(no subject)

[yvannairie]

I currently have a Pillowfort account in the sense that it exists, and I glance at my dashboard every morning, but I follow like four people and the only one putting content about my fandoms on my dash is my friend who migrated with me.

I look at my reading page here a lot more but since I'm only subscribed to maybe five people, that, too, goes pretty slow.

It's the first time since my big Tumblr Hiatus that I'm not drowning in content (since I also turned off notifications on my Tumblr feed) and it's weird. And since my migration here happened during the busiest time of the year for me, I'm feeling strangely unmoored -- like, I really hated missing out on fandom stuff b/c I was too busy to go through my feed, but this is more like object impermanence has kicked in and I'm not entirely sure if fandom even exists anymore.

(Ofc the solution is to find more people, since Not Everyone is a high-volume blabbermouth like me. Even on Tumblr, I needed to be following like three dozen people to always have something more than "hey, look at this neat picture!" going on on my dash. So, go crawling through the addme communities here and go look through the notes of some popular TF post on Pillowfort to find someone to precurate the content for me.)

(I just.)

(I miss my regulars, you know?)

(I miss knowing what my Basara Friends are thinking about, I miss the back and forth between TF Friends who are mutuals.)

(You lose a lot when you no longer have that "hey! Neat thing!" interaction, it really puts into context how much I knew these people through what they love.)

Comments

[autobotscoutriella]

As random as this probably seems since we've interacted, like, once--I feel that. I'm used to having tons of people on a Tumblr dash or whatever, and shifting over to DW and Pillowfort has been...oddly quiet. I'll admit to probably being very annoying on Discord going "Hey guys, Dreamwidth, did I mention Dreamwidth PLEASE MIGRATE WITH ME".

It's not the most fun feeling ever, but I keep hoping it'll pick up as people learn how the new sites work and have more time to post content. Maybe?

[yvannairie]

Oh no you're fine, it's not random at all. The mood -- especially on this site -- is very muted atm. I guess a part of it is also a lot of writers realising we weren't as liked for our writing as we were for our comments, insights and presence, because while DW is great for us, it's not a social media site the way Tumblr is. Most people prefer their fandom more compressed -- images and soundbites -- and that's why longform doesn't really appeal to them.

My hope is that once people have noticed that The Writers Are Off At DreamWidth, people will start getting more comfortable having parallel fandom experiences. Tumblr was an image board, a reading page, a community repository and a forum all at once, it's gonna take a while for people to realise all of those exist independently as well.

I'll probably eventually set up a Dw/Tumblr(/PFIO, if Pillowfort persists past the honeymoon phase) RSS for myself, like I had back in my LJ days before I even had a Tumblr account. It's how I learned to use newsfeeds, actually |D

[autobotscoutriella]

Definitely—DW is very well-suited for writing and in-depth engagement, but not so much for casual chatter. Plus, I suspect the lack of like/reblog without commentary features scares some people off; I’ve had to actively make myself comment on things, because I can’t just like the post and call it interaction. (Probably a better way to make friends in the long run, but not as easy :) ) I hope people will adjust eventually, but it’ll probably be sadly quiet for a bit until then.

I should learn to do that! My Tumblr presence was almost entirely in the RP communities, but it would still be nice to keep up with some of it here (and maybe convince a few of them to come join over here).

[yvannairie]

I can’t just like the post and call it interaction.

Man, I could never bring myself to do that. I only ever used likes as a bookmark set for stuff I wanted to always have access to in case I forgot what I'd tagged them with, or a way to pick stuff out from my references/resources tags to be readily available. I deeply dislike liking/reacting as the primary form of engagement, it's what puts me off most social media in general. It's like the "seen at" notification, only good for making you wonder what you could have done better to inspire more engagement

[autobotscoutriella]

Oh, it certainly wasn't a great habit to let myself get into--I'm a long-time lurker who spent years just watching fandom from afar (usually shyness, but sometimes from not having an account) and social media really didn't encourage me to get better about it. My usual solution is "hover in the background until an extrovert adopts me and drags me into a chat or something" (come to think of it, that's also how I make most of my friends offline, too--thank goodness for an extroverted seatmate in my first college class), which is not super conducive to fandom involvement.

I've always had more fun when I'm involved in commenting and posting original content, though! Once I figured out how nice it was to have someone comment on your stuff, I had to start doing it more often. Got a bit bad at it when Tumblr was the main fandom hub, but once I finished college my goal was to leave comments on every fanfic I read. Going back to DW was a nice reminder to actually talk to people outside of that, too, so I'm hoping others will come to the same conclusion.

And thanks for the RSS feed link! I will definitely have to check that out.

[yvannairie]

OH ALSO I found a post that talks about integrating RSS into DW!!

I think it's official I am neeeeeever leaving this site.