I can’t help but be frustrated with social media of late. It’s not just the agonisingly slow death of tumblr, though that’s a pretty big part of it.
For a few years, Tumblr was my favourite platform. There was a lot of interaction and original content. I made some of my best friends during this period. And while we all had a good laugh at ERICA, that’s where it all started to unravel. The spam never truly went away and only got worse over time.
And nowadays, I’m lucky to get a like or 2 on a reblog. My last couple of painting and cosplay posts have had no interaction, it doesn’t feel like there’s any significant interest in the original content I’d like to post. Because the people that would have cared for it have moved on. And like them, I feel more and more “why bother” about Tumblr. I come here to keep my queue active and check if friends are still active.
Oddly enough I’m not all that bothered by Tumblr removing explicit content. But I am bothered by what that has done to the people on here.
Don’t even start me on the fact genitals are bad but staff are still willing to give racists and the like their 15 seconds of fame. I find that kind of bigotry more offensive and reprehensible than a tasteful sideboob could ever be.
But it’s not just Tumblr.
Facebook has been butchering reach for a while now, so for a creative - cultivating any sort of following there is a massively uphill struggle. Yeah you can pay to boost that, but read that as getting a brief surge in likes from bots. It seldom converts into genuine followers. Instagram is showing similar early signs of this behaviour. My posts are typically maxing out at 50 interactions or so before abruptly dying. I don’t think that’s at all coincidental.
I was around for MySpace and deviant art. DA just did not have the same kind of interaction and community the other sites did. Mybattalion was a neat wargaming platform, but it never took off. WargamerAU seems so much quieter and unless you are already firmly entrenched on YouTube or Twitch, starting up on there feels like a lot of work for nothing.
Patreon is a thing but again, unless you’re a big name artist or producing lewds, it feels like I’d be talking to an empty room.
And that’s the thing I hate the most.
Talking to an empty room.
Since I was little, I’ve been a performer in some way. I’m a crowd pleaser at heart.
Whether it was through stage acting, high school film projects, public speaking, voice acting, painting, writing, blogging etc. There had always been something? I’d never really acknowledged that very well - my anxieties used to make me quite blind to my own achievements. And it feels like a pretty cruel twist of fate that as I’ve grown to accept and like myself over the years, now that I’m at a point where I’m itching to do more - I don’t have a suitable platform for it.
And that’s really doing a number on me. Feeling like I’ve failed professionally because of a new job turning into a nightmare and sending me back to my old job is only exacerbating the angst and frustration this is giving me.
I want a place for sharing my cosplay.
I want a place for sharing my painting and gaming.
I want a place I can blog and write, whether it’s fiction or reviews - I really enjoyed doing both.
I want to get back to voice acting.
But most of all, I want that to feel like it’s part of a community. Not talking and performing for an empty room.
Continually starting over is exhausting, but maybe the clean slate is necessary to cultivate a worthwhile following early on… I dunno.
I’m a bit lost on where to go from here.
yousharknotpass
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