I've been reading a lot of discussion and meta about internet platform migration this week, and it's got me thinking about voice, participation, internet persona, and personal authority. Some sort of keyword cluster like that.
Was it LiveJournal culture, or was it me? Somehow, sitting down to write lots of long opinionated stuff felt normal in 2007. I'd watch an episode of tv and then read and write about just that 40 minutes for hours. And it felt normal to use an authoritative persona, to state my thoughts, feelings, and responses, with the assumption of a generally interested audience. Of course we were all going to sit around and discuss the new ep for a week or two!
Now, the way I do internet time is different. Tumblr gives my brain a long string of pretty pictures, deep thoughts, bits of poetry, and fannish gifsets, and sometimes I mutter thoughts or feelings in the tags. If something heavy is going on, I might admit it ... or might not. And I mainline entire seasons without writing extensively about my response. And fandoms come and go so much faster than they used to, or so it seems, back in the Stargate-and-X-Files days.
Yes, one still blogs, sometimes, about books, or a particularly impactful bit of media, or political events. But I notice that, on the whole, I'm a lot quieter on the internet nowadays when it comes to speaking my own thoughts in my own voice. Is that, at least in part, down to no longer being a college student, opinionated and with lots of time for argumentation? Probably, but some of it also feels like a hollowing-out of self-representation.
What about alla y'all? Do you find that you do internet fandom differently? Do you think it's the platforms, or you, that's the biggest factor in changes or continuities?
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