sorry, it's time for cranky!Krait again.
Jul. 20th, 2014 06:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kraitSo.
This week I keep running into people on Tumblr ~*~lamenting~*~ how Tumblr is so hard to have fannish conversations on, how the old LJ/webring/whatever days were so much more interconnected, how much harder it is to find stuff or keep stuff on Tumblr, how it's harder to control who sees what and thus some stuff has to go unsaid, how deeply they wish they could tell people "I liked that" or "I feel that way, too" and talk to people like they used to...
and they're posting this on Tumblr.
IF YOU MISS THE INTERACTION SO MUCH, POST TO YOUR BLEEDIN' INTERACTIVE SITE OF CHOICE!
Ahem. Sorry 'bout that. But it really does drive me up the wall; I want to shout at them, "The power is within your grasp!" Crying about it on the very platform guaranteed not to open a meaningful dialogue about it suggests to me that you don't actually want those things, you just... I dunno, actually. Want to feel sad for a while, and any cause will do? Want to brag about how Experienced In Fandom you are? Are having a bout of I'm old and nobody understands and couldn't resist whining?
Why would you complain (in some posters' cases, deeply and comprehensively) about how hard it is to do fandom now that it's (partly) on Tumblr, and then proceed to ignore any of the ways you could fight the shift/help the parts that aren't there?
Nobody says you have to pick Just One Place to be fannish in! Crossposting is a thing that can happen. For that matter, use one as a simple alert system for the other -- remember how we used to do fake LJ-cuts for outside links? Yeah. Post somewhere that allows for discussion, and then make some fake Read-Mores on your Tumblr that link to your LJ, or whatever you use! If your Tumblr posts are generally short, do a "daily roundup", ML digest style, to consolidate them in one DW post.
There are tonnes of ways to be interactive, not just whatever it was you used Back When Everything Was Great. But if all you do is use the "most popular" option, then you should stop complaining about it -- you're part of why The Ways We Used Before aren't as active, and it makes you look disingenuous at best.
NB: Yes, I really am done complaining now. I really appreciate all of the people who don't do this sort of thing, y'know -- thank you, all of you who continue to use other platforms for fannishness because you prefer that communication style! People who know what they want and refuse to follow the crowd when it makes them unhappy are people I'm happy to read and squee with. ♥
NB2: The fake-readmores thing is something I've been vaguely considering doing with my own DW for a while now, actually! Anybody with more familiarity with Tumblr want to chime in with whether this seems feasible? (I know I post infrequently; would I be seen at all, or would I be swept away in the jetstream too quickly?)
This week I keep running into people on Tumblr ~*~lamenting~*~ how Tumblr is so hard to have fannish conversations on, how the old LJ/webring/whatever days were so much more interconnected, how much harder it is to find stuff or keep stuff on Tumblr, how it's harder to control who sees what and thus some stuff has to go unsaid, how deeply they wish they could tell people "I liked that" or "I feel that way, too" and talk to people like they used to...
and they're posting this on Tumblr.
IF YOU MISS THE INTERACTION SO MUCH, POST TO YOUR BLEEDIN' INTERACTIVE SITE OF CHOICE!
Ahem. Sorry 'bout that. But it really does drive me up the wall; I want to shout at them, "The power is within your grasp!" Crying about it on the very platform guaranteed not to open a meaningful dialogue about it suggests to me that you don't actually want those things, you just... I dunno, actually. Want to feel sad for a while, and any cause will do? Want to brag about how Experienced In Fandom you are? Are having a bout of I'm old and nobody understands and couldn't resist whining?
Why would you complain (in some posters' cases, deeply and comprehensively) about how hard it is to do fandom now that it's (partly) on Tumblr, and then proceed to ignore any of the ways you could fight the shift/help the parts that aren't there?
Nobody says you have to pick Just One Place to be fannish in! Crossposting is a thing that can happen. For that matter, use one as a simple alert system for the other -- remember how we used to do fake LJ-cuts for outside links? Yeah. Post somewhere that allows for discussion, and then make some fake Read-Mores on your Tumblr that link to your LJ, or whatever you use! If your Tumblr posts are generally short, do a "daily roundup", ML digest style, to consolidate them in one DW post.
There are tonnes of ways to be interactive, not just whatever it was you used Back When Everything Was Great. But if all you do is use the "most popular" option, then you should stop complaining about it -- you're part of why The Ways We Used Before aren't as active, and it makes you look disingenuous at best.
NB: Yes, I really am done complaining now. I really appreciate all of the people who don't do this sort of thing, y'know -- thank you, all of you who continue to use other platforms for fannishness because you prefer that communication style! People who know what they want and refuse to follow the crowd when it makes them unhappy are people I'm happy to read and squee with. ♥
NB2: The fake-readmores thing is something I've been vaguely considering doing with my own DW for a while now, actually! Anybody with more familiarity with Tumblr want to chime in with whether this seems feasible? (I know I post infrequently; would I be seen at all, or would I be swept away in the jetstream too quickly?)
no subject
Date: 2014-07-26 08:35 pm (UTC)That puts me in a foul mood, and after a couple instances of that, I'm eyeing those 'read more's with some deep suspicion. If I knew it was a link, I'd just open it in another tag, but formatting something to look exactly like something it's not? I shouldn't have to be a suspicious bastard that checks everything single thing before I click on it.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-28 04:49 am (UTC)AHA! Yes, that makes perfect sense! *facepalming* I tend to forget that infinite-scroll is a thing, and I definitely forgot (if I ever knew) that it was a Tumblr thing! I use NoScript with Firefox, which doesn't allow for infinite-scroll, so I don't ever encounter it; as a result, it never occurred to me that it might be a common Tumblr setting. That makes for a much more obvious "do not want to click away" reason. :D
If I click the back button, it doesn't take me to the point at which I was reading, it takes me all the way back to the beginning
Urgh, that is awful! That also seems like it shouldn't happen; bad coding on Tumblr's part? But what do I know.
I've felt that frustration on various commercial websites, when they aren't set up to "remember" where you were in the search results and take you back there after looking at an item -- it's appalling! My deepest sympathies. :D
If I knew it was a link, I'd just open it in another tag
I know it's possible to code links so that they automatically open in a new tab/window; I should look up how to do that. (Which would still probably be a nice thing to warn for, in case people out there have software that would block it -- that has happened to me before, with NoScript/AdBlocker! Now I'm pretty quick to catch on that if I click a link and nothing happens, try either allowing the page or else deliberately opening it in a new tab; but in my early days I'd get extremely worried or annoyed that the site was broken!)