This is fascinating

[a_candle_for_sherlock]

It's like...BLOGGING blogging. Tumblr is what happens when every form of social media interaction build a city together. You can explore it forever, find niche shops and wild clubs and cliquish parties, stay an anonymous people-watcher forever or put yourself out there and find best friends for life. The crowds are always shifting; you don't know who you'll run into, who's watching you, who'll jump in on your conversation--you could get lucky or very unlucky. It's an endless metropolis.

This feels more like a college campus. We know who's here, more or less, and who’s in our clubs and classes, and where to find the literary arguments and the theater kids' hangouts, and we're sitting around each others' dorm rooms, talking about our feelings and the things we like. I like it.

Comments

[write_out]

Yes!! It's kind of nice, isn't it? Like taking a much needed break.

[a_candle_for_sherlock]

It is! It’s grounding.

[pagimag]

I love your analogy, but I think this is scary. For someone like me who is more comfortable lurking, tumblr has always flooded me with interesting things without needing too much interaction. Which of course has left me rather on the outskirts of everything.
So this is me forcing myself to interact ;) and hopefully build more relations to all the people I've followed and reblogged but haven't dared to say a word to. Otherwise I guess I would end up like I would on a real life campus, alone in a quiet corner and missing out on all the fun things.

[sanguinity]

fwiw, it's possible to lurk here, and people do. You just have to follow a lot more people to get tumblr-levels of content.

That said, I'm happy to see you saying hi. Hi! :-)

[write_out]

I was on LJ lurking in XF fandom for years and years, so it's totally possible to lurk here! I might be a little more active in Sherlock fandom, but I still do a lot of lurking here. It's a little harder to hide, yes, but you can! :)

[a_candle_for_sherlock]

Aw I’m so glad you’re trying it. Irl i kept to myself a lot in high school, but when I got to college I convinced myself to put myself out there, and I made the best friends and loved the things I got to do. It was so worth it. I hope this ends up being a satisfying experience for you too even if it’s intimidating to begin with! I love actually getting to know fandom connections I’ve only seen floating by on the dash for years.

[mirawonderfulstar]

This is such an apt comparison!!

I'm hollering!!

[a_candle_for_sherlock]

Thanks 😝 I miss college so this is great!

[sanguinity]

Dreamwidth really is a nice place for a chat. You *can* chat one-to-one on tumblr, but it's hard to have a conversation with a small group of friends there, whereas it's much easier here.

And you know what? I *like* having conversations with small groups of friends. There's been a lot less of it since people decamped for tumblr, and I've been enjoying the increased activity here these past days. :-)

...and very selfishly, I can't help but think it'll be good for holmestice, too, to have new people coming in to Dreamwidth. One less hurdle to participating if one is already here, yes?

[a_candle_for_sherlock]

Oh yes, I think so! I always want to do Holmestice but then hesitate to interact with an unfamiliar platform, and now I’m here and it only took me an hour to get comfortable navigating so it’ll be easy next time.

[sanguinity]

Oh, yay! We'll be very happy to have you. Be sure to shout if you have any questions. :-)

[a_candle_for_sherlock]

I will! You can initiate me into the mysteries of the sisterhood.

[tripleransom]

If I can finally do Holmistice, you can. It always scared me because it was so heavily weighted toward BBC Sherlock. I was always afraid that no one would want anything I offered to write!

[a_candle_for_sherlock]

Oh I’m glad you’ve realized your work is wanted! The Victorian Holmesians are a smaller group, but they’re always hungry for new content, and very encouraging.

[yaycoffee]

Perfect analogy! I like the community aspect of this kind of format so much!

[a_candle_for_sherlock]

It feels lovely. Companionable 😆🙏🏼

[003_5]

awww, that such a nice way to put it! and accurate too!

[a_candle_for_sherlock]

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[dogandmonkeyshow]

DW (and LJ and IJ before it) are Tumblr without the algorithms throwing content at you: you have to find the content yourself. Which is work, yes, but also means you have a lot more control over what you see and who sees you. There are pros and cons to each. I think Tumblr is easier when you're new to a fandom; the interactions are shallow but broad, which is what you want until you find your tribe(s). But DW is much better for real conversations rather than standing on a rooftop and shouting to all and sundry. Assuming that's what you want, of course.

Welcome to online fandom v2.0.

[a_candle_for_sherlock]

Sounds spot on to me! Interestingly I’ve mostly avoided tag searching and recommended content on tumblr in favor of just following the friends of friends, so the way I interact with this platform is almost identical. The fact that the majority of my dash over there is art and photography is the major difference.

[alchemistdoctor]

I think there's a little more responsibility on both DW and PF about your content. Where it goes and who sees it is more under your control because of lack of reblogs.
But that also means if you post something terrible you can't blame it on being a reblog. It's your content. So it's more personal.

[a_candle_for_sherlock]

Ha yes! It’s pleasantly intimate but it could be intimidating.

[booksandgalaxies]

Since I mainly make text posts the switch shouldn't be too hard. The question is how many people will come over to DW.

[a_candle_for_sherlock]

Probably not that many. This is more of a classic fandom style space. Twitter and instagram will probably suck up the visual artists if tumblr goes belly up, not that I think it will soon. AO3 already has the corner on younger writers, but this is a good place for the more outgoing creators—easier to interact in a more personal way here than on AO3.

[tripleransom]

Well, see, I am one of those dinosaurs who had an LJ account since - oh, 2000, I think. Tumblr always just seemed so random to me. I could never find anything again, never follow up on anything, never knew when a post was made. It was like Brownian motion - molecules encountering each other in a random sequence. I had actual friends on LJ, actual conversations, and followed peoples' lives - or at least the parts of them they wanted to reveal. So, this is the format that seems comfortable to me. I hope you like it here.

[a_candle_for_sherlock]

Oh, that’s so true. I took to saving favorite posts from other people in my drafts so I could find them again. Desperate measures!

[johnlockismyreligion]

I was on LJ, too. Somehow I survived the purge and my blog is still there... god, it seems like a life ago!

[a_candle_for_sherlock]

That was before my time! Fandom-wise, not otherwise😝I’m not that young.

[tripleransom]

But did accounts get purged? Other than by their owners, I mean? I know a lot of folks purged their accounts on purpose.

I can see why someone wouldn't want their info, especially financial info, in the hands of the Russians, but there's still some really NC-17 gay porn on LJ.

[johnlockismyreligion]

Some years have passed and maybe memory is failing me (besides, back then, my English was shabby and I wasn't totally aware of what was happening), but I remember that many people I followed, just suddenly disappeared from LJ, without leaving a message about their whereabouts, like if they got cancelled.

[tripleransom]

I know that happened on ffdotnet. They just deleted anything that was deemed inappropriate without warning, Could be that it happened on LJ also and I just didn't see it.

The only one I knew about was the much-lamented nlr_alicia although her account is still there. Her last message was a pledge to not leave her stories unfinished and then...silence. Her stories are still on her wordpress account, though and if youhaven't read them, they are superb, even if some of them are unfinished.

[johnlockismyreligion]

Oh god, don't get me started with the FF(.)net purge. I'm still mad at it, and sad for all the beautiful fics that got lost. I followed many wip in the E.R. and Lost fandoms and I didn't think about saving them because "well, they're online", I thought. I was wrong.

[a_candle_for_sherlock]

It sounds like it was devastating. I can’t imagine the loss of community—and without multi-platform connections! Now I can always check in with a friend on discord or twitter if their Tumblr or AO3 goes awol. I take that for granted—the ability to be semi open about fandom online, and use real names. I know doxxing still happens, but the intensity of the threat seems so much less in most cases. I’m so immensely grateful for the people who laid the groundwork for fandom as it is now, no longer unspeakable. My mom reads my fic!

[johnlockismyreligion]

Yes, that's actually very nice ^_^

[a_candle_for_sherlock]

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