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Sep. 1st, 2020 01:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hungryghostsIn light of the most recent round of slapfights in the #PluralGang Twitter tag, we remembered this essay by someone on Pillowfort about why Tumblr's reblog-to-comment system (and similar systems elsewhere) is damaging to mental health and community.
There's a lot of good points in here, but the part that I'm especially thinking about right now (emphases theirs):
This was why we flat-out quit Tumblr and have mostly quit Twitter except for a few tags we check manually, while logged out to curtail the temptation to participate. (Even during the time we were participating, we had a strict rule to NEVER so much as give the slapfight the time of day.) We couldn't in good conscience continue to participate in a platform that was systematically poisoning our communities along with our own mental health. There are definitely ways for communities to grow toxic even on platforms that have strong content controls and clear commenting systems, as LB's most recent essay on plural history describes, but... something about Tumblr's and to a lesser degree Twitter's system of communication has lent itself to a special degree of egregiousness.
Anyway. Onto happier things and better ways to spend our time. We've placed an order for a new computer that can HOPEFULLY run things at over 20 FPS and we are SUPER excited to re-experience Tyria in its full, non-migraine-inducing glory. :D
There's a lot of good points in here, but the part that I'm especially thinking about right now (emphases theirs):
Reblogging to disagree still boosts a post’s visibility. It still spreads that post farther than it would have otherwise. It still exposes it to more with more eyes. Even with your witty burn at the end, you’re still expanding its reach. It's still extending "a platform," as they say. By comparison, commenting to disagree makes it far easier to argue with a bad post without boosting its circulation.
This has two consequences right off the bat. One, not all bad posts are created equal. They all come in varying degrees of provocation to respond. From what I’ve witnessed, the motivation to add with disagreement or reblog added-disagreement is greatest not when a post is “slightly off” (which might encourage engaging in nuanced ways), but rather when the badness of original post is perceived as outlandishly severe, and this means that the worst stuff attracts the most circulation. Secondly, even if everyone who encounters the added-disagreement version takes the side of the adder/critic (which they might not!), that boosted visibility can still have negative consequences, because in aggregate, a site culture of reblogging to disagree means a site culture of continuous re-exposure to the things you hate.
Continuous re-exposure to the things you hate will stress you out. Stressed out people become less charitable toward others, more inclined to make snap judgements, and much quicker to lash out in anger.
This was why we flat-out quit Tumblr and have mostly quit Twitter except for a few tags we check manually, while logged out to curtail the temptation to participate. (Even during the time we were participating, we had a strict rule to NEVER so much as give the slapfight the time of day.) We couldn't in good conscience continue to participate in a platform that was systematically poisoning our communities along with our own mental health. There are definitely ways for communities to grow toxic even on platforms that have strong content controls and clear commenting systems, as LB's most recent essay on plural history describes, but... something about Tumblr's and to a lesser degree Twitter's system of communication has lent itself to a special degree of egregiousness.
Anyway. Onto happier things and better ways to spend our time. We've placed an order for a new computer that can HOPEFULLY run things at over 20 FPS and we are SUPER excited to re-experience Tyria in its full, non-migraine-inducing glory. :D
