Social Interaction on Dreamwidth vs Tumblr
Oct. 1st, 2021 07:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
soc_puppet(Originally posted to Tumblr on August 8th.)
Today I'm going to take a moment to talk about a major cultural difference between Tumbr and Dreamwidth, and that is Audience.
On Tumblr, when you post something and tag it, you post with the assumption that anyone, anywhere can and might stumble across it at any time; you have to be mentally and emotionally prepared for the interactions you will face. Since many of the people who will potentially see your post are people who don't know you, and who you don't know, one of the things you have to be prepared for is Bad Faith Interactions: Where a person reads what you have written and comes to the worst possible conclusion about both the writing and about you, and is prepared to take their conclusion directly to the source. Since Tumblr is a content aggregation site, if something you write takes off, the odds that it will reach people who will misinterpret what you wrote and are willing to fight over it are higher than they are on other blogging platforms.
On Dreamwidth, you have one primary audience you post for, and many optional secondary audiences you can post for.
When you are posting on your own journal, the majority of people who read what you post are your own followers, rather than any random internet user who happens to also be logged into the site. Sure, someone may stumble across your post on the Latest Things Page, but they're much less likely to do so than your average Tumblr user browsing through tags, or even their own Dash. Your followers are your primary audience. For the most part, they already have an idea of who you are, and are much more willing to read positively into things you write than your random internet stranger.
Furthermore, because you are more likely to have an established relationship with them, you are more likely to be able to clarify what you wrote without things escalating out of your control.
Finally, due to how Dreamwidth works as a social journaling site, you have more control over the interactions you have on your own space: You can disallow comments on your posts, freeze conversations that are going nowhere or crossing your boundaries, block people, make your posts private or visible only to selected people, or delete your posts entirely, comments and all. People who saw it may have taken screenshots of your post, but other than that, the odds of coming across a post that you regret, have learned better from, and apologized for years ago are practically nil compared to on Tumblr.
That's primary audience interactions. Secondary audiences are those who follow communities you may post to.
A community on Dreamwidth is comparable to Tumblr accounts whose content is primarily made up of submissions (or, in some cases, official content). This means anything you post there will likely be exposed to a wider audience, or at least a different audience, than only your personal followers. They are less likely to have only positive associations with you, if only because they are overall less likely to have interactions with you specifically. That said, there are still several differences between Tumblr and your average Dreamwidth community.
First, in addition to membership rules and posting guidelines (both of which can be extremely lax or very strict), there are moderators whose job it is to enforce those rules and guidelines. While communities exist with bad or ineffective moderation, they don't always last long or grow very big, and groups can and do splinter away from them to form their own communities. A moderator can do all of the things you do in your own journal (freezing conversations, locking posts, deleting posts, and banning members temporarily or permanently) with the authority granted to them by the community itself. Moderators are how communities regulate their content, memberships, and interactions.
Second, the poster retains most of the control of anything they post. A moderator can go over their heads if something drastic is happening, or if they judge that a post goes against community guidelines (etc), but by and large, if you post to a community, you can change that post as you please, whenever you want. If you realize that you made a mistake, you can edit the post to own it and add new thoughts, and—this is the important part—that is the version that people will see. Again, they might have access to the old version through screencaps or the Wayback Machine, but whatever the current version is will always include whatever updates you've made to it.
Overall, between these two factors, the interactions you'll have with people on Dreamwidth will likely be of a very different character than those you have on Tumblr.
Is it still possible to have huge flame wars and fandom wankfests on Dreamwidth? Absolutely; they happened with frequency on LiveJournal, which is the structure Dreamwidth was originally based on. But in general, it's easier to control the types of interaction you have on Dreamwidth than on Tumblr, and that includes fandom content and interactions.
Today I'm going to take a moment to talk about a major cultural difference between Tumbr and Dreamwidth, and that is Audience.
On Tumblr, when you post something and tag it, you post with the assumption that anyone, anywhere can and might stumble across it at any time; you have to be mentally and emotionally prepared for the interactions you will face. Since many of the people who will potentially see your post are people who don't know you, and who you don't know, one of the things you have to be prepared for is Bad Faith Interactions: Where a person reads what you have written and comes to the worst possible conclusion about both the writing and about you, and is prepared to take their conclusion directly to the source. Since Tumblr is a content aggregation site, if something you write takes off, the odds that it will reach people who will misinterpret what you wrote and are willing to fight over it are higher than they are on other blogging platforms.
On Dreamwidth, you have one primary audience you post for, and many optional secondary audiences you can post for.
When you are posting on your own journal, the majority of people who read what you post are your own followers, rather than any random internet user who happens to also be logged into the site. Sure, someone may stumble across your post on the Latest Things Page, but they're much less likely to do so than your average Tumblr user browsing through tags, or even their own Dash. Your followers are your primary audience. For the most part, they already have an idea of who you are, and are much more willing to read positively into things you write than your random internet stranger.
Furthermore, because you are more likely to have an established relationship with them, you are more likely to be able to clarify what you wrote without things escalating out of your control.
Finally, due to how Dreamwidth works as a social journaling site, you have more control over the interactions you have on your own space: You can disallow comments on your posts, freeze conversations that are going nowhere or crossing your boundaries, block people, make your posts private or visible only to selected people, or delete your posts entirely, comments and all. People who saw it may have taken screenshots of your post, but other than that, the odds of coming across a post that you regret, have learned better from, and apologized for years ago are practically nil compared to on Tumblr.
That's primary audience interactions. Secondary audiences are those who follow communities you may post to.
A community on Dreamwidth is comparable to Tumblr accounts whose content is primarily made up of submissions (or, in some cases, official content). This means anything you post there will likely be exposed to a wider audience, or at least a different audience, than only your personal followers. They are less likely to have only positive associations with you, if only because they are overall less likely to have interactions with you specifically. That said, there are still several differences between Tumblr and your average Dreamwidth community.
First, in addition to membership rules and posting guidelines (both of which can be extremely lax or very strict), there are moderators whose job it is to enforce those rules and guidelines. While communities exist with bad or ineffective moderation, they don't always last long or grow very big, and groups can and do splinter away from them to form their own communities. A moderator can do all of the things you do in your own journal (freezing conversations, locking posts, deleting posts, and banning members temporarily or permanently) with the authority granted to them by the community itself. Moderators are how communities regulate their content, memberships, and interactions.
Second, the poster retains most of the control of anything they post. A moderator can go over their heads if something drastic is happening, or if they judge that a post goes against community guidelines (etc), but by and large, if you post to a community, you can change that post as you please, whenever you want. If you realize that you made a mistake, you can edit the post to own it and add new thoughts, and—this is the important part—that is the version that people will see. Again, they might have access to the old version through screencaps or the Wayback Machine, but whatever the current version is will always include whatever updates you've made to it.
Overall, between these two factors, the interactions you'll have with people on Dreamwidth will likely be of a very different character than those you have on Tumblr.
Is it still possible to have huge flame wars and fandom wankfests on Dreamwidth? Absolutely; they happened with frequency on LiveJournal, which is the structure Dreamwidth was originally based on. But in general, it's easier to control the types of interaction you have on Dreamwidth than on Tumblr, and that includes fandom content and interactions.
no subject
Date: 2021-10-02 01:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-10-02 02:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-10-02 10:13 am (UTC)I am not very social on Tumblr.
The main challenge with Dreamwidth, regarding audience, is finding one. How do you meet new people, or how do new people meet you? It's fantastic when you have a social circle, but the best avenue I can think of for making new friends is communities. Which, admittedly, can work.
But with that out of the way, it's so much more relaxing to be able to step back and say 'this is a post for me' and not worry about it going viral and inviting anon hate from a thousand furies.
no subject
Date: 2021-10-02 05:41 pm (UTC)I actually wrote out a fairly comprehensive post about how to find people to follow on Dreamwidth around the time of the pr0n ban, when people were looking for alternatives. It got a decent amount of traction, too! But yeah, the big thing is, if your friends aren't also going to whatever platform you want to move to (or already there), it can be hard to make the jump on your own. It's one of the reasons I've been trying to think of ways to make
Anyway, yes. Sometimes it's very nice to just write for your own followers, and be reasonably confident that a post isn't going to go viral without a lot of extra work, and probably permission to link granted on your part.