Scattered

[potofsoup]

Today is a big day in tumblr-verse, and I feel an enormous sense of loss. I think it's finally hitting home that the specific tumblr community that I was part of is now no more. We are now spread across multiple platforms and chat services, like that moment in any team-up movie where all the characters are have scattered to the winds. Tumblr was an extremely flawed platform under incompetent management, but it was a potent and vibrant space. And now, even if people trust it enough to return, it won't be the same.

The last 2 weeks have been an interesting experience, because everyone was rushing to save their blogs and find people on different platforms, but ... my blog was deleted before that, so there's nothing for me to back up, and no way for me to tell my followers where I had gone. I don't even have a list of the people I was following to go off of as I try to re-establish my networks. It's frustrating, trying to rebuild without something to lean on.

To make things worse, I'm still feeling pulled in multiple directions, without a proper internet "home" -- I like DW as a platform, and I think it can work for fandom. But others are going to Twitter and PF for their needs. Those platforms don't work as well for me personally, but I can see how the hype on Twitter and the ease of posting on PF are attractive. Will I stand my ground here, on DW, or follow everyone else? And given that I really don't have time to engage in social media, does it actually matter? I just don't know anymore.

I know that this is the part in the movie where everyone feels disconnected and helpless, before they realize that they're in a movie about coming together as friends with a common cause. So the best thing to do is to stop moping and set out to find my friends, and hope that soon, the federated fandom folks will put out the call to assemble.

Comments

[daphneblithe]

I go blank when faced with the DW comment box, but I want to write something here about how sorry I am they took your blog like like that, and about how it is deeply sad that a vibrant community has been destabilized like this, and about how it absolutely does feel like the end of an era (even for a recent arrival like me)... and how much I am hoping for the joyful collegial end of the movie too. Oh I guess I said it after all :) <3

[potofsoup]

Thank you, love. <3 DW makes me happy because I get to comment and make these connections and share in my feels. It's okay, we will regroup.

[minoanmiss]

TBH, the thing that made me say "fuck Tumblr" to myself was how they treated you and deleted ALL your blogs and gave you no recourse or anything.

And... I hear you, a lot.. I like your extended metaphor here.

[potofsoup]

<3 <3 <3 yeah it kind of sucks majorly. Thanks for being a constant source of support.

I still made stuff, and I've made friends, and I should go back to backing things up on AO3. Anyways, more fandom thinkies are obviously still needed on my part to properly process all this.

[kaasknot]

psst this is only sort of tangentially related, but i figured since you're an artist you'd like to know: you can use discord for image hosting instead of using up dreamwidth's 500mb (discord's also p handy for networking, htp has a server there)

[potofsoup]

Hmm... I didn't know discord can be used for image hosting??? Do they have that in their TOS? Does that mean I can create my own "server" there and just dump images there? It feels .... wrong, somehow.

Also, discord chat is scary and overwhelming for me, probably because there's no threading and whenever I'm there I have such a hard time keeping track of conversations.

[kaasknot]

i totally get you re: getting overwhelmed in chat, i dislike v busy servers (and mostly avoid htp) for that reason. it's hard to keep up. i have a couple of smaller servers tho that are much better, no more than 20ppl, and a bunch of one-on-one chats like skype.

AS FOR IMAGE HOSTNG: you can upload any image to discord provided it isn't larger than 8mb, and you can right-click on it to get an html link. i don't think they explicitly ban hotlinking, and the reddit post that suggested it has a 2yo image that hasn't been taken down. so long as you don't post, eg, loli/shota (which is banned content), then i reckon what discord doesn't know can't hurt you. and yeah, i'd recommend making a private server for picspamming.

all that said, i'd recommend also backing up your images in case discord catches wise and/or decides to nix that feature.

[potofsoup]

That's good to know, re: discord!

Yeah, I don't go on the htp server much -- I mostly stay on the slack. :)

[karadinart]

I feel your pain, if we just knew where fandom was going to jump ...

[potofsoup]

The thing that I'm beginning to realize, is that everyone is in a holding pattern, waiting to see where fandom jumps. Except ... there is no singular entity that is "fandom". Fandom is me. Fandom is you. So I'm going to take a risk and "jump" to DW, and start posting here and see how many people I can pull in here. And if, in a few months time, people end up going to PF or somewhere ... well, then I'll follow. But right now, I'm going to take that risk and just ... start. Because seriously, I'm tired of holding my breath. I wanna draw. I wanna post art. I want to connect with cool fandom people.

[norsellie]

*hugs*