Thanks for sharing the full tweet here ♡ (I know I saw it on Twitter later but it’s so nice to be able to answer slowly)
That makes sense about archive vs. community - particularly in that case, it would feel unfortunate to not post to ao3 because there might be silent readers out there who do stumble across a story, even years later, because of the searchability & filtering & “being in a centralized database space”-ness. (My “save all the things” and “make everything accessible” hat!) And then I get a bit morbid sometimes too (but in a constructive way) and think about the longevity of different places (like a personal website one pays for or even self-hosts on-location is great because one controls it entirely, but that only lasts as long as on is still around/someone is paying, but on the flipside no platform is 100% resilient; there’s resilience in collective/shared responsibility). But if posting doesn’t feel like it really connects with other people, that can feel even more isolating than not posting at all. It’s not like you’re posting just for yourself, if the posting is your attempt to connect.
I know of some people who participate in community by primarily commenting and reccing and find their connection that way? But that usually requires being fairly active on at least one “fast” social media platform, and depending on the fandom, I’ve heard that can get really toxic 😭
Back when I was trying to connect in more with kpop I’d do all of the events, and that sort of worked but it was stressful and once it got to the stage that I didn’t have time to read and comment on other fanworks in the event I was in, I realized that was actively harmful to the community that an event is hopefully supposed to engender.
A lot of words to say that I don’t really know! I hope that thinking about this will help with finding a compromise. It’s helpful to think about these kinds of things, and reflect.
Sending you 💕💕💕 and I’m always happy to listen, even if I’m slow to respond.
no subject
That makes sense about archive vs. community - particularly in that case, it would feel unfortunate to not post to ao3 because there might be silent readers out there who do stumble across a story, even years later, because of the searchability & filtering & “being in a centralized database space”-ness. (My “save all the things” and “make everything accessible” hat!) And then I get a bit morbid sometimes too (but in a constructive way) and think about the longevity of different places (like a personal website one pays for or even self-hosts on-location is great because one controls it entirely, but that only lasts as long as on is still around/someone is paying, but on the flipside no platform is 100% resilient; there’s resilience in collective/shared responsibility). But if posting doesn’t feel like it really connects with other people, that can feel even more isolating than not posting at all. It’s not like you’re posting just for yourself, if the posting is your attempt to connect.
I know of some people who participate in community by primarily commenting and reccing and find their connection that way? But that usually requires being fairly active on at least one “fast” social media platform, and depending on the fandom, I’ve heard that can get really toxic 😭
Back when I was trying to connect in more with kpop I’d do all of the events, and that sort of worked but it was stressful and once it got to the stage that I didn’t have time to read and comment on other fanworks in the event I was in, I realized that was actively harmful to the community that an event is hopefully supposed to engender.
A lot of words to say that I don’t really know! I hope that thinking about this will help with finding a compromise. It’s helpful to think about these kinds of things, and reflect.
Sending you 💕💕💕 and I’m always happy to listen, even if I’m slow to respond.