Fannish migration
I'm slacking at this December posting something rotten. Time to set up!
glass_icarus asked for my thoughts on fannish migration. This is one of those subjects where I have a lot of opinions, but struggle to get them into any sort of order.
The off-LJ migration was a big deal for me, and it was a fairly rough time. I think it shows how difficult a planned migration can be, because getting fandom organised is far harder than herding cats. DW has been a winner in terms of proving longevity and stability, but even now it remains a smallish corner of fandom, rather than mega fandom central. That's probably for the best, to be honest, given fandom's collective crash and burn tendencies.
This post by telesilla is the best thing I've seen on fandom migration, although it paints a somewhat bleak future. I'm a bit more upbeat about AO3, since I think most of fandom really likes it, and the critics are just a noisy minority. The lurching between corporate factions though... yeah, that sounds about right.
LJ became popular because it was the best option at the time, a popular social media site with features that people liked. Tumblr got big the same way, in particular because people like how easy it is to use, and that it's good for art. Whatever becomes the next 'home' for fandom, it'll probably follow the same pattern - a corporate fandom that's for generic social media, that will have features people like. Fandom follows technology more than anything else.
In the meantime, tumblr will tumbl on a while longer, and some of us will huddle for warmth in small groups on Discord, DW, and maybe even Pillowfort. Apparently there are even people doing fandom on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest which is odd to me because I don't use any of them that way (or at all, for Facebook). We'll still have AO3 to offer us a bit of consistency, and I sincerely hope it lasts a long, long time. Otherwise, we'll just have to sit it out until the next new shiny comes along.
In the meantime, I'm shaggydogstail on pretty much every platform.
This entry was originally posted at https://shaggydogstail.dreamwidth.org/393926.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
glass_icarus asked for my thoughts on fannish migration. This is one of those subjects where I have a lot of opinions, but struggle to get them into any sort of order.
The off-LJ migration was a big deal for me, and it was a fairly rough time. I think it shows how difficult a planned migration can be, because getting fandom organised is far harder than herding cats. DW has been a winner in terms of proving longevity and stability, but even now it remains a smallish corner of fandom, rather than mega fandom central. That's probably for the best, to be honest, given fandom's collective crash and burn tendencies.
This post by telesilla is the best thing I've seen on fandom migration, although it paints a somewhat bleak future. I'm a bit more upbeat about AO3, since I think most of fandom really likes it, and the critics are just a noisy minority. The lurching between corporate factions though... yeah, that sounds about right.
LJ became popular because it was the best option at the time, a popular social media site with features that people liked. Tumblr got big the same way, in particular because people like how easy it is to use, and that it's good for art. Whatever becomes the next 'home' for fandom, it'll probably follow the same pattern - a corporate fandom that's for generic social media, that will have features people like. Fandom follows technology more than anything else.
In the meantime, tumblr will tumbl on a while longer, and some of us will huddle for warmth in small groups on Discord, DW, and maybe even Pillowfort. Apparently there are even people doing fandom on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest which is odd to me because I don't use any of them that way (or at all, for Facebook). We'll still have AO3 to offer us a bit of consistency, and I sincerely hope it lasts a long, long time. Otherwise, we'll just have to sit it out until the next new shiny comes along.
In the meantime, I'm shaggydogstail on pretty much every platform.
This entry was originally posted at https://shaggydogstail.dreamwidth.org/393926.html. Please comment there using OpenID.