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soc_puppetToday I’m going to take a moment to talk about a major cultural difference between Tumbr and Dreamwidth, and that is Audience. That is to say, the person or people you assume will be reading what you post.
On Tumblr, when you post something and tag it, you post with the assumption that anyone, anywhere can and might stumble across it at any time; you have to be mentally and emotionally prepared for the interactions you will face. Since many of the people who will potentially see your post are people who don’t know you, and who you don’t know, one of the things you have to be prepared for is Bad Faith Interactions: Where a person reads what you have written and comes to the worst possible conclusion about both the writing and about you, and is prepared to take their conclusion directly to the source.
Since Tumblr is a content aggregation site, if something you write takes off, the odds that it will reach people who will misinterpret what you wrote and are willing to fight over it are higher than they are on other blogging platforms. If you only have a few followers on Tumblr, the odds of Bad Faith Interactions are fairly low; however, it is never impossible, and the odds go up with every follower you gain.
On Dreamwidth, you have one primary audience (that is, people who are primarily there for you), and many optional secondary audiences (people who might be there for you, but are just as likely, if not more so, to be there for a more general subject).
( Primary Audience: Your own journal's followers )
So that’s your primary audience interactions. Secondary audiences are those who follow communities you may post to.
( Secondary Audiences: Community subscribers )
Overall, between these two factors, the interactions you’ll have with people on Dreamwidth will likely be of a very different character than those you have on Tumblr.
Is it still possible to have huge flame wars and fandom wankfests on Dreamwidth? Absolutely; they happened with frequency on LiveJournal, which is the structure Dreamwidth was originally based on. But in general, it’s easier to control the types of interaction you have on Dreamwidth than on Tumblr, and that includes fandom content and interactions.
As always, if you think I missed or misrepresented something, want to point something out, or have any questions, please let me know!
On Tumblr, when you post something and tag it, you post with the assumption that anyone, anywhere can and might stumble across it at any time; you have to be mentally and emotionally prepared for the interactions you will face. Since many of the people who will potentially see your post are people who don’t know you, and who you don’t know, one of the things you have to be prepared for is Bad Faith Interactions: Where a person reads what you have written and comes to the worst possible conclusion about both the writing and about you, and is prepared to take their conclusion directly to the source.
Since Tumblr is a content aggregation site, if something you write takes off, the odds that it will reach people who will misinterpret what you wrote and are willing to fight over it are higher than they are on other blogging platforms. If you only have a few followers on Tumblr, the odds of Bad Faith Interactions are fairly low; however, it is never impossible, and the odds go up with every follower you gain.
On Dreamwidth, you have one primary audience (that is, people who are primarily there for you), and many optional secondary audiences (people who might be there for you, but are just as likely, if not more so, to be there for a more general subject).
( Primary Audience: Your own journal's followers )
So that’s your primary audience interactions. Secondary audiences are those who follow communities you may post to.
( Secondary Audiences: Community subscribers )
Overall, between these two factors, the interactions you’ll have with people on Dreamwidth will likely be of a very different character than those you have on Tumblr.
Is it still possible to have huge flame wars and fandom wankfests on Dreamwidth? Absolutely; they happened with frequency on LiveJournal, which is the structure Dreamwidth was originally based on. But in general, it’s easier to control the types of interaction you have on Dreamwidth than on Tumblr, and that includes fandom content and interactions.
As always, if you think I missed or misrepresented something, want to point something out, or have any questions, please let me know!
