Vent

[citrakayah]

The existence of social media that allows you to reblog things has been a plague upon the Internet.

Back before those sites gained traction, if someone had a blog, you'd be reading their thoughts. Maybe their thoughts were personal, maybe they gave away very little about the person's life but were about some scientific topic. Maybe their thoughts were not well put together or maybe they were really good. But you were reading their thoughts. You could actually form some sort of connection with people. It might not be super deep, but it could be. I met people who I got to know well through Dreamwidth, and I know people have formed even deeper connections.

That's not totally disappeared, but now when I look through Tumblr and Twitter blogs it's mostly reblogs or likes. I'm not actually getting to know the person, I'm getting to know what they like. If I want to find an original thought by this person, I have to trawl through a bunch of reblogs and likes to find it. There's exceptions but that's the rule. And it's not that these people don't have original thoughts (I know that isn't true; I know and respect many of them). It's just that I'm not seeing them.

But it still makes me feel like I can't actually get to know them, which is unfortunate both because there's people who seem cool that I don't know and people I do know that I only really see on Tumblr and Twitter now. Other people somehow manage to form deep connections through Tumblr and Twitter, but I'm genuinely not sure how they do it--whenever I look at the average person's blog, it just seems like a jumble of assorted stuff.

Comments

[professionaljaywlker]

Oh i feel you a LOT on that. A "personnal post" section is sorely missing on tumblr, and even with my own blog i tend to get... weirdly detached? It doesn't feel that much mine, moreso a way to just... talk with others. But worse than a forum, because it's indescribably hard to search stuff up on tumblr, so it's really only the current happenstances. I *guess* it's nice for art, though? It's much easier to find new stuff through tumblr or twitter than say, furaffinity, for me. But i prefer posting on furaffinity because it's better as a personnal archive.

Honestly mostly came on this site for this reason, but I'm kinda balancing between dreamwidth and pillowfort at the moment since both have decent journaling features, and the search feature feels easier on pillowfort than here. Bit of a hard time with how to find new people, with this one.

[the_broken_tower]

How active is Pillowfort? That's a new one to me

Tumblr's always been hard to search... And the chances of reblogged posts randomly disappearing is way too high to be comfortable. It isn't really within the user's control and I definitely don't like that.

- Rosen (he/him)

[professionaljaywlker]

It's definitely slow. Only a few posts i've been interested in, in the span of a few days. I assume it's approximately as active as on here, but it feels a slight bit more active due to the more tumblr like disposition of the blogs : you do by default see anything other blogs reblog, so that gets more stuff on your page, for better and for worse. I've been able to comment on stuff and get responses, but it's not like i've gotten a lot in return on my stuff.

Quite frankly, the activity isn't really what i'd be recommending it for. I just like the way it's set up quite a lot, and few posts is better than none, i suppose. I also find it prettier for the sharing of picture : i found that dreamwidth makes most image posts a little bit wonky, but it might be me not being used to how i'm supposed to format yet. Additionally, there's a tag search on pillowfort, which isn't a thing here : i'm getting used to that as tumblr user, so it's more intuitive in there for me to find the blogs i want.

[citrakayah]

There's a way to search for only original posts on Tumblr, but some blogs are excluded (probably because they're not visible to the third party website that does it) and I don't think it catches things like reblogs where the person whose blog you're searching added a comment to the reblog chain.

[the_broken_tower]

They're probably bonding more over shared interests (e.g. fandoms). Iirc, discord servers are a big way for people there to socialise outside of their posts, and the posts themselves aren't the main avenue for that.

It seems like a lot of people feel more comfortable spectating than interacting even on DW, which... like man, that's not what we're writing for. :( I dunno if it's an energy level thing or social norms from other sites coming to this one or what, but it's so hard to get to know people on here.

- Rosen (he/him)

[citrakayah]

I think a lot of people just aren't very active. In my case I tend to check journal entries once or twice a month, since I got used to not having a very active watchlist. I know other people who only show up every few months. I've seen a lot of other people who create a journal, post a few times, add some people to their circle, and then... never come back.

[redsixwing]

I feel you. I do interact with folks over on Tumblr, but it's almost all 1-on-1 chat through DMs or Discord, neither of which is anything more than ephemeral.

I do like curating what amounts to a personal favorites art collection, but if that's all I'm doing, I get bored in a hurry.

[elinox]

Sadly, this seems to be the new norm online now. Social media = share your likes to get attention! *eyeroll*

I refuse to do Tumblr because it's disorganized and people just reposting stuff. I've yet to see anything worthwhile there.

I miss thoughtful discussions on forums and animal people sharing their thoughts and experiences on their journals.

[xerimorph]

I've struggled to get comfortable with social media past the age of LJ/DW with the lack of post filtering. I was ok with Twitter in the early days when it felt like just me and my friends but as it grew I felt less comfortable sharing my thoughts and experiences and became more of a reblogger, which I agree feels disjointed and impersonal.

And now I'm a boring old recluse, so I barely post anywhere at all! So I'm part of the problem, but I'm with you. I miss the more personal net experience.

[foxboi]

boy do I feel that!
Most of the folks I actually interact with in a lasting way end up being the folks I've met and hung out with (digitally or in person) elsewhere

[lhexan]

One major division between social platforms seems to be whether you govern what you read, or whether the people you follow govern what you read. Only the latter lends itself to numbers-driven meme culture, but corporations recognized the addictive potential of such numbers, and as a result most platforms now follow the latter approach.

There was a time when I maintained a presence on each major site (except Facebook, to hell with them), so I could be there for those times when a friend sobbed into the void. And I was able to be there for several such moments; heartbreakingly, I was typically the only one there, despite dozens or hundreds of followers on their account. I was also able to help out lots of people during the pandemic.

These follower-driven sites are time-consuming by design, yet provide inadequate reward for time spent there, unless you happen to be one of the lucky or privileged few whose posts make numbers. Now I've chosen to only spend time on the platforms I like (Dreamwidth, Furaffinity and Discord), hoping that my friends have grown enough to reach out to me should they need help.

[citrakayah]

That's a good point I didn't think of before. Never really considered how much it clogged your reading page.

[injunjane]

I'm so much agree with what you're saying here.

I started my social networking with LiveJournal (before it was bought by Russians) back then with no option for re-posting. Me and my friends were enjoying so much the opportunity to say something totally our own openly to the world. Later most of them moved to Facebook which we jokingly called Mordokniha (the book of muzzles), and that was absolutely awful...not only people are endlessly re-posting, but what they like pops up in the thread even if it's super stupid.

I didn't start to use Twitter because of the same reason. It's brainless, it's disgusting, and it reminds me Fahrenheit 451 IRL :(