Stop Talking To Each Other And Start Buying Things, Etc.

[grayestofghosts]

I was reading an article from 2022 Stop Talking to Each Other and Start Buying Things: Three Decades of Survival in the Desert of Social Media by Catherynne M. Valente and even if it's two years old at this point it still seems as relevant as ever. Bluesky is underway as the 'new' social media and it seems like some places on the fediverse are crashing.

The article talks a lot about LJ and the destruction of LJ that looms large in I'm sure a lot of DW users minds, considering that DW was born from LJ being gutted. It just makes me think, the thing about DreamWidth is that it's always felt a little like a bomb shelter, in that everyone wants it to be there but nobody wants to actually be here for long periods of time. For a long time, people threatened to move here whenever social media sites became unusable but very few people actually did, and when they did they tended not to stick around too much. Which is... sad? It seems like it could be a real thriving social media site like old LJ, but it just doesn't have the new-shiny that corporate can buy now to make it slick and immediately appealing.

This and other things have made me continue to think about my neocities website, but also aside from that I've been going even MORE low-tech and paying more attention to my commonplace book/zibaldone. I think once I've practiced enough I might do a write-up on these types of books on the neocities site along with some useful links because they are having a bit of a moment now, and maybe that moment should stay, because the internet is so friggin fickle.

Comments

[soc_puppet]

Oof, that bomb shelter comparison is almost too on point 😓 Especially for those of us who really do think of Dreamwidth as our home!

[grayestofghosts]

I would really like to use DW more but the problem is that a lot of what I use the internet for is fandom discussion/material and vibrant fan culture, compared to other places, is very sparse here, and for recent fandoms is basically nonexistent, as far as I can tell.

[soc_puppet]

I'm pretty sure that the driving force for fandom being in a lot of other places is image hosting. Which is, uh. I mean, easier image hosting would definitely help Dreamwidth! (What I wouldn't do to at least be able to tag my uploaded images, I tell ya...) But Dreamwidth will probably never have the kind of money it needs to compete with Tumblr or Facebook or Instagram for sheer volume of image hosting space, even if they manage to make the image hosting interface easier. Because the reason that those other places have the ability to host all those images for "free"? Is because they're willing to compromise a lot more for money, in ways that Dreamwidth isn't.

Dreamwidth is an objectively better website in a lot of ways because they won't compromise on their morals, but the money that would come from compromising their morals could make Dreamwidth so much more attractive to fandom's current image-hungry incarnation.

There's also stuff like how long-form journaling/blogging is more mental-resource-heavy than platforms that let you easily share or like stuff, which are also things that are very appealing to modern fandom, but which Dreamwidth likewise isn't really planning on doing, IIRC.

Overall, for a lot of modern fandom, Dreamwidth feels like less reward for more work, even if a lot of us also acknowledge that it is instead better reward for more work. The "more work" part is pretty detrimental here.

[grayestofghosts]

Oh yes, so much of it is image hosting specifically. 10-15 years ago everyone was just using random imagehosting sites that would allow hotlinks for a while. Now the only site I know that really allows this is cubeupload but even so it's fiddly to use hosting sites and link and format the image to a post here rather than the instantaneous and easy formatting on other sites. It's just... a lot, and it's stuff that's much easier to do on a desktop which is less accessible these days. This is why AO3 managed to take off despite having similar principles, because its purpose is just text to begin with, so that it is lightweight isn't detrimental to its adoption.

As a medium between the two, a lot of fandom discussion seems to go on on reddit, which allows somewhat easy image posting but is also text heavy compared to a lot of modern social media sites. In terms of active social media sites I feel like reddit is a bit of an outlier, though.

[watervole]

Oh, gosh yes! Image hosting is a real pain here.

If I take stuff directly from my Google photos collection, half my readers won't see the image.

Having to upload stuff to my image library and then link from there, is so clunky that I hardly ever do it.

But it does allow me to see exactly what I want to see. And I can control who sees what.

and people are polite here - possibly due to the above.

But I find the clunky system often means that when people comment, they comment more intelligently, and the posts are rarely click-bait.

And so, I stay and I tend to write longer posts than I do elsewhere.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> It just makes me think, the thing about DreamWidth is that it's always felt a little like a bomb shelter, in that everyone wants it to be there but nobody wants to actually be here for long periods of time. <<

There are some of us who are active here, who try to encourage and support activity, so that more folks will want to spend more time here. Frex, see the Follow Friday posts I do that feature lists of active communities for people to join. They're on my blog and also followfriday.

>>For a long time, people threatened to move here whenever social media sites became unusable but very few people actually did, and when they did they tended not to stick around too much. Which is... sad? <<

I agree that's sad. So I make a point of reaching out to new users. If they say they like X, Y, and Z then I recommend a few communities abou those things. If they say they don't know how to use the site, which is common, I point them to how-to resources. newcomers gives people a place to go where they can learn about Dreamwidth -- or teach about it, if they're experienced. Because after all, every other site's epic fuckup is our opportunity to scoop its users. I think this improves the chances of some sticking around here.

>> It seems like it could be a real thriving social media site like old LJ, but it just doesn't have the new-shiny that corporate can buy now to make it slick and immediately appealing.<<

Most of us who are active here are on DW because we don't like the way social media has evolved elsewhere. It's too short. It doesn't have the features we need. And its mood is like little boys writing their names in pee. Do Not Want.

Re: Thoughts

[grayestofghosts]

Well, the major problem is that the old LJ that a lot of people are reminiscing about was very much heavily-fandom based and most fandoms, especially ones that have come about in the last 5-10 years, have zero foothold here. Talking to yourself about fandom isn't what most people, or I, want to do, so you have to go where the actual people are, who are not here. I personally think the move of a lot of fandom from Tumblr to Twitter after the porn purge was a disaster to begin with but I couldn't actually do anything to prevent it. If I wanted to see any of the art or participate in any discussion of anything I was involved with, that was where it went.

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

I see a lot of newcomers on DW saying they came here because Tumblr / Twitter / wherever was unbearable. They tried, because that was where the people went, but it wrecked their mental health so they had to leave. DW is one of the main places people come under those circumstances.

And what we don't see here, very often, are the people who just quit because there is nowhere civil to discuss their fandom. Once in a while, someone comes back and mentions that they did that for some time, but I suspect most of them just give up on fandom.

[fred_mouse]

I think that those of us who moved from LJ to DW and have stayed active weren't heavily into the fandom aspects. I certainly followed fannish people, but it was the non-fannish friends (or the ones who changed from fic writers to other writing) and communities that have stayed with me. And I was sad to lose a lot of friends, but I've made a lot more since moving here.

[grayestofghosts]

Yeah, most of the active posters I see here aren't really doing fan stuff. I have done a lot of writing and did used to blog about that and that's part of why I've continued, but because of first publication rights I haven't put much out there in terms of original fiction.