Get Your Own Lawn

[galadriel1010]

Fandom has a problem. Drop into any fandom right now and you'll fill a bingo square of the same arguments - what should and shouldn't we consume, how should users under 18 interact with older users and each other, how should older users interact with younger ones, what is actually queer-baiting and what's just rainbow spectacles? And honestly, it's exhausting. I think most of us want to actually get down to actually enjoying fandom instead of just marking out, yet again, where our limits are, finding the people who will respect them and occupying our spaces ready for the next onslaught. And honestly, it didn't used to be like this!


When I was a fandom kitten, I was really, really annoying. I hung out on a Lord of the Rings forum where most of the users were old school fans of the books, and I was one of the influx of bright young things attracted by Orlando Bloom's luscious locks. There was even a forum called Legolas Lovers where the fangirls lived, writing fanfiction and geeking out in our awesome way. There were also more serious lore discussion threads and RPG threads, including an actual RPG academy for newbies to the format. Everything had a place and everything was in its place, and the old hands did an absolutely brilliant job of nudging the fandom babies back into line. You knew where you were. If you wanted to squee, you went to Legolas Lovers. If you wanted to write fanfiction and create fanart, there was a whole board for that. If you wanted to debate the nuances of geomorphology as designed by Morgoth, there was probably a thread for that.

After Lord of the Rings came Torchwood, and that was during the LiveJournal heyday. I do not want to know how many communities I was in. I was in most of the Jack/Ianto ones but none of the Jack/Gwen ones, took part in several of the big bangs and a couple of bingos, and was a regular contributor to the fic finder communities. If there was a kink meme, I wasn't on it. I was on FanficRants, and a relatively regular contributor to fandom_wank.

And then LiveJournal got bought, several times. It followed a lengthy period of instability, because Russian democracy campaigners used the site for their networks, so every time there was an election in Russia the site mysteriously went down. Pretty soon it was bought out by a Russian company, who applied the anti-LGBT legislation, and the site died. There was a mass migration away, to Tumblr and Discord and Twitter and who knows where else. ArchiveofOurOwn, an amazing site and a resource we can never let go of, isn't a community.

There are so many ways in which Tumblr and Twitter are absolutely terrible for fandom. There's no silos. There's no community bucket in which to put your fanfiction or art and go "Hi, this is me, I made this thing." You have to find people through hashtags and comments, and there's no easy way to exist in the same space as other people for long enough it becomes easy to strike up a conversation. You only meet people through other people, which isn't great when most of the time your fandom seems to be arguing. There's no easy way to post long content, either. Spoiler cut your screed, people!

And so here I am, making an impassioned plea for you to join me on DreamWidth. It's perfect for long content, perfect for having conversations in the comments, you can even make a contents page and customise your avatar to the occasion! It's a site designed for communities and for people. And no character limits.

Comments

[badly_knitted]

I've been here since 2010. I'm still on LJ too, because there are still communities I want access to, but I like dreamwirth better.

I never went on tumblr or twitter, I'm an old dog who didn't want to learn new tricks, just wanted to potter about doing what I do and hopefully get a occasional comment, or a good conversation. The pace of life here is less frenetic than the new fangled social media sites from what I've heard, but I do mourn the loss of commenters, amd the brevity of comments these days. Few people seem to have the time to say much anymore, like they're forgetting how to communicate. Makes me nostalgic for ten years ago.

[galadriel1010]

I really miss those days. They were simpler times. I really want to get a revival going, but it's an uphill struggle

[badly_knitted]

A lot of people have wandered off or left altogether, people don't seen as interested in holding conversations anymore, all those easily clickable 'like' buttons have a lot to answer for.

[emptyego]

I miss ye olden days of Livejournal and Greatestjournal, too. :( I think it doesn't help that there's some services (like Twitter) that actively encourages you to speak less. (Microblogging in only so many characters, etc.) At least Ao3 is good for archiving old fiction and art. Not really much of a community, though, as you said. More of a tool for a community's use. I really wish more people migrated here with the whole explosion of tumblr last December.

[inkpetal]

I found this post via searching "Dreamwidth" on Twitter. I completely agree with everything you have said here. I would really love to see a resurgence of folks using journaling sites, but I think younger generations are too accustomed to microblogging. But I do have hope that someday that'll change again. I too have tried to wrangle fandom friends over to DW, but they think the site looks outdated, don't like that it doesn't have a mobile app, and think it's too slow-paced to use.

While I agree DW could use a facelift/mobile app, it's a shame more people don't give it a chance. I think too many young people haven't learned that large corporate social media will never act in their best interest. I was really hopeful after the Tumblr exodus last year that people would flock here, but instead everyone went to Discord and Twitter. I'm not sure why people assume those platforms would be any better - I bet in a few years they'll enact similar censorship measures. (I think Twitter is already starting to.)

Anyway, I'm going to add you as a friend! I'm a LoTR fan too and it sounds like we have some things in common. :)

[mxcatmoon]

This is a few weeks old, but hey, I'm doing my part of keep DW as active as possible, so here I am (found your journal while wandering around aimlessly). I too am hoping more fans come to DW. I was mostly away from fandom for a decade so I missed the whole Tumblr era -- thank God, from everything I've heard I want no part of it. I loved LJ in its heyday. I like that there are quite a lot of fanfic challenge and Bingo communities here, mainly multifandom. Which is good for exploring new stuff. Except for a minor interest in Good Omens though, I haven't found anything new to be passionate about, so I just happily play in my old sandboxes.