Graphicabyss: past, present and future
I’ve had a lot on my mind lately and I decided I need to write it down to clear my thoughts. Today I would like to talk about my blog and try to figure out what do with it.
I discovered tumblr about 6 years ago and after several months of battling with myself I made this blog. At the time I was really into Alice Nine so my blog was 99% made of Alice Nine posts. I posted a lot of screens, gifs and translations. At the time I just began to translate but I wanted to learn and I did some full magazine translations and even some subs which I am not willing to do now.
At first it went well. I was enjoying myself and had several hundreds of followers. I collaborated with people and helped out anyone who asked me, I felt content. I even wrote about how nice and friendly the fandom was. After about a year though I began to get anon hate. I tried to ignore it but anon turned to direct hate and soon I found people who I thought of as allies badmouthing me behind my back. People said I was annoying, spammed their dash and shoved my OTP down their throats. I learned they only “tolerated me because I did translations”. I was shocked. I tried to stand up for myself but in the end, the battle was lost and I left the fandom.
I was devastated. All of this resulted in me being in a very depressed state and losing all desire to have anything to do not just with the fandom, but also with the band. Everything I was ding for 1,5 years suddenly lost all meaning. Even now I hardly listen to their music.
That was exactly 2 years ago. In my quest of trying to pick myself up, I found NEWS. I felt like a refugee in a new country, I started from scratch again. I tried to avoid past mistakes. I kept most of my opinions to myself, I put very little tags to avoid spamming people’s dashes and right from the start I created a separate blog for my OTP feels lest my love for them offended someone.
NEWS rekindled my excitement, they cheered me up. I couldn’t get enough of them and my blog once again flourished. The fandom welcomed me. I got a lot of support and encouragement, even letters of gratitude and people saying I helped to get them through hard times. I felt needed and happy. But even then I was still cautious and kept my distance. I couldn’t bear another disappointment.
Of course, it couldn’t be perfect. After about a year I got my first anon hate. I turned off anon and blocked a few people and for awhile it was peaceful again but lately, 2 years after my exile from A9 fandom, I feel like the scenario begins to repeat itself.
Within the last 2 months I have been accused of being rude and patronizing for one small comment and given a very long and patronizing lecture on it from a person it didn’t even concern, I was accused of not using enough credits even though I tried really hard to follow everyone’s guidelines, bashed for supposed misinformation of some random fan tweets as if I committed some kind of crime. And every time I try to fix my mistakes and do better next time but it seems no matter how hard I try, there will always be people who’ll criticize me.
Of course, it’s not as bad as it was last time. I haven’t yet discovered people badmouthing me and I haven’t been getting hate directly but this is still taking its toll on me.
The thing is, I am a very reasonable person and I am ready to add/change any credits if needed, fix my translation or apologize if I believe I was wrong. However, most of the criticism I got was very blunt if not rude, patronizing and often completely irrelevant which leads me to believe the people who sent it didn’t really care about justice or order but were simply trying to assert themselves.
Of course, I feel very frustrated. I invest a lot of time and effort into the blog and it’s not like I get any money from doing this. Of course, I make minor mistakes sometimes. After all, I got over 12.000 posts, mostly original, and when I was productive I made dozens of posts a day. But though my follower count is well over 1000, I still get 25 notes on average and mostly from the same 10-15 people. Which is fine, I don’t expect any praise for what I do. All I want is a little respect. The whole point is to brighten the mood of my followers and my own, to share the news and the things I find exciting and have fun discussions. So I get angry when people who don’t post anything themselves are scrutinizing what I do and giving me ridiculous accusations.
People told me I should just ignore the criticisms and do what I like but this doesn’t really work for me. For one, I am not someone who can just walk away from a confrontation, I shall stand by my every word. But most importantly, these conflicts leave me drained. I post spontaneously and the amount and content of posts depend wholly on my mood and enthusiasm. Conflicts kill my desire to post completely. That is why they have been few and far in between lately. People also recommended me to take a break but honestly it’s not something I want. Being active in the fandom makes me feel alive. Yet, I have tried to take breaks but now I feel like going on break even before I come out of the previous one.
I know in the end these things can’t be avoided. One thing I realized is that the more you do, the more reaction you get, both good and bad. But the way it works is, it’s always the bad comments that get to you the most. Disabling the anon is not much help either as tumblr is the most anonymous of all accounts and anyone can make dozen blank accounts. I honestly wish there was a way to make my blog friend-only but alas that is not possible.
Writing all this, I don’t want to victimize myself. I haven’t gotten any direct hate and everything else is very subjective. Though I try to be very careful, I might have offended someone as well at some point. In the end, I feel it’s my own failure to deal with things but sadly my mental health is not strong enough to face it all. My emotions tend to shut down to prevent further damage and I really don’t want to lose another band like this.
I feel like I need to mention that despite all this, there are people in this fandom I trust, people who have been truly kind to me. I don’t want those people to feel like they haven’t done enough. You have, you’ve done more than you think and I am truly grateful. No matter what happens, I’m still willing to help with any requests if I can. Unlike last time, I feel I am not alone in this but it’s still my battle.
Right now I am honestly at a loss about the future of my blog. I’m not making any big statements now, I am still weighting all the pros and cons. I know there are many people who enjoy it and I myself want to continue it but right now every bad comment I get brings me down more. The blog is supposed to bring joy to me and if it fails to, there’s no point.