#internet meet real life

[bethanyactually]

a three-hour many-cups-of-coffee chatty brunch with @catty-words was exactly what I needed today 💛

[sciderman]

As another blog who accidentally got following for funny jokes and content creator by god you summarized how creating content feels on Tumblr nowadays. Like,

No one interacts but at the same time they'll complain that there's no updates, they'll complain that you disappeared but even if you post something no one interacts with. They treat as if people who post things about fandom are just there to be some kind of machine will post something to make them laugh and then reblog in silence.

There's no feedback, there's no community, and it feels weird like some kind of big brother. Where you spend your time and energy making something and then people throw you a like and you're just like blind??? 'Do they still like it?' 'am I doing it wrong?' 'did I lose the flow?' But nope. It seems like every person who makes something in this plataforma feels a different variation of that. And feels so weird talking about it as if you're 'seeking attention' and being too 'hungry' about it. But what are we supposed to do...? Just put our heart and souls by a grand majority that won't take a second to say something and just like and maybe reblog as if you're some advertisement?

Feels weird. I am sorry you feel like that too Sci, your ask-blog is great and you spent a lot of energy co-creating with people and using your creativity. I don't blame you for feeling demotivated. That's a weird era to be in where people don't know how to differentiate that there's someone behind a blog and nor a major corporation that will put something they're interacting or not. Very weird.

it's so very universal, i've seen it all the places, everywhere. i know it's not just a me thing... it's kind of honestly just the way the world operates now. running the blog really did used to give me such an excited feeling to be building this story with other people who were invested and everyone had a hand in pushing wade and peter into all kinds of directions and it was so, so gratifying. and when i left i was still craving that interaction - i wanted to create an interactive instagram account, but i kind of figured it wouldn't work, because the platform just isn't good for it.

something that's largely been absent from my life is community, y'know. it's so difficult to find it, in the city. and i kind of found it through the blog. but online communities feel like something that's dying too. nobody wants to be communal. i've had so many interactions where people are taken aback that i'm just some dumb, tired little human. i'm a tired human who made spider-man comics because it got me friends on the internet. i don't make money doing this. i do it for friends. i... sighs. i miss so many people that used to be around but they're not here anymore. i miss how it used to feel. i don't think i can get it back. i don't know where i can look now, but i don't think i'm going to find whatever i'm looking for here. i guess it's like - i know i have to leave the city because the city makes me feel small and lonely. and maybe i have to leave the internet too. it makes me feel small and lonely.

[bilaudad]

fighting on the internet would be as fun as it seems like it’s going to be when you start if you didn’t then spend 90% of your time after just cleaning up misunderstandings and disavowing things you never said :/

[gingerbreadmonsters]

6k in and my head is about to explode. STILL not allowed to say what i want :(

[nullcoast]

Why can't we just love eachother and help eachother and cry for eachother when we hurt and laugh for eachother when we're happy. What happened to radical acceptance and beauty. Why are we self-separating using white suppremist ideas about identity. The idea someone needs some pure property to be worthy of adopting a community is point blank a white suprematist idea. Where is the understanding of mistake and pain.

We are so alone and isolated in this generation and we are playing directly into the interests of those in power by further self-separating. Focus on some important fucking shit.

[speakercrab666]

OH MY GOD SHUT UP U GUYS I AM THINKING ABOUT DVDS!!!!!!!!! OH MY GOD. I LOVE DVDS. DISCS. HOLY SHIT U GUYS. HHHHHHHHHH.

GONNA BUY A PORTABLE DVD PLAYER AND THEN I’M GONNA WATCH BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN!!!!!!!!! I ALREADY HAVE BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN ON DVD BUT I HAVEN’T SEEN IT YET DUE TO NO DVD PLAYER.

AND THEN I’M GONNA FIND MY ROBOTS DVD AND I!!!! AM GOING!!!!!! TO WATCH!!!! ROBOTS!!!!!!!!!!! IT’S THE BEST MOVIE POSSIBLY EVER AND I REFUSE TO WATCH IT ONLINE. IT LIVES ON A DVD!!!

I CAN’T FIND MY ROBOTS DVD RN BUT OH BOY WHEN I DO!!!!! I WON’T BE ABLE TO WATCH IT BC I DON’T HAVE A DVD PLAYER YET. BUT ROBOTS!!!!! EXCITED FOR ROBOTS.

[kafus]

in the grand scheme of things being 23 is not that old and using the internet for socializing and fandom since i was ~10, so 13 years, is also not that long, but i really cherish a lot of the spaces i've been in and the people i've met over that time, even though they were transient. there will be a time too where i fall out of love with kaf's music, or she quits being a vsinger/being kaf, whatever happens first, and i will only be able to look back at this time with nostalgia for the thing that carried me through my early adulthood years. there will be people who i've met who have touched my life in minuscule or massive ways that will become a relic of the past and their names will blur and they'll move on to new handles and i will never be able to contact them again. and i think that's beautiful even though it makes me sad too

[uhhbeans]

thinking about our boys and CRYING and weeping an d.

[nthflower]

I used to have terrible anxiety and it was worse in social media. Even liking posts or just commenting one word things were impossible for me.

And now I am sharing whatever I want some stupid posts my personal nonsense or even comment sometimes and interact with people etc.

It is very important for me because normal people things were so alien and so unreachable. And now I am doing it.

I thought I was hopeless and there were no future. Like there were good future possibilities which I wanted but find impossible and there were bad future which I was deadly afraid of. And never changing future where I did nothing and everything was same. But no right now I am living in future I didn't even thought about it there was a 4th way for things to go. And it opened many other possibilities soo there was not only 4th way but a 5th or 6th or infinite ways to go. And still future isn't hopeless and possibilities are limited it can be absolutely different and unexpected. I can't lose my hope.

Anyways just writing posts about my feelings here is something past me wanted but thought impossible so it's interesting for me. And I wanted make a post about that but it's became more detailed.

I Love you people who reading this even I don't know you and I mean it. I also started to love and value people more. And I care about things more in a way that matters. I care about random people I care about life and death I care about myself.

Life became more real and I can handle it more easily. Healing is terribly scarily super hard but it's better than what I was.

I never wanted to go back there is no back and I am more happy being emotionally unstable than being emotionless all the time.

I like making mistakes now it's better than doing nothing

End :)

[lycanphobia]

I am actually very sick of the people on here who are claiming masculinity isn’t demonized unless they’re a marginalized group because I personally know someone who was demonized for being a man in his position as a substitute teacher. He was being stalked by young girls across the internet, and was told it was HIS fault for being a “young attractive man” when he did everything right and was still treated like a sex offender for it.

[bethanyactually]

I can now confirm that @catty-words does in fact exist. 💖

[zuzajs14]

TAG GAME

Thanks for tagging me @fluffsnake, my dearest sunshine <3

Relationship Status: Well, I am that one meme where parents yell at their child "why don't you have a boyfriend? she's bi! damn, nobody wants you!"

Favourite Colour: blue (but mixed with green, so it becomes the colour of the sea) and also red (like the hellfire where i belong)

Song Stuck In My Head: Who is your favourite fearless heeero... Who is your favourite fearless heeero! (both Polish and English versions) But also City Grown Willow, which is my fave song for now :>

Last Thing I Googled: em.... biblically accurate angel pin XD <3

Current Time: 11:12 pm

Dream Trip: Ow. This is a hard one. Cause I love traveling and want to see a huge part of the world. I wish to go to Scotland and just stand in a high grass while wind tugs at my clothes, I wish to travel trough America in a big spacey car with a group of people I could call friends, I wish to go to Iceland and breath in the cold air till it stings... And so many, many more. I just yearn for the world.

Sooo, apparently I am supposed to tag 5 people. And I know I hadn't interact with so many in here cause I am very shy on the internet (not so much in real life tho, I am a menace and I would make you all my friends if it were face to face! ) So I hope, my dear mutuals I didn't talk so much with, you will be interested in participating so I can find out more about you <3

@naughtystiel @archervale @free-birdies @bakh-meliorism @gloomyinks

[glittercorvid]

hate listening to a man talk about women and knowing that what would fix him is nonsexual intimate relationships with women while also knowing every woman who has the kind of patience and emotional capacity to slowly train a man to see her as a full human being deserves better than to have to

[discoursedamaged]

you have to love trans women more than you hate transmisogynists. and i mean real trans women, not this abstract symbol you've created just to defend. the real flesh and blood human beings who are messy and complex and imperfect. you have to love them even when they fall outside of your preconceived idea of what a "good" trans woman must be, when they're doing femininity "wrong" or "not enough", when they understand themselves in terms you find unintuitive, when they're rubbing against your understanding of what a woman should and can be. you have to support the trans women in your life and you have to be kind to the ones you meet and you have to respect the ones on the internet. otherwise you're not helping, you're just using them to play hero.

[madlori]

On being an older fangirl

I was probably 10 years old when I first conceived of what was, looking back, fanfiction. Me and my best friend would lie in bed together on sleepovers and I'd make up stories about what happened after the end of our favorite book, "The Westing Game." She'd ask me for more stories, and I'd tell her more, inventing them as I went along. "Then what?" she'd say.

I was 14 when I went to my first convention. I had discovered Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was 1987, and my youth pastor was a huge Trekkie. He took me to a one-day crappy Creation con, but it was amazing to me. I met Nichelle Nichols. My dad showed me the Trek movies. He and I watched TNG together.

When I went to college in 1991, my dad used to videotape TNG episodes onto VHS tapes and mail them to me, so I could keep watching (I didn't have TV in my dorm room).

By the time I was a senior, we had Trek watching parties in the dorm lounge, where the TV had cable. Star Trek: Voyager had started up, and I wrote a column about it for the college newspaper. I joined a mailing list about it, with people in it that I still know today.

I got my first computer that could go online in 1995. I was on newsgroups. I discovered Doctor Who. I went to Trek conventions where we still passed around fanzines containing fic and art and smutty K/S fan creations.

Then it was Harry Potter. Then there were websites. Then there was Geocities, where we could all make our own little spots. We organized them into webrings. We talked on newsgroups and mailing lists. There were fanfic archives. Then there was fanfiction.net.

Then...there was LiveJournal. And we could interact in entirely new ways. We could form communities, and debate things, and fight over canon, and get into ship wars. On LiveJournal, I met my best friend of 22 years. I was in her wedding. She's my sister of the heart (which is what she calls me).

Then there was Tumblr. And Twitter. And now there's Discord. But it's all the same.

I am the same.

I am still that little girl who made up fanfiction in her head to entertain her best friend. I am still the one who was amazed to find communities on the internet - which was so new, so raw, so uncommodified - where others like me could meet. I found there people to meet in real life.

I am still that twentysomething going to her first major convention, being told that someone loved my fic, being asked about my writing process.

I am still that thirtysomething watching something I wrote blow up. Seeing friends from other fandoms find me in new ones, finding them there, too. Forgetting which fandom I know someone from, because I've known them for twenty years.

I still know some of the people who created those early websites, those mailing lists, those archives. I still meet people in new fandoms who say "Oh, I read your fic in [fandom] fifteen years ago!" There's no feeling quite like having someone remember something you wrote for that long. Or meeting someone whose fic meant a lot to YOU, or who you talked with on rec.arts.drwho.creative in 1997.

Aging in fandom is a gift. Being middle-aged in fandom is a joy. Having people who still read what I write and ask "Then what?" is a blessing.

It breaks my heart that so many people see it as something to be ashamed of, when it is one of my life's greatest gifts.

[gachagon]

There is no lesser of two evils here they are both equally murderous old white men who will kill people in foreign countries, I'm so sick of this narrative that Biden is the "less evil option" when he's not. If he wanted to stop murdering people in Gaza he'd have done something to do that ages ago, but instead he has just gaslit the entire country by going "actually giving Israel a shit ton of money and weapons to kill Palestinians is morally correct and if you think otherwise you're just 'not educated' enough on the topic."

I find it immensely interesting that Biden has virtually "no power" to stop all of this, yet he is our "last hope" according to a lot of you vote blue no matter who people. The ONLY reason none of you want to vote for Trump is because you know then that you'd have a president who would make life worse personally for you, and not just people in other countries.

It has nothing to do with wanting to help Palestinians or lessen the death toll, and everything with the fact that you don't want to be like the little guy who the government bullies systematically every single day, and so you're willing to choose the other guy who's just not preoccupied with personally making your life hell at the moment.

And this is not some endorsement of Trump if anyone is actually ignorant enough to think that, it is an observation of the actual reason people are so adamant about voting for Biden again no matter what. Vote for whoever you want, but stop with this moral high ground bullshit where you pretend you're somehow better for still choosing one of the genocidal assholes to be in office again. We are all complicit in this horrible genocide, and that includes people who keep voting "for the lesser of two evils" every 4 years.

You know I used to think "tumblr's absolute refusal to actually engage with the Trolley Problem in favor of insisting that there must be a third, morally pure option that doesn't require them to make a hard decision and anyone who asks them to make a binary choice is just a short-sighted idiot is really fucking annoying, but I guess it's not actually doing any harm".

Anyway that was before we asked tumblr at large to decide between "guy aiding a genocide but making progress elsewhere" and "guy who would actively and enthusiastically participate in a genocide and would also make everything else much, much worse for everyone elsewhere" and the response was that there must be a third, morally pure option that doesn't require them to make a hard decision and that anyone who asks them to make a binary choice is a short-sighted idiot.