~4 B.C. had no mass communication~

[lotesse]

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?

Comments

[vriddy]

Everyone else made very good point on everything's that changed, both in terms of platforms, media distribution, and ourselves :D I also read interesting thoughts this morning about keyboards, too. Many people experienced the online world mainly on phones these days, while sitting down at a keyboard tends to set people up better for writing longer thoughts. That certainly resonates with me, although I may be particularly useless with phone keyboards, haha. Maybe that's not relevant if you use Tumblr etc on a computer.

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 bnha_fans because there's a good little cluster of people :)

[lotesse]

That's interesting! I'm a stubborn phone hater, and it has a lot to do with my deep preference for keyboard interaction rather than touchscreen UX. I can super see that being a major shifter, in terms of user behavior. Thanks so much for the link. I wonder if we'll see a substantial increase in reaction comms like the ones you mention any time soon.

[vriddy]

I think it'll depend on more people starting their own reaction posts and participating in them in existing or new comms, if they find the concept interesting! Just a post saying "What did you think of episode X" can work. A couple of us who found them fun for BNHA have been trying it out for more series on anime_manga, but it's really dependent on who shows up. It can be discouraging if there is only 0-1 other person replying (I found 2 other participants is the minimum to keep it fun :D), and make it less tempting to try again later... I've also been eyeing scifi_rewatch for a while because I think it's such a cool concept!! But I don't want to organise something if I'm not sure yet I can make the time regularly. Would love if someone else started something though, so I'm keeping an eye on comm :D

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.