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

[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