Beyond Selidor

I got super anxious recently when I tweeted about how harassment was not okay and some of the harassers minions' got into my mentions and I had to shut them down (reply + block so they couldn't keep arguing). Even knowing I was standing up for someone who needed support, even though "you should not harass people" seems like it's just basic common decency. Augh.

Ugh, that situation sounds so stressful! Good for you for standing up for the person being harassed, but I can undersand why it would make you feel anxious. Being around conflict is awful.

I've been seeing your open posts and they all look great! I've been wanting to participate but the Mystery Bug really drained me of all types of energy including that for participating in fun things. But I so do appreciate that you're hosting those kinds of conversation.

That's lovely to hear, and of course there is no pressure to participate, especially given how ill you've been. (I'm glad to hear you're on the mend.) The beauty of Dreamwidth is you can choose when, and where, and how to participate, and no one will mind (or at least they shouldn't mind, and I definitely don't).

Regarding Facebook, I have an absolutely rigid separation between my professional and personal lives (to the extent that I use my full name among work colleagues and in professional contexts, and my nickname elsewhere). I operate on the assumption that nothing online is truly private, and my online identity isn't that hard to link up to my real world identity, but I don't go out of the way to do so. I don't add work colleagues on Facebook, I have a separate professional Twitter account which I use, and so far that's worked fine. A friend actually asked me about this, and I realised this rigid separation was only possible because I had a career change. If I'd stayed in academia, my colleagues would have been all my friends I met during postgraduate studies, who know my nickname and personal Twitter handle and so on! So I'm glad I switched careers and can keep my online life separate from my work life.

I love longform but I don't always have energy for it, but on Twitter I can get a lot of social interaction through quick, easy exchanges.

It's really interesting that you should say this, because I found the exact opposite in terms of energy: longform posting (that doesn't have to be done in real time) is much less effort for me than the short-form, real-time engagement that I felt Twitter requires. This is because I feel I can post (or comment) when I'm in the right frame of mind to do so, at times which are convenient to me. With Twitter, it felt like I have to monitor it constantly and immediately respond and react to everything, which drained me of energy and left me feeling burnt out.

It definitely sounds as if you've found a way to make it work for you, and that there are things inherent to the platform that really, really suit you, and that's great! The whole point of this post was not to say 'my way is the best, and you should all copy me,' but to encourage people to do a kind of mental audit of the platforms they used, and ask themselves a) what they want to get out of said platforms, b) what, if anything was making them unhappy with said platforms, and c) what, if anything, could they do to remove those sources of unhappiness and make the platforms work for them. The answer to all these questions is going to vary from person to person.