hey, followers: After seeing ripples of fandom unhappiness this week, plus sentiments about how hard it is to keep in touch with fandom friends, I’m wondering:
- how do you keep in touch with your fandom friends? tumblr only? gchat? IRC chat rooms? email? LJ? comments on AO3?
- how do you make new fandom friends these days?
- do you feel like tumblr is conducive to making friends, or do you find it difficult?
I keep in touch by checking out Tumblr blogs of folks I follow, if I know they still do LJ updates I read and comment there, and I email if I’m betaing, and for my one close fandom friend who is in my area we often meet and hang out.
I don’t really have many fandom friends, probably more like fandom acquaintances, or a small circle of folks who I like to keep updated with their blogs because I find them very interesting and creative and cool, but don’t really talk with them outside of commenting or reblogging. (again shy). Doing the IRC chat thing is kind of overwhelming in general, which is why I don’t really hang out in the larger fandom online spaces. So basically, I’m not quite sure how to make them! One day I hope to get better at it! 🙂
I find, for me, Tumblr is kind of not conducive to making new friends. It often feels more like adding comments to disappearing threads and randomly liking things. It’s a very odd medium. Kind of like a bullhorn, but with pictures.
Very interesting question 🙂
I, um…well, mostly I fail at keeping up with friends lately. I was doing really well there for a bit, mostly via IRC, a bit by Skype, but recently I’ve kind of done the thing where I pull in like a turtle.
That’s on me, though, not fandom or the technology.
Generally I keep in touch through all of the above. I don’t find Tumblr very conducive to forming new friendships. It’s so awkward. It takes a lot of work and active participation from both parties, a lot of fighting with the platform in order to leave comments and have dialogues in a way that actually strings together into a real conversation. I mean, it’s good for noticing people. You start seeing patterns of names in the reblogs, comments, etc. But it takes even more of an extra step to go further than that than most platforms do—and considering that the step to “having a real conversation” is so rough for a lot of people to begin with…
I have been using G+ more, recently, for work, and am noticing how it’s got some really good things going on. Though in other ways it’s got some serious problems. I suppose if you have a G+ identity you reserve specifically for fannish interactions, it could be a pretty great place for fandom.
…Maybe I should try that and see what happens.