I know you weren't the OP but just in regards to the 'share stuff you like' post, I want to share a personal anecdote that might highlight exactly how important this is to creators, but am afraid to share it on my own blog because of the 'you should make content for yourself' crowd. Because fuck that, I make it for myself but I post it on the internet for people to interact with. Recently I discovered that people have been reccing both my art and fic privately on various servers and chats (1/5)
Like A LOT. I notice random fics get a few more kudos than normal from time to time and figure it’s just a blip, but no it turns out my work is getting recced left right and center, and I HAD NO IDEA. I get so little engagement on tumblr that I assume everything I create is mediocre at best, and definitely not something people feel strongly enough about to reblog because they aren’t bothered about sharing it with their friends. On Ao3 I have a small number of regular commenters, (2/5)
and get the odd random one from someone new, but overall again, middling responses. Appreciated, but not anything to indicate that more than three or four people really like what I’m posting, and the rest are very much ‘thanks for adding more to this ship tag’ type kudos and comments. I feel really, really not good about the work I create. So imagine my shock when I discover there are people out there saying it’s awesome, but not telling ME. People I’ve never interacted with beyond (3/5)
them perhaps liking my posts every now and then. I have seriously considered removing all my fics from Ao3 and keeping them just for myself. I’ve considered giving up fic and fanart all together to try investing my time in a different hobby as I have many others. But fandom is my first love, and brings me a lot of joy, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still want to know when people like my stuff! Tell people if someone’s recced their work to you in private, please. It’s a huge boost. (4/5)
so folks, put yourself in that person’s shoes. Could you imagine being like me, thinking you’re mediocre or bad only to find out that in private people are sharing your work around like it’s a big secret? If anything that makes me feel almost worse because it’s like folks are embarrassed to admit they enjoy what I create, which makes me think there’s something about me as a person that puts them off. An insight into the mind of one creator, that might shed some insight into the convo (5/5)
Ahh that’s crazy! I’m so sorry! D: And thank you so much for sharing this. I don’t have anything to add so I’ll let your words speak for themselves, but I hope people stop hiding and show you the appreciation you deserve! <3
So I was talking with a friend about the issue discussed in this ask I got months ago. They mentioned how a mutual friend who is in a server neither of us are in DMed them to say that the people in that server were all raving about an image my friend posted to Tumblr. None of this feedback would have made it to my friend without the second friend letting them know. I’ve had the same thing happen numerous times and when my friend told me this, I replied:
I always wonder about things on servers because most conversations there never make it into the wider fandom. So unless an artist or writer is posting their work directly into a server, they never hear anything nice about it from those people.
Which then, of course, got me riled up about people sharing uncredited work, not linking to the original work, etc. But it also made me wonder if the sharp decline in interaction/reblogs that most creators have seen over the past few years on Tumblr has to do with this kind of thing happening so much on discord.
Obviously, the biggest part of the issue is so many people refusing to give even the most minimal feedback to fandom creators by reblogging or commenting on things. But with how much chatter goes on in discord servers, I’m beginning to think that might also be a huge factor.
And yes, I make art and fic for myself, as do many people, but is it such a horrible thing to want some feedback or nice comments on something you’ve spent hours and hours on? The desire to share your work with others and get excited about it together is a pretty normal and healthy human thing, so acting like fan creators are whiny or entitled for wanting even the smallest scraps of interaction is honestly just idiotic.
What’s entitled is enjoying all this free art and fic and never lifting a finger to thank the people who make and share it.
P.S. I had this sitting in my drafts for a few days and then a different friend told me about yet more people sharing my art in servers without saying a peep to me about it, which was the impetus for posting this today.
TL;DR if you like something, tell the person who made it.
I’ve been thinking about this, too, lately.
I did pull all my works from AO3 and FFN. Everything since 2012. My accounts are empty now. While guilt was my primary motivator (I had a lot of wips and very few complete works outside of oneshots), I’ve been reflecting on how lack of community contributed. Not to say that I dipped out because of a lack of kudos or comments– honestly, I probably got more than what was warranted– but when I finally found a small circle of friends who would actively talk with me? Get as deep into the story as I was? Enable my unhinged narratives? Share songs or art that reminded them of the stories or characters? It was a whole new world.
The day I pulled everything, it was such a small, harmless comment that set it off. “Loved it! When’s the next update?” The reader’s first comment, 30k into the fic. It was almost out-of-body. What’s the point? Why am I doing this? Why do I come into this space when I have friends somewhere else that actually talk to me? I get more out of reading bits of my fic out loud during Story Time on Discord with three others in chat than I do from any amount of three-word comments.
It ain’t the numbers. I could have the fic with most views/kudos/comments ever and I’d still feel this way. It’s interaction I want, and most existing fandom spaces really aren’t designed for it. Views and kudos aren’t interactions, but for some reason those are some of the most visible metrics. You interact with a specific fic, not the author. You reblog a piece of art and hope the artist doesn’t read the tags too closely. Because many fandom spaces are oriented to the product, they’re not oriented to the process or the people behind it.
Discord’s not like that. Discord is oriented to the people in a given server, a vehicle for communication, not a destination in itself. Discord destroys the division between creator and audience because you are both and everyone else is both, even if the only thing anyone is creating is conversation. Discord’s biggest limiting factor is fragmentation. Servers are generally purpose-specific, which inherently limits who you can talk with, but when given the choice of a large silent audience and a small interpersonal one, I think more people are choosing the second.
And it makes sense that people gravitate towards it, because AO3 and even tumblr don’t really let the audience gush together about something they love. It’s not common to see readers talking to each other in a comment section (I think I saw it maybe three times? in ten years?) and tumblr doesn’t lend itself well to conversations (it happens but the interface is awkward af compared to just… live chatting in discord).
I agree with everything you say, 100%. It’s lonely to be a creator. But it’s lonely to be the audience, too. The best AO3 and Tumblr can offer right now is one-on-one interactions (which can be intimidating for both parties, let’s be real), but once you do that… what’s next? Is there a secret corner of tumblr I don’t know about where people are having full-on conversations about fic or art? (completely plausible, I’m still fairly new to tumblr)
I don’t have any solutions. I’ve found what works for me, for the most part. I’m working to be better about reblogs and comments, though I’m still kinda ass at both. I’m still getting coached on how to properly use tumblr (shout out to @bluedaddysgirl for having the patience to explain with small words). Like you say, we create for ourselves but we post for others. When others don’t say anything, well… maybe someday I’ll post on AO3 again. For now, I’m happy to share the gDoc links with those who ask.
As someone whose formative fandom experiences were on LJ groups, forums, and geocities fan sites, the movement from public spaces to private discords makes me sad.
I don’t doubt that it’s a wonderful setting for that immediate sharing of enthusiasm and community, especially in smaller servers where everyone knows everyone else. But it’s hard to know those communities exist if you’re not already in them, and I don’t know that it’s possible to archive them.
The Matrix messageboard I was on in the early 2000s still has pages on the internet archive. Most of the fics are there, and at least a few pages of discussion. The LJ groups are still there, even if individual blogs have been abandoned. When M4 was released a few months I found my way into a discord server mostly full of new fans who wondered aloud about what early fandom was like - and that record is still there for them to find.
What will the fandom revivals of the future have left to find? AO3 is an archive of fan works, yes, but as noted above it’s not as good at (or built for) community engagement.
I dunno, I suppose I feel like discord is as ephemeral as the living rooms of those early Star Trek fans. There are hard copies of their fic and zines that have survived, but the conversations are only memory. And that’s closed to anyone who wasn’t there.
You know what… I wonder how much the current purity wave/censorship/anti bullshit has fed into this. Because people gushing in private, smaller communities on places like Discord instead of more publicly reminds me of how I was lamenting recently that I publish some fics anon now, fics I never would have stressed about putting out there a couple years ago. Like, the desire to not deal with potential harassment and even just annoyances that suck your energy is very high these days. It’s hard to feel safe and joyful about publicly interacting with your fandom, even when it’s stuff you think won’t garner any ire. I think people are choosing to be more private about their interests in general, which sucks.
But yeah, I’ve def noticed the amount of interaction is vastly different than it was a couple of years ago, and while I am super blessed to have had a lot of quality commenters currently and in the past, it’s def markedly less now. I def relate to that “one bad day/bad comment away from bailing” sentiment haha. Just posted about that last night in fact. It is hard to pool all your energy and enthusiasm into something and then feel like it’s not returned, especially in this current era where we’re more isolated than ever. Like, I know a lot of people have moved on from pandemic isolation, but a lot of disabled folks like myself are still in their houses a great deal of the time. And so when you’re already at an energy deficit from the isolation and the general state of all the *gestures vaguely to the trashfire world,* you can start to get pickier about what you put your energy into. So it makes sense that, at the same time the interaction is dwindling, your motivation and willingness to allocate that precious energy toward fandom will dwindle in proportion. Which is to say: I take a reduction in interaction or a rude comment way harder than I used to! And I think that has A Lot to do with both the circumstances of pandemic life and the rise in the horrible censorship crowd who doesn’t understand how fiction works.
As this post has been making the rounds again, I’ve been seeing some honestly heartbreaking tags from other folks in the fandom and I wanted to share them (with permission). Initially, I planned not to add anything of my own, but then I happened to notice the like/reblog ratio on this post, and, well:
Y'all.
THIS is closer to how Tumblr used to be. When, you know, people actually appreciated all the hard work fan creators put into the things they share.
And for people who complain that writers and artists are ‘whining’ or just want higher numbers or stats:
And while I absolutely and literally do those things for myself, I do like to share them, and I don’t share them in hopes people will tell me how good I am at them, or express envy about any items involved.
I hope people ask questions. Tell me what it reminds them of. Share pictures of similar projects they’ve done. Say it’s inspired them to do a new project. Interact.
But I know most people have their own reasons for not doing that, to the point where I feel like, if I respond to their sewing or doll posts that same way, they’ll wonder who I think I am, to come out of nowhere and not simply appreciate what they’ve shared with a quiet like or reblog. So people may hesitate to leave comments, because they feel like those comments might, somehow, make the OP judge them harshly.
It’s a social media culture problem that will take work to counteract, if we can figure out how.
