potofsoup | (no subject)

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People keep telling me how amazing comment threads are here, but the more people describe it the more it doesn't sound like My Thing. What I love are conversations between a few people where there is an exchange of ideas or experiences and it feels very intimate, and it's something that I really missed on tumblr.

But everyone here is like "comment threads are like hosting a dinner party or a salon, where you can hop into the kitchen to check on food and people can carry on having conversations! It's great! Join the fun!" And I'm like ... "Whenever people invite me to parties I basically reply and ask if we can do one-on-one coffee instead" and "Whenever I invite people over to my house, there's that moment about 2 hours in when I don't know what to do with the people in my house anymore and I just want to hide in my room." (Which is the feeling I was trying to capture in Introvert Time)

But I'm also too much of an archivist to lock my entries or delete stuff or lock comments. (Oh! Just remembered to unlock the comments on this post. There were good comments there and I didn't realize that locking it would actually hide the comments. Oops.* But it's unlocked now, yay.)

It's not that I'm anti-comments or anti-comment interactions. It's just that the thing that people describe to me as Absolutely Amazing also happens to be one of those things that I curate very heavily in my own life.

So, how do I curate it in my online life so that I don't feel overwhelmed?

One thing I've done is to filter all the comment email notifications into a separate folder so that it doesn't clutter up my inbox and I can choose when to read them.

Another thing I can do is to simply not read comment threads on posts. And that's mostly been working out for me, except (a) it's probably like not reading the tags on tumblr reblogs -- I'm basically missing out on a big chunk of the fannish interactions, and (b) it's the equivalent of being that one person who awkwardly lingers in the kitchen at the party so that they can catch the host in a one-on-one convo when they're actually busy trying to do something else.**

If I open post comments in a separate tab for later reading, I then get a bajillion tabs and forget why I opened them in the first place***, but the Memories system is too hidden for me to actually remember to check them.

What do people usually do? Is there a way to indicate that I'm flailing at you but don't expect a reply? Is there a way to indicate that I'd be really confused and chagrined if someone who's not the person I'm replying to actually showed up in the comment thread? Or are there already social norms in place that make the "butting in" a net positive experience for all involved?

Or maybe what I need to do is just direct all posts (and comments on public posts) to a wider group of potential participants than I'm used to?

-----
* probably mental block from that moment around 7pm that night when I was feeling happy after a day spent having good-but-intense convos with people and re-writing some of my posts to be more explicit about respecting DW privacy norms and then ... I opened my email to see if there's any work messages and found 4 emails basically telling me that I need to stop using the word reblog because they've been on tumblr longer than I have and clearly reblog means repost (and maybe I should go back to tumblr or PF if I love reblogs that much). And dammit I spend my life being the immigrant and my time at work being the-only-one-without-an-advanced-degree-and-a-woman-to-boot and it just caused a lot of EMOTIONS that I couldn't ~~still can't~~ deal with.
** yes that person is me in RL. I try to be helpful in the kitchen tho
*** There's that separate frustration I have, which is that when I share a link to a cool internet thing, I want to be able to "reblog" it from the original poster of that cool link, as a way of giving attribution and thanks for sharing that thing, but usually all I have is that open tab and the OP has disappeared down my Reading Page

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The introversion is strong in us and I feel everything you said.

I personally deal with the overwhelming feeling by turning off all email notifications except for private messages, so I only deal with DW in DW's space. Theoretically, it means I can decide to mark all as read without adding to my mental load but it might only be effective when your activity is as low as mine (2-3 days without your reading page moving or anything in your inbox).

The other thing I do is choosing to only see top-level comments if a post has a shitton of comments. They're usually the more relevant ones that comment directly on the post itself and you can expand them as you like. I have avoided expanding threads that looked either too long or if they had users whose opinions I know will give me a headache.

<3 <3 <3

Ooo, viewing top level comments is a good idea! Yeah, right now I just feel a deep sense of trepidation in entering the comment space at all. My activity isn't that much -- probably 2-3 new comments a day? But I currently have a pretty liberal "follow first, unsubcribe later" policy, so maybe it'll ease up as I curate a bit more closely. (altho tbh I just want more fanarts and stuff here, and ... there isn't that much yet. Maybe when the bangs start posting there will be!)

Understandable, especially after that whole kerfluffle and since you're still getting nasty messages. And if you're anything like me, a conversation vampire, then we kinda have to be explicitly invited in.

So far I think fanart wouldn't really move here because the format isn't very inviting. It's not really easy to post images here and the capacity is also limited.

yeah, I'm sad about images not coming here, but I guess such is life. When I have more brainspace I'll go poke around the Hubzilla stuff.

The only thing that could possibly make it easier would be a dedicated image hosting site ala Imgur for Reddit. But then, Reddit isn't really a site for artists either.

Oh are there any updates on the Hubzilla progress? I haven't seen anything so far.

I have always felt like comments on personal journals are pretty intimate. Partly because unlike a lot of fans my primary LJ experience was with people I knew in meatspace (perhaps because LJ came out of UW and

seattle was very active) but also because I never went viral so my audience is typically friends or friends of friends. (I talk about LJ because it formed my habits and sense of culture.)

your experience here might be really skewed by the "reblog" thing?

Yeah, I have that primary LJ experience, too -- got an account in 2001, and have basically been journaling to my meatspace friends since. (until everyone moved to tumblr, and then it basically became a place where I process emotions and write to-do lists). I guess what I'm trying to figure out now is exactly what my fannish identity/account/output should be like here?

And yeah, it's definitely skewed in part by the reblog kerfluffle, but also basically everyone I follow seem to be like "yay comments = parties!" and "making a public post is like hosting a salon!". It may just be a perception thing, though -- probably by "everyone" I actually mean "a group of people who happen to follow each other and like this particular aspect.

I think specifically what happened was that https://cesperanza.dreamwidth.org/590162.html linked to https://anneapocalypse.dreamwidth.org/83618.html linked to https://the-great-tumblr-purge.dreamwidth.org/77386.html?thread=297546#cmt297546 , plus 3-5 different people who have commented to me describing the same basic sentiment.

Ugh, I feel you, and being caught up in all of that reblog stuff (where most long-time DW users completely ignore that tumblr has an incredibly strong "reblog, don't repost" culture) sounds so stressful.

Personally, I've unfollowed (*cough* unsubscribed *cough*) people who say shit like, "If you want reblogs, go back to tumblr." If they can't see the parallels to how some people talk about immigrants, well, that's on them, but I sure af don't want them on my screen.

Edited 2019-01-26 09:02 (UTC)

<3 <3 <3

Yeah, I have enough self-preservation to curate my Reading Page to people whose content I want to read. It was mostly one of those "oh, wow, this hit me harder than expected".

Oh, I didn't mean to make it sound like I was suggesting something you surely hadn't thought of before – I hope it didn't come across that way. <3

oh, it didn't come across that way at all! <3

I wonder if the traffic here will calm down in a while? It's been a bit overwhelming even for a long-time DW user like me to find I can barely keep up with my reading page, when DW used to be a quiet backwater. Maybe it'll balance out, though.

Who knows? I wonder if DW will have more of a public/personal distinction now that people are moving over from tumblr. (I've always used DW as "personal" and tumblr as "public", so one of the things I'm trying to figure out is how to do both on one platform, and the social norms around the "public" on DW).

For example, when I was on tumblr, the follower/following ratio was typically uneven, because if everyone posts 20 posts/day, then following 200 people meant scrolling through 4000 posts/day. Whereas here, following 200 people means scrolling through 100 posts/day, which means that the follower/following ratio can be more balanced. UNLESS social norms start changing???? WHO KNOWS

It definitely takes some getting used to (if you want to get used to it, I mean, if it's something you're interested in). I am super comfortable commenting on everyone's posts everywhere, now, but that took literally 10+ years of being in fandom spaces. And I am still NOT comfortable commenting to anyone other than the OP, especially if it's off-topic to the original post. That said, it's part of DW culture to have a kind of "open salon" situation in the comments, so people are generally used to that here.

For me, I've turned off the comment emails and just check my DW inbox regularly, then mass-delete comments if I have a post blow up and feel I can't adequately respond to everyone (or if there's a lot of inter-comment communication that I don't NEED to respond to). Then I can go back manually to those posts later, and read the threads if I want to, when I feel more energetic about it.

Or maybe what I need to do is just direct all posts (and comments on public posts) to a wider group of potential participants than I'm used to?

Hmmmm. I don't think you HAVE to, but if your posts/comments are public, then there's always the possibility of reaching more people than you expect. It was the same on Tumblr, right?

Thanks for all the helpful advice! Yeah, having the email notifs in a separate folder has helped me a lot. As is waiting for a bunch of comments to accrue on a post and then commenting directly on the page instead of hitting reply on the email.

> It was the same on Tumblr, right?
Hmm... not exactly? I chose the word "participant" on purpose, because on tumblr, you have an audience, and if one of my posts explodes and gets a crapton of notes, it usually doesn't require actual interaction or conversation from me. Whereas on DW, a post seems to be written to a group of potential participants to the conversation, and not just a mass of potential audience/consumers for the information. I think it's an important distinction and it's one that I value. It just takes some brain-switching, and perhaps some soul searching about what I want out of fandom -- the audience:participant ratio, if you will.

Hmm. I feel like "what the comment section is for" is a highly variable thing that is set by the journal owner, and people will follow the cues in a particular post.

There are people I read who do the salon thing, and they telegraph their expectation that wide-ranging discussion will be happening, and you can see all the collapsed comment threads on their discussion posts that demonstrate and reinforce that norm.

There are people I follow who post about what they're reading/writing/doing in their personal life, and they don't get random strangers coming in to comment on other people's comments, as a general rule - they have a readership that's interested in them personally and often know each other, at least in that commentspace. There might a meta post about a particular fandom that gets a bunch of discussion of that fandom going, but not a whole party with people coming in off the street.

I've also seen people mix it up. They post a life update? Likely to get some congratulations or sympathy, but not a lot of discussion. They post a long thinkpiece on a fannish topic, with a poll and "so what do you all think?" prompt at the end? More likely to draw in the salon crowd, including people who got linked there and haven't hung out in that journal before.

tldr: You make your own journal culture. Give people cues about what kind of commenting you expect, and they will mostly follow that. Some trial and error may be required to figure out what the most effective cues are.

ETA: Also if you find that your series of DW For Tumblr Refugees posts got you a lot of unwanted attention, and you want a more private and personal space... maybe play with the access list and see if it does something for you? You can still do public posts when you want to broadcast widely, but you can also have more intimate discussions with limited groups of people.

ETA2: I forgot while writing this that you actually do already have a personal journal, so sorry if this sounded patronizing/assuming ignorance on your part! I should not reply to things while sleep-deprived.

Edited 2019-01-26 17:06 (UTC)

:thumbsup: it's definitely reassuring to hear that it's not All Salon, All the Time. I like the "opt in" aspect of tumblr as far as content and sideblogs go (as in: it's not me giving you access to my personal life, it's you choosing to follow that blog or not), but as a result, I think that my potofsoup blog will naturally have more public-facing posts, and I'm trying to figure out what that means for me. <3

*points up* This. All this. I agree with that comment :)

Honestly I read the post you're referring to and I eye rolled a bit. It seemed a bit over the top and part of why people feel pressure to post "high-caliber" (barf) stuff on DW.

I agree with the comment above re: different journals cultivating different moods and expectations for how their comment sections work. That's part of why I'm enjoying it- my blog is *my* space, and I have control over my content and comment sections, unlike Tumblr where people could reblog my stuff and add on whatever they liked, whether it made sense or not (or at times, even when it was problematic and made me uncomfortable).

yeah, I'm definitely appreciating the "my blog my rules" aspect of DW (although I do wish it's easier to find what the rules are other than hunting on profiles). And yeah, tumblr reblogs are so hard to respond to, because they will never see your response. It's definitely one aspect of tumblr reblogs that I won't miss.

<3 <3 <3

The people who are lecturing you on reblog vs repost are clearly suffering from altitude sickness. They need go get off their high horses and come back to reality.

to be fair, I think it was a honest misunderstanding, especially since the way to stylistically reproduce a tumblr-style reblog is to repost. Whereas I was trying to talk about how to functionally reproduce a tumblr-style reblog, which is to share a link and squee a bit. And as long as we know which type of reblog people are talking about, I think both meanings can co-exist.

There's no one way to have a journal! For me it is just that: a journal, not especially like hosting a salon. I think it's nice that people do that, but it's for sure not imperative to treat your own (or others'!) journals that way.

<3 <3 <3

Thank you for the reassurance!

My best advice, if you want it, is... You do You.

Make your space, just the way you like it, and block anyone who tries to tell you otherwise.

After some needed adjustments, acclimation to the site and minor stress with that, DW should be a place to de-stress.

*higs*

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