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Apr. 22nd, 2020 08:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7via https://ift.tt/34YekQK
Oh, no, not at all– listen, I’ve been online many many years, and it’s long past the time where I used to think things were super weird when they transitioned from one to the other. Like, if you were Googling for “farms near Troy” and found my sister, would that be weird, to be like, “I found you online”– no, that’s part of her business plan.
It’s also part of my… I won’t say I have a personal brand, but I have given consideration, over the last 20 years or so I’ve been journaling online, to what is worth writing about and what I mostly don’t. I try to tell my little life stories in engaging ways, and while yeah, I feel like my most dedicated audience is Future!Me, I’ve done some work over the years on trying to make those stories appealing to other people. I write engagingly about my life because I do like people to read about it. And I’ve learned, sometimes the hard way, not to talk about stuff on here I don’t want people to know, which can be harder to remember than you’d think. I talk about the good and the bad, and I’m generally pretty honest (I’ve only I think twice published actual untruths, and both of those were within my first year of blogging), but it’s not just an unfiltered stream of consciousness on here, though it can often seem like it is.
I’m not a BNF on here, but I do have over a thousand followers now and I am aware of that. I can’t filter like I did on LJ, so I have to be more judicious, but I’m also not likely to attract people with bad intentions, and if that changes I’d have to change my behavior but it hasn’t so far, so I’m good. (Knock wood, I guess; please don’t be dicks, guys?)
I talk about Tumblr people as “an online friend” and it’s not generally weird. I met a new local person via Tumblr when the lockdown orders first started coming down, and gave her a sourdough starter, and that worked out great and nobody got murdered. Another longtime online person who I don’t even think follows me back asked for penpals, and when I gave her my address, we found out she lives seven doors down from the house I’m staying in now– how fun! It’s not weird. Like, there are always dangers when you meet new people, but it doesn’t have to be weird.
I’m just a realtime, Internet, essay/memoirist, and sometimes there are weird leaps in intimacy– and I have always been slightly unnerved upon meeting lurkers, but I’ve gotten more and more comfortable with that as time goes on; I know someone I was close to in like third grade exclusively lurks on my Facebook, has never commented, but her mom tells my mom things about my life when they talk, and it’s weird that she never says hi but I also understand, she’s not a person who’s comfortable talking online very much.
My sister would probably just laugh if you said “So I heard abut your farm because your sister writes about it on the Internet”, because that wouldn’t at all be the first time she’s had that happen. Some of her most assiduous Instagram followers are people I’ve pointed that way– because connections happen where they happen. So that’s why I decided a while back that I am going to be linking to the farm by name and using things that’d show up in Google.
There are dangers, sure, but I’ve been stalked by people I met IRL way more often than online ones, and nobody tells you that you shouldn’t join social groups or attend college classes to meet friends.
It’s just always a tiny bit awkward when people are like “so how do you know so-and-so” and it’s like “ha ha well she runs a shitpost Tumblr and writes really hot erotic fanfiction and we got talking?” but I mean, it’s 2020, that’s how the world works now, more or less…
And the farm sister has read all my MCU stuff including the rated E stuff, to my mild chagrin, so I guess I have no secret corners of the Internet left to me really.
Oh, no, not at all– listen, I’ve been online many many years, and it’s long past the time where I used to think things were super weird when they transitioned from one to the other. Like, if you were Googling for “farms near Troy” and found my sister, would that be weird, to be like, “I found you online”– no, that’s part of her business plan.
It’s also part of my… I won’t say I have a personal brand, but I have given consideration, over the last 20 years or so I’ve been journaling online, to what is worth writing about and what I mostly don’t. I try to tell my little life stories in engaging ways, and while yeah, I feel like my most dedicated audience is Future!Me, I’ve done some work over the years on trying to make those stories appealing to other people. I write engagingly about my life because I do like people to read about it. And I’ve learned, sometimes the hard way, not to talk about stuff on here I don’t want people to know, which can be harder to remember than you’d think. I talk about the good and the bad, and I’m generally pretty honest (I’ve only I think twice published actual untruths, and both of those were within my first year of blogging), but it’s not just an unfiltered stream of consciousness on here, though it can often seem like it is.
I’m not a BNF on here, but I do have over a thousand followers now and I am aware of that. I can’t filter like I did on LJ, so I have to be more judicious, but I’m also not likely to attract people with bad intentions, and if that changes I’d have to change my behavior but it hasn’t so far, so I’m good. (Knock wood, I guess; please don’t be dicks, guys?)
I talk about Tumblr people as “an online friend” and it’s not generally weird. I met a new local person via Tumblr when the lockdown orders first started coming down, and gave her a sourdough starter, and that worked out great and nobody got murdered. Another longtime online person who I don’t even think follows me back asked for penpals, and when I gave her my address, we found out she lives seven doors down from the house I’m staying in now– how fun! It’s not weird. Like, there are always dangers when you meet new people, but it doesn’t have to be weird.
I’m just a realtime, Internet, essay/memoirist, and sometimes there are weird leaps in intimacy– and I have always been slightly unnerved upon meeting lurkers, but I’ve gotten more and more comfortable with that as time goes on; I know someone I was close to in like third grade exclusively lurks on my Facebook, has never commented, but her mom tells my mom things about my life when they talk, and it’s weird that she never says hi but I also understand, she’s not a person who’s comfortable talking online very much.
My sister would probably just laugh if you said “So I heard abut your farm because your sister writes about it on the Internet”, because that wouldn’t at all be the first time she’s had that happen. Some of her most assiduous Instagram followers are people I’ve pointed that way– because connections happen where they happen. So that’s why I decided a while back that I am going to be linking to the farm by name and using things that’d show up in Google.
There are dangers, sure, but I’ve been stalked by people I met IRL way more often than online ones, and nobody tells you that you shouldn’t join social groups or attend college classes to meet friends.
It’s just always a tiny bit awkward when people are like “so how do you know so-and-so” and it’s like “ha ha well she runs a shitpost Tumblr and writes really hot erotic fanfiction and we got talking?” but I mean, it’s 2020, that’s how the world works now, more or less…
And the farm sister has read all my MCU stuff including the rated E stuff, to my mild chagrin, so I guess I have no secret corners of the Internet left to me really.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-22 09:44 pm (UTC)It's a server where wallet names aren't used (there are a couple of exceptions), and people often go by pseudonyms even beyond their usual internet handles. So talking about being local is almost weird, except it isn't because it feels really good to have some kind of local connection to someone I don't already know.