![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
~4 B.C. had no mass communication~
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?
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?
no subject
no subject
But it does seem like a fun moment to revisit older modes of fannish engagement ...
I haven't made the jump to Discord myself, but I wasn't on chat much back in the day, either. The impermanence doesn't do it for me. I want to build edifices, in tandem with many other partnering hands, that can last the ages! lol
no subject
Something I've been saying for a while is BRING BACK FORUMS! They're so much more community-focused and there's one out there for pretty much anything.
no subject
no subject
I'm doing what I always have done, just here instead of on LJ.
I have had a lot of shit hit the fan in my personal life the last few years which means I have less time to write meta or watch fannish canons, but I have every hope that soon I will be returning.
The biggest impact I saw was when Twitter came along and all of a sudden people decided You Could Not Post on Dreamwidth Unless You Had A Long, Edited Thoughtful Post That Would Get An A in College.
Which was never true and made me sad. But it cause people to quite using DW for short, off-the-cuff posts, which I enjoy reading, whether it's personal or fannish.
I mean, DW is not Substack or Medium, right?
But that's what I saw.
no subject
Yeah, I don't know why dw feels like a space that requires coherence. i definitely picked that up from somewhere! But there's really no reason for it. I guess it feels awkward joking in my own voice, instead of re-circulating someone else's joke. weird how malleable, and yet unchanging, we all are in these core ways
no subject
no subject
I definitely do internet fandom way differently, but so much has changed in the twenty-odd years since I got online that there's absolutely no way to say that one factor is a bigger contributor than another. Like, if I were sixteen now, I'd undoubtedly do fandom differently than I did back in 2000. But, if I'd been 38 in 2000, I also would have done fandom differently back then. Fandoms, and platforms, and media, and I have changed in so many ways.
I think one of the biggest changes is that streaming happened, and suddenly we all got decoupled from the weekly TV release schedule. Back in the day, if your were in a TV fandom, and fortunate enough to live in the region where it got first run, you were absolutely going to have your butt on the couch at a certain day and time. Maybe you'd tape or DVR or whatever if you had some sort of conflict, but the vast majority of people were watching at the exact same time and then immediately hopping online afterward to join in the discussion. I suspect that contributed to the posts you mentioned, where we all jumped online to write up our thoughts. That was part of the viewing experience. Watch the show, then jump into the discussion. These days, people definitely do post reviews, but that collective experience is gone because most people are watching stuff at different times. I definitely feel less inclined to post my thoughts about things I watch because I know that there's a limited audience and I don't feel like I'm part of a larger conversation.
I also get more self-conscious about posting. I see mostly people posting reviews of books and movies and TV seasons as a whole, and they usually do it in isolation. I think that tends to make the content of the review much more important, and also makes them feel like they need to be well-written and funny and coherent. They have to stand alone. I can't remember the last time I saw a review that was nothing but incoherent flailing about how much someone loved an episode or how their OTP shared a look or whatever. (Keep in mind that I basically only read DW. Maybe this happens on Twitter and Tumblr?) I don't post those anymore, for the most part. Partially that's because age has dulled the edge of experience and it's incredibly rare for me to get that excited about something these days. And partially it's because I think if I'm going to post a review it should be thought out and well-written and I just don't have time for that.
There's a ton of other stuff I can think of too...the transition from the internet being primarily text to it being primarily audio-visual, the rise of algorithmic social media which means that people no longer curate their own internet experience and instead have it curated by AI, shorter seasons meaning fewer filler episodes which means fewer chances to end up with a random wacky fan-favorite episode that gets everyone talking... So much is different now. I do think I'm quieter as a result, but I also can't discount that being in part due to me being old and tired these days. ;)
no subject
I wonder if anything could be organized on the fandom end to restore that sense of community seriality. We've been good enough at building our own structures in the past.
I've had a blast watching the Dracula Daily phenomenon on Tumblr. After reading Dracula at least three times at different points in my academic life, it felt like an opportunity to actually understand what people liked about the book! And the return to seriality seems to me to have been key to that.
I know rewatches have limited popularity in niche spaces. In a ways, I'd love to see rewatch/reserialization comms become a central thing, a hub for fandom connection and shared interaction with a media text ...
no subject
I would love to read meta about the shows I'm interested in, but I forget to bookmark it for later and don't read it when it's fresh because I don't want to be spoiled. Then I miss out on whatever conversation on DW there is about the given show. I did watch Obi Wan in real time so I got to be part of those discussions.
no subject
Personally, even when I was trying to make Tumblr and sort of Twitter into my fandom home, I never got comfortable with expressing my thoughts freely there because of the loss of control once the reshares takes it away, and how little it takes for someone to get harrassed. But I might also be a chicken :) Getting corrected on Dreamwidth doesn't seem as fraught.
Some comms have been doing "reaction posts" for on-going media (I've seen/run them for anime, and I think I saw some for house of dragons) and these can work nicely for having chill conversations in the comments. Not super well formed meta but somewhat longer thoughts than what one might find in tumblr tags. I'm enjoying it, especially on
no subject
no subject
I'm glad you found that link interesting! I'm always fascinated by how communities are shaped and influenced by platform, design, technology, and so on. I'm also on team "way more comfortable with a keyboard", haha, but I suspect that's the case for most of the people who enjoy Dreamwidth.
no subject
I think I've also found myself getting more cautious about what I put on the internet, which is partly about anonymity (back in the 2000s I used I regularly post thoughts about theater that I'd seen, which I would feel very very hesitant to do now) and partly about having weathered the vitriolic atmosphere of a lot of social justice circles at this time, and the ways that's seeped into fandom. At the same time, I think I also feel a different kind of confidence now in my opinions about art and media, and I care less about whether other people agree with me, so I don't feel as strong an impulse to write rhetorically.
I do struggle with all this, though - I not infrequently do find myself thinking that I would enjoy interacting with the internet more in the ways I used to, including writing more in my own voice in that way. I certainly think I would be happier if I got back to writing and post fanfic more regularly. But it feels like there are a lot of obstacles to doing so.
no subject