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Post by creeps on Nov 16, 2024 23:54:51 GMT -5
Hey there! I’ll try to describe to you my reasoning behind the creation of my idea, and how to be honest, it is not rooted in nostalgia, in the least. ^-- *proceeds to echo my soul in regards to social media* Sir, I have never met you before, but you are going to be the happy death of me... I am glad there are others like me! I just like this format of communication and community a lot when it comes to the internet… Back then, I didn’t feel lonely on the internet like I do now. I would be scared to even admit that on twitter, because I would feel like it would feel attention seeking or something?? It’s just not a great place to be vulnerable in general. Everything feels pretty heavily scrutinized on there though lol. I can kind of pour my heart and soul out on here a bit easier. I second others mentioning how I can also come chime back in on a topic even as long as a day later, and it will still not even be too late, people will still respond, as opposed to in group chats and social media, I wouldn’t even respond because it kind of is too late… everyone has moved onto something else aready, the pace is far quicker. People could say my problems are anxiety or depression but honestly I am a pretty happy person at least nowadays, I like to socialize in person, and I think social media makes everyone a little anxious while using it even if they do not realize it. Social media bad. Idc if I sound like a old person lol. |
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novasquirrel
New Member
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Pronouns: she/her
Occupation: programmer
Species: platformer squirrel/SNES mouse
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Post by novasquirrel on Nov 17, 2024 0:30:07 GMT -5
I've really enjoyed using the fediverse/Mastodon as my main social media, and I've been doing that since 2018 or so. I actually know the admin of the instance I use and feel safe on there, and content warnings make me feel confident in just being my complete self instead of having to divide myself across multiple accounts.
A lot of the people I know are pretty spread out across different communities so it is helpful to have all that together, and I am usually sending stuff out for my friends to see rather than trying to get popular or be an entertainer. I don't make it a competition and try to have a healthy relationship with it all. I also make an effort to talk to people I find and make meaningful connections; I made a bunch of friends through Twitter that I still talk to off-app.
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Valyce Negative
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The Average Toony Woof!
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Pronouns: She/her
Occupation: Freelance Illustrator
Species: Toon
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Post by Valyce Negative on Nov 17, 2024 1:32:50 GMT -5
With pretty much how I feel a majority of the fandoms prescense now tied to social media (in my opinion), I feel like that takes away a lot of avenues for in depth discussion and interactions. Twitter, bluesky, instagram, pretty much all the big ones I can think of that everyone is on, is not very “discussion” friendly in my opinion. If you asked me this question via twitter, honestly I probably would have either not responded, or it would have been very watered down. And watered down is exactly how I feel social media interaction is, shallow and lacking an actual conversation (maybe to only me, I am unsure). I feel like almost that it does not let me or at least discourages it with how I would have to make 30 tweets or blue sky posts just to write this. Yes, better discourse and slower response times is basically what we all lost by leaving forums behind. The simple fact that all messages posted are still here and easily relocated allow for users to read something, ponder on the response for as much as they want, then get back to it without remorse and with their best thoughts to type in. Constant instant need to reply to everything in that moment or it's gone forever is what made social media toxic to me, because it either all reduced to one-word comments, nothing at all, or vitriolic response coming from guts rather than brain. An old forum I was in- since it centered on salvaging and documenting fandom and fandom-adiacent media- even had a special rule that favoured necroposting over double posting, so to have no more than one thread per subject/argument. One could reply to your response or add more news and discoveries to whatever thread you were following even after one year xD Discord can have all the threaded moddings and skins it can manage to apply to its servers but it's still a chat platform at heart and chats move constantly: no one's gonna scroll back infinitely to catch a message they spotted yesterday night to write up a lenghty response that is gonna get drowned soon enough. I've been in several servers dedicated to zine projects and despite the atmosphere being pleasant and nurturing I never got any close to the "general" channel if not for an initial "hello, glad to be here" and a final "good job everyone, the zine came out amazing". Reddit instead is the most intimidating place I've seen so far, on the discourse point of view. The only thing that makes it vaguely closer to forums is that messages don't go away like chats but that's it: the simple fact that there are places in which you can't even create threads if you're too new and "karmaless" is alienating. I ended up not even using the upvote system, I just scroll in the most passive lurking way possible and never contribute to anything. |
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novasquirrel
New Member
Posts: 15
Pronouns: she/her
Occupation: programmer
Species: platformer squirrel/SNES mouse
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Post by novasquirrel on Nov 17, 2024 2:30:41 GMT -5
An old forum I was in- since it centered on salvaging and documenting fandom and fandom-adiacent media- even had a special rule that favoured necroposting over double posting, so to have no more than one thread per subject/argument. One could reply to your response or add more news and discoveries to whatever thread you were following even after one year xD One of the forums I keep up with is 20+ years old, and people don't care how old the thread you're replying to is as long as what you're posting is a meaningful contribution. So sometimes there will be threads with a decade gap between two posts in the thread and that's considered OK, but I also don't see why it shouldn't be. Sometimes there's a big gap in someone's project or research, and sometimes someone stumbles onto a new detail that does warrant revisiting a past discussion with that information in mind. |
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ratcha
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Occupation: Comic Artist
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Post by ratcha on Nov 17, 2024 11:09:24 GMT -5
My feelings about social media in the last years:
Instagram feels like a TV that only shows advertisements on every channel.
Twitter feels like an endless void of SMS messages.
Youtube is like a TV with some good programs but only has one channel. No matter what I do, it shoves my face with the same stuff over and over until it bores me to death.
Furaffinity feels dead as there are mostly no interactions between people there.
Inkbunny and e621 are surprisingly the platforms that feel the most alive with intertesting comments and sometimes discussions there
Discord is actually fun but is a terrible time sink, i try not to go there.
Telegram is the place where keep in touch with people and that is not heavy on time or does not require to answer immediately.
It really feels like the forums have died and nothing of similar value could replace them.
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Wicker
Junior Member
I am not a fan of this cold...
Posts: 75 
Occupation: Writer and Magician
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Post by Wicker on Nov 17, 2024 14:20:43 GMT -5
I've got very little to say except for my agreement with pretty much everything people have been saying. One thing to add though is not just the difference in forums compared to social media itself, but actually how you use the platforms. You can read and post on a forum using your phone wherever you happen to be, but it's really not the most comfortable way to use them. To comfortably use a forum means having to use a computer (either desktop or laptop, makes no massive difference I'd say) instead of your phone in a spare thirty seconds you happen to have. The importance of not just what you're using in terms of software, but what you're using in terms of hardware, is something that has come really clear to me after moving and not having unpacked and set up my desktop yet. I just don't want to write a long post with my laptop perched precariously on my knees, compared to sitting at a desk. This is probably why the slower, I'd say deeper, conversations aren't just a matter of temperament of the users. The way I see it, the forum being tied to a physical place is just as much a cause for the difference that others and myself like as the site's structure is. You can't reply to someone until a day or two has passed? Of course you can't, the forum isn't in your pocket every minute of the day. They don't stalk you. Maybe I'm wrong, but it's hard to imagine anyone making the (comparatively) long posts that they have just in this thread on a phone while they're on the train or bus to work. EDITForgot to mention something along the lines of what Horcat said about @creeps being 'one of us.' This is true, but in that is the acknowledgement that there is an 'us' for him to be 'one of'. A forum has to be a community or it doesn't function. 'Engagement' doesn't get very far on a forum, and no one is going to doomscroll a forum for a community they dislike. |
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simoskunk
New Member
stinky
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Pronouns: He, him, skunk
Occupation: Watermelon Farmer
Species: Skunk
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Post by simoskunk on Nov 17, 2024 21:01:21 GMT -5
I really hope furry Twitter goes the way of the dodo. Maybe Bluesky will be the final nail in Twitter's coffin, but even posting there I'm reminded that it is stil social media, and far from my ideal, the character limit still rankles me.
I'll be making at least a few posts here every day, in the hopes of getting this forum to reach critical mass! I really wanna see this place succeed, it can feel like such a barren landscape right now, in terms of online furry social life.
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GalenLK
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Delightful, Fluffy
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Occupation: Writer
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Post by GalenLK on Nov 20, 2024 10:33:20 GMT -5
All this, 100%.
The biggest problem I have with Twitter (/bsky, /mstdn, whatever) isn't even the fire hose per se, it's just the total disposability of everything other than social connections themselves. Follows persist, followers persist, everything else is just a candle wick that's rapidly burning away to ash. Even the character limit exists purely to make sure that no one post can be taken too seriously, or dwelled in too long.
There's nothing wrong with chatter per se, but it gets to be such a problem when these networks try to force literally all interactions in to the mold of 'light banter'. It substitutes wit for ideas, and engagement for insight. It teaches its users to judge the people around them based on the teams they're on and the people they associate with, rather than their own character or creativity, it treats art as disposable and interchangeable and promotes content mills, it discards any idea too complicated to be turned in to a slogan.
I don't want to wake up one day and realize that I've started thinking in 280 character blocks! It's not a good way to be!
That is, I think, one of the reasons that I've actually stayed on Tumblr year after year. Obviously it has plenty of its own problems but it also has some of the same advantages of forums; it's designed to let posts stick around for a long time, even to be rediscovered years after the fact, and it lets communities assemble around art and big ideas without letting those things get drowned out by the clamor of now, now, now.
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novasquirrel
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Posts: 15
Pronouns: she/her
Occupation: programmer
Species: platformer squirrel/SNES mouse
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Post by novasquirrel on Nov 20, 2024 11:42:30 GMT -5
The Mastodon instance I use (chitter.xyz) sets the character limit all the way up at 1000, and after getting used to that Bluesky's 300 character limit has been feeling pretty constraining. Though when I have a lot of words to say I'm probably best just writing on my blog and linking to it, which I see other people doing too. Sometimes I'll go in the other direction and decide that, actually I do want to collect all my thoughts together and go write a proper thing on my blog about whatever I spent a few thousand characters and several posts talking about on Mastodon.
I feel like on Tumblr my posts are too permanent and the inability to delete or modify all the copies other people made of something I said makes me just not want to post on there. I've seen callout posts continue to get spread around despite the person that made them realizing they just had some sort of misunderstanding with whoever the post was about and getting rid of it, for instance.
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GalenLK
New Member
Delightful, Fluffy
Posts: 11
Occupation: Writer
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Post by GalenLK on Nov 20, 2024 11:48:17 GMT -5
I feel like on Tumblr my posts are too permanent and the inability to delete or modify all the copies other people made of something I said makes me just not want to post on there. I've seen callout posts continue to get spread around despite the person that made them realizing they just had some sort of misunderstanding with whoever the post was about and getting rid of it, for instance. Yeah, no lie about Tumblr posts getting out of hand. And that's now! Back in the day, they used to weave the notifications in between the posts on your dashboard, so if you had something really go viral, your entire dashboard would be unusable for days or worse, just an endless stream of likes and reblogs. |
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Wicker
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I am not a fan of this cold...
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Occupation: Writer and Magician
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Post by Wicker on Nov 20, 2024 12:42:45 GMT -5
This entire thread seems to be hinging on the idea that the last 10-15 years of online communication has been trying to fix a problem that didn't exist, by causing troubles people never had before. I remember when Twitter first launched and it only had about 100 characters and I thought it was a joke! All this, 100%. There's nothing wrong with chatter per se, but it gets to be such a problem when these networks try to force literally all interactions in to the mold of 'light banter'. It substitutes wit for ideas, and engagement for insight. [...] That is, I think, one of the reasons that I've actually stayed on Tumblr year after year. Obviously it has plenty of its own problems but it also has some of the same advantages of forums; it's designed to let posts stick around for a long time, even to be rediscovered years after the fact, and it lets communities assemble around art and big ideas without letting those things get drowned out by the clamor of now, now, now. I agree, but it's not even about ideas or insight or anything that 'big', but just the space and time in order to say what they want, what they feel. To fully represent themselves as a person, rather than as a slogan, or just their output. On social media an artist is 'just an artist' while on a forum like this the artists/writers/musicians/contributors of all kinds, are given the chance to be seen as full people. Someone who doesn't 'do things' isn't any less a member of a forum community as long as they are part of it. Their contribution can simply be their presence. |
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xroshtag
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Posts: 27
Occupation: Tertön
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Post by xroshtag on Nov 20, 2024 14:33:14 GMT -5
By the discourse on this thread, you'd think FurAffinity was dead, but it's still pretty vibrant and active, even if so many prioritize engagement on Twitter/BlueSky. Just something I noticed.
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simoskunk
New Member
stinky
Posts: 29
Pronouns: He, him, skunk
Occupation: Watermelon Farmer
Species: Skunk
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Post by simoskunk on Nov 21, 2024 4:06:02 GMT -5
I'm getting close to nuking my main Twitter, and the big thing I've noticed is how much happier I am even seeing it 90% less. Even if you are fully cognizant of the various psychological wiles social media employs to get its hooks into you, it's amazing how they still can, without you even noticing.
I've been using Bluesky a bit, but even then I'm reminded that social media has never been my thing, even more generally, things like this are much more my speed.
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scorpiashark
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Shark pal | Avatar by NicOpossum!
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Post by scorpiashark on Nov 21, 2024 4:28:44 GMT -5
Some really interesting sentiments in this thread - a lot of stuff I simply have to agree with. I'd been on twitter for the better part of 12 years, but more and more over the past years I'd felt to a degree that social media structured in that way is somewhat poisoned from the start. Everything needing to be "short" and "snappy" doesn't really make a media platform very "social" at all. I do owe Twitter a lot in-so-far as it was where I met a lot of my friends, but real discussions about things were only ever had over voice/on text chats with a far more generous character limit. Bluesky has a nice enough feeling to it, for now, but so did twitter a decade ago - I think it's a fate of that style of site that as soon as the initial venture capital funding runs out they start having to become less user friendly and more advertiser friendly. User count always seems to explode on those sites, costs of hosting go through the roof, so you need to repeat the same mistakes again and again. It's hard to form community in a place that is driven by algorithms, ultimately. I spend a lot of time on Discord - I've been lucky to know people who could build healthier online communities, but similarly have to agree that even in the most tight knit of servers - discussion happens too quick. It moves on before you get a chance to give your thoughts/contribute. The immediacy of it all is both a blessing and a curse.
It's why this place has warmed me up a bit. I still love the discord communities I am on, don't get me wrong, but I'm glad to have that forum feel again. I forgot how much I missed it. To some extent, I've always held a bit of hope we'd "go back" to forums, really. The way discussions get to be organized into threads, and you can respond at your leisure, at your own pace. That asynchronous version of communication online feels.. healthier to your brain. Let's you engage as and when you want to. I think it opens a lot of doors even for people who get socially burnt out quickly. |
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Wicker
Junior Member
I am not a fan of this cold...
Posts: 75
Occupation: Writer and Magician
Species: Mole
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Post by Wicker on Nov 21, 2024 4:30:25 GMT -5
I'm getting close to nuking my main Twitter, and the big thing I've noticed is how much happier I am even seeing it 90% less. Even if you are fully cognizant of the various psychological wiles social media employs to get its hooks into you, it's amazing how they still can, without you even noticing. I've been using Bluesky a bit, but even then I'm reminded that social media has never been my thing, even more generally, things like this are much more my speed. I made a Twitter and a Bluesky about the same time, and realised almost within the day why I never made a Twitter account before then, and even now Bluesky is wearing thin. And this was only a few weeks ago. Foolishly I roped myself into the book challenge, so I'm on the line for 20 days. Oh well. You live and learn. I'd probably be more okay with Bluesky as the 'lesser of two evils' if I didn't come across this place  . |
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