apparently i have a lot of feelings
Oct. 15th, 2010 06:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elapsesHave you guys been keeping up with the posts that have been made in reaction to this post of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
oxymoronassoc's? I feel like I have learned a lot from reading and discussing the positive and negative reactions to the idea of a tumblr hiatus. I've seen stuff in friendsfriends and today I checked ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
metafandom and all of that reading helped me iron out how I, personally feel about everything.
UM I MENTIONED A LOT OF PEOPLE IN THIS POST, none of it is really especially personal but I hope no one feels weird about me like, throwing out what you said, at random.
But specifically all this reading made me think a lot about how I personally interact with fandom. Because that is really the issue here, and it is so much more complex than "I use livejournal" or "I use tumblr" or "I use both". Some people picspam and some people write fic and some people read fic and some people like overanalytical meta about the source material and some people like overanalytical meta about the people who like the source material. And there are so many other ways and so many different levels of all of those things -- post-episode reactions can be nothing more than a string of !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! or paragraphs upon paragraph of intense analysis. Every person who is in fandom has their own very personal (and also very dynamic) style of loving the things they love. I loved reading this post, I thought it was very smart and very detached. She is so right -- for the longest time fandom existed almost completely on livejournal, so of course it's weird and difficult to adjust to this brave new world where our fannish spaces have expanded. Especially for people like me: I am not a very visual person. I mean I can appreciate beauty, but I don't really have an eye for it -- it's the way my brain is wired, math and language are the things that come naturally to me. Also I don't know if you guys have noticed, given my CONSTANT QUESTIONS AND POLLS, but I tend to treat my flist as a sample of fandom that is there for me to interrogate about my topic of the week. I feast on the range of intelligent responses I always get from you and that is often how I learn things about fandom. I also really like to create ridiculously elaborate personal canon, and then read fic and see how well it fits into the universes in my head. That is how I interact with fandom. For the most part it fits seamlessly with the specific format of livejournal. So I guess it makes sense that to some degree the idea of everyone leaving livejournal for tumblr and twitter makes me feel like throwing a fit, because I can't do what I do here there. But other people's needs are met less by livejournal and more by other things, and reading comments along the lines of "there was always all this pressure for me to have elaborate thoughts on livejournal"....... I don't know. It's weird. There's a time and place where I would have judged someone who felt that way, because HELLO WORDS ARE MOST IMPORTANT, but the truth I'm realizing is that has never been my place to judge someone for interacting with fandom in a different way than I do. What is fulfilling for me is completely different from what is fulfilling for those people!!! I guess I didn't pay enough attention to after school specials as a kid!! But I am trying, and objectively I get to the point where I can say that if tumblr is really better for some people, maybe they should stay there.
But I am not objective, that is the thing. There are all these grades of livejournal friendships -- there are really close friends I have made here that I will talk to regardless of what websites we use or do not use, but there are also so many of you whom I really just talk to on livejournal that I love so much and feel so tied to all the same. And it is sad and frustrating for me when those people move -- basically completely -- to tumblr, especially since I don't have a casual-use tumblr that I can use to keep up with them. And it's funny because that was the bottom line I read in all of the posts that were written. I don't think you can understand it if you don't specifically feel it -- if you are not a livejournal-mostly person who is fairly friendly with most of the people you have friended. One of the real ironies is that a lot of the defensiveness is coming not from the people who have actually disappeared off lj, but from people who use tumblr as a supplement, but felt judged by the rhetoric. But I thought Britta's post, and the other few that accompanied it were very specifically targeted towards the friends that barely use livejournal at all now; the word "abandoned" was thrown around a lot.
I feel like I've learned a lot from reading comments everywhere and this post about why the people who use and like tumblr use and like it. Specifically the idea that sometimes there are situations where you want to express love for something without having to defend it. I also talked a lot about the idea that LJ is judgier than tumblr withgoldenmelisande. Um, yeah. Comments as currency is not something we are usually allowed to talk about openly on livejournal, is it? We don't want to come off needy. But they are important, and I know I feel super weird and awkward until I have three comments on any given post of mine. Three is my threshold between "OH GOD THEY ALL THINK I'M RIDICULOUS" and feeling like, normal and okay. And it's so funny to think about that because there are SO MANY POSTS OF YOURS that I find completely endearing and interesting that I can't think of anything to say to or get bored drafting a comment to and so I end up not saying anything and not always giving you the validation that we all kind of need. Sometimes commenting is hard! Whereas clicking the little tumblr heart isn't. And I saw so many comments this week along the lines of "I like LJ, but no one comments on my posts here...". Before this week I had honestly never thought of that as a motivating factor! Which is easy for me to say, because you know what? My posts do get commented on. Always. cambridge was telling me about this friend of hers who thought this whole thing was stupid, and how of COURSE she felt that way because she had 1000+ followers on tumblr and only 30ish friends on livejournal. There's a question of power to be considered here -- it's hard not to feel more comfortable where you feel more accepted, I guess. Yeah, even on the internet.
K but I got off track there, BACK TO THE JUDGING THING: I don't know if you have noticed (except you have), butgoldenmelisande and I have really, really lame interests. That lately basically boil down to korean pop stars and the Star Trek shows that are still uncool even post-movie. And I could pretend I am a super secure person or whatever and I have my moments, but I also have a lot of other moments where I am like "oh god I CAN'T POST ABOUT THIS, I'M ANNOYING THEM AGAIN". And Catherine was talking about how on tumblr she can express all these FEELINGS IN HER HEART without dealing with that feeling. And I get that. This summer I actually even tried tumblr (I knowwww, I'm ruining my I DON'T USE TUMBLR street cred), just for the boring kpop shit, without telling anyone but her. And in the end it's not for me. I want to talk at length about entertainment companies and the all the stupid girl group v. girl group bullshit kpop fandom comes up with and reblogging adorable pictures does not alleviate that AT ALL for me personally. I don't get a lot of enjoyment out of it. shimmeryshine basically said the same thing as Catherine did, except with her "stupid fantasy show". I think a lot of us feel that way at some point or another -- IT IS SO LAME, BUT WE JUST WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT ALWAYS, but it IS hard on livejournal. But I also don't think it's as hard as we think it is. thecolorbetween was talking about tangentially related stuff in an entry earlier and I wanted to pull this quote from that:
THERE'S A DEGREE TO WHICH I STILL DON'T GET HOW ANYONE COULD ONLY USE TUMBLR THOUGH, I'm thick I'm sorry. Do you know how cereal commercials always end with "part of a balanced breakfast" and then show a bowl of cereal with like, eggs and a banana and a glass of milk because SUGARY CEREAL IS NOT ADEQUATELY NUTRITIONAL TO MAKE UP YOUR BREAKFAST?! I can't wrap my head around tumblr being adequately nutritional enough to be your primary mode of fannish interaction.
oxymoronassoc's? I feel like I have learned a lot from reading and discussing the positive and negative reactions to the idea of a tumblr hiatus. I've seen stuff in friendsfriends and today I checked metafandom and all of that reading helped me iron out how I, personally feel about everything.UM I MENTIONED A LOT OF PEOPLE IN THIS POST, none of it is really especially personal but I hope no one feels weird about me like, throwing out what you said, at random.
But specifically all this reading made me think a lot about how I personally interact with fandom. Because that is really the issue here, and it is so much more complex than "I use livejournal" or "I use tumblr" or "I use both". Some people picspam and some people write fic and some people read fic and some people like overanalytical meta about the source material and some people like overanalytical meta about the people who like the source material. And there are so many other ways and so many different levels of all of those things -- post-episode reactions can be nothing more than a string of !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! or paragraphs upon paragraph of intense analysis. Every person who is in fandom has their own very personal (and also very dynamic) style of loving the things they love. I loved reading this post, I thought it was very smart and very detached. She is so right -- for the longest time fandom existed almost completely on livejournal, so of course it's weird and difficult to adjust to this brave new world where our fannish spaces have expanded. Especially for people like me: I am not a very visual person. I mean I can appreciate beauty, but I don't really have an eye for it -- it's the way my brain is wired, math and language are the things that come naturally to me. Also I don't know if you guys have noticed, given my CONSTANT QUESTIONS AND POLLS, but I tend to treat my flist as a sample of fandom that is there for me to interrogate about my topic of the week. I feast on the range of intelligent responses I always get from you and that is often how I learn things about fandom. I also really like to create ridiculously elaborate personal canon, and then read fic and see how well it fits into the universes in my head. That is how I interact with fandom. For the most part it fits seamlessly with the specific format of livejournal. So I guess it makes sense that to some degree the idea of everyone leaving livejournal for tumblr and twitter makes me feel like throwing a fit, because I can't do what I do here there. But other people's needs are met less by livejournal and more by other things, and reading comments along the lines of "there was always all this pressure for me to have elaborate thoughts on livejournal"....... I don't know. It's weird. There's a time and place where I would have judged someone who felt that way, because HELLO WORDS ARE MOST IMPORTANT, but the truth I'm realizing is that has never been my place to judge someone for interacting with fandom in a different way than I do. What is fulfilling for me is completely different from what is fulfilling for those people!!! I guess I didn't pay enough attention to after school specials as a kid!! But I am trying, and objectively I get to the point where I can say that if tumblr is really better for some people, maybe they should stay there.
But I am not objective, that is the thing. There are all these grades of livejournal friendships -- there are really close friends I have made here that I will talk to regardless of what websites we use or do not use, but there are also so many of you whom I really just talk to on livejournal that I love so much and feel so tied to all the same. And it is sad and frustrating for me when those people move -- basically completely -- to tumblr, especially since I don't have a casual-use tumblr that I can use to keep up with them. And it's funny because that was the bottom line I read in all of the posts that were written. I don't think you can understand it if you don't specifically feel it -- if you are not a livejournal-mostly person who is fairly friendly with most of the people you have friended. One of the real ironies is that a lot of the defensiveness is coming not from the people who have actually disappeared off lj, but from people who use tumblr as a supplement, but felt judged by the rhetoric. But I thought Britta's post, and the other few that accompanied it were very specifically targeted towards the friends that barely use livejournal at all now; the word "abandoned" was thrown around a lot.
I feel like I've learned a lot from reading comments everywhere and this post about why the people who use and like tumblr use and like it. Specifically the idea that sometimes there are situations where you want to express love for something without having to defend it. I also talked a lot about the idea that LJ is judgier than tumblr with
goldenmelisande. Um, yeah. Comments as currency is not something we are usually allowed to talk about openly on livejournal, is it? We don't want to come off needy. But they are important, and I know I feel super weird and awkward until I have three comments on any given post of mine. Three is my threshold between "OH GOD THEY ALL THINK I'M RIDICULOUS" and feeling like, normal and okay. And it's so funny to think about that because there are SO MANY POSTS OF YOURS that I find completely endearing and interesting that I can't think of anything to say to or get bored drafting a comment to and so I end up not saying anything and not always giving you the validation that we all kind of need. Sometimes commenting is hard! Whereas clicking the little tumblr heart isn't. And I saw so many comments this week along the lines of "I like LJ, but no one comments on my posts here...". Before this week I had honestly never thought of that as a motivating factor! Which is easy for me to say, because you know what? My posts do get commented on. Always. cambridge was telling me about this friend of hers who thought this whole thing was stupid, and how of COURSE she felt that way because she had 1000+ followers on tumblr and only 30ish friends on livejournal. There's a question of power to be considered here -- it's hard not to feel more comfortable where you feel more accepted, I guess. Yeah, even on the internet.K but I got off track there, BACK TO THE JUDGING THING: I don't know if you have noticed (except you have), but
goldenmelisande and I have really, really lame interests. That lately basically boil down to korean pop stars and the Star Trek shows that are still uncool even post-movie. And I could pretend I am a super secure person or whatever and I have my moments, but I also have a lot of other moments where I am like "oh god I CAN'T POST ABOUT THIS, I'M ANNOYING THEM AGAIN". And Catherine was talking about how on tumblr she can express all these FEELINGS IN HER HEART without dealing with that feeling. And I get that. This summer I actually even tried tumblr (I knowwww, I'm ruining my I DON'T USE TUMBLR street cred), just for the boring kpop shit, without telling anyone but her. And in the end it's not for me. I want to talk at length about entertainment companies and the all the stupid girl group v. girl group bullshit kpop fandom comes up with and reblogging adorable pictures does not alleviate that AT ALL for me personally. I don't get a lot of enjoyment out of it. shimmeryshine basically said the same thing as Catherine did, except with her "stupid fantasy show". I think a lot of us feel that way at some point or another -- IT IS SO LAME, BUT WE JUST WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT ALWAYS, but it IS hard on livejournal. But I also don't think it's as hard as we think it is. thecolorbetween was talking about tangentially related stuff in an entry earlier and I wanted to pull this quote from that:Yes, we judge each other, and yes, I come out of Fandom March Madness feeling less unsure about what I like than I would care to, but at the end of the day, I know that I'm not going to lose this friend or that friend because I "admit" that I like someone. Or maybe that happens, I don't know. My LJ has been drama free since '03, and it's really wonderful.I think that this is true for most of my friends -- most of whom don't interact with "fandom" so much as they interact with their friends. And it just made me think about how fruitless it all is. Because I think I specifically spend a lot more energy worrying about being judged for my stupid interests than any of you spend judging me for them. Because ugh, so many of the things I CAN FEEL YOU GUYS WORRYING ABOUT, I find adorable. FOR REAL. But that doesn't mean that self-consciousness doesn't exist, and I guess the point I have to acknowledge is that there are some things that are wrong with livejournal "culture" that are apparently not wrong with tumblr culture, and if I want you all to come back and play in my sandbox, all I can do is get better about telling you all how great I think you are. (Newsflash: basically everything that is lame is my favorite, so all your weirdest quirks and interests are MY FAVORITES.)
THERE'S A DEGREE TO WHICH I STILL DON'T GET HOW ANYONE COULD ONLY USE TUMBLR THOUGH, I'm thick I'm sorry. Do you know how cereal commercials always end with "part of a balanced breakfast" and then show a bowl of cereal with like, eggs and a banana and a glass of milk because SUGARY CEREAL IS NOT ADEQUATELY NUTRITIONAL TO MAKE UP YOUR BREAKFAST?! I can't wrap my head around tumblr being adequately nutritional enough to be your primary mode of fannish interaction.
