(no subject)

[thedarlingone]

So I was like "Tumblr and Dreamwidth are both deathly quiet and I'm bored and lonely", and then I was like "perhaps I should try posting more?", and then I fell down metaquotes which is apparently still going, and then I was like "I remember why I don't make more public posts on Dreamwidth". Because obviously metaquotes concentrates this effect, but the people who are still active on Dwth are the ones who use things like grammar and punctuation and write essay-like posts on thinky thoughts with interesting turns of phrase. I am far more of a tumblr goblin by habit these days, and between that and [walking the fine line between remaining semi-anonymous versus talking about my personal life], I feel a bit intimidated of trying to Post More On Dreamwidth, and a bit uncertain what I would even post publicly anymore. But as I was earnestly telling people ten years ago when AO3 launched, you can't get traffic without putting up content first...

(I have been doing a lot of writing, but it's all been on longfics that keep getting farther away from being done, as longfics are wont to do. Also I'm having a lot of trouble sleeping, partly because my CPAP mask does not fit. I did just have an appointment to get a different one fitted, so hopefully that will help once I actually get the new one in a few days...)

I have been thinking about the olden days, though, and specifically about events like 3w4dw, where the goal was to encourage people to post more here and try to jumpstart activity. I might try doing daily posts about something for a while, see if anything happens. Apparently nobody knows where fandom has migrated to or is in the process of migrating to yet; it will not be Dreamwidth, because our communication has shifted so far to the visual as Tumblr made that easier, and Dreamwidth really doesn't have facilities for any kind of remotely easy photo posting. But I am here, so.

Comments

[brin_bellway]

>>Because obviously metaquotes concentrates this effect, but the people who are still active on Dwth are the ones who use things like grammar and punctuation and write essay-like posts on thinky thoughts with interesting turns of phrase.<<

1: I've seen a couple people have similar concerns, followed by other people reassuring them that it's their blog and they can write in whatever register they damn well feel like, and that back in the olden days people who made several one-line posts per day were not all that uncommon.

2: Seems like a decent percentage of the quotes near the top of that comm are in tag register or other informal styles?

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>>our communication has shifted so far to the visual as Tumblr made that easier<<

It can go both ways, though. I've been less image-y after making Dreamwidth my new home. I look at a lot of Tumblr threads now and go "was that screenshot *really* necessary? couldn't you have just posted a transcript instead? I'm almost out of storage space on my Wordpress account, and you want me to reblog *that*??"

(I might end up getting a paid Wordpress subscription? Even if you ignore the increased storage space, it would be a certain amount of comfort to be a paying customer: gives them more incentive not to screw me over. It's CAD$48/year, which I suppose is really not that much.)

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>>I might try doing daily posts about something for a while, see if anything happens.<<

Maybe we should dig up one of those 30-day prompt memes. I don't think I've ever done one of those before, and it might be interesting to try.

Also, while questionoftheday is having somewhat of a creative dry spell right now, there's a bunch of archives there.

[thedarlingone]

Seems like a decent percentage of the quotes near the top of that comm are in tag register or other informal styles?

Either we have very different concepts of "tag register" from each other (not impossible) or there's some other perceptual difference going on. I mean... *turns head upside down thinking*

Hm. I wonder. Because I was going to say that the only posts out of about the first ten that have the particular posting style I mean were the "have you tried a tight hat" and the soulless ligbeets one, but I don't think that's actually the register they're written in so much as the fact that they're written in direct response to someone. I think a lot of what I'm missing about Tumblr may be the... noise, the inherent conversationality of a reblog chain, the feeling that community was happening around you. Sometimes community you'd rather would pass you by, Tumblr was very much like being at a bus stop hoping that particular person didn't get on your bus, but the scraps of conversation -- I've recently started going to a weekly knitting group, which is not busy enough for me, I like the ones where two dozen people are all having conversations at once. Tumblr was like that. You couldn't follow everything and I was okay with that. Dreamwidth posts inherently feel more discrete, it's not a jumble of voices. "I didn't read the URL" is not a Dwth problem.

/nightblogging

[brin_bellway]

I think the main difference in our definitions is probably in "decent percentage". Twenty percent doesn't sound that bad: enough for a proof of concept.

(Also there's the final sexual aim, which explicitly states that it's going for a Tumblr-y style.)

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>>Dreamwidth posts inherently feel more discrete, it's not a jumble of voices.<<

It's possible to mitigate that somewhat with linkspams and the like, though admittedly linkspams are significantly more removed, less in-your-face.