Social Media Self-Care
Jul. 5th, 2020 07:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingDuring the past few days, I deleted about four hundred posts on Tumblr:
Posts where I reblogged people’s stories, meta, and art with supportive comments and tags, posts of original art and stories and jokes I made for people’s ideas and headcanons, and reblogs of people’s creative projects and commission info.
I applied the same level of attention to weeding my blog on Tumblr that I’ve devoted to developing my island on Animal Crossing, and it was incredibly cathartic.
I don’t need to see a snapshot of myself going out of my way to be kind and friendly to someone who thought it would be a good idea to send me a message asking if they could commission me to drink an entire bottle of NyQuil and pass out with a plastic trash bag over my head, for example.
I was never friends with any of these creeps. It never happened.
For me, the purpose of Tumblr is and always has been to create a small garden of things that make me happy. I scroll through my own Tumblr when I’m stuck in a waiting room, or during some impossibly long train or car ride, or when I’m exhausted but can’t sleep. “Interesting but relaxing” is the vibe I’m going for, and I think I’ve gone a decent job, for the most part. After all, I’m fairly skilled at catering to myself as an audience of one.
I’ve never been comfortable with the expectation to behave like a brand; and, regardless, activity on Tumblr has declined rapidly during the past month or so. I’ve gone from getting well over a thousand notes a day at the beginning of the year to getting less than a hundred a day during the past three weeks, and it only takes me about fifteen minutes to scroll through an entire day’s feed – if I even bother, which I mostly don’t.
What has ultimately come out of my social experience of fandom on Tumblr are lowkey but lasting friendships with professional artists and writers who have mostly moved to Twitter. I understand the value of online anonymity, but I think there are benefits to allowing yourself to be a real and fully-rounded person online. There are also benefits to being able to mute people, as well as being able to choose never to see certain tags and keywords. I’m not saying that Twitter is a good platform, because it’s objectively awful, but it’s become a much easier place to manage the social aspects of fandom.
To be honest, it’s because of Twitter that I no longer think of “fandom” as a discrete area of my life that needs to be contained and concealed as a shameful waste of time. I am a writer who writes reviews and critical essays about media. Sometimes I write fiction and draw comics. This is who I am, and I’ve found it much easier to interact with people when I don’t have to hide aspects of myself. I’ve also found it much easier to pick up the sort of high-quality freelance assignments that enabled me to quit the soul-crushing job that was making me sick.
Maybe it took me a little longer than other people to find my voice and surround myself with a supportive community, but I’m happy I’m here now.
Posts where I reblogged people’s stories, meta, and art with supportive comments and tags, posts of original art and stories and jokes I made for people’s ideas and headcanons, and reblogs of people’s creative projects and commission info.
I applied the same level of attention to weeding my blog on Tumblr that I’ve devoted to developing my island on Animal Crossing, and it was incredibly cathartic.
I don’t need to see a snapshot of myself going out of my way to be kind and friendly to someone who thought it would be a good idea to send me a message asking if they could commission me to drink an entire bottle of NyQuil and pass out with a plastic trash bag over my head, for example.
I was never friends with any of these creeps. It never happened.
For me, the purpose of Tumblr is and always has been to create a small garden of things that make me happy. I scroll through my own Tumblr when I’m stuck in a waiting room, or during some impossibly long train or car ride, or when I’m exhausted but can’t sleep. “Interesting but relaxing” is the vibe I’m going for, and I think I’ve gone a decent job, for the most part. After all, I’m fairly skilled at catering to myself as an audience of one.
I’ve never been comfortable with the expectation to behave like a brand; and, regardless, activity on Tumblr has declined rapidly during the past month or so. I’ve gone from getting well over a thousand notes a day at the beginning of the year to getting less than a hundred a day during the past three weeks, and it only takes me about fifteen minutes to scroll through an entire day’s feed – if I even bother, which I mostly don’t.
What has ultimately come out of my social experience of fandom on Tumblr are lowkey but lasting friendships with professional artists and writers who have mostly moved to Twitter. I understand the value of online anonymity, but I think there are benefits to allowing yourself to be a real and fully-rounded person online. There are also benefits to being able to mute people, as well as being able to choose never to see certain tags and keywords. I’m not saying that Twitter is a good platform, because it’s objectively awful, but it’s become a much easier place to manage the social aspects of fandom.
To be honest, it’s because of Twitter that I no longer think of “fandom” as a discrete area of my life that needs to be contained and concealed as a shameful waste of time. I am a writer who writes reviews and critical essays about media. Sometimes I write fiction and draw comics. This is who I am, and I’ve found it much easier to interact with people when I don’t have to hide aspects of myself. I’ve also found it much easier to pick up the sort of high-quality freelance assignments that enabled me to quit the soul-crushing job that was making me sick.
Maybe it took me a little longer than other people to find my voice and surround myself with a supportive community, but I’m happy I’m here now.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-06 12:18 pm (UTC)SAME. Tumblr is chill time for me. Or even "I'm waiting for water to boil and need something to distract me". The second it becomes anything beyond that, I need to close the app/browser.
I've also noticed fewer posts in general on my dash. So many people have uprooted and gone elsewhere (mostly Twitter). I'll probably stick around until the site is actually deleted. It gets so exhausting to have to relocate fandom every 5ish years and Tumblr has set a very interesting bar for fandom and content creation that it's difficult, if not impossible, to see that replicated elsewhere.
And I'm thrilled you've been able to create this for yourself. It broke my heart to see the struggles you endured; you've been nothing but an amazing, positive person in all of our interactions. You deserve happiness and I'm glad you're happy now 💕
no subject
Date: 2020-07-07 04:33 pm (UTC)I told you about how I've started to spend more time on Reddit, I think. It's started to evolve in an interesting direction, and I'm seeing more inclusivity when it comes to fannish content. If you told me, back at the beginning of 2016, that Reddit would take significant meaningful action to ban hate speech while Tumblr would alienate its LGBTQ+ communities by censoring "adult content," I would have laughed, but here we are.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-07 08:06 pm (UTC)I also would've laughed, because yeah. Also it's mindboggling to think of 2016 and where social media was at and how it's both forever ago and like, yesterday. I hope instead of getting figurative whiplash when corners of the Internet slam on the brakes that I just... keep going and get launched into space or something and drift through the void forever.
I swear future historians analyzing this time period are going to make Raphael's The School of Athens look like a fucking joke.