drama drama
Oct. 30th, 2017 10:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
saysthemagpiei am trying not to bring tumblr drama into this peaceful little oasis so i'm just going to put this behind a cut!! it's just personal it doesn't require a response or anything.
as my tumblr hiatus approaches (two days!!) i've been feeling nervous about it because i'm like what if my friends all move on without me and i'm alone forever!! but then i have a night like tonight where i wanted to come home and spend time writing/thinking/talking with people, and instead i just got sucked into yet another three-hour spiral of reading stuff and stressing and reacting and being completely unable to moderate my emotional/physical response to tumblr drama. and this is after culling my following list from ~600 people to just under 100, only about a third of whom are 1d blogs. and i think what stresses me out even more than the existence of drama is the fact that a lot of time the drama is over stuff that i really want to engage with, but the speed at which tumblr moves + the endless scroll feature + the impossibility of dialogue (so it's always just people yelling angrily over each other or yelling in the tags) + the way that stuff escalates into this incredibly performative I CAN YELL LOUDER THAN YOU AND THAT'S HOW YOU KNOW I'M SAYING SOMETHING IMPORTANT thing just makes that impossible.
i know probably everyone is tired of me always coming back to the stuff about tumblr's design and what that does to fandom/internet culture, because i feel like a broken record sometimes saying it and maybe it isn't even true for other people, maybe i'm just weirdly sensitive to it and need to stop crying about it. but it's like, i really believe that the form in which you encounter information affects the way you feel about that information and the way you are able to process that information. so the endless scroll design makes me feel as if i can't find a foothold. there's no break in the discourse and that means there's no little space where i can just stop and quietly think, check in with myself, and figure out what the best way to engage is -- like, to determine if i need to speak because it's important to talk, or if i need to hang back and listen to other people's voices, or if it's appropriate for me to ask questions or engage in some way, etc.
like today, as i was going about my life today i was thinking about queerlyalex's post from last night, and doing some thinking about what fandom looks like from my angle of vision vs from someone else's, and thinking about how if i keep writing/talking about fandom i want to really be conscious of like, i move through fandom spaces in a different way than a fan of color does and that's going to shape what i see/value in those spaces, and it's also going to shape what i can't see and need other people to help me be more attuned to. so i was thinking about that and processing some feelings of disappointment with harry esp compared to MUNA (my girlfriends i saw next to on a plane one) who have made their political commitments so integral to their public image & to their art in a way that i really respect. and i was thinking about how i hope he does better, but also about ways that people within fandom could start helping to facilitate and be part of those conversations, and wondering ok what's the appropriate role for a white fan to play in this conversation etc. just basically trying to think about how, ok, if 'treat people with kindness' is aspirational and not at all what happens in reality, what would it look like to actually do it - like, in this situation what kind of concrete actions can we take to make fandom a kinder community, where do these conversations happen, etc....
ANYWAY i was trying to think about all of that, and then i got on tumblr, and within 30 min i had gone from thinking "this upsets me because it's an issue in my community that affects people i care about and affects the whole fandom climate - can we do something about it and if so what?" to feeling like "i feel completely overwhelmed by all this constant stimuli, i can't slow down to sort through what i'm reading, i have no idea who's talking to whom or what people are responding to, there's no space or room for reflection, and there's no conversation whatsoever about how we would fix any of these problems, it's just problem problem problem yelling yelling yelling, and i feel STRESSED." and then i started feeling guilty because my stress was causing me to shut down, and i was like "oh this is TYPICAL OF ME, A WHITE GIRL, to just conveniently SHUT DOWN when things get uncomfortable, you need to just POWER THROUGH it and READ WHAT PEOPLE SAY" which i did for ages and then finally some part of my brain was like, "it's not the topic of conversation that's bothering me!! it's not even the tone of the conversation!!! it's the utter pointlessness of a conversation that doesn't even try to offer avenues for responding or ways of beginning to address and unpack these problems!!!!"
since tumblr does not support even the most basic conversation let alone a roundtable discussion type thing, the only way that people can engage or show that they want to engage is by reblogging someone else's venting post, which is important but is also like, venting is ok but don't mistake reblogging someone else venting for having taken an action to dismantle racism within fan spaces! like!!! i'm not saying i know how to do that because i don't, but i can't even figure it out or start trying to have conversations with people who might have ideas born of experience, because again tumblr gives me no space to stop and reflect and look around me to figure out who i should talk to or where the conversation's already happening so i can sit and listen.
anyway ok i'm sorry i'm going to go eat banana bread and think about Flicker
i know probably everyone is tired of me always coming back to the stuff about tumblr's design and what that does to fandom/internet culture, because i feel like a broken record sometimes saying it and maybe it isn't even true for other people, maybe i'm just weirdly sensitive to it and need to stop crying about it. but it's like, i really believe that the form in which you encounter information affects the way you feel about that information and the way you are able to process that information. so the endless scroll design makes me feel as if i can't find a foothold. there's no break in the discourse and that means there's no little space where i can just stop and quietly think, check in with myself, and figure out what the best way to engage is -- like, to determine if i need to speak because it's important to talk, or if i need to hang back and listen to other people's voices, or if it's appropriate for me to ask questions or engage in some way, etc.
like today, as i was going about my life today i was thinking about queerlyalex's post from last night, and doing some thinking about what fandom looks like from my angle of vision vs from someone else's, and thinking about how if i keep writing/talking about fandom i want to really be conscious of like, i move through fandom spaces in a different way than a fan of color does and that's going to shape what i see/value in those spaces, and it's also going to shape what i can't see and need other people to help me be more attuned to. so i was thinking about that and processing some feelings of disappointment with harry esp compared to MUNA (my girlfriends i saw next to on a plane one) who have made their political commitments so integral to their public image & to their art in a way that i really respect. and i was thinking about how i hope he does better, but also about ways that people within fandom could start helping to facilitate and be part of those conversations, and wondering ok what's the appropriate role for a white fan to play in this conversation etc. just basically trying to think about how, ok, if 'treat people with kindness' is aspirational and not at all what happens in reality, what would it look like to actually do it - like, in this situation what kind of concrete actions can we take to make fandom a kinder community, where do these conversations happen, etc....
ANYWAY i was trying to think about all of that, and then i got on tumblr, and within 30 min i had gone from thinking "this upsets me because it's an issue in my community that affects people i care about and affects the whole fandom climate - can we do something about it and if so what?" to feeling like "i feel completely overwhelmed by all this constant stimuli, i can't slow down to sort through what i'm reading, i have no idea who's talking to whom or what people are responding to, there's no space or room for reflection, and there's no conversation whatsoever about how we would fix any of these problems, it's just problem problem problem yelling yelling yelling, and i feel STRESSED." and then i started feeling guilty because my stress was causing me to shut down, and i was like "oh this is TYPICAL OF ME, A WHITE GIRL, to just conveniently SHUT DOWN when things get uncomfortable, you need to just POWER THROUGH it and READ WHAT PEOPLE SAY" which i did for ages and then finally some part of my brain was like, "it's not the topic of conversation that's bothering me!! it's not even the tone of the conversation!!! it's the utter pointlessness of a conversation that doesn't even try to offer avenues for responding or ways of beginning to address and unpack these problems!!!!"
since tumblr does not support even the most basic conversation let alone a roundtable discussion type thing, the only way that people can engage or show that they want to engage is by reblogging someone else's venting post, which is important but is also like, venting is ok but don't mistake reblogging someone else venting for having taken an action to dismantle racism within fan spaces! like!!! i'm not saying i know how to do that because i don't, but i can't even figure it out or start trying to have conversations with people who might have ideas born of experience, because again tumblr gives me no space to stop and reflect and look around me to figure out who i should talk to or where the conversation's already happening so i can sit and listen.
anyway ok i'm sorry i'm going to go eat banana bread and think about Flicker
no subject
Date: 2017-10-31 05:13 am (UTC)(this is very much coming from my social work background lmao) - when you're dealing with shit, sometimes you just need to vent and complain, but after awhile you're just contributing to the problem if you're not solution-focused. sometimes it feels like i spend all day solving real-life problems at work, so for me fandom is an escape where sometimes i want to opt-out of the discourse. obviously i have to check my privilege all the time on this, cos not everybody gets the option of opting out and i don't want my behavior in fandom contributing to things i see as issues, but at the end of the day, am i really /doing/ anything by reblogging posts? i think it's important, it brings issues to light, but if we're not taking the next step after that - and that step is, i don't necessarily know - then we're just sitting around complaining and nothing will change.
okay i feel like i got off course, my point was that it's okay not to always engage in fandom, it's good to take a step back and assess how to contribute meaningfully to a discussion, and it's unhealthy not to set limits when it's too much/overwhelming. that's something i'm always preaching to the people i supervise lol - you can't do anything helpful if you burn yourself out.
no subject
Date: 2017-10-31 11:59 pm (UTC)I'll probably be back in the next few days with a detailed response you didn't ask for ;-)