Postfurries, Twitter, and "After Dark"

[rax]

So, a bunch of my friends are postfurries [0], and I follow a number of them on Twitter, which I vacillate between finding enjoyable and finding really frustrating because I can't express nuance well in 140 characters. Often they talk about stuff like anyone else talks about on twitter --- what they had for dinner that evening, they missed the bus

Comments

[jadia]

I feel like this sort of thing is also somewhat the problem with how things on the internet are different from things in real life. I think really what you are talking about is that online, things get all jumbled together. You're getting breakfast blogging right next to being in someone's bedroom while they get it on, right next to a discussion of social justice

[rax]

I think that the concepts of "space" and "place" on the internet differ, but they still exist, and figuring that out is sort of the job of the intersection of informatics and geography in a really exciting way I don't know much about. Like, twitter is set up for a certain type of things like a grocery store is, but the things are technical more than they are topical. I do feel like I get different sides of people between LJ, Twitter, IRC

[jadia]

Fair comment on the concepts of place and space being different but still there on the internet. I guess I'm still just figuring out the *how*...but you're right, I see different sides of people with LJ vs. gchat, etc. For instance I have conversations on LJ that would be a *lot* harder to have in person and impossible to have in twitter

[shatterstripes]

I solve it by just not following the Twitter accounts of people who scene on Twitter. Some of them are following me, I'm fine with that.

I also kinda don't follow the "postfurry" scene any more so I dunno if I'm really qualified to weigh in on the social problem of postfurries sceneing via their locked twitter accounts. Hell, I haven't had any kind of weird impossible net sex in a year and a half.

[rax]

The problem with selectively unfollowing folks who do this sort of thing --- for me, anyway --- is that then I get all of these irritating half-conversations and end up having to go look at their tweets anyway, or just not care.

It might be time to harness the power of not caring, but that's never been one of my core competencies. ;)

[bitter_crimson]

You can also set it so you don't see peoples @ replies unless they're @ people you also follow. I mean, this maybe also requires harnessing the power of not caring, but there is that. (I do this to avoid long discussions people have about technical fandom things on twitter I don't care about, and it mostly works, except for the times when I follow both of them, darn it.)

(On that note, and more related to your entry maybe, it's also become popular lately to use twitter accounts for fandom roleplaying, which I find amusing but it is totally not relevant to my interests. Thankfully people tend to create dedicated accounts to do that, so I can easily avoid them most of the time by not following -- I just see things when ppl I follow decide to retweet some roleplay tweet, etc.)

[rax]

I had that for a while but I kept getting thirds of conversations where three people were talking and I followed two of them and that was also annoying. Basically, twitter kind of sucks. ;)

Fandom roleplaying I think works similarly? I dunno, I've not really done it.

Non academic input you say?

[ext_758926]

The primary issue of consent is interesting, especially because it is what changes the definition ostracization versus claiming territory

Re: Non academic input you say?

[rax]

I do think any media is broadcast, but there's a difference between something that you have to go get and something that's pushed onto your screen. Tweets don't have cut tags and that matters. I mean, if folks really want to stake a claim to public twitter accounts as a place they can scene, that's their right, but I'm probably gonna unfollow them eventually, and I'm not sure it's the best move to make politically either. I think "consenting" is an important part of the "wide audience" bit. Of course, staking a claim sometimes means sharing things with people who don't want to see them --- thus, you know, coming out of the closet. So it's not just simple.

I do like the idea of being a bouncer rather than being in hiding.

[kelkyag]

While you frame this as a postfurry issue, I think it's a pretty broadly human one. I've been trying to figure out how I want to wrangle a similar situation -- in particular, one of the authors I've recently started following writes a range from child-friendly through not-my-kink. This is at least on a medium that does provide tagging (which the author uses lots of) and filters, and may be an overdue push for me to sort out what I want to read and how often I want to look at it

[rax]

I do think it's a more general problem, but I'm looking at it in a particular slice both because that's where I ran into it and because I think the specificity is helpful. (In another community, things would be a little different, and things don't quite generalize.) I'm still figuring out where my time/effort tradeoffs are too.

I've given up on putting together a G+ rant. I just have G+ exasperation.

[kelkyag]

Details will certainly vary wildly. I'm wondering whether there are useful common solutions, technological or social. And how much different communities will vary in putting the responsibility for filtering on the reader or the writer.

Now I wonder if Miss Manners has written anything on the topic ...

[cat_in_dminor]

Least productive comment on this journal. I got up to you saying 'drug use' and started to giggle.

God i'm terrible, and I have a one track mind.

[rax]

Terrible? No. But one-track mind I'll grant you. ;)