A not very ranty rantpost

[dolorosa_12]

In your own space, Scream Into the Void. Get it all out.



I feel weird doing this, but anyway...

Moving from one online platform to another is not going to solve systemic problems within fraught and argumentative communities — it will just replicate those problems in another setting (professional SFF community, I am looking at you)

People who spend the majority of their time and effort complaining about the preferences of fandom at large instead of creating fanworks, commentary, or hype and enthusiasm about the things they would prefer to be fandom-at-large's preferences are exhausting

I would like more of an assumption of good faith when disputes flare up in fast-moving fannish spaces

And yet I would also like people in fast-moving fannish spaces (all right, fine, Twitter. I'm talking about Twitter, and to a lesser extent Tumblr) to consider the source and not just mindlessly click retweet/reblog from a stranger because their post is funny/appears to be aligned with the retweeter/reblogger's worldview

In general, retweet/reblog/share buttons plus algorithmic feeds plus easy to use apps with a low barrier to entry were a real double-edged sword for online community

Shipping is not activism

To be honest I feel like a lot of fandom activism is a displacement activity

I guess this post of mine is something of a displacement activity itself, given the things I'm lamenting are really insignificant in the scheme of things

I did mention I feel really weird writing this. I've said all these things in various places for years, but it feels odd to just pour everything out in a single rantpost. I'm also still in the serene and productive blissed out mood that always descends on me on New Year's Day, and find it hard to summon up much rage when it comes to fandom-related stuff.

Comments

[muccamukk]

I really liked your blog post.

What happened on substack? I'm not online enough, I guess.

[dolorosa_12]

This was a while back, but from memory Substack paid a bunch of journalists/commentators to use it (I guess to make it look like a good platform for their colleagues), and it ended up that a lot of prominent transphobes were among them. This caused a lot of Substack users — paid or unpaid — to leave the platform en masse.