#bobaboard

[fujocoded]

"Rebuilding Community on the FujoWeb" is finally live!

We're biased calling this a *must watch*, but don’t take it from us: as an attendee said, "the talk brought back hope for the future of the internet I didn't know I could still feel"!

In this talk, @essential-randomness recounts how @bobaboard was founded out of love for fandom and disillusionment for Big Tech. But the talk goes way beyond, from the downward spiral of the internet, to why "new social" projects keep failing and what we can (and need to) do about it.

Without spoiling too much (really, watch the video!!) the talk also explores how power influences the dynamics between online creators and consumers, and how we must change our relationship with it to make lasting social change–on the web, in fandom, and on the fandom web!

So if you care about the fandom, the web, or are otherwise in the mood for “a really thoughtful blend of education, humor, and insights” (again, not our words!), take 50 minutes out of your day to watch our talk! And if our work resonates and you can give $3/month, join our Patreon TODAY!

[talk link, slides link, patreon link]

[fujostore]

FujoVerse Holiday Special

It’s that time of year again! Use code FOLGERS_SEASON for 15% off across all our sites (and join our Patreon for an even deeper 25% off discount)!

Check out the links below ⬇️ have the happiest of holidays 🥂 and thank you for your ongoing support! 💜

For the 2024 FujoVerse Holiday Special, we’ve revamped our store to include items from the FujoCoded campaign, including t-shirts, tote bags, stickers, and more.

Use code FOLGERS_SEASON for 15% off!

Looking for the classics? The BobaBoard merch of Folgers Seasons past has moved into our FujoCoded store, too! From stickers to charms, from washi tape to emoji sets, there are plenty of Boba-tans to bring home for the holidays.

And of course there are the much beloved FujoBoards, which (especially when paired with your favorite snacks) are sure to be the star of any décor. Choose your favorite cheese paddle, from YAOI to BLORBO and beyond!

No time to wait? Whether you gift a RobinBoob ship certificate to a friend or buy your own OTP to treat yourself, you’ll receive it in your inbox right away!

Want an even deeper discount? Become a sustaining monthly supporter to receive 25% total off your order! Tiers start at $3/month, and every bit adds up to support our mission: building a kinder, more diverse, more collaborative, and more weird internet.

If you would like to show off your FujoVerse merch, please do tag us on socials—we’d love to see how you decorated in a festive fujin way!

Bluesky

Fediverse (blorbo.social)

Twitter

or right here on Tumblr dot com, @fujostore

Please help us boost this post (like to charge, reblog to cast) 💘 Thank you!

[essential-randomness]

Your angle or yuor devil: choosing between LLC and nonprofit

It's time! For this week's Tuesday Content, I'm cheating a little: first, it's Wednesday; second, instead of new content, I'm "unpaywalling" a section of my $upporters-only "Quarterly Extravaganza".

Learn below (or in the blogpost) about the eternal dilemma: should our org be a nonprofit or an LLC?

To support our project (and get early access to this content), support me on Patreon!

The first step to settle the LLC vs nonprofit debate was to look at the path chosen by other fandom-adjacent entities. Turns out, there's historical examples of both!

So, armed with grit, we took the logical next step: get clarity on the legal differences between the two!

Cutting to the chase, we chose to (very soon) incorporate as an LLC. It was not an easy choice, and we went back and forth–and agonized over it–for quite a while.

However, a few considerations tipped the scales:

First, while our projects have a “charitable intent” that would allow us to qualify for 501c3 status (a.k.a. become a nonprofit), we decided that the procedures required would place a too heavy weight on our already-stretched shoulders.

Next, as we spearhead many ambitious projects with very little budget, we wanted to be able to reward those who took a bet on us with their time and work, should our efforts eventually pay off.

(You can learn about these projects here)

Finally–without mincing words–the online (and fandom) discourse around nonprofits made us uncomfortable: while it’s true that nonprofits have a charitable intent, they still have a balance sheet to balance, and produce work that deserves to be paid for. This is too easy to forget!

Obviously, given that our projects have a clear “anti-corporate bent”, becoming a for profit corporation came with concerns.

However, we found that LLCs are an incredibly-flexible legal structure that gives us ample power to add ethical guardrails!

There's a lot to say about the various options, and we've just started exploring them. If you want to learn more about these, you can read the article/slides or watch this video by the excellent Sustainable Economies Law Center, whose help has been invaluable throughout all this!

(To be clear: until we have more resources in place and a better understanding of our future, we’re going to keep things simple: at first, our LLC will be what’s called a “single-member LLC”, owned by yours truly (me). We'll keep evaluating options as we work to reach stability!)

...and that is all for this week! Once again, to support this journey towards a better web, you can donate on Patreon or on my own website!

You can also help us by reblogging this post and sharing the blogpost with all your friends and fandom-oriented Discord servers!

We'll keep you updated about this all as the year progresses. Look forward to it!

[starfieldcanvas]

To be a bit more specific:

This user supports AO3's mission and general continued existence

but not their entrenched systemic racism and xenophobia (which constantly evades intervention from the elected board members due to AO3's shitty poorly-scaled organizational structure)

This user supports Squidgeworld

This user supports Bobaboard

This user supports all efforts by anti-censorship fans to create safe & supportive communities by fans and for fans, however imperfect

This user supports AO3

This user is anti-censorship

This user believes in “don’t like, don’t read”

This user believes in “ship and let ship”

This user believes that fiction tastes and preferences do not dictate moral character

[witchoil]

sighs……i guess there’s pillowfort

[olderthannetfic]

All I ever hear about is people complaining about the spaces online that used to exist but don’t anymore but for some reason no one is making an effort to recreate those spaces? Why?

--

Offhand?

The people complaining weren't the ones who made the spaces in the first place. The people who did make the spaces are off building something new.

--

But it really depends how we define our parameters. Some of the complaints are that it's infinitely harder to create the social vibe someone wants on the platforms available now due to algorithms and modern internet bullshit. Solving that requires technical skills. Some people are still trying, but it's going to be a smaller number, and they're going to have to tackle it in groups. Bobaboard is one such attempt. There have been plenty.

--

The most common scenario I see, however, is people who think they are trying but who, to me, are often more trying in the other sense.

Most of us have no idea how we make friends. I don't mean we don't know what to do consciously right now (though that too) but that we don't actually understand the steps that led to our past friendships.

Often, we perceive things as "just happening" where a savvier outsider could point to a lot of specific behaviors or circumstances that directly contributed. If someone else approached us, we may be aware of that, dimly, but not really of all of the effort they may have put into making a social group happen.

Over and over, I see people asking how to make friends. I tell them what worked for me in recent years on Tumblr... and they snap at me that they don't want to do those things or that those things could not possibly work. Often, their tone is extremely negative and offputting, and they're totally unaware of it.

--

I used to miss LJ. I don't anymore. Why would I when we have long, text-based discussions here all the time?

But I'm also not mourning my lost youth or specific LJ friends I don't see around anymore. I'm not even mourning my old fandoms. Onmyouji is a thing again. Who would have thought?

People say "spaces", but what they often mean is "how I felt back then".

[rabbitindisguise]

instead of "where are you going if tumblr shuts down" let's play pretend and think about our favorite real and imaginary websites to host fandom communities

[starfieldcanvas]

y'all should come help us build @bobaboard

not really a tumblr clone, it's its own thing, but if you want a hand in building a modern by-fans for-fans community platform...

taking this out of the reblogs of my last post @deez-no-relation because I think it's important and its own thought.

There isn't any place similar to Tumblr on the internet. Here and now is the last shreds of an internet that was, an internet that could exist without monetization. An internet that lasted through so many ~pivots to video~, an internet that is text and gif and photo first. An internet that is driven by serendipity and the impetus of the user to do the searching, the digging, the work that is just handed to you by algorithms on other sites for the purpose of better advertising to you.

The best part about Tumblr is the reason why it can't monetize and I have been hitting up against this wall for literal years. There's magic here because it's one of the places that hasn't been overrun by ads. Every social site's business model relies on those midrolls, prerolls, in between story slides, because the money is what keeps them running.

Someone joked about making Tumblr a UNESCO World Heritage site and honestly? That's where my brain goes, too. Tumblr is a library. Tumblr is a museum. Tumblr is a third place. Tumblr is where people can go to be inspired and go feral over shit they love and indulge in passion and process their shit. How do you monetize that safely?

@taylorswift honestly this is your moment to bankroll Tumblr and save the internet (just kidding....) (unless.....)

[fujocoded]

This April 1st, there's a sweet, sweet surprise in store (😏) for you

Introducing: FANDOM COOKIES,

the first cookie specifically created to satiate your hunger, so you can work hard to quench your thirst!

Fandom Cookies come in 3 different flavors each with its own special selection of carefully-crafted fortunes (all also in gluten free):

"kinda vanilla" for the tasteful shipper

"chocolate doves" for those who like spice

"lemony prompts" for the scenario-ponderers

Find our fortune cookies here!

But we aren't "just" a cookie company. We also work hard to entertain and (important) teach web skills! Check out the reblogs for more info on a free digital item 👀👀👀

As usual, your purchase will not only fill you with deliciousness, but will @fujocoded teach niche online communities to take charge of their own web—not to mention, to hire fan creators to help!

Want a discount? ...well, you might want to check out our Patreon 👀 you know, for reasons... 👀👀👀

And with this,

Buy cookies now!!!

[fujostore]

The Official BobaVerse Holiday Fundraiser

It’s that time of the year again! That is, the time for the official BobaVerse Holiday Fundraiser, with discounts all across our projects!

Whether it's a ship ownership certificate, a yaoi cheese paddle, or cool stickers, we have the perfect gift for your friends… or yourself!

Project 1: RobinBoob, the Ship Ownership Marketplace

For the first time, we have a just-implemented RobinBoob discount code! Use code FOLGERS_SEASON for 15% off, and get an additional 5% off exclusively during Cyber Week.

Project 2: FujoBoard

Remember the old Yaoi Paddles? This is them now!

Serve your fujin friends some festive treats in style with our engraved cheese paddles! This holiday, we have 5 new styles up for grabs: blorbo, smut, fujoshi, fudanshi and fujin!

Again, code FOLGERS_SEASON 🛒

Project 3: BobaBoard

If you prefer more bite-sized merch that supports indie developers and artists, head to store.bobaboard.com for stickers, charms and more! Want these AND FujoBoards in one single order? I hear the FujoBoard footer might have a hidden xmas egg for you!

Want an EVEN BIGGER discount? Time for a read more.

For an EXTRA 10% OFF, and to see more projects like these (as well as more underrepresented folks in coding and open source), $upport our project lead @essential-randomness directly to help her continue her work in 2024!

Find her support me page here!

...and now that you made it all the way here, follow us on our other socials too!

BlueSky

Twitter

Fediverse

[essential-randomness]

Enter the FujoVerse™

Starting 2024's content creation journey with a bang, it's time to outline the principles behind the FujoVerse™: an ambitious (but realistic) plan to turn the web back into a place of fun, joy, and connection, where people build and nurture their own communities and software. (You can also read the article on my blog)

The Journey

As those who follow my journey with @bobaboard or read my quarterly newsletter (linked in the article) know, the used-to-be-called BobaVerse™ is a collection of projects I've been working on since 2020 while pondering an important question: how do we "fix" the modern social web?

Obviously the joyless landscape that is the web of today is not something a single person can fix. Still, I loved and owed the internet too much to see it wither.

After countless hours of work, I found 3 pillars to work on: community, software ownership and technical education.

Jump in after the cut to learn more about how it all comes together!

Community

Community is where I started from, with good reason! While social networks might trick us into thinking of them as communities, they lack the characteristics that researchers identify as the necessary base for "true community": group identity, shared norms, and mutual concern.

Today, I'm even more convinced community is a fundamental piece of reclaiming the web as a place of joy. It's alienating, disempowering, and incredibly lonely to be surrounded by countless people without feeling true connection with most of them (or worse, feeling real danger).

Software Ownership and Collaboration

As I worked with niche communities "software ownership" also became increasingly important to me: if we cannot expect mainstream tech companies to cater to communities at the margins, it follows that these communities must be able to build and shape their own software themselves.

Plenty of people have already discussed how this challenge goes beyond the tech. Among many, "collaboration" is another sticking point for me: effective collaboration requires trust and psychological safety, both of which are in short supply these days (community helps here too, but it's still hard).

Education (Technical and Beyond)

As I worked more and more with volunteers and other collaborators, however, another important piece of the puzzle showed itself: the dire state of educational material for non-professional web developers. How can people change the web if they cannot learn how to *build* the web?

(And yes, learning HTML and CSS is absolutely important and REAL web development. But to collaborate on modern software you need so much more. Even further, people *yearn* for more, and struggle to find it. They want that power, and we should give it to them.)

Once again, technical aspects aren't the only ones that matter. Any large-scale effort needs many skills that society doesn't equip us with. If we want to change how the web looks, we must teach, teach, TEACH! If you've seen me put so much effort into streaming, this is why :)

And obviously, while I don't go into them in this article, open source software and decentralized protocols are core to "this whole thing".

The Future

All of this said, while I've been working on this for a few years, I've struggled to find the support I need to continue this work. To this end, this year I'm doing something I'm not used to: producing content, gaining visibility, and putting my work in front of the eyes of people that want to fight for the future of the web.

This has been a hard choice: producing content is hard and takes energy and focus away from all I've been doing. Still, I'm committed to doing what it takes, and (luckily) content and teaching go hand in hand. But the more each single person helps, the less I need to push for wide reach.

If you want to help (and read the behind the scenes of all I've been working on before everyone else), you can subscribe to my Patreon or to my self-hosted attempt at an alternative.

I deeply believe that in the long term all that we're building will result in self-sustaining projects that will carry this mission forward. After all, I'm building them together with people who understand the needs of the web in a way that no mainstream company can replicate.

Until we get there, every little bit of help (be it monetary support, boosting posts, pitching us to your friends, or kind words of encouragement and support) truly matters.

In exchange, I look forward to sharing more of the knowledge and insights I've accrued with you all :)

And once again, to read or share this post from the original blog, you can find it here.

[bisexualbaker]

Thank you for the correction! Or, well, that just about adds up to "never" (and I swear I remember seeing Denise comment in an official news post that she'd kill the site before going to ads), but I acknowledge the possibility.

There is a third-party script to allow Dreamwidth users to reblog content, but it's not something I've ever tried out, so I don't know how easy or difficult to use it is. Still, it does exist, and I've got it linked in my Dreamwidth 101 tag.

(Is Bobaboard still 18+ only, or are some spaces open to all ages? That's my big condition for it; if it's not open to the under eighteen crowd in at least some places, I don't think it would be a good sole home for fandom. As a partial home for fandom, sure! But there should be at least one place that's even partly open to younger people.)

Why do people keep recommending Dreamwidth as a Tumblr alternative, when Dreamwidth and Tumblr are so different?

To be flat-out honest, it's because Dreamwidth has so many things that Tumblr users say they want, even if it's also lacking a lot of features that Tumblr users have come to love:

Dreamwidth has incredibly lax content hosting rules. I'd say that it's slightly more restrictive than AO3, but only just slightly, and only because AO3's abuse team has been so overwhelmed and over-worked. Otherwise, the hosting policies are pretty similar. You want to go nuts, show nuts? You can do that on Dreamwidth.

In fact, Dreamwidth is so serious about "go nuts, show nuts", it gave up the ability to accept transactions through PayPal in 2009 to protect our ability to do that. (It's also one reason why Dreamwidth doesn't have an app: Dreamwidth will never be beholden to Apple's content rules this way.)

Dreamwidth cares about your privacy; it doesn't sell your data, and barely collects any to begin with. As far as I'm aware, it only collects what it needs to run the site. The owners have also spoken out on behalf of internet privacy many times, and are prepared to put their money where their mouth is.

No ads. Ever. Period. They mean it. Dreamwidth is entirely user funded.

Posts viewed in reverse chronological order; no algorithm, opt-in or otherwise. No algorithm at all. No "For You" or "Suggested" page. You still entirely create and curate your own experience.

The ability to make posts that only your "mutuals", or even only a specific subset of your "mutuals", can see. Want to make a post that's only open to Bonnie, Clyde, Butch, and Cassidy? You can do that! Want to make a post that's only open to Bonnie and Butch, but Clyde and Cassidy can't see shit? You can do that, too!

The owners have forsworn NFTs and the blockchain in general. Not as big a worry now as it was even a year ago, but still good to know!

We are explicitly the customers of Dreamwidth. Dreamwidth wants to make us happy, so any changes they make (and they do make changes) are made with us in mind, and after exploring as many possibilities as they can.

Dreamwidth is very transparent about their policies and changes. If you want to know why they're making a specific change, or keeping or getting rid of a feature, they will tell you. You don't have to find out ten months later that they're locked into a contract to keep it for a year (cough cough Tumblr Live cough cough).

So those are some things that Tumblr users would probably love about Dreamwidth.

Another reason Dreamwidth keeps being recommended is that a significant portion of the Age 30+ crowd spent a lot of earlier fandom years on a site known as LiveJournal. Dreamwidth may not be much like Tumblr, but it it started out as a code fork of LiveJournal, so it will be very familiar to anyone who spent any time there. Except better.

Finally, we're recommending Dreamwidth because some of the things that Tumblr users want are just... not going to happen on the web as it is now. Image hosting is the big one for this. Maybe in the future, the price of data will be much cheaper, and Dreamwidth will be able to host as much as we all want for a pittance that a fraction of the userbase will happily pay for everyone, but right now that's just not possible.

Everywhere you want to go that hosts a lot of images will either be running lots of ads, selling your data, or both.

Dreamwidth knows how much it costs to host your data, and has budgeted for that. They are hosting within their means, within our means.

Dreamwidth is the closest thing we may ever get to AO3 as a social media platform. One of the co-owners is from, and still in, fandom; she knows our values, because they are also her values. It may as well be the Blogsite Of Our Own.

[bobaboard]

It's official: the BobaBoard 2023 retrospective is finally out!

Unlike every other year, this retrospective was not written by our founder, but by a community volunteer! This marks a bigger shift in the way we work on BobaBoard: as you’ll read in the retrospective, our work in 2024 will focus on turning BobaBoard into a true community project.

You can read more about this change in our founder's own words on her blog.

If you have questions, you know where to find us. See you in two days with the unveiling of @fujocoded

The retrospective itself is long, so here's a look at the table of contents under the cut👇 choose your favorite section to peruse, or read it all!

[fujowebdev]

Streaming today!

Come witness @essential-randomness tackle a new project: building her consulting resume on her Astro website as she revamps her worksona for her next era (The One With a Job™).

Twitch Link

The idea of this series is to approach it like a "build in public" project: what does it take to go from individual contributor, to open source project(s) lead, to consultant? Let's (hopefully) find out together!

Also, small update on LAST WEEK's work: the bobabot discord example now refreshes the authentication token, making it fully possible to host your own Discord bot that posts to a BobaBoard instance!

See the bot here And see it being built (and learn about REST APIs) in last week's video!

[transformativeworksandcultures]

TWC 42: Fandom and Platforms [Special Issue]

Editorial

Maria K. Alberto, Effie Sapuridis, and Lesley Willard; Putting forward platforms in fan studies

Article

David Kocik, PS Berge, Camille Butera, Celeste Oon, and Michael Senters; "Imagine a place:" Power and intimacy in fandoms on Discord

Kimberly Kennedy; "It's not your tumblr": Commentary-style tagging practices in fandom communities

Axel-Nathaniel Rose; #web-weaving: Parallel posts, commonplace books, and networked technologies of the self on Tumblr

Sam Binnie; Using the Murdoch Mysteries fandom to examine the types of content fans share online

Gamze Kelle; How Covid-19 has affected fan-performer relationships within visual kei

Rhea Vichot; The expression of sehnsucht in the Japanese city pop revival fandom through visual media on Reddit and YouTube

Welmoed Fenna Wagenaar; Discord as a fandom platform: Locating a new playground

Sourojit Ghosh and Cecilia Aragon; Leveraging community support and platform affordances on a path to more active participation: A study of online fan fiction communities

Paul Ocone; Fandom and the ethics of world-making: Building spaces for belonging on BobaBoard

Amber Moore; Analyzing an archive of allyish distributed mentorship in "Speak" fan fiction comments and reviews

Jionghao Liu and Ling Yang; Censorship on Japanese anime imported into mainland China

Lin Zhang; Boys’ love in the Chinese platformization of cultural production

Matt Griffin and Greg Loring-Albright; Platforming the past: Nostalgia, video games, and A Hat in Time

Irissa Cisternino; Players, production and power: Labor and identity in live streaming video games

Symposium

Yvonne Gonzales and Celeste Oon; Public versus private aca-fan identities and platforms: An academic dialogue

Dawn Walls-Thumma; The fading of the elves: Techno-volunteerism and the disappearance of Tolkien fan fiction archives

Martyna Szczepaniak; The differences between author’s notes on FanFiction.net and AO3

Muxin Zhang; Fandom image-making and the fan gaze in transnational K-pop fan cam culture

Sabrina Mittermeier; "One day longer, one day stronger": Online platforms, fan support and the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes

Book review

Sebastian F. K. Svegaard reviews "Vidding: A history" by Francesca Coppa

Laurel P. Rogers reviews "Fandom, the next generation," edited by Bridget Kies and Megan Connor

Axel-Nathaniel Rose reviews "Mediatized fan play: Moods, modes and dark play in networked communities," by Line Nybro Petersen

Multimedia

Naomi Jacobs, Katherine Crighton, and Shivhan Szabo; Building the spear: A demonstration in faking and remaking real feelings for an imaginary work

Rachel Loewen; "Darkness never prevails": Doctor Who Covid-19 videos as keystones for pandemic engagement

[essential-randomness]

Let me know if you need help coming up with a more concrete MVP roadmap

this ao3downloader rewrite is consuming my life... I've put in probably dozens of hours in the last few weeks and it just keeps growing. it's like a hydra as soon as I implement a planned feature two more ideas spring up lmao.

I don't even know what the reception is going to be (if I actually manage to ever finish it lolsob)... lots of people like the original, and the new version is going to be different just by pure necessity of having a UI and a mobile version and so forth. which are surely things most people will want? but also, what if everyone hates it 😭 what if I get two stars on the app store......