(no subject)

[shamanicshaymin]

I went looking for some old silly thing I made through my DW and I'm taken back by how much personality my journal had. I went engaging in whacky fandom memes and had fun with my favorite characters. And then there's Twitter, a corporate wasteland.

I find the entry my image was at, only to find it's broken because I posted it on Tinypic, a site that no longer exists.

We really took Internet 1.0 for granted, didn't we? We used to actually create shit. But social media is formatted to turn you into a talking head. Now all we do is fight over the most asinine shit like whether or not it is "moral" to like this show or if shipping this pairing means you're secretly a colonialist and it's so fucking pointless.

But nobody has stepped forward with a solution, because we're all drained and living in the most boring dystopia ever. Capitalism is the ultimate parasite.

God, I just wish I had more energy.

Comments

[sarajayechan]

Tell me about it. There's still a cluster of creators, sure, but they're in hiding and have to use socks to post anything above a PG-13 rating in case some clown decides to doxx them for liking a thing. And unfortunately a lot of NSFW artists use Twitter, and if Twitter died their art would disappear from the internet unless they made their own website. And making personal webpages is a dying art.

And Tinypic, I remember that one well. Fandomsecrets used it.

But nobody has stepped forward with a solution, because we're all drained and living in the most boring dystopia ever.

People who want to change things are afraid to or have crippling depression and apathy due to this society. :/ And it sucks because they're the ones who could probably make the biggest impact. Other people who notice how shitty things are just talk about how the good times are over and this is "the new normal" without attempting to make changes because it's easier to lament. And the latter group tends to be on tumblr/twitter, which...well, look at those places, it's hard not to believe the worst.

(Then there's BuzzFeed and Twitter, which generate revenue based on outrage and fear clicks. I vote we take all the cat stuff from those sites and put it on ICanHasCheezburger where it belongs.)

[terrorgutz]

True. As someone who spent most of later childhood years in those types of spaces, it took me a long time realize and work through all the ways those places messed up my brain. I'm doing a lot better now, but I still catch myself with certain thoughts or behaviours I picked up from those years. I still have to remind myself that I'm creating fanart and fanfic for me, and that I'm not trying to appeal to other people or make "content" to fuel an algorithm. It doesn't matter how fucked up or weird it is, I made it for me.

Looking on the bright side of this, at least fandom spaces like here on dreamwidth still exist, and haven't been torn apart by people or just completely dried out due to inactivity.

[tehexile]

agreed, I could rant on about it all day, but it just makes me feel worse. All I can do is keep the flame alive, lead by example and try my best to live as I've always lived. I've been using twitch as a platform to do this and actually have an audience.

[sarajayechan]

agreed, I could rant on about it all day, but it just makes me feel worse. All I can do is keep the flame alive, lead by example and try my best to live as I've always lived.

Same.