brief thoughts on online "community"

[serpentinemalign]

what my experiences in online communities have taught me is that everyone is just kind of dealing with their own shit and everyone is traumatised not only from things in their "real life" but also a long series of community conflicts and dissolutions and web 2.0 panopticons and it feels as though most online community conflicts wind up stemming from people being at vastly different stages of their recovery from All That Shit

with the migration off of social media, people will sometimes attempt to coopt more private and personal communities like discord servers and masto instances into their replacement for Tumblr or Twitter while refusing to leave behind the paranoid mindsets that were forged there and which no longer work elsewhere.

with that all said I am sick and tired and exhausted of watching the same conflict over and over again where nobody learns anything and everyone is upset and angry. I don't blame anyone because I think I would act similarly. There is a reason I will always be a member of these communities, never a leader. My heart would be too weak to take it.

Still I feel an urge to grasp onto these brief glimmers of community with both hands and hold their flames close to my heart before they inevitably snuff out, each one sooner than the last as we continuously eat each other ouroboros style

Comments

[elendraug]

man I really feel this :( everything's spread so thin lately

[serpentinemalign]

it is super rough. i had this on my mind because one of the communities i frequent was just like, it seemed to be imploding, but it's since gotten a lot more peaceful. but the ebbs and flows feel extra precarious :(

[linky]

I really feel all of this. I used to run a community space (a discord server, which granted, went as well as it could have and not too much upset happened. Which I am grateful for given horror stories of other servers...) and it really is a lot on the heart. I'm surprised I was even able to do what I did five years ago when it comes to that. But I learned a lot of valuable things during that time which help me today in navigating spaces online and trying to grasp those feelings of community now and move forward.

But I would never run a discord again, it's just more than I can handle now.

[serpentinemalign]

ugh, yeah :( it's super impressive that you managed to do that, i hope you were able to keep good friends from your server! i definitely feel the kind of... lack that there is now. it feels like everyone is just so exhausted and fatigued from the stress of attempting to manage their online social life (if not previous communities of their own) that it is so much harder to build any kind of community that lasts. but it is good to have the experience to take forward to whatever comes next.

[ablankwhiteroom]

ive been thinking about a lot of this lately so this has been kind of healing to read lol, the panopticons part especially hits, that *was* traumatizing. it was! sometimes i forget that or just dont care about it, or im desensitized to it. it was really, really bad, and weird, and for some reason it feels like the cultural zeitgeist doesnt realize it either, and they dont talk about it, and we people in the underbelly will talk about it or like you say we *wont* because we havent recovered etc, its just all over the place. it really, really is. it feels so disjointed.

i like that you say the paranoid mindsets no longer work elsewhere. i think a lot of the paranoia is rooted in the online cultural abolishment (or, flat-out *erosion*) of anonymity. that was a really strange thing to come about in web2.0, and i still cant wrap my head around it.

side note, im glad to come back to dreamwidth and see that you're still posting and doing okay after everything earlier in may! (i hope you enjoyed the venture bros movie!) i stopped using the site and a lot of "internet" around summer. isnt it really surreal that the internet culture is doing so bad and its so uncomfortable that an "extremely online" person who literally grew up joined at the hip within the culture would become "extremely offline" to combat its toxicity? ive been seeing that a lot lately, we are in a near opposite state of where cyber geek/fannish community types were 10 years ago, its mind-boggling to me idk. the real-world isnt easier on the front of community, it becomes more like friends and connections than community but
thats another conversation i think XP

i feel the same as you do about clinging to "brief glimmers of community" and it sucks! theres always got to be a leader, but theyll be the first to be burnt at the stake and generally are treated like the "face of the movement" (even when its not a movement, its just a group chat or server or something about a fandom, but... idk, these groups can get very personal and start infighting and then get lumped in with whatever personal sentiments are exchanged there. bleh. am i even right?) but in my eyes its been that way forever online, hasnt it? oversized corporate-owned social medias are a pleasant scapegoat where the head is some empty suitcase bearing ghost, and the social media itself is treated like a hub of its innards (remember the tumblr stereotypes from the last decade? it boggled my mind how that all faded away and got memoryholed after tumblrs porn ban. that used to be commonplace, just day-to-day bread-and-fucking butter. things change so fast.)

...but the smaller you get with fediverse and discord servers that figurehead is unavoidable! and the onus of any chaos lies on a person, an individual human and their heart, not a "server" or a "group", they cant safely hide behind the platform or fandom or CEO, because socially the culture puts it on one person's back now. no shared burden. theres community in a shared burden too isnt it? more thoughts on this one... but im currently editing this single paragraph/thought after having written several already so ill just finish this comment and stop rambling XD

i think way back when these "-->communities" were real and thriving we didnt even conceive of it as a community, it was just the way things were, these were the people into and engaging with the same things as each other– hobbies. nowadays with all the focus on community and *it working out* ig, its really getting forced and hamfisted. "communities" of old were not seamless, they just werent paranoid and insane with hidden vendettas and panic-knives hidden in our clothes to backstab when we feel afraid we're going to lose it all. the stakes werent as high, and i think there were less consequences.

if you messed up, it seemed like you could start over or just move to another fandom... people held grudges, but it seemed like there was too much going on and even too many people for it to really matter. the majority of people wouldnt go out their way to settle their grudges like bounty hunters; the hobby was more important than that back then. if drama happened itd be giggled, gossiped, or ranted about (nevermind hwo damaging or crazy that was back then LOL) but living in it for ages and treating it like fallouts or a scuff on your criminal record didnt happen. the hobby persisted

it feels like the "social technology" of giving that much of a fuck about what other people were doing and using it for social capital didnt exist yet. that social economy had not been developed or engineered yet. social bounty-hunting wasnt yet profitable, and instead the image and status you got from engaging your hobby was far more socially rewarding back then in the previous culture. and back then im sure it was painstaking too, but compared to now i think we'd all want it back versus the sociopolitical-economic hobby circles that exist now. i think thats also especially exhausting. maybe im just late, but it feels like these days theres a lot of barriers to entry within even smaller fandom communities these days (social, intellectual, reputation, etc)

i remember a big part of the panopticon of 10-ish years ago was cultural discourse ceremonies and exchanges and if you couldnt keep up, you were put out. and if you could keep up, you were rewarded for being a voice and a leader (and eventually a scapegoat or martyr). just weird things all around. so weird. its like a fractal that keeps eating itself. really, the self-cannibalizing ouroborous. it's SO tiring! why's it like this? where'd all the fanfic go??? /J

thats why i like when you say the paranoid mindsets "no longer work elsewhere" outside of the panopticons. because in fediverse (which i dont use im just assuming) the hobby persists over all, and here on dw im assuming that the hobby is persisting, and on individual websites the hobby persists, and on small discords the hobby can sometimes prevail (before the server implodes, ig). its just the traumatized members feel like theyre walking on eggshells before the community implodes "like all the others". i really dont think its even wrong to think this way, especially when we're constantly operating inside doorless and windowless vacuums now

i genuinely think the reason it feels strange on niche slow media even if *the hobby is persisting* and all signs point to *community being there, just interact!* (if you look for it, is always the caveat) is the lack of an audience. not in a clout-y content creator way or *popularity contest* way, but even just sharing the hobby with the lurker.

is that crazy? is that too unhelpful or vague? i think that was an integral part of old communities that doesnt exist anymore. thats the third person, i think. theres the first and second person, the speaker and those immediately next to them, but there isnt a neutral or engaged observer that passes through and makes the world feel bigger and more lived in.

there are no lurkers *down here* in the "slow web" or in secret discord communal treehouses, because fandom as it is right now has become so mainstream and corporate and >social capital> that the fandoms that have lurkers, hobbyist lurkers, are corporate-owned or mainstream (meaning they're engineered to reward lurkers w/ social profit to platform themselves), and they are all on the topsoil with the "fast web", the trash web... tiktok and the like get that passive engagement (such a tainted word, i mean engaging in fandom for fun from the observers perspective not from the poster's for profit) that doesnt happen down here. corporate fandom is fandom as the general lurker , the layman fan knows it. maybe in the back of their minds they wonder where real fandom went, and assume it didnt go anywhere, and theyre looking at the real thing, not the corporate copy.

i dont really know if im still even on topic, but i hope this is all still food for thought or even just a good read. you can always count on me to me to make a philosophical mess in a comments section XD

stay well, okay? even if things stink, im in your corner!

[serpentinemalign]

yes!! yeah the sense that, oh shit, i have to keep all of my creative outputs completely separated or i risk being doxxed is... bad. i kind of just regret ever revealing anything real about me ever. why did we ever think that was a good idea :')

thank you, likewise!! when i first read your comment earlier in the month, i was really heartened to hear from you and i am glad you are back!! i absolutely feel what you wrote in your last post and hope you are doing okay. <3 i keep rappelling between 'ok i need to be brave and actually exist online because i deserve to' and 'you know what i'm done time to hide under rock forever with my giant dvd folder'

yep i agree with you - it's not actually that different, the problems that the socmed giants and small communities face are actually the same, but i think it's easier to put individuals making their own independent communities on a pedestal and then immediately shoving them off when they make any mistake ever while doing something that is... quite volatile and high-risk. it's way easier to stick with tumblr or twitter and make 'haha we are in hell' jokes because everyone else is there.

yeah... i know there have ALWAYS been people in it for the drama, regardless of the time period. but it definitely feels the most profitable it's ever been to make everyone feel worse, if not actually unsafe.

but yeah!! i think like, actually remembering that this WAS what it was like, it was actually this slow if not slower (i think one thing that makes it hard to step back from mainstream socmed is the ability to find people into niche tropes or fandoms - but by this point there are so many fellow fans ready to make themselves your enemy OVER that interest that thats not genuinely a good thing). people are often taking their time because they are actually like. making stuff, or appreciating fandoms and hobbies mindfully. as opposed to just 'consuming' or finding stuff to get angry about.

i am not sure if i am making sense but i love your response and i am definitely going to keep it in mind moving forward. <3 i hope you are also keeping well!!