tomblar and hobbies and musings

[felicitygs]

This is rather dashed off, but it's pretty interesting seeing people all over beginning to consider how to divide time in their hobbies. The most prominent example is, of course, tumblr, because I've seen all over from people migrating away how they want to reevaluate how they interact with fandom. There's so little time; how do we choose to spend it?

maybe all this shit isn't worth it and i'm not having a great time. maybe i got out of it what i wanted? i've now seen these ancient computers operate. i got to see it in crisp RGB on The Good TV, and now like. maybe i'm just Done.

— Graviscera (@gravislizard) December 5, 2018

I keep thinking about this tweet. Honestly, click through--I keep thinking about the entire thread, in relation to so many hobbies. It feels like it recontextualizes hobbies I've bounced off of, hobbies I keep going back to. Those realizations, over and over again, of how our time (what we do with it, how we change it) develops over time. 

Tumblr was, for me, always a great time, but how I was getting that great time changed drastically over the life of the service. When I started, it was definitely interacting with fandom--I was involved with a lot, I was writing more material for fandom than I had in years, and so on and so forth. By the end--and how it will hopefully continue, until finally the site is put down--it was all shit posts and sharing and hoping other people would enjoy the same weird neo dada humour that has been creeping into everything since. 

But a thread I kept seeing--and experience, if I'm honest--was how few people were interacting by the end. Of course there were people who I did, but so much of tumblr fandom was simply being able to churn out enough content to keep people around, or so it felt. It was distressing, and I stopped following several blogs just because it was too much stress to see how much engagement they would get with.. everything, and how much of that mentally I tied to their ability to constantly and consistently put out Content (tm).

idk idk this is all nebulous thinking

content culture is a thing now. time is limited, and grows thinner by the day as there's more and more that demands it. where and how and why do we want to engage with our hobbies--fandom or otherwise? I've dispersed between a few different platforms, and so much of it feels like a balancing act. What do I want to keep? How do I want to keep interacting?

I hope pillowfort survives it's closed beta--but how much of that is it's in between of tumblr and traditional blogging? How much of that is the fact that I don't have the time to devote to a proper blog anymore? How much of that is just not being familiar with trad blogging anymore?

How much of that is the conveniences of the vibrant and thriving Korean blogging community, which is so heavily intertwined with the news sites that it's trivial to find blogs to discuss things with people compared to how neatly segregated from... well, everything Dreamwidth feels?

How do I want to spend my time? 

Comments

[gold_pen_leaps]

This post makes me think about minimalism and being-in-the-moment. You know, stuff that I view as the domain of pretentious hipsters. "Oh, I'm better than you because I only have a spork and a knife in my kitchen drawer." But, in spite of the fact that I dislike people who tend to join communities based around these topics... they kind of have a point. I think there's a reason there are communities about deliberately having less. The Internet gives us more but it is more than anyone could hope to experience.

The problem is, you don't want to get stuck in the trap of wasting your time thinking about how to not waste your time. And FOMO is your foe.

I guess what I'm saying is... don't think about it too hard. Make a plan about when and for how long you do your hobbies, maybe, but decide in the moment what you want to do. If you're not actually enjoying yourself, then what is the point of a hobby?

[felicitygs]

Idk, I feel like thinking about something that is and has been so important for so long is quite worthwhile? I'm kind of a thinky person though. And lolol at the idea of me ever making a plan on when and how to hobby and actually sticking to it.

I think some of this is just spinning my wheels about whether I want to create content or just keep consuming it, and even then how much to read. I know at one point I was reading all the time and making recommendations, and that stopped eventually--and sometimes I do feel guilty about that, because there's good work. So some of this is trying to think through, okay, why did I stop? Would I want to get back into reading, then if so, how much, etc etc. Kind of aimless really.

[terresdebrume]

Ha, that'san interesting thought indeed. I've been thinkingabout these things lately, mostly in the context of how I feel like I haven't done all that much writing this past year and I'd like to do that more...though on the plu side I did read more this year than I do on my writing-heavy years so. Pros and cons.

I don't think it's really possible to have a general guideline for how much time to spend on hobbies because in a lot of ways I think it depends on how much brain space, time and need/desire you have for them at any given moment, and that can change real fast depending on external consequences.
Re: the lack of interactions on tumblr though... sometimes I wonder how much of it is due to the ever-increasing negativity in the past few yearS. I'm not saying the site doesn't have its problems, it's just that I remember when I joined and people were mostly just happy to talk to other, and then the wave of 'this website (and by extension its users) sucks' started and... never stopped?

And I don't know if I just have my head in the sand or if there's something I missed or what but I feel like that general atmosphere can't have helped with people wanting to spend time interacting with others. I mean, who likes to spend time and energy on stuff that everyone (and themselves?) think is garbage? Idk. Maybe this is a think that could have happened on any websites, maybe the way tumblr works influenced it, but either way it's something I tend to come back to and can't figure out an explanation to so... I guess I'm right there with you in the aimless thinking zone xD

[felicitygs]

Yeah, me too--I've been reading so much and doing more in Korean, and as a result all my English related output has lagged behind pretty hard.... but otoh my Korean is better. I guess for me I end up feeling guilty I'm not as engaged with the fandom as I used to be?

That's a pretty interesting point about the general negativity of the site perhaps driving people to stop using it as much. I don't know if I necessarily agree--it felt like people were upset with how the site was being developed. But, nature of Tumblr, it could very well have been the people we were following. I generally made an effort to follow people who were engaged more than I was, so even if I couldn't personally do so, perhaps my followers could. I do know a lot of users hate their site (see twitter for primo example #1) but. Yeah, I don't know. It feels like maybe there could be something there too.

[terresdebrume]

Sometimes it's tough to remember we only have so much time in life, I guess x)

Yeah, the negativity definitely wasn't the only thing! Like I said, there are real problems with how Tumblr is handled so it's not like the criticism came out of nowhere, I just wonder what kind of influence it had on people x)

It could also be that you and I got on tumblr at a time when it was really very active (particularly the MCU fandom, which was shiny and new) and then as the enthusiasm for that particular mega fandom faded it felt like tumblr in general got slower? I mean, smaller fandoms still produced, but it's hard to reproduce anything close to the amount of fanwork we used to see back in the days too, I guess.

[felicitygs]

Oh, well, I think some of that fade in fanwork might have been the MCU specific things--I ended up drifting over to Star Wars/Kylux and the adventure zone, which had/have tons of content. Plus Homestuck, the fandom that never really sleeps, even if it's quieter now. But I also think that whole sweep of anit-culture that arose in fandom did absolutely no favours for anyone--a bunch of creators I followed stopped making stuff thanks to that, or heavily limited their output. I know it certainly affected what sorts of things I felt was "okay" to write, and it was a huge part of why I've written almost nothing Kylux or Mitaka/Hux despite tons of ideas I had for it. I just didn't want to deal with the anti culture, with people taking choices about fictional characters as moral imperatives worth judging or what have you. So yeah, I think that definitely played a huge part in stiffing the culture.

[terresdebrume]

Oh yeah, anti culture definitely put a damper on many a creative spirit :/

I'm always kind of torn about it though because on the one hand, like you said, a lot of thingswent overboard and just stiffled a lot of things, but on the other hand some of the discussions I saw were also worth being had, and from where I sat the 'antis' weren't the ones who went into aggressive behavior (not to say it didn't happen, of course, just that I didn't see it).

I'm thinking mostly about the whole Kylo Ren/Rey debacle for example because on the one hand yes, ship and let ship but on the other hand it also does say something when the vast majority of a fandom sidelines the black lead character in favor of the white villain for their ship when generally speaking (in my experience) shipping usually tends to focus on the 'good guys' of a franchise.

So like. I don't disagree that this whole thing dampened a lot of motivations and that's really sad, but I don't think all the discussions that were being had were unnecessary and honestly I'm in no way closer to figure out tat particular mess x)

[felicitygs]

I don't know, the anti-culture I kept seeing wasn't about these 'needed discussions' so much as trying very hard to drive off anyone who made content they didn't like. I saw a lot of people tying their identity and morals so hard into the type of media and ships they liked, and I found that (still find it tbqh) very suspect--it's not healthy. Discussions about the issues around media was still going on outside of those circles; in almost all cases, I was seeing antis come into people's inboxes and on their posts being the aggressors in almost all cases.

Reylo is a whole nother can of worms, tbh, I feel like that was the first recentish ship where we saw what happens when people decide to tie worth as a person up with their tastes in fictional characters. I saw good discussion happening about how that's kind of questionable so many people ignored Finn/Rey, but at the same time the vitrol on both sides was extremely toxic.

It's probably because the antis I saw were so overwhelmingly aggressive and so many were trolls that I'm pretty happy to say 'death to purity politics' and also a hearty 'fuck you' if someone openly admits to being an anti--but then, I also saw a lot of people proud and happy antis who were also proud and happy aphobes, to the point it became a kneejerk reaction to check to see if they were aphobic or not first.

[terresdebrume]

Yeah, these were a thing too, and tbh one can also slide into the other whenever people aren't interested in talking with each other, so yeah just because the starting topic is worth discussing isn't a guarantee that things will proceed well.
Ha, see, I have the exact reverse experience (as a witness) re: antis/not antis starting shit or not, but then who you follow or read influences that so much it's not all that surprising.

As for the anti/aphobe correlation, I wasn't aware of it but I am, sadly, not surprised. People who are jerks regardless of the topic they're jerks about, tend to be jerks in multiple ways, and I'm sorry you had to deal with this :/