Warning, fandom rant.
I was gonna piggyback ride off Tagedezorns post about falling out of love with the fandom.
Dont get me wrong, I still fucking LOVE 40k.
Im having a great time painting my minis, reading the lore, reading and talking with the BL authors on twitter or talking the ears off the staff in my local GW (don’t worry, they love it, and they have some fantastic HC’s too!)
But the rest of it is sadly losing its appeal for me as well, and it saddens me to see other fan artists or writers feeling the same, I thought it was just me.
When I first started to become active in the shipping fandom about a couple of years ago it was fantastic. I felt so welcome and wanted, I had never gotten a reception like that in any fandom before. I even faced my fear and started writing fanfiction, and people seemed to love it.
But the last months/year it feels like it’s all gone. As if Tumblr has died, it feels like I’m shouting into the void. (I have a few people who still interact on my posts and I see you and I love you). But I have eightdoubled my followers last year, but that hasn’t resulted in any more interaction, other than a few more likes. But to be fair, likes does nothing.
Im not an influencer or a content creator, and I have zero aspirations to become one. That is why I stopped doing tiktoks. I do not want to chase trends or algorithms, I want to be unhinged about my blorbos and see people being unhinged about their blorbos in turn.
I love the intense passion fandom can have, even when it’s not a character I’m personally into.
I really don’t want Tumblr to die. I have tried Discord and it was the most alienating and disheartening experience I’ve had since like high school.
When I first tried it out it was soo much fun, but as time went on, more and more people who seemed to like me stopped posting on there, and more and more whenever I posted I just got straight up ignored.
I could post in a channel that had been dead for weeks, and suddenly people started posting about other things, everyone ignoring what I wrote. If it happened once or twice I wouldn’t have bothered, but a dozen or more times? It just fucking sucks. I noticed how it started affecting my mental health, trying to reach out and talk to people, but just being talked around and over. So I just stopped posting.
If someone doesn’t like me on Tumblr I won’t notice or get sad, but seeing it happen in real-time just fucking sucks.
And also, on Tumblr there is always the off chance that your post gets necromanced. That just doesn’t happen on Discord.
And another thing that has happened a lot is I write a fic or a Tumblr post. It gets zero interaction, and I’m like “oh I guess no one is interested about that,” and then I see that someone has just reposted my fic/post in a discord and people are geeking out over it over there.
I’m not a paid artist/writer. I do what I do because I want to geek out over something, preferably with someone else. But I effectively become removed from my art. People are discussing it, just not with me.
Dealing with being unliked as a person fucking sucks. Especially when it’s supposed to be your hobby-fun-time. And it is making me not want to post stuff anymore.