wiseheart: (Tosh_flowers)
[personal profile] wiseheart
Hi folks! *waves" I know I'm late kicking off my virtual birthday party of 2013, but considering that I worked almost 11 hours today, I think I can be forgiven, right?

It's that time of a year again - I'm getting older. In this case, I'm turning 57 on October 9, so let's party!

Last years virtual birthday party yielded 1328 comments on 6 pages, before LJ crashed the whole thing, and 617 additional ones on 3 pages at the second coming. Which won't be easy to top, but we're good, aren't we? WE CAN DO IT! WE CAN BREAK THE 2000-COMMENT-BARRIER! Let's give it a try! In the recent years, it has always been great fun, so let's have fun again!

You're all cordially invited to help yourself to a slice of virtual cake of your choice. If you want to post your favourite recipe in a comment, be my guest. If not, just drop by and say hello.

Cheers!

Note: The party will be closed on October 9, at midnight, sharp. However, to avoid the same mishap that occurred last year, there will be a separate post for each day until the 9th. We will count all pages and comments together when the party is closed.

Join us and have fun! Feel free to start any thread, any topic you want; we can discuss it, mock the general stupidity of life and laugh at it. I tentatively started two topics, just to begin the fun somehow, but you may add anything you want.

(no subject)

Date: 2013-10-01 07:57 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] tyellas.livejournal.com
Topic #2: Fandom's shift onto Tumblr

Happy birthday! I'm going to settle in here with my own personal Sachertorte and a fork and ask what people think about fandom moving onto Tumblr. I was pleasantly startled to find acres of Silmarillion slash over there earlier this week, but...do I want to play, or just comment? I've held back on Tumblr because I am ten years older than I was last time around in fandom, and because there's only so many hours in the day. Discussions and your own Tumblr links are welcome.

(no subject)

Date: 2013-10-01 08:06 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] wiseheart.livejournal.com
Thank you. I envy you for your Sachertorte. ;)

I'm not on Tumblr myself; the few times I tried to follow some leads there I got hopelessly lost and very, very frustrated. I'm clearly too old for such a hectic medium, which is a shame but cannot be helped.

(no subject)

Date: 2013-10-01 10:36 pm (UTC)
artemis10002000: Don't drink water... fish have sex in it (AustriaHungary)
From: [personal profile] artemis10002000
It's super confusing at first, but I've found as long as you don't try to actually *find* something particular there, it's quite fun. I can't get it to work as an archive for me in any way, so it's useless for fics or such, but just to find amusing tidbits of fandom life or such.... It's quite entertaining.

(no subject)

Date: 2013-10-01 08:15 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ideealisme.livejournal.com
I write very little fanfiction, but given you can't comment on tumblr, it seems a bit pointless in any case.

(no subject)

Date: 2013-10-01 08:42 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] tyellas.livejournal.com
[livejournal.com profile] ideealisme, the young'ins there do communicate via the "ask" function, and even have dialogues and role-playing. This is Thing #1967 that makes me personally feel old.

[livejournal.com profile] wiseheart, hectic is the word! And here, have a sachertorte of your own. I even got you a fork.

(no subject)

Date: 2013-10-01 08:54 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] wiseheart.livejournal.com
Awww, thanks! Virtual Sachertorte with no calories, yum!
It's a beautiful one. MIne gets lopsided every time I try to bake one from the scratch. Yummy, but not that pretty-looking.

(no subject)

Date: 2013-10-03 02:45 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lhun-dweller.livejournal.com
[slips into the party a tad late and sidles up to the torte]
Mmmmmm....
Köszönöm, Wiseheart! And happy birthday!

(no subject)

Date: 2013-10-03 10:17 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] wiseheart.livejournal.com
Theside of the cake is always the right side.;))

(no subject)

Date: 2013-10-01 10:35 pm (UTC)
artemis10002000: Don't drink water... fish have sex in it (AustriaHungary)
From: [personal profile] artemis10002000
I've been eyeing the move to Tumblr with mixed feelings!

It's fun at first when it was an additional medium to drool over pics of your favorite characters. I find it difficult to communicate over Tumblr, though, and thus have never gotten past being a spectator.

I do have a Tumblr account for reblogging/memorizing things I like
(deleted comment)

(no subject)

Date: 2013-10-02 01:27 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] tyellas.livejournal.com
You often find it via tags. But some of the tags are wacky and arbitrary - #SilmarillionHeretics is a tag, as an example.

I'm going to try and explain Tumblr because I have to explain it in a workshop tomorrow.

Tumblr was started as a blogging platform with two stated goals and one unstated goal: to be super-easy to use, to not even require fully finishing a thought to share it, and (unstated/unintentional) to be a communications platform for people who are aliterate - people who don't want to read anymore.

This article here describes backstage at Tumblr. http://nymag.com/news/business/boom-brands/tumblr-2013-10/

Importantly, it also provides some distance/hipness by association by introducing *reblogging*, sharing images or information. You can build a Tumblr entirely on reblogging visual content provided by other people, so that, instead of describing yourself or providing something new - inconvenient requirements of most blogging platforms - you can curate yourself from other peoples' creations. "The new blogging would be less about writing and more about declaring a personal sensibility. Thanks to an innovation called the reblog, users wouldn’t even need to create anything themselves; they could just post what they scavenged elsewhere and, Karp says, “use that curation to tell their stories.” He sees Tumblr as a tool for “the most talented people in the world.”

As a result, Tumblrs often seem strange, surreal, and opaque. I know two women who have Tumblrs and similar tastes and their Tumblr feeds look almost identical: airy shades of peach and white, delicate hip fonts, images of foxes and vintage dresses. One woman is a 25 year old model, dancer, and girl about town. The other woman is 45 and stays at home due to extreme anxiety disorder. But they have curated nearly identical online identities.

Tumblr has made being a fan artist or decent Photoshopper a lot more important in fandom. BNFs now often have these skills rather than being writers/forum explainers extraordinare.

My entry into Tumblr was one created by an LJ friend from my palmy fandom days ten years ago who is about my age. Because of this I found her stuff a bit more comprehensible than others, and even enjoyed it, and explored some more.

http://vulgarweed.tumblr.com/

Er, does this help?

(no subject)

Date: 2013-10-02 01:51 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] espresso-addict.livejournal.com
This is really interesting -- it would explain why it's hard to find real-seeming content, if content creation is not a core function.
(deleted comment)

(no subject)

Date: 2013-10-02 02:05 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] espresso-addict.livejournal.com
I suspect it's aimed at those people who used to run LJs entirely full of quizzes & LOLcats & the like, but the popularity of the medium has swept in others who used to blog with content.

(no subject)

Date: 2013-10-02 01:58 am (UTC)
From: [personal profile] a_starfish
Yep! I think my own frustration with it was in part from misunderstanding what it was for and thinking there was a world of content I couldn't find rather than considering that the content might not be there to find.

(no subject)

Date: 2013-10-05 03:49 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com
Very interesting explanation.

I'm another one who has never managed tog get into tumblr (or stay on twitter much) -- guess when I want to talk to people or share links, I tend to do so on irc (or campfire - chat program otw volunteers work on), and when I want to post stuff it ends up on lj/dw. I suppose it is partly because I am much more interested in text than pictures....

(no subject)

Date: 2013-10-02 01:53 am (UTC)
From: [personal profile] a_starfish
Yes it does! Thank you so much for taking the time to explain it. I can definitely see the aliterate aspect to it and the amorphous 'identity' Tumblr creates. I shall come back and read the article (and poke around Tumblr a bit more) when I've had some sleep.

(no subject)

Date: 2013-10-02 01:45 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] espresso-addict.livejournal.com
I've tried to understand tumblr but repeatedly failed. Lots of tumblrs seem crash or hang my browser, and almost all the ones that don't seem to have little/no original content. Am I just too old to understand? Or is there something obvious I'm missing?

(no subject)

Date: 2013-10-02 01:46 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] tyellas.livejournal.com
See my explanation attempt immediately above...and nice to see you!

(no subject)

Date: 2013-10-02 01:54 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] espresso-addict.livejournal.com
And you! I stumbled across your explanation after commenting, which just shows it's not just tumblr that defeats me :)

(no subject)

Date: 2013-10-02 04:39 am (UTC)
ext_422737: uncle hallway (Hallway)
From: [identity profile] elmey.livejournal.com
I found after a while, that I didn't like using tumblr for fandom, and nowadays I just check the tags once in a while. That's enough to make me feel I'm not missing anything--I'm not in any big fandoms anyway. It's probably more exciting for on-going fandoms, where there are always new photos of the actors, and new gossip coming out. All my fandoms are old and closed. And I like fic and meta and for that I need functional tags, and I get no thrill from reblogging.

But I've found tumblr very useful for following photography blogs, and a few other obscure interests. Also for magazines: I always found them too overwhelming via rss, they threw everything at you. On tumblr they "curate" and just give you some highlights every day. So I do use mine, more as a reader/viewer than anything else.

(no subject)

Date: 2013-10-02 10:23 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rcfinch.livejournal.com
I, dinosaur, have no experience with Tumbr whatsoever. How does it work?

(no subject)

Date: 2013-10-03 02:49 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] shimere277.livejournal.com
I'm quite active on tumblr, but only in music fandom. If you want to share pictures, videos or music, it's wonderful. If you want to communicate with people, it's ridiculous. But I think it's better not to communicate with people over there anyway - it seems like half of them are 14 years old, and I don't want to risk saying anything age-inappropriate. For fiction, I'm still using LJ.

(no subject)

Date: 2013-10-03 01:33 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] wiseheart.livejournal.com
I'm very sad to see even people of my generation (or only slightly longer) migrating away from LJ. This was such a calm, versatile forum for keeping tab on each other in the long run, finding new people of similar interests, discovering new fandoms and finding worthy stories through these people. It's a shame that all this should be lost.

(no subject)

Date: 2013-10-01 11:25 pm (UTC)
From: [personal profile] a_starfish
Ooo! Interesting topic. I don't understand how people (a) find stuff on Tumblr (especially to revisit later) and (b) find/post anything of any length (c) discuss anything. Basically I don't understand Tumblr at all. I wish I did understand Tumblr because I loved the buzz of things happening and there being a continual stream of new works to devour and discuss. I follow people, look at things but I hate the frustration of not being able to comment on anything in any meaningful way. It does seem to be good for sharing images/gifs though.
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