NEVER READ THE COMMENTS

[moonflower_rose]

I truly regret, at least four times a day, clicking on the comments in social media posts. I just made the mistake of looking at some on a pro-AO3 Tumblr post, and immediately felt drowned in exhaustion from the absolute wankery in the replies.

I remember the heyday of LiveJournal when I was living and breathing fandom and was so engaged, and often feel very nostalgic for those times. Maybe there was less wank then, or maybe I was just more able to ignore things I didn't like, but these days there seems to be so much negativity disguised as discourse and my old carcass can't handle it. It's the lurker life for me!

Comments

[enchanted_jae]

People are getting ruder online. I'm sure that part of that stems from A) not being able to see how you've hurt someone, and B) not having to face the consequences of being a wanker, as in, getting punched in the mouth.

:/

[moonflower_rose]

I definitely agree that people say many things online that they would never consider saying face to face. I’m sure it probably has something to do with feeling in control or empowered in a way they maybe don’t in daily life. It’s a shame people need to be dicks to others in order to feel better about their own situation!

[firethesound]

I feel like this too, though I'm not sure there really was less wank. I think that a lot of it comes down to how LJ and tumblr are set up, with LJ giving me more control over what I saw and who I interacted with, plus comments happen on someone else's post and drama there felt a bit like being rude in someone else's living room so that might've helped? Plus, I think a lot of the wank (at least, a lot of the wank that I was aware of, which overall wasn't too much) happened more behind closed doors, so to speak. Whereas with tumblr, it's all just out there, and there's way more people having much shallower interactions with each other, and to me it just feels less personal which I can see how that could be open season for some people to just be total butts. Like in the comments on news articles, which you should also never read (and I can never stop myself from checking anyhow...) I don't know, I want to believe it's something about the set-up of tumblr that encourages it, rather than being an Ugggh People These Days sort of situation.

Or maybe it's just nostalgia. I do miss the heyday of LJ and so many of the people who were around all the time back then who have since drifted away from fandom

[moonflower_rose]

I was a much later adopter of Tumblr, I'd sort of fallen off fandom for a bunch of years and came back and LJ was a ghost town. Maybe if I'd been on there earlier I might feel some sort of affection for it, but for me it's just not as great as the LJ days. For a start, the reblogging where the post gets unbelievably long makes me so frustrated! You'd never get away with long-ass posts without a cut back in the old days! Plus the luxury of being able to post things privately and engage with just your close friends, or to have the opportunity to get to know new people but in that more private space - I made some of my lifelong friends that way through LJ, and 15 years later I've been to (and in!) weddings, visited them in their home countries - I have to admit I haven't made a concerted effort to get to know people via Tumblr, but I do know I feel like sort of a small voice in a noisy crowd there, and I haven't made a new fandom friend via Tumblr at all in like, 4 years on there. That's okay though, because I'm at a different point in life and can enjoy fandom on the edges in a way I couldn't when I was first getting involved.

I often think of some of the great folks from the old days that I lost track of as LJ withered and died, and I hope they're all doing great and are happy! But I do miss those times.

I think you're definitely right, a lot of the wank back in the day was either invisible because it was in private posts, or because you just chose not to follow people who were total butts (love that, btw!). Now the wank is sort of thrust at you because people you HAVE chosen to follow will reblog it, and it comes up on your feed thirty times in a day, and people send those awful anon asks that then can only be answered by doing so publicly, and ugggggggggh. I have unfollowed some folks on Tumblr even though I really enjoy their fic, just because of wanky reblogs or asks. I'm glad now in my old age that I recognise when I'm not having fun and just stop doing the thing, rather than feeling anxious about it and feeling like I must witness/engage/follow. Very liberating. Plus I can thank AO3 for being better able to do this, since you can subscribe to an author and therefore avoid the blogs but still not miss the new content.

[firethesound]

Ohhh the anons and reblogged wank and it's THE WORST when someone you follow gets into it with someone else and you end up seeing the same post reblogged a dozen times as they hash it out. I'm really picky about who I follow exactly because of things like that. And this doesn't help with super long posts on mobile, but on desktop I recently found out you can just hit the J key and it'll skip to the top of the next post. Saved my sanity, I tell you!

I really do miss the LJ days, though, and getting to know people through their journals. I've also made some of my best friends through fandom on LJ and haven't been able to do the same through tumblr. I keep hoping that Dreamwidth will pick up, but it's still pretty quiet here, and some of the people I adore from LJ never made the jump.

Tumblr does have its uses, though. I haven't had much energy left over for fandom for the past couple of years and largely ended up disengaging from it, and because scrolling tumblr is such a low-investment sort of interaction it was nice to be able to stay connected like that. Plus, I get to see loads more fan art there. But yes, thank goodness for AO3 subscriptions!

[moonflower_rose]

I agree, when I've been too in my own head to be properly interactive, the scroll and like option has been good to keep connected, esp using the app. I've found it brilliant for finding and following artists! And I'm a bit of a sucker for animal accounts, I think that I probably reblog more funny cats than anything else which is either sad or quite nice? lol

[dark0feenix]

Tumblr is definitely worse with the wank. Here's a good take on why tumblr and the likes of it actually want the conflict: https://mikkeneko.tumblr.com/post/169325179934/how-web-20-and-especially-tumblr-is-ruining

I spend most of my regular fandom time on tumblr though I try to stay clear of any ship tags. It's not easy to find new content if you don't follow actively posting and reblogging people but I don't want to see all the hate in the ship tags. It's definitely harder to make friends there or to have a proper conversation. I hate how it's so public, so I rarely post anything myself, just reblog all the shiny that catches my eye.

[moonflower_rose]

I'm such a novice at Tumblr, even after 3 years, that I almost never investigate the tags and basically end up stumbling across things I like almost in spite of myself. I think I started by following Femmequixotic for updates on one of her fics from a few years back and then found people to follow based on her reblogs, and then so on and so on...actually that's exactly how I dipped my toes in LJ fandom back in the day too, but I dove in headfirst pretty quickly there, lol.

I remember I was following a fic on an Archive that kept going offline due to difficulty paying for the server, and this author finally made a post saying she wouldn't be updating there anymore and to follow her on LJ. Her beta was the one and only SilentAuror, and I ended up following her (and befriending her, we're still in touch!) but mainly I then read their friends pages, and discovered new people from there. Anyway, I suppose it's not really that different in the end, it's just the way I interact with it.

I don't really make posts there either, I do reblog things on occasion but no posts that I'm creating from scratch. I definitely spend some time scrolling every day though, even though I'm not really commenting or asking etc.

Thanks for the link, so interesting!