So... Tumblr

[capri0mni]

I started my Tumblr account on 1 March, 2016. It was mostly to create some sort of "Social media presence" to promote my book (The Monsters' Rhapsody: Disability, Culture, & Identity), because, as much as I love Dreamwidth, Tumblr was a taller soapbox.

And then, the 2016 American Presidential Election came up, and I ended up spending more and more time over on Tumblr, and all but ignored this journal, because, as much as I love Dreamwidth, Tumblr was a taller soapbox (I'd guess-timate that about 40% of my posts can be summed up as: "For the love off all things decent, VOTE!!").

And in the process, I met a lot of new friends over there.

And then, came their new TOS, which puts an all-out ban on Not-safe-for-work content. I wish NSFW meant harassing your fellow workers (whether sexually or otherwise), telling racist jokes around the water cooler, and calling your employees at home after they've clocked out for the day. But apparently, it just means "Female-presenting nipples." (and anything vaguely rounded and sorta flesh toned, including Kirby, the 2-d animated video game character, and shiitake mushrooms).

Nazis, apparently, are fine

And all the friends I've met there are scattering to the four winds platforms. One of those platforms is Dreamwidth, and a few people have followed me over from Tumblr. I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome and introduce punklucky, ink_in_hand and elliefint.

And today, there's a Tumblr boycott, where people are logging out of their accounts for 24 hours. Frankly, I think Tumblr's soapbox will shrink down to the size of a shoe box.

I don't know how much I'll be back there, after tomorrow.

Today, I've got Doctor Who to catch up on, a post on Hamlet's Ophelia I want to finish, and maybe I'll start tackling that Christmas story I wrote about, here

Comments

[meridian_rose]

I've never left DW, though I've made fewer personal posts, not that I made many personal posts at Tumblr because it's really not meant to be about individuals. All the new activity here is making me feel connected to people again in a way I never felt at Tumblr. There's room here for nuance and discussion without the dogpiling Tumblr excels at :)
I do think DW could look more at how we can connect with a wider audience and promote work - I'm thinking something like "public tags" curated like AO3's main canonical tags, though I'm not sure that's workable. But I'd get maybe 3 notes on anything I tried to post/promote most of the time so I never felt Tumblr was the best way to get audience, since popularity hinged on someone more popular than you reblogging your work, which is nothing like being able to promote at a community on DW! (Original fic wise I get more likes/comments at Wordpress than my Writeblr)

[capri0mni]

I used the "Soapbox" metaphor for Tumblr quite deliberately, as it really does remind me of Hyde Park's Speakers' Corner, where people really do stand on soapboxes (or other crates) and talk as loud as they can to try and attract a crowd -- like busking, but with politics ;-).* While Dreamwidth (and LiveJournal, back in the early days, before everyone left to set up Facebook accounts), is more like inviting people over to your living room for tea, cookies, and chat.

I hit a stroke of luck at Tumblr, and in my almost-three years of having an account there, I've only received like, two or three anon hates in my inbox, and never had anyone dogpile me. ...Though that may be because I blocked the worst of the anons at the first really hateful message I got, and thus, blocked a dozen at once, since I suspect a lot of dogpiling is actually one person pretending to be a crowd. I also think my good luck is that the first 3 or four people I became mutuals with on Tumblr, are all long-time Internet friends that I've known for almost 20 years, and the about half the people I chose to follow after that were those whom they reblogged, and were reblogged by, most often.

I rarely used my Tumblr to post my writing directly, but since my book was poetry with a social/philosophical theme, I instead used my blog to establish my credibility on the subject of my book, so that when it was ready for sale (and when I later did a promotion on Amazon), people would have more interest.

I'd probably sell a lot more books if I could work out the formatting for an e-book that works on universal formats, but poetry, with its lines and stanza breaks, is a bitch and a half to code for... :-/

Anyway, yeah: having standard tags would help people find each other on Dreamwidth. As would, I think, some sort of notification system like Tumblr has, where you get notified (once! I really do not need 17 notifications for one note, Tumblr!) when someone mentions you in a post, or links back to it.

*Though after this new TOS policy starts having an effec

[meridian_rose]

The coding for normal ebooks scares me so poetry would be terrifying!
Notifications would be great! I saw a discussion on the DW suggestions about using @ people rather than the code "user name=" which would help smooth the transition for tumblr users. LJ does notify you by email "you were mentioned in a post" with the url if someone codes you as lj-user name, so DW could easily implement this, even if it was restricted at first to premimum users notifying people. And yes, just once, Tumblr's insistence on reblog culture means multiple notifications for one post and it's a mess!

[capri0mni]

Not just multiple notifications per post, but multiple notifications per note -- telling me seven times that @person liked my post once.

...It ends up confusing me, more than informing me.

[alatefeline]

Glad you are here today!!! <3

*wibbly wobbly vworp vworp sound effects, just because*

[capri0mni]

Glad to be here!

[alatefeline]

:)