Social Media as a necessary evil?

[AY38910]

I fscking hatte WhatsApp.
Have to use WhatsApp because of it being the only way I can communicate with my best friend, who never answers calls.

[JetDungeonDragon]

I fscking hatte WhatsApp.
Have to use WhatsApp because of it being the only way I can communicate with my best friend, who never answers calls.

I honestly don't know how people use it. I've had to help my mother use it and by god does the UI feel absolutely awful. It has the worst feeling one I've ever used for a messaging app. I at least understand its necessity and the positive things its existence has brought forward however much I may hate it.

[wolfkitty42]

@Blue we should try and start a movement to get people to make fandom specific sites

This is interesting. I think fandom specific forums would be a rough sell- Most of that niche is filled by Reddit or Discords these days. That being said, I think fansites have a lot of potential... Especially if RSS feeds become more popular, I think a lot of Tumblr fandom spaces would also enjoy using it to keep up with independent fansites.

I think the best thing we can do right now to encourage fansites is things like webrings. It makes it a lot more fun to connect your site to a bunch of other ones for the same piece  of media. Who knows! People might be more enthusiastic about creating fansites or shrines on their site if they know there's a demand for it. That's just my thoughts!

[arcus]

[...]
Dreamwidth is going to be frequented by people who are older in general, so the fandoms might reflect that, meaning there won't be many newer fandoms present (trust me, as someone who loves doing exchanges, it took me a whole year for a one that also isn't cross-posted on Twitter to have another person who'd like to write for it too).
[...]

Another part of that is that Dreamwidth is hard to navigate and appears less active than it actually is. The multifandom communities are still active, but there's no real way to find them unless you already knew about them. I've stumbled upon really active communities for my fandoms which do not show up in search.

[...]
but most people don't use Fediverse for fandom
[...]

The thing with the Fediverse instances you listed host art that is illegal in most countries. Some instances allow you to interact with them on the assumption you will not interact with anything illegal, but most instances will block them entirely because it's a moderation nightmare. Said art is also banned on Tumblr, Twitter, and Bluesky for legal reasons too (albeit poorly moderated.) If you want to be somewhere more active, try blorbo.social, it's a multifandom Mastodon instance tries to strike a middle ground. There's also Wafrn, a Tumblr-like that blocks the instances you listed, but it supports Bluesky natively.
 
The Fediverse is actually pretty popular for fandom in Japan. Big fandoms such as Touhou and Vocaloid have their own instances, and the majority of early fandom Fediverse instances were Japanese. As for Misskey specifically, Oekakiskey and Nijimiss.moe are popular instances with fan artists.

For real though, the situation with fandom on the web sucks. Fandom hasn't been the same since early Tumblr for me, or better yet, before Tumblr. I'm lucky that one of my fandoms is fairly active on Dreamwidth again.

@Blue we should try and start a movement to get people to make fandom specific sites

There's actually a web host dedicated to that: Squidge.org. They also have some other cool services, like their own fan fiction archive, email, and image hosting.

[Blue]

Another part of that is that Dreamwidth is hard to navigate and appears less active than it actually is.

This is definitely true. The only reason I manage to use it is because I found an event community that promotes fandom events of any sort, so stumbling upon them because much easier. I don't actually participate in fandom-wide ones because my main fandom (identity v) is not that popular with older demographic (at least with western fans)

The thing with the Fediverse instances you listed host art that is illegal in most countries. Some instances allow you to interact with them on the assumption you will not interact with anything illegal, but most instances will block them entirely because it's a moderation nightmare. Said art is also banned on Tumblr, Twitter, and Bluesky for legal reasons too (albeit poorly moderated.) If you want to be somewhere more active, try blorbo.social, it's a multifandom Mastodon instance tries to strike a middle ground. There's also Wafrn, a Tumblr-like that blocks the instances you listed, but it supports Bluesky natively.

I purposely use aethy because it allows said things. I do not believe in censoring fictional content, no matter how uncomfortable it is, so any sort of instance that censors said things is a hard no for me. I know a lot of people who feel the same, so it's one of the reasons most still stick to twitter/tumblr for fandom stuff. It's why I avoid blorbo.social, I can't even post anything I normally do in fandom. I was thinking of using Pilowfort, but once I read the rules I noped out of it. Other socials mentioned (beyond tumblr) do not even have anything said specifically on fictional content that I know of at least (tho nsfw ban on tumblr still stands and you can't search for certain things on your own and have to search in different ways).

Generally, for me it would be best to interact with the Japanese and Chinese fandom community since I do happen to enjoy media popular there, like my main fandom, but learning both of languages is kinda tough and I don't want to even attempt to make a Lofter account due to how complicated it seems to do so for a non- Chinese person (it's their equivalent of tumblr and while it's censored due to cn laws, most of the community finds a way around it).

[Vidknight]

No, but also yes in a way. I hope what I'm about to say is clear, but I think that social media was never necessary in the slightest, but now that it is here for most people it's necessary to have at least one.

Before I get more in depth about what I'm talking about I acknowledge what I'm saying will be 101% biassed since I hate, and I really do mean  HATE social media right now with very little positive to say. So take what I'm going to say here with a grain a salt. But social media especially the more current iteration of social media was never really needed since everything that it does was also something that we was able to do before.

Connect with people? We had forums for that, talk with your friends? instant messaging, texting, and calling them was all there before, meet completely new people? once again forums for that. Share your ideas? there was blogging especially without the fear of getting dogpiled on for a slightly different opinion on something. I can go on, and on about all the things that social media can do that we was able to do before without it. But my point is that we never really needed it.

But now I would kind of agree with you that it is a necessary evil since you're most likely be forced into using it sooner, or later. For example me, my school has usually has information about upcoming events, and despite having a website everything about these events is posted on Instagram which means if I want to see what is going on I'm going need to keep checking their Instagram luckily I can get away with not creating an account, but for some people they can't. Even than it's not really the school fault it's what the majority of people in my community uses so it was either share everything on Instagram, or share everything on a site, and hope people remember that it exist.

Don't get me wrong for some people like me you can still get away with no social media, most people in my life contact me through text, call, or face time. For online people it's usually discord (Although only a small server), or email. For a lot more people on the other hand they're going to need it for something, and unfortunately can't easily get away from it.

[Junebug]

This forum counts as social media, by the way. I think rather than social media being especially bad as the salient issue, it's that everything has some undesirable property to it, that it's a fact of life that many things that are useful to people also carry with it unpleasantness. So it's about whether having something in your life is worth it when balancing what it gives you and what it takes away. As far as I'm concerned, this is business as usual for the human condition.

[CosmicRot]

For me personally, I just search for a good middle ground of everything. I actively avoid anything meta-owned, and of course shitter, but I tend to use artist-oriented platforms, bsky, and tumblr, just because well.. I don't have a life really that's not online anymore. The social part of social media is very important to me both as a way to interact with the world, but also because I like being able to support other artists and share their work with other people in a way that can help them get love and appreciation as well as possible getting money and what not.

like I'm an artist, I'm disabled, my entire income is donations and commissions so I kind of have to use social media, but I find ways to enjoy it [ie blocking bigots, losers, etc.. all those "wuh buh an echo chamber!!!" people don't realize that social media is meant for fun first and foremost so idc about being ""challenged"" I'll save that for discussions with smaller groups and searching stuff up online] as well as balancing it with using more niche stuff, like exploring personal websites and using forums and the like! as well as ACTIVELY and fully avoiding companies like meta/twitter/whatever and places that staunchly promote AI, and hateful algorithmic BS.

I think that social media is just too invasive and all encompassing for most people, and most people just don't know how to balance things or feel bad blocking people, mixed with yeah big gross companies being big and gross :/

Also I agree with saying that well... forums are technically social media as well haha. They're social, and contain media, the two like major important parts of something being considered social media

[Eunice]

If you watch a lot of police procedure dramas, as I do, you'll see that social media is useful for tracking missing people, or getting evidence on some nefarious person. They do it all the time on "The Rookie".