Modern Social Media Sucks for Fandom by memorizingthedigitsofpi (2021)

* all posts are public, leading to epic levels of wank
* people reply at different points in the conversation, also leading to wank but more importantly, obscuring parts of the conversation and also making the full conversation only viewable to the initial poster
* sharing anything automatically shares it with everyone you know on that platform because you can't have subgroups for your content unless you make multiple accounts
* real fucking names
* constantly changing usernames (looking at you tumblr) makes it impossible to know who you're even following/who's following you. it also makes it hard to keep track of friends
* platforms are maximized for “engagement” not for community, so it's all about getting the likes and shares and who cares about deep diving anything
* priority is mostly given to short form content which makes nuance difficult
* everything moves so fast that it's difficult to have a follow up conversation on anything you post because people can't find the initial thought
* everything is presented without the context of the posts that came before and after them - especially on sites that don't give you a date/timestamp
* tags are communal rather than personal, so you never really know what you'll find in there. Everyone wants to organize their own space, but the items they put in their containers might be something you're allergic to (to stretch a metaphor)
I can't do twitter. Tumblr makes me feel more like either a spectator or a performer. Tiktok is every social media experience I've ever had, played through at 100x speed. No option is perfect, but some are way less perfect than others. At least for me.

Source: memorizingthedigitsofpi's Dreamwidth Journal (2021) / Noted: 2025 February 27

(..) I think twitter and tumblr and the modern social media platforms are inherently forcing people to be performative? Because you're never in your own space, you're always speaking in a big courtyard full of people where someone else might hear you and answer, and there's fun in finding new people like that but it's also exhausting in that you always have to be on. Unless you hide something carefully in a post with no tags on tumblr, I guess, which is like whispering into the void because it will be lost in two minutes since that's just the way the platform works, pushing new content on top all the time.

Like, in theory just as many people could be reading and listening here on DW… but I think that comes with more awareness that you are lurking, this isn't your space. And there's nothing for you to “win” here - you can't make yourself look good by reblogging/retweeting interesting content or by disagreeing outrageously with a Bad Take (which may be genuinely bad, or maybe just too easy to take in bad faith.)

And there's nothing to “win” in terms of engagement here either. There's no like or anything. If people want to interact, they have to pause and write some thoughts - and there's no internet points to win there either, just a quality connection.

how does the structure of web 2.0 socmed harm fandom?

in aggregate: it forces fandom[$], a diverse space where people go to indulge niche interests and specific tastes, into overexposure to outsiders and to one another, and exacerbates the situation by removing all semi-private interaction spaces, all moderation tools, all content-limiting tools, and all abuse protection.

The result is that fandom on web 2.0 - tumblr in particular - is overrun with widespread misinformation, black & white reasoning obliterating nuanced debates, mob rule and shame culture as substitutes for moderation features, fear of dissent and oversensitivity to disagreement, hatedoms and anti- communities, and large/expanding pockets of extremist echo chambers that have no reality check to protect those trapped inside.

Source: freedom-of-fanfic's Tumblr (2018) / Noted: 2025 February 27

When you pour your community-building efforts into Tumblr or try to instigate anything more than empty positivity and aesthetics, you are trying to extract meaningful discussion and nuance out of a platform that is working against you. It's possible, sure, it's not that you can't, but it's like trying to chop down a tree with a steak knife. It's not a tool suited to the job. The community spaces (i.e. the tag search) cannot be moderated. The reblog system is structurally geared toward boosting hostility. You cannot disable reblogs or additions on your posts, leaving you constantly exposed to the whims of other people. There is no room for making mistakes, since anything you post (once reblogged) becomes impossible to take back. The ask-advice blog culture is completely lopsided. You are constantly operating in the short-term immediacy of the Now, you are discouraged from using a web building block as basic as the link, and you can't even block people in a way that keeps them off your dash.

I can't tell you the number of people who I've seen refer to the Tumblr experience as “screaming into the void,” and these are only some of the reasons for that. Take stock of your options and consider redirecting some of your community's time & energy into something other than Tumblr.

Source: osteophage (originally posted to Pillowfort 2019, reposted to Dreamwidth 2021) / Noted: 2025 February 27