(no subject)

[nny]

I wanted, earlier, to change my livejournal name back to villainny. I do miss the name, I guess, but it's certainly not something on which I'd waste what little money I have at the moment, especially since on reflection it's not the name I miss. Mostly I miss the way my online interaction used to go. iibnf was talking about this the other day, that the conversation and discussion and social aspects are what have disappeared from social media, now. It's one of those things that I guess shows my age. I'm now over 30 so I dislike adapting to new things, and I cannot work out how to interact with people on tumblr.

Tumblr is also awkward in that it's fast paced and a bit like a video game that you keep trying to beat. Like Candy Crush, in fact. It's thoughtless and automatic and occasionally you score big (multiple likes/reblogs) and that sense of achievement without any sort of investment or work boosts you enough to keep you coming back. The gambling of the social media world. All it's doing is encouraging me not to think about things, and while in some ways my tumblog is deeply representative of my brain, it kind of bounces off the surface. It's kind of addictive and it waste a far greater proportion of my time than I'm comfortable with, and I know it annoys at least one of you.

It's a numbing activity, something I discussed with my counsellor. I - did I talk about counselling on here? Because it had a huge effect on my happiness, but I'm kind of backsliding now, hence this post. I need to articulate and write things down to make them real, I've found, and honesty is key. So, to be honest with myself, I am being lazy and avoiding moving forward by using tumblr as a cheap emotional boost. In a counselling session we talked about the difference between comfort and numbing, and a lot of the activities I take part in appeared on both lists, the only difference being the level of engagement and interaction. What concerns me is that the amount of actual interaction I get on the internet is declining over time, and chasing desperately after some odd popularity/connection/interaction facsimile on tumblr is making me increasingly unhappy, but although I am trying dw/lj don't have much to glom back onto right now.

I'm investing more time in RL, anyway, which I think is good; I want to stay here, because I am genuinely emotionally exhausted from moving every year or so, so it's kind of important that I sort out real people to interact with. I guess I need to weigh up the balance of time between RL and online, and work out how better to use time off the internets. This is nothing new, but kind of essential, I think. Also maybe I should look for a little more comm-based action? I don't know. Who's still interacting on dw/lj comms? How's that working for you?

Comments

[quarter_to_five]

Tumblr (My not-quite-two weeks experience of it) reminds me of early days of facebook (my early days, so like four years after everyone else.) Kind of hectic, desperate and addictive, and yet also weirdly satisfying, until suddenly the bubble burst between one day and the next and I had absolutely no desire to look at the thing anymore. I think that's coming with tumblr too. (although I have been using it exclusively to post (very) short fics to tags and not reblogging anything and a lot of it, frankly, is weirding me out.)

In short, real people are probably where its at. I should get on that myself. :-)

[nny]

I have phases of being on tumblr practically exclusively, and not going on it for days. Mostly it depends on what else is going on in my life, but that's a pattern of behaviour that holds true for a lot of the activities I engage in. I bought the Sims supernatural extension pack a couple of days ago, as a birthday present to myself, and I have spent way too much time playing. :D

[pennyplainknits]

Tumblr stresses me the fuck out because I don't understand how people talk to each other. I'm sure they DO but I don't understand how

[nny]

Me either. That's basically my problem. I'm so isolated all the time from moving so often that I just want to connect with people, that is genuinely what I'm on the internet for, its entire point and purpose. And instead I get to watch other people communicating and forming friendships, which is like the worst wallflower party experience times approximately eleventy. XD

[krait]

From what I can tell? They do it by endlessly reblogging (this may not be the right term for it) what the other person said and then adding their two cents to the very bottom.

This results in me having to read THE SAME FRACKING THREAD fourteen million times, spread over fifty entries in eighteen Tumblrs; my PgDn key gets a harsh workout.

[nny]

It's unbearably inefficient and exposed, I don't like it. There's a peacocking quality to the conversations that makes my skin crawl a little, the way it's so public and also so controlled and impersonal. Blech.

[sholio]

I think for me, Tumblr feels like a really weird blend of being isolated and terribly exposed. What I mean by "exposed" is not just that you can't lock stuff, but any conversations you have are posted back and forth between you and someone else (possibly a lot of someone elses) for your entire list of followers AND theirs to read. Unless you've Tumblr-saviored a particular tag (and I never bothered learning how to do that), if someone you're following and their followers are having a long discussion about Teen Wolf, you get to read each and every goddamn post of it. XD The really chatty people on Tumblr are actually monumentally frustrating to follow, at least for me, because it's like being spammed with every comment on an LJ you're following -- you just get post after post of successive iterations of this comment stream that you don't care about.

It's not only frustrating as a follower, but it inhibits me from "talking" to people. I can see how it's done (although they'd have to follow you to see your replies; it's really the most frustrating interactive medium of all time) but it doesn't really feel worthwhile to repost something to my own timeline just to add a paragraph of commentary that the original author might not even see.

So, yeah, I end up just looking at stuff and occasionally reblogging it. I finally found out how to check the activity on my tumblr blog (it's at www.tumblr.com/blog/yourblogname/activity), where you can see who has liked or reposted your posts lately, which at least gives you an idea that people are reading it and you're not just shouting into an echo chamber ... but yeah, it's frustrating and isolating and DO NOT LIKE. :(

The really irritating part is that tumblr's actually great for what it's great for! I like going on there to look for pictures and gifs. There is lots of shiny pretty stuff, and for me it's a much more convenient interface for looking at pictures than LJ, which isn't really set up for that. But I'm still boggled that tumblr is where all the discussion is going, because - it's terrible for that! Simply awful! I am clinging to LJ with all my claws. *g*

[nny]

Yeah, I don't like the conversations because I like being able to opt in and out of seeing everything someone says; partly because it becomes almost compulsive for me, that I have to be completely on top of everything.

I've also spoken about this to a friend, that once you've said something you lose all control over it in a way that you don't on LJ. If it weren't such a bullying and dogpiling environment, as bad if not worse than LJ at its worst, that wouldn't be a problem, but the inability to edit/defend your self image is awful. I don't like that you might end up accidentally putting your foot in your mouth and having that be someone's only impression of you ever. It oughtn't to matter but it really does still; counselling only goes so far and I still feel a great need to control people's reactions to me. :D

And yes! Yes! That's the problem! I need tumblr In Conjunction With, rather than As Replacement For. And as much as I love the shiny, it's never going to replace LJ/DW, so I'm going to make more of an effort to interact on here.

[in_the_blue]

To me, Tumblr is a lot like having the television on in the background with a show you don't really care about but don't want to bother to turn off. I think it's a shit place to interact with anybody, I think it's boring, and I get genuinely sad to see that so much of what people used to do here (which is actually interact with each other) has gone that way. It depresses me plus I have limited patience for most of what I see, which is why I really don't use it. I still use LJ/DW and they work in fits and starts. There are times when there's a lot of interaction here and times when there just isn't any. So if I shout into a vacuum, does my voice make a sound? One of those online conundrums.

[nny]

YES THIS. That is an absolutely perfect analogy, and the perfect thing about it for me is that I am incapable of backgrounding TV. I don't know if it's because I lived without one for over four years, but when a TV is on and people are having a conversation I find myself getting sucked into what's going on on-screen, no matter how much I try not to. I've always been pretty bad at filtering between conversations - which made teaching a challenge - and having a lot of people in one room can be difficult, so peeling myself away from tumblr has been really challenging. I'm actually deleting my tumblr now, actually.

I think I need to work out how to make DW/LJ work better for me, but I don't know how yet. Need to work out precisely what my emotional needs are (she counselled counsellingly) with regards to it, so I can get from it what I need.

Also hopefully I can make more of an effort to spend free time writing rather than mindlessly reblogging.

[skygiants]

I HATE TUMBLR FOR DISCUSSION. You and I have talked about this, and it's not new. But yes. There's one or two very specific people I feel like I can talk with on tumblr, because they have a ... discourse style ...? that's very unself-conscious and that I feel I can react to with a quick comment-reply as if it were a blog post, but in the vast majority of cases, no, no, no, no, no.

I don't think I'm really doing any interacting on dw/lj comms, but I do feel as if I still do a fair amount of internet interaction on dw itself, though! I try to post pretty frequently and comment as much as I have the energy to, and I do really appreciate the conversations I have that way. But maybe it's just that it's proportionate; I certainly don't do as much as I used to do four years ago, but I don't have anywhere near as much free time as I did four years ago, either. I think I would be much more frustrated if I was still working a super boring and internet-enabled eight-hour job where I got all my daily interest from whatever LJ was doing that day.

[nny]

I think the free time thing is the issue, as it always has been with me. Note that I only have this revelation/breakdown when I have nothing else to fill my time as all my essays are either in or currently avoidable. I am so bad at filling my time, and a lot of the time it does feel like that, that I have to plan really carefully so that I'm not entirely empty and I run out of ideas. So I go on the internet and then there's been a day and I've done nothing that's been any use (which is a crappy self-flagellating way of putting it and I need to stop judging my worth by it) or more significantly made me happy.

[vivien]

Oh man... Tumblr. I enjoy it for the pretty pictures, but I miss journal communication so very much. I like thinking about the difference between comforting and numbing. Tumblr is easy - it doesn't take much thought, and yeah, it is absolutely something numbing to pass the time.

As for turning 30, I wouldn't be fussed by that. I was way over 30 when I took up role playing and journaling with you kids, so it's not age and being used to certain things. Tumblr is just crap for communication.

[nny]

I'm deleting mine later today. I've had enough. I'm gonna go through it some and rescue some pictures, I think, but I'm just not interested in it any more.

I hate the idea of 'passing time' is the thing. Interacting takes more energy but also leaves me more energetic, and I hate that I spend so much time literally attempting to fill my day in because I have nothing else. Like sleeping is almost something to look forward to because hey there will be new posts to read and maybe I'll have an email when I wake up and my candy crush lives will be refilled. I am BETTER than this, dammit!

[sasha_feather]

Are you on Twitter? People are pretty chatty on Twitter, usually, which is nice. I don't get Tumblr, really.

[nny]

I am on twitter! I have the issue of being a compulsive completist, though (which is also why I'm now deleting my tumblr). I hate missing things...

[batyatoon]

Being read-only on tumblr is working so far for me, but we'll see if that lasts.

And anyway yes I am still here on dw/lj for precisely that reason! Tumblr is terrible for the kind of communication I want.

[nny]

I can't do that! I mean to but I can't! I wish you could comment on tumblr and then I wouldn't have any problems, but instead I'm deleting mine. :D

[krait]

Aaaah, Tumblr; I don't grok it, either, but so much of Homestuck fandom is on there that I've adapted enough to keep a list of Tumbloggers I check up on daily(ish). It's such an irksome format, though, because - as you note - I want to comment and interact with these people, and I can't work out how you're meant to do that. My brain can't accept that you're not meant to do that, so it keeps worrying away at the "I want these people to like me and be my fandom friends, but I can't jimmy my way into their circle; I'm doomed to be a fringe lurker forever!" treadmill. Sigh.

I'm still here on DW, but it seems slow... at least till last night, when I tried to skip back to readinglist entries from the 10th and realised that was skip=320! It doesn't seem that fast-pasted, but apparently it's more a factor of my increased free time this month than it is of DW. *wry*

As for RL... well, check your post! Tea is on its way as of this afternoon. :D

[nny]

Ah yes, that is definitely a treadmill I am familiar and uncomfortable with. :/

DW absolutely seems really slow, so basically the way I am going to deal with that is by a) working out what my needs are and b) posting more and interacting with it in a way that will fulfill them. :D

[icarus]

I tried Tumblr this week, missing fandom. There were too many things that blink. My eyes ached within ten-twenty minutes and I couldn't do it anymore.

I've been on Facebook lately, but that's really old school chums and temple friends, RL pals.

I miss fandom and I'd like to reconnect, too.

[icarus]

When I'm online and yearning for fandom, I tend to check DW. My LJ is crowded with comms but I get to read real people's posts here.

Like yours!

[nny]

I check both LJ and DW for people, mostly for the few stubborn holdouts on LJ. My primary interaction space is here, now, and I quite like it, but I've never really got the community spirit on here in a way that i sort of did on LJ. That said I don't follow most of the communities I'm a part of on there because there's too much I'm not interested in, so it's not like anything's a perfect system. :D

[icarus]

You know, one of my friends was having health issues and my Lama pointed out (on Twitter) that it was more about her lifestyle. Then said, in all caps: READ.

[attractivegeekery]

It's weird how compartmentalized I've become over the years. I have social places where I talk solely about game, and social places where I talk solely about fandom, and then still others where I put stuff that I refer to as: Mom Appropriate.

On a good day I participate in all of them. On a bad day I hyperfocus on just the one.

During the New Year I'm seriously considering starting a Social Justice tumblr of sorts...because I have problems.

Having said that, I do find tumblr to be horrid for actual conversations. It's a signal boost for me, and not much else. It's where I get recs to fic and pretty pictures of fandom shaped things. More and more often it's also the place where I see and participate in "Preaching to the Choir."

What I need to do is focus more on my personal blogging, because...I too see a counselor. Though I prefer to refer to him as my shrink. I'm at the point in my own treatment where I've finally unpacked the good chunk of my baggage, and the time has come to fold everything and rearrange it neatly this time. That's where I'm having the greatest problem: sitting, stewing, and folding.

I've also found that my non-IM online interactions have suffered because...I do spend so much time at a workstation, that I feel as though if I write back right away, it'll look like an act of desperation to the person on the receiving end.

Plus...these things always end up taking mulitparagraph digressions that I feel as though need comment, and then it's just overwhelming.

...

Kind of like this response to your blog post.
*facepalms*