and you loved things just because

[musesfool]

I did in fact stop in at Home Depot last night to pick up a new light bulb for my bathroom (everyone I mentioned this to was surprised but it's not like they carry 3 ft. long fluorescent bulbs in Duane Reade. Or maybe they do and I just can't find them), and then when I climbed up onto the toilet to install it, I discovered that the reason the old

Comments

[thornsilver]

I too never believe that people want to talk to me/spend time with me. It's make maintaining relationships downright impossible, IMHO.

[musesfool]

It does make things difficult, but I've managed with the help of persistent friends. *g*

[amothea]

I find the hard part is meeting people and then maintaining a line of dialogue long enough to turn that meeting into a lasting friendship. I accidentally made a fandom friend through Mobile Read forums, in the Calibre thread. But it helped that we had a shared passion for using Calibre, creating fandom covers, and enough time on Skype to talk and share knowledge. Eventually, when we were done with Calibre we had enough conversations to realize we also shared a lot of other common interests. Other than this one person, it's been years since I've made a new fandom friend

[musesfool]

The hard part is finding people with enough common interest in something to get the conversation going and then enough similarities/compatibles to keep the conversations going after the point of interest has changed.

THIS. SO MUCH THIS.

[roga]

There has deeeeeeeeefinitely been a switch from comments to kudos. For a lot of different reasons, obviously, but I can say for myself - I used to feel so guilty leaving kudos instead of a comment, but these days, since I do so much of my fic reading on my phone, comments are do inconvenient to type out and the kudos button is just - comfortably there, I end up using that a lot (and even that's better than not leaving anything, when I read offline

[musesfool]

Yeah, I've stopped leaving as many comments, too. Part of it is sometimes I'm at work and I'm in a rush, but sometimes it's like, fuck it, people aren't commenting much on my fic, so I'll just be lazy too and leave kudos, and sometimes it's just that I don't have anything to say other than "I liked this!" and a kudos conveys that.

and reach the ending and have my mind blown when I see that they have like, 1500 kudos and 10 comments. Which seems extreme but I'm getting the feeling is, these days, normal.

*nod nod*

I think on the LJ days leaving comments was also a way to start a conversation with and befriend the author? And on AO3 that could still happen, but the befriending would have to happen on a different platform, possibly with a different username, so it's a less organic process and therefore serves less of a motivation for people to leave comments...Yeah, I think that's definitely so. And I mean, I've had the occasional conversation in AO3 comments, but it always feels weird and out of place to me, because that's the

[viridian5]

I've definitely noticed a shift from leaving feedback to leaving kudos. I figured that some of the problem is from me writing in fandoms that have become much smaller from being old fandoms, but you write in some big, currently popular properties so I guess it really is a Thing for everyone these days. I'm finding it harder to make friends in the new version of fandom, whereas I met and befriended a lot of people in the '90s and '00s. Of course, most of them left fandom or moved onto other properties since then, so I don't hear from them anymore

[musesfool]

No, it's definitely all over the place. I also think that reccing is down, or it's happening on tumblr where it's hard to find so stories don't get that traffic anymore either, the way they used to.

Some things I snapped off in a few hours made a big splash, while other things I poured time, effort, and love into didn't hit as well.

Yeah, I've found that's frequently the case. Which is why I personally have stopped worrying about it, at least during the writing process. There's plenty of time to be anxious about a story's reception after it's posted!

[viridian5]

Lately all I've been doing is writing stories when I have no idea how they'll be received!

[musesfool]

Me too!

[viridian5]

But I do notice that people leave a lot more feedback at fanfiction.net, but a lot of it seems to be criticism, not always of the constructive kind. Like, when your public comment to the author is not to write the pairing this fic is because the site has "too" much of it....

Sometimes I wonder if I should try to post anything to the Pit of Voles.

[musesfool]

I haven't posted over there since, like, 2001, so I have no idea what the fb culture is anymore, but that sounds like what I've heard from other people.