#online communities

[shinelikethunder]

tumblr trying to make communities happen and adding individual-post-level interaction controls like turning off reblogs 🤝 discord trying to enable publicly-discoverable forum-like servers that still support granular permissions over who can see what 🤝 bluesky custom feeds and multiple ways to view/organize reply threads:

any sufficiently advanced social media site that bothers to listen to its users will eventually convergently evolve back into LiveJournal

[zr-art-world]

Want to help me With an Anthropological study paper about Online Artist Communities for my class?

How would you describe the art community online and the subcultures within the online art community?

Do people act differently towards an artist that has garnered more clout/fame and do they interact with fans in a different way than artist with a smaller fallowing? Also, How might that effect the artist monetarily as they sell their art work.

If you are in a online art community sub culture (like a particular medium like painting, digital art, animation, crochet, ect or particular subject like fandom and such) can you describe it to me?

How you think AI and grifters effect these online communities and artist.

Also,

How would you describe online culture? I know that the way we interact with people online is different than how we interact with each other in person.

[wat3rm370n]

Communities have been, and continue to be, manipulated.

This likely won’t get better any time soon.

Public health isn’t about a niche group with special or secret practices, and community care shouldn’t be gate kept away from people who for whatever reason haven’t been afforded information or opportunity. But there seems to have been a concerted effort to “other” people who avoid getting sick, and even to get people to other themselves - by pushing the immunocompromised and the careful to the so-called fringe. People, support groups, or organizations formed around public health, disability, patient advocacy, and generally avoiding covid, are lambasted as somehow bad and strange, even though these are essentially the interests of most people.

Jay Bhattacharya, of Great Barrington Declaration fame, is Trump’s pick to lead the NIH. People are rightly concerned that he’s going to move us into a Dark Age by squelching research. But this is a person with designs on social engineering. He has signaled that he wants to make up the media landscape and the political landscape in his vision. (And probably that of the Brownstone Institute, which backs him with big money.)

Tweet by Number 99 @MmeBlackBalloon Aug 18, 2023 "Still COVIDing" regional FB groups use social media to enable intentional communities that sequester "clean" people from the rest of the current world. They have 10's of 1000's of members whose identities are based on social isolation & fear of disease as markers of status. IMAGE SCREENSHOTS OF FACEBOOK Still COVIDing, Bay Area Edition Private 1.2K members 10 posts a day This is a group for COVID conscious individuals and families in the San Fran... Join Still Coviding, Young Adults Edition Private 620 members-2 posts a day This is a space for young adults who are still taking Covid precautions to co... Join Still coviding: adapting to the new reality Private 1.3K members. 5 posts a day This is a group for those who are trying to stay safe but are a bit more 'out ther... Join Still Coviding, Still Trusting & Believing In God, in unbelie... Private 315 members 2 posts a day This group is a safe place for believers of God who are still taking precautions a.... Join. REPLY by Jay Bhattacharya @DrJBhattacharya Aug 18, 2023 Meanwhile, at the command of the government, FB suppressed or eliminated vax injury groups, anti lockdown posts, and the GBD. REPLY by Number 99 @MmeBlackBalloon I wonder how much influence these kinds of people had on public policy and government perceptions of appropriate actions? Like very which came first, chicken or egg. Not that government don't always try to get away with censorship but having backing from masses helps. All bad. 1:13 AM 3 Aug 19, 2023 1,132 Views

The idea that Still Coviding Facebook groups had influence over public policy and government is laughable. I myself wrote 200 postcards to Biden in the last 4 years and almost nothing I wrote about was addressed, and none of my pandemic concerns were at all addressed. Joe Biden campaigned in 2020 on a robust pandemic response plan that was actually quite good. Once in office he and the Democrats who had defended the disabled and the high risk turned their backs on us and said: Return to Office butts in seats downtown for the economy. And the Biden administration pretty much embraced natural herd immunity, abandoned the pandemic measures he campaigned on, and additionally, under pressure from Republicans, the economic mitigation measures ended under Biden. I don’t know why they even needed Trump considering the Great Barrington Declaration has become the status quo of most nations frankly - except of course for the part where they “focus protection” on the vulnerable! That’s nowhere in sight as infants and the elderly have been totally hung out to dry along with the disabled high risk and immunocompromised.

MedPage Today - Nursing Homes Fell Behind on Vaccinating Patients for COVID �� Billing complexities and patient skepticism partially to blame by Sarah Boden, KFF Health News December 5, 2024 Loveland has seen patients and coworkers at the nursing home where she works die from the viral disease. Now she has a new worry: bringing home the coronavirus and unwittingly infecting her infant daughter, Maya, born in May. Loveland's maternity leave ended in late June, when Maya wasn't yet 2 months old. Infants cannot be vaccinated against COVID until they are 6 months old. Children younger than that suffer the highest rates of hospitalization of any age group except people 75 or older. Between her patients' complex medical needs and their close proximity to one another, COVID continues to pose a grave threat to Loveland's nursing home -- and to the 15,000 other certified nursing homes in the U.S. where some 1.2 million people live. Despite this risk, a CDC report published in April found that just four in 10 nursing home residents in the U.S. received an updated COVID vaccine in the winter of 2023-24.

The truth is that the Pentagon under the Trump administration perpetrated an anti-vax propaganda campaign, and under Biden, that campaign continued for at least a while. But not only that, there was someone who I was shown evidence that they were listed as an NIH contractor in 2021 and who operated on social media as a pro-vax influencer who posted prolific amounts of dubious “vax, unmask, and relax” content - clearly going well beyond promoting vaccination, and actually to exist to calm nerves about going “back to normal” seemingly for the sake of The Economy, or perhaps to at least to calm the public to settle things down. They literally told people in April 2021 that it was absolutely impossible for vaccinated people to transmit the virus to each other, when no such evidence existed at that time nor since. When I say this influencer is prolific, people who analyzed the posts of this person’s social media account, told me that it appeared they were doing it as a full time job with overtime, or that the account was being staffed by multiple people in shifts. Today this influencer account can be found hyping (as if it’s just another exciting breakthrough), among other studies on covid remedies, a junk covid product that is being hyped by a number of other outlets in a PR blitz.

The point is that we’re living in The Internet of Fakes, and government entities and big industries are documented as having been known to hire operatives and provocateurs and even to infiltrate social groups.

But Jay Bhattacharya thought it was vulnerable people, often immunocompromised, who were “silencing” him, and this elite has silenced his way to the Trump administration. He’s entering the halls of power with his assertions that regular people just trying to survive are enemies trying to silence and take away power from Jay Bhattacharya. Even if it’s totally made up, or perhaps because it’s made up, this orientation around covid is so disturbing.

Jay Bhattacharya @DrJBhattacharya Aug 18, 2023 “Meanwhile, at the command of the government, FB suppressed or eliminated vax injury groups, anti lockdown posts, and the GBD.” 9 replies, 41 retweets, 366 hearts, 12K views.

Considering that every accusation is a confession with these people, I think there’s good cause for concern.

Mother Jones - November 26, 2024 - He Rose to Fame as a Covid Contrarian, and Trump Wants Him to Be NIH Head - Jay Bhattacharya is outspoken about public health restrictions and sees censorship on social media. - Kiera Butler At a conference hosted by the anti-lockdown group the Brownstone Institute in November 2021, nearly a year after the rollout of the Covid vaccines, Bhattacharya lamented that public health had become a tool “for authoritarian power” and “to enforce the biosecurity state.”

We know that shadowbanning is indeed real. But ironically the people who complain the loudest are the biggest of hypocrites when it comes to the “free speech” issue. So what do you think Jay Bhattacharya intends to do with money he will have at the NIH to splash around to contractors who can hire influencers online?

Many pandemic related groups today are sadly largely places where the members are used as a captive audience of eyeballs given to vendors by admins who’ve consolidated power. They’re too often filled with MLM stuff and target marketing of pseudoscience covid products. People join groups for support and are offered opportunities to buy expensive products with no good evidence of safety or efficacy. People join advocacy groups thinking they’re getting involved in activism, only to find that they’re expected to hype someone’s project on social media, and help them gain attention to get funding from some cryptocurrency source or other. And that’s along with an endless parade of infiltration by trolls, operatives, reporters, scammers, spammers. And many already suspect the presence of state actors in these spaces. But these social groups form because people, especially people at high risk who must avoid infections, have sought out people in similar situations when their families and friends were convinced to abandon safety or any care or concern for the high risk, in order to prop up the economy - by both political parties and both the Trump and the Biden administrations - because both parties prioritize profits over people and businesses over constituents. The most vulnerable people are already extremely marginalized, and sometimes harassed. People avoiding covid have to avoid almost everything, especially in the winter. Online clubs are far from perfect, but the last thing we need is the further fringe-ifying of communities. Especially when social media seems as toxic as ever, and the same problems exist in all social media to some extent. Social media is a way to meet people, sure, in the same way you can meet new people in a tavern, but it’s an absolutely terrible place to try and maintain real connections or accomplish anything within that space. “Likes” are not substantial, let’s be honest. And now, lockdown revisionists and anti-vax posse vigilantes will target this population who has no defenders in positions of power, possibly with state sanctioned violence, or at best, be given a harder time than is already the case.

People talk about media and journalists “obeying in advance” nowadays, but if you care about having doctors mask and not spread their covid or flu to cancer patients, or even if you just care about vaccination - like me you’ve likely been seeing journalists obey in advance to authoritarianism for ages now. And probably also see tons of evidence people don’t even know that updated covid vaccines even exist.

lisa725 2d ago Tuesday, December 3, 2024 at 10:36:14 PM EST Honestly I had no idea there was one. Is it like the Flu shot now? My doctor didn't say anything about it at my annual. She asked about the flu shot. That's it. I have gotten the shot 4 times and I would get it again. Reply grulepper 2d ago. It's a yearly like the flu shot, odd your doc didn't bring it up. Reply Key-Wallaby-9276 22h ago My doc nor my kids doc did either Reply the-names-are-gone 16h ago Yeah it is odd that the medical professional with a decade of schooling and however many years of real world experience didn't see the need to ask

I’m concerned that this situation won’t be confined to making vaccines less available, or even outlawing them, as there has been talk of having county sheriffs deputize anti-vaxxers to do raids on public health officials and others. When people are given power of the state and a stamp of approval on going after enemies, it can coerce people to act improperly or invite opportunists. What’s going on is nothing to take lightly.

(crossposted from my substack)

[annerb-fic]

Online Communities

Yahoo Groups (2003-2006)

I started off my earlies experiences on yahoo groups. There was a huge SG one that was easy to get lost in and I think I posted my first fics there. But I quickly veered into a space called Gateship, which was a yahoo group led by @rowandarkstar, and I remember it deliberately being a space with no ship wars. It was a “ship and let ship” space and it was so great. Everyone was so supportive and there was none of the yucker bits of fandom and it really showed me what fandom can be like at its best.

LiveJournal (2006-2013)

I eventually followed the Gateship people over to LiveJournal, very reluctantly, if I recall and it ended up being my favorite community space I’ve ever been on. For all I can barely remember how LiveJournal even worked at this point, it really was an amazing space. I loved the communities and the prompt fests and the sheer amount of writing challenges and exchanges and fests we had there. It really was so conducive to creativity and experimentation. I also really loved all the comment fics that were so common there. I’ve never really managed to find a space as welcoming and creatively stimulating since.

Tumblr (2013-?)

I moved over to Tumblr when everyone had finally abandoned LiveJournal, but it was also during the time I was transitioning from writing SG-1 to writing Harry Potter fics. As cool as the endless stream of visuals and inspiration was, it was also a very isolating experience. I could not for the life of me figure out how to find community on such a site, especially when I was trying to build connections in a new fandom. I did eventually connect with a core group of people there and I am so grateful to them.

Discord (2019-?)

I did go over to discord at some point, but honestly, it terrifies me and I have never found a rhythm there in the six years I have tried. I have managed to make some small dm groups there that are awesome, and the team I had for my MDZS Big Bang fest was so, so amazing.

[uncleasad]

On zero-days, shades of grey, and digital mobs

This week has been a month, hasn’t it?

I hope you are all holding up as best as you can and have safe spaces and support systems to lean back on.

Over the course of this week, I’ve had a front-row seat to witness digital mobs come after people and rip apart two extremely different online communities, and it’s disheartening to witness how quickly everything snowballed into hellfire, whether it was deserved or not.

I wish that in online spaces there were a way for a concerned party to contact a trusted third party that the victim/concerned party and the accused both felt would be fair and have that party mediate between them, instead of resorting to direct confrontation and call-outs.

Everyone is at their worst in this initial stage—angry, defensive, scared, embarrassed, ashamed, hurt—and fight-or-flight takes over. The person who believes themselves to be a victim is fighting mad, and the person who has been accused—whether they truly screwed up, made an innocent mistake, or it was all a misunderstanding—either wants to run and hide in their shame, or they stand their ground, also fighting mad. No good can come from a situation like this. Even less good can come from it if it all takes place in public, in front of everyone, and mobs start to form, piling on one or the other.

Mob justice is not justice.

No one will want to admit they were wrong, screwed up, made a mistake, if they know a mob is coming after them. If our goal is to have a good and just community, where people can learn from their mistakes, errors, and other screwups, become better people, and strengthen the community in the end, mobs are not the answer. (Few things, especially online, should be something that someone can’t come back from.) Mobs are the unleashing of anger at anyone and everyone in their path. They’ve burned down the town before anyone can hear other sides to the story, much less establish an objective truth. (I know; I’ve been part of one. I felt completely justified.)

We want to see everything in binary, in clean, clear black and white. The truth is, the world and most situations fall in shades of grey. Some things are fuzzy, and others we should evaluate on a sliding scale…did they know that X was wrong or hurtful? Was it intentional? Have they done Y repeatedly? (I don’t know if that person knew it was wrong. I do know they had done it to dozens of fics. I don’t know if they’ve done it again after being told it was wrong. It was 100% presenting unchanged works of others as theirs, out and out theft.* But because no one ever talked to the person or an intermediary, all we know is the account was…deleted? closed? put in time out? We don’t even know that, just that their page and the fics no longer loaded after a couple of days of reporting the stolen fics. But we got our blood and pound of flesh, so…)

If we could slow things down, we have a better chance of learning all the relevant information. If we keep things outside of the public eye initially, we have a better chance of a just and peaceful resolution that keeps our communities together, helps people learn and grow and become better contributors to society/the community. (Again, this outcome might not be possible in all cases. It also might not be a just result in all cases; some cases may call for more severe consequences, such as removal from the community.)

I know some of you are out there shouting “But what about accountability!? If everything’s kept quiet, no one knows/N is gonna do it again.” I have a process for that, too. Let’s switch gears in our analogies for a moment.

In software (and occasionally hardware) security, the usual process for reporting a security bug goes like this:

You report the security bug to the vendor via their security bug submission procedure (e.g., you email securitybugs AT tumblr.com [dunno if that is real] and tell them you’ve discovered a bug that lets you see someone else’s Inbox, and how to cause it)

The vendor acknowledges your report and you might go back and forth about how to trigger the bug, or, in some cases, whether it really is a security bug (our example bug really is, if it were real!), or how serious/easily exploitable it is, which is a proxy for how quickly it needs to be fixed

The vendor fixes the bug

The vendor ships the fix to everyone (in our example, updates the tumblr website or tumblr app, depending on where the bug was)

The vendor announces there was a bug and they’ve fixed it, and thanks the reporter

This is called responsible disclosure. It works great, and everyone is happy (except the bad actors who were using the bug to access other people’s inboxes!).

The opposite of responsible disclosure is known as a zero-day (or 0-day). That’s when a security bug is announced without a fix available. This happens in 3 cases: 1) when the bug is so serious that everyone needs to know NOW so they stop using the piece of software (or delete their information from the software, or whatever) to secure their information/lives, 2) after working with the vendor for some period of time following the established process, the bug reporter feels the vendor is taking too long to fix the problem or doesn’t feel the vendor is taking the bug as seriously as the reporter believes they should, or 3) the person who found the bug doesn’t believe in responsible disclosure (sadly, there are some security researchers in that camp).

(A Zero-Day, and especially Case 3, is basically unleashing a digital mob.)

Back to our online community situations.

In an ideal case, after the intervention of the trusted third party, both the victim/concerned party and the accused release statements. If the accused did indeed do P, their statement should be an apology, what they have learned, and so forth, and the victim probably will acknowledge the apology and note that the two parties have talked and they consider the matter settled, no need for mobs—but also forgiveness is not forced. If things were a misunderstanding, both parties might explain their sides, note they’ve talked it out and consider the matter settled, no need for mobs. Obviously, this varies by case—it’s not all black and white, one size fits all. As an alternative, the trusted third party might also make a report of the facts as best they can tell and the evidence presented.

To ensure things don’t get swept under the rug when a mediated solution is not possible, there are 2 failsafe options. First, our Case 2 from the Zero-Day; after a week or two—remember, we’re trying to slow things down and calm everyone down to allow for better understanding and reflection—the victim/concerned party can then publicly announce the situation and the failed mediation, and/or ask the trusted third party to make a report, perhaps including a transcript of the back-and-forth.

I feel like our online communities would be a lot healthier if we were able to inject just a little bit of real-world processes…a little bit of humanity, of deliberation, of mediation. Everything online is so toxic, and it doesn’t have to be.

I know this is a pipe dream, but maybe by putting it out there, it can do some good somewhere, in some community. After all, if we don’t have hope, what do we have left?

* All theft and plagiarism is wrong, full stop. But the degree of my anger depends on factors such as the extent, intent, and taking responsibility—and not doing it again. And, of course, are you an individual, a fan…or a scummy fic-hoovering AI company?

[yesterdays-xkcd]

I'm waiting for the day when, if you tell someone 'I'm from the internet', instead of laughing they just ask 'oh, what part?'

Online Communities [Explained]

Transcript

[Hand-drawn fantasy style map with land and sea areas representing populations of online communities, plus some fictious jokes and references. Each area or item is labeled.] Map of Online Communities and related points of interest Geographic area represents estimated size of membership

[A giant continent with:] The Icy North (Yahoo, Windows Live) containing the Mountains of Web 1.0, AOL, Qwghlm, Yahoo Games, Reunion dot Com, Classmates do Com, Faceparty, E-Harmony, Friendster (off the coast of which is the The Lonely Island), My Space containing The Series of Tubes, MySpace Bands, and the much smaller Attractive MySpace Pages, Blurty, O.K. Cupid, Cyworld, Orkut, Facebook, and Livejournal & Xanga - the coasts of which form the Bay Of Angst.

[The Noob Sea is bordered by AOL, the Icy North, MySpace, and an island system off the coast of Yahoo Games consisting of:] Second Life (and the much smaller island Third Life), Lineage, World of Warcraft, Runscape, Ultima Online, EverQuest, Final Fantasy 11, and further off, 2Channel and 4Chan. [To the east is labelled "Here be anthopomorphic Dragons].

[The Gulf of Youtube is bordered by Facebook, Myspace, and the island continents of:] Piczo, Broadcaster, the river Bit Torrent, Flickr, Last.FM, and DeviantArt with the subsection Gays of Web 2.0, and off the south coast and between another island is the Straits of Web 2.0.

[Off the pennisula of MySpace, island of Second Life, and island continents of Broadcaster et al is the Sea of Culture which hoasts the Peer-to-Peer Shoals. The Sea of Culture is separated from the Ocean of Subculture by and island system consisting of:] Digg, Fark, Reddit, Slash Dot, Soviet Russia, and Something Awful, which surround the Bay of Trolls, and Spaaarta (You're The Man Now Dog), Stumble Upon, and Delicious on the south end of the Viral Straits and the north end of the Sea of Memes, the Isle of Slash, Numa, and Your Base.]

[On the south end of the Sea of Memes, mostly made up of the IRC isles with a dotted outline where Usenet is located, is:] Stallman's Airship, Google's Volcano Fortress, Sourceforge, and the Wikipedia Project bridged island system that connects to M.I.T., EnGadget, Gizmodo, and Make Blog.

[West of the Wikipedia Project lies the Blogipelago with:] BoingBoing, Technorati, [something that can be read as T.W.B. or T.M.Z.], Cory Doctorow's Balloon, Sulawesi, Xu Jinglei, Post Secret, the Shipwreck of the S.S. Howard Dean, the Huffington Post, and the Wet Sea.

[North of the Blogipelago lies the Compass Rose-Shaped Island, with the north arm labelled Practicals (Noob), the south Intellectuals (Pi), west Focus on Real Life (I.R.L.), and the east Focus on Web (dot Com).]

(Not a complete survey. Sizes based on the best figures I could find but involved some guesswork. Do not use for navigation.) Spring 2007

[firstoccupier]

4chan: The Internet’s Mos Eisley Cantina Takes Another Hit

In the chaotic world of online forums, 4chan stands out like a neon sign in a dark alley. Dubbed the “cesspool of the internet,” it has a reputation for being the lawless Doge City of the online world. This notorious imageboard has seen its fair share of craziness, and now, it’s down again—this time, apparently hacked. On April 14, 2025, users began reporting that 4chan was loading slowly. By…

[sneezingowl]

Hey kids! Hey you! This is for you!

Don't sneak into 18+ spaces online, even if they're not nsfw spaces. Respect the boundaries that other people set. They don't want minors there for a reason. Stay out. There doesn't need to be porn for it to not be a place for you. Respect our wishes and wait until you're old enough to join. There are places for you that you can seek out.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

[shinelikethunder]

soooo, what's it like on Fandom Bluesky these days

(look, i'm not saying it's a certainty that tumblr is about to become collateral damage of matt mullenweg filling his own car with hammers and explosives and hitting the detonator while driving it off a cliff, but i wanna hedge against the possibility and so far i'm only familiar with law/politics/journalism bluesky. just fuck me up.)

[trendynewsnow]

The Impact of Online Communities and the Story Behind 'Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara'

The Evolution of Online Communities: A Look Back The dawn of the 21st century marked a pivotal moment for the internet, shifting from algorithm-curated content to a vibrant tapestry of shared interests. Whether you were passionate about a specific band, deeply religious, or exploring your sexuality, there existed a plethora of AOL chatrooms, message boards, and LiveJournal communities where you…

[wat3rm370n]

The woke-washing of product placement.

I’ve heard stories about vendors and people advertising products in social and support groups and forums using woke-washing to try to bully people into promoting products. If someone is telling people it’s “harming community” to choose not to promote some product, it might be woke-washing. It really doesn’t even matter if the products are sketchy or if they’re ordinary useful products. Support groups and advocacy organizations that are legitimate should not involve guilt-trips or high pressure sales tactics, especially not around selling products. I’ve also heard stories about group admins who oust anyone who complains about the practices of vendor marketing within the group. If this is happening in a “community” or group you’re in, you might actually be dealing with an MLM or something like that. At any rate, nobody should have to put up with groups that exist primarily to sell member eyeballs to vendors and marketers. It’s hard to avoid sketchy stuff on the internet, but we all deserve spaces where people don’t play fast and loose with people's information, and that are not constantly rocked by risky shift.

It’s okay to say no thanks to product cults.

[zaryathelaika]

The web is dying. We are present on these websites:

Instagram

YouTube

TikTok

Cohost [decomissioned]

Bluesky

Flickr

We have presence elsewhere in several different places (eg. Pillowfort, Dreamwidth), but not sure how to best use them. The best way be updated on our social media migration is our GitHub (which is backed up GitLab and Codeberg). Really need to get around to setting up a Fediverse presence. Just need to find an instance which has a decent mod team.

[keikaru]

Since LinePlay is closing down on April 18, 2024…I wanted to take a few screenshots of my character, clothes, and room. ₍^. ̫ .^₎

It was fun while it lasted! I actually fell off playing for a long time but occasionally logged in for dailies. This gives me flashbacks of TinierMe shutting down, and I miss that feeling of having an online community and friends. 😢

I’ll miss the cute clothes and avatars…but life goes on. Until another game like this comes around~!

[uncleasad]

On taking breaks and moving on

An online friend of mine from a community I used to frequent several years ago just published his first chapbook of poetry, and his announcement reminded me of how many years it’s been since I’ve been active in that community.

In fact, it’s been pretty common in my life (online, at least) to move on from communities over time. In “past lives,” I’ve been a notable contributor to a handful of open-source software projects, an active member on a variety of discussion fora, a frequent commenter on a handful of old-school blogs, a part of the aforementioned community in question, and, of course, our beloved Hosie fandom (far more active on AO3 than on here, for sure). I think the longest I’ve been an active part of something has been 7 years, and in most of the longer-timeframe instances, I’ve also taken breaks and later returned.

Legacies debuted in 2018, and I’ve been a Hosie since nearly the beginning (the poking in the park)—but still before I knew it was a ship!—and reading fanfic on AO3 since at least late 2019 (though I didn’t start writing my first Hosie fic until late February of 2020). So we’re stumbling towards middle age, I suppose. And a series that produced only 68 episodes and, in this new visual entertainment media reality, will be locked away in a corporate vault, never to be seen again (more on that some other time), well, the reality is, the fanbase has already peaked.

The worst, of course, of my online community experiences are the cases where it felt like I was the only one left putting in the effort to hold up the project or community, and not wanting to quit because I know it will be the end if I do—the wall will come tumbling down—but also not wanting—or being able—to keep at it alone.

Already I feel like we’re approaching that point in the Hosie fandom on AO3. It used to be that it didn’t matter who you were, your fic would garner a handful of comments; you didn’t have to be one of those “top tier” authors whose chapters drew dozens of comments. Today, though, those same “top tier” writers and their successors are lucky to get a handful of comments on their chapters, and I often find myself the only reader commenting on new chapters from many existing authors as well as new work from new authors—yes, amazingly, there are still some! (There are others who are pretty active in the comments, particularly Shadowmama55, who wrote their first fic this year—you should go read it if you haven’t, and leave comments as you do—a cracking debut fic!) 

All of which is a longwinded way of saying that I hope this writing slump of the past 9 months or so is just me taking a break. I know from experience my active time remaining is limited, but I don’t plan on walking away yet—at least not before TheDarkestHour13 finishes Such is Our Fate (and I think the projected chapter count is 200-something, so that’s another couple years yet if the current chapter/week pace persists, so rejoice in its slow burn) 😏

See you around, everyone 👍

December 4, 2023

[altasthetic]

Unveiling the Multifaceted Subcultures of Emo Music and Lifestyle

Greetings, music enthusiasts and cultural explorers! Today, we embark on journey through the multifaceted world of emo music and lifestyle. Emo, an abbreviation for “emotional,” is more than just a musical genre. It’s a diverse subculture with a rich history, marked by various evolutions and subgenres. So, let’s delve into the distinct subcultures that have flourished within the intricate fabric…