by this or that exodus, too.
>> These were smart people who were happy to explore the features, but unsure how those features translated into norms of interaction, content discovery, and what-to-post-where. And I remember being baffled by how intimidated many of them were about posting to communities. To them, friending individual blogs was the natural first step, but comms were A Whole Fucking Thing they were wary to intrude on, like submitting yourself for the approval of judgemental classmates. <<
Considering how hostile a lot of communities have become, I can't say I blame them. However, I do invite people to the communities I host, which are designed to be easygoing and welcoming with activities that are straightforward to join. Or hey, you can just lurk and read the things that other folks post; that's fine too.
>> And I was going "?!?!?!" It's a complete inversion of how seriousness and intimacy worked on LJ, right? Your journal was your combination front porch/living room/blanket fort in the bedroom, a personal space with varying degrees of privacy and choosiness about audience, because it was About You. One of those degrees was "public," but a version of "public" that rude guests would still be intruding on. A "public" where introductions weren't really required, but it still wasn't uncommon for random strangers who'd stumbled across your post to preface their comments with "Hi, I found you through X, hope it's not creepy that I'm butting in," and in fact friendships were frequently made that way. <<
Blogs have a wide range of privacy. It's now common for them to be completely friendslocked, which wasn't all that common some time ago. Some are partially locked. Some are public. Mine has always been public (unless I have to lock it temporarily to shut out spam) because I'm a writer; it's a connection with my fanbase and crowdfunding patrons. A blog can be a diary, an art gallery, a cookbook, a classroom -- the metaphor defines how public it is and what kind of behavior is expected. Though it helps if you actually put your expectations in your profile. It can be About You, or it can be about anything else you please.
>> Comms were where you slapped your fandom shitposts and casual discussion about topics of common interest, where random people with no prior acquaintance could interact with it on the basis of shared interest alone. Where it wasn't About You, it was about the thing everyone was there to talk about.<<
Yeah, I really do miss that. They're a lot more cliqueish now, and I am so not into that.
Re: Thoughts
"Your blog can be whatever you want it to be if you put in the effort" is the starting point for this post, which is actually an attempt to probe why it takes so much effort to participate in Dreamwidth as it exists today, and to what extent it's worth it to swim upstream. It says right there in the part you quoted that dutiful inventories of [thing] consumed in [interval] is not a usage pattern I have any interest or ability to participate in, because the thought of turning fandom (particularly my personal space) into homework makes my soul shrivel up and die. So in what way is it useful to respond with "Have you tried setting yourself small, regular homework assignments to motivate yourself through obligation?"
Because, to clear up a more sentence-level misread, what's dumb is not the desire not to turn fandom into homework, which my head and my gut are in full agreement on as a valid and healthy desire. What's dumb is, indeed, the assumption that you can only use a platform the way everyone else is. But then the question becomes "So what's stopping you from dumping all your drive-by casual opinions/reactions/analysis/jokes here?", and the answer is the complex dynamics described in the post about comm culture and, to distill it down, Where's The Best Place To Put Things.
I am not looking to cultivate an audience or maintain posting discipline or have a Goal To Accomplish. I'm looking for the least-bad place to yell--at irregular intervals, lengths, and degrees of formality--about Blorbo From My Shows among people who share the same brainworms as I do. That's the thing that's missing here that was present on LJ. Every platform where fans congregate has its own set of benefits and drawbacks, and right now, for me, the drawbacks of swimming upstream on a sleepy platform with no designated places to put that stuff anymore are enough to keep me on Tumblr. (But still not enough to drive me to the much worse cesspit that is Twitter.) Obviously your personal cost/benefit analysis is different. That doesn't mean I'm failing at anything and just need help doing "better," or need to be led by the hand like a child and have the basic privacy system of platforms I've been using for decades explained to me.
I do agree that regular discussion prompts are a good way for a mod to keep a community alive--I used to run weekly caption contests and regular discussion topics on the LJ comms I maintained in the mid-00s. But I cannot convey to you the depths of my lack of interest in treating my own personal space like that. The assumption that [structured obligation-posting/virtuous personal-accountability blogging/acting like a salon host with a duty to Maintain Your Audience] is THE thing to do with your personal space, and that people subliminally expect you to be doing that whether or not it's what you actually intended or committed to, is a large part of what turns my stomach every time I think about posting here.