ngl but I’m getting alittle annoyed with the way people keep pushing Dreamwidth.
Yes, Dreamwidth is run by fandom-friendly folks. But it is also firmly stuck in the bad old world of online fandom that was divided between the small number of talented content creators and the masses of mostly non-participating lurkers. Dreamwidth may be great for creators, but for the rest of us who participate in fandom through reblogs or retweets – the active curation of ours and others’ fandom experience through our Tumblrs or Twitter accounts – a return to a 2000s-style fandom experience means a return to a world where most of us are relegated to a passive audience.
I know the most of people pushing Dreamwidth so hard don’t mean it this way, but the way some of them are so, so blasé
about the lack of a resharing function is kinda starting to feel like some of them want us to sacrifice our participation in fandom in order to preserve their fandom experience.
I like tumblr because it feels like a conversation where everyone is invited to join if they want to. I definitely don’t care about writing meta on ao3, for instance – I don’t want meta to be the nonfiction equivalent of fanfic, where one person writes and readers read and give kudos and maybe comment. I want it to be a conversation. I think that’s why my attempts at writing fanfiction always fail while meta generally comes more easily – it does not feel like an individual activity where I share the finished product (and I can’t muster enough motivation to finish it). It feels like a prompt for a conversation, even if the meta ends up being like a mini essay. I like how things just bounce from blog to blog. It feels alive and it keeps me motivated to be active. I don’t feel like the Meta Writer who dispenses their Thoughts to others while others nod and clap and occasionally write a letter back to give me their feedback, you know? It feels like everyone’s sitting around the fire and sure, someone talks more and others tend to listen, but it still feels like we’re having a conversation together.
I’ve had a dreamwidth for years… I think longer than I’ve had a tumblr… but I don’t use it, and I don’t like it. But then again, I never liked LJ either, so that explains a lot of it.
The only reason I’m currently stuffing meta onto AO3 is because it’s a stable platform that can handle the load. It’s just a convenient lockbox to secure stuff I’ve written for the time being until I can find a better home for it and have the time to sort through it all. If this site flushes itself down the internet tubes, I just want to make sure I’ve salvaged everything I can before it all disappears forever.
So I might have a dreamwidth, but it’s more of a placeholder hoping something better and more long-term viable for me personally pops up. It’s just so… clunky compared to how fluid tumblr’s dash is.
And Pillowfort tries to be Tumblr Plus LiveJournal, which I guess is fine, but the inability to add to reblogs bugs me. Half of what I find entertaining about sharing on Tumblr is seeing that trail of commentary after someone’s random thought. And a comments section doesn’t have the same flavor of community creation.
To me comments are just for the OP. Reblog commentary is for the community.
I was in a tiny fandom on LJ back in the day, and for the public posts in the community forum, threaded comments were definitely for everyone. The difference is, it had a specific and obvious audience – the other fandom people in the comm. (This was a tiny fandom, so there was only one comm. But in a larger fandom, this would not be public to everyone in the whole fandom, only the people on that particular fandom space…).
Someone would post a question or a headcanon and everyone would discuss and it was 100% not about the OP – it was just all of us having a good conversation.
Not like commenting on private LJ blogs.
That kind of community discussion was a bit different though, because if you replied, your audience *included OP*. So you couldn’t add a super snarky commentary that’s addressed to YOUR user base and not to OP. Like people do on twitter a lot.
If you disagreed you had to debate in a way that included OP, and thus probably be… politer?
I think that style of community discussion tends to create more positive spaces, because no one feels like they are talking behind the last reblogger’s back and can therefore be snarky to them.
Like right now, I’m reblogging this from @ltleflrt and I feel a little uneasy in case they take offence at my disagreement. Tagging someone you’re not a mutual with can feel a bit scay because what if they think you’re being a dick? (hi @ltleflrt, sorry for picking on you – I’m not trying to be a dick, I’m wingstocarryon and I’ve followed you for ages and I like you, sorry!).
But the reblog function means I’m not talking to @litleflrt directly. I mean, I COULD tag you and have a conversation WITH you, directed at you, but the medium makes me feel like I’m reblogging to MY followers. It only changes if we’re mutuals and I know you’ll read what I’m writing. Then it becomes more friendly, less passive-aggressive. Even when I don’t WANT to be passive-aggressive, I just want to add my thoughts to the pile.
Like, I enjoy the spark that happens with the disagreement and the snark and all the takes piling on. But it’s a different feeling of what the community is. People with different interpretations are more likely to come into conflict, I think.
I’m not saying this to dispute anything above, though. Just thinking aloud.
I LOVE the posts that are made by reblogs. There’s a kind of creativity that comes from being able to add stuff and make it all public. I’d miss that a lot.
Idk. I didn’t realize you couldn’t add commentary to PF reblogs. That’s too bad.
It would be interesting to see what style ends up taking over in a system that allowed both.
I started using LJ in 2001 and never got into communities even tho I used the site regularly to blog for years. I never made friends on that site, maybe had 5 followers and 4 were irl friends. And communities were SO clique-ish. At least the ones I poked my head in were. It was never the right environment to pull me into socializing.
Tumblr, on the other hand, sucked me right in. People who followed me could share my posts and expose me to their groups, and suddenly my conversations spread to new people who weren’t part of my circle. This was before you could @ someone, and you just looked at your post notes to see who added commentary to their reblog (which is how I saw your reply @fandom-after I never got notified of you tagging me. Also hi! No offense taken because it’s just a conversion! lol) and as the op I could either reblog to talk back or just ignore whatever was added.
The op is still involved in reblog conversations with everyone who interacts with the post. And that fear of tagging someone you don’t usually interact with seems no different than being too shy to comment in a community. So I’m still not seeing the benefit of communities driven by comment conversations in LJ/Dreamwidth/Pillowfort vs reblog conversations on Tumblr.
But there’s a reason Pillowfort exists. The smaller community vibe was missed by old LJ users enough to try and hybridize the two social media styles. I’m just not one of those people 🙂
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