(no subject)

[soc_puppet]

...Fucking hell. I don't want to start wank, and this is a person I otherwise find interesting and want to get to know better and potentially have as a fandom friend, but uh. "If you like but don't reblog, I'm disappointed it you?" (Not you, alexseanchai; I'm linking your reblog because it includes the image descriptions. Also we are already friends, so.)

I feel like this is, in part, a major cultural difference between fans who primarily got started on FF.net and LJ and so forth, and fans who primarily got started on Tumblr. But I'm also not that huge a fan of the whole "Reblog or I will guilt you about it" thing, or the "This is how you fandom correctly" thing, no matter the context.

And I also feel like, if I bring any of this up on Tumblr, it is more likely to turn into wank than a productive conversation, due to the nature of Tumblr as a content aggregation site. Any productive conversation we may try to have will almost inevitably get lost as people reblog from one of us and not the other, and I just. Don't want to go there! Especially since I should already be turning the light out tonight, as I have work tomorrow, and trying to do any sort of damage control or prevention on Tumblr would necessitate me staying up probably another hour and a half, maybe longer.

But also, if I don't say anything I'll be disappointed in myself and probably toss and turn anyway for at least an hour and a half, still without getting any sleep?

So, compromise: Posting about it here. Hopefully tomorrow I'll either have gotten over this, or come up with a diplomatic/polite enough way to phrase "That guilt trip thing you're doing is making me uncomfortable, and the way you're trying to make me interact with social media on your terms rather than my own is not helping even a little" that I can send an ask or something and then get on with my life.

Comments

(frozen comment)

[alexseanchai]

The thing is, you're not entitled to space on anyone else's blog, either, and if people don't reblog stuff you want people to see, people are not going to see it.

I don't know about the OP of the post soc_puppet linked. But the second person in the thread reblogs fan content he didn't create all the time. That's the implicit other side of the deal. If you're on Tumblr wanting people to consume the fan content you create and/or to find fan content other people created, you are relying on other people to reblog fan content, and your part of the deal is, you reblog fan content too.

Not doing that is a choice you can make. But not doing that and then wondering why your fic has no readers and you aren't seeing much fic to read? Not cool.

(frozen comment)

[cbrachyrhynchos]

I don't think the contract model you're proposing here works. The network ties involved with reading or reblogging are way too thin to claim that we have a "deal." It's often the case that we're three or more degrees of separation from the original work. (And in fact, I think that's a huge problem where tumblr is concerned. I ended up dogpiled when one of my link posts got picked up by the TERF-sphere for example.)

We don't have to all do the same things in fandom, or even have the same fandoms. So this argument that I'm breaking some sort of a deal for not boosting your thing doesn't make sense to me.

(frozen comment)

[alexseanchai]

If you are not expecting nor even hoping for anyone to reblog your content, and if you are content with the volume of content you find and not expecting nor even hoping for more, then you are not being a hypocrite by not reblogging anyone else's content. And it's not a one-to-one anyway and I don't think I implied it was? Gift economies don't work if no one gives.