1. How did you find Dreamwidth? What attracted you to this platform? Why did you start blogging? I'm pretty sure I followed
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
syntheid across - my very first post makes reference to someone 'allowing' me to start using DW, as it was still in its beta, invite-only phase, and Lane's always been the platform adventurer (and generous supplier of invite codes).
I don't really remember what the initial attraction was. LJ was still going strong then, and that same first post admits to having no real plan for a new blog when I had so many on the go already. It was just new and interesting and I liked hoarding things, even if I wouldn't start using it in any kind of earnest for another two years.
2. How long have you been blogging on Dreamwidth? What has changed here, or in your life, over that timespan?Since 10 May 2009, apparently, meaning we are rapidly coming up on this blog's 14th anniversary. Good lord.
What has changed here? I started actually blogging, for one thing - for most of its lifespan DW served as a cross-posting storage unit for fic, and not even a particularly comprehensive one at that. These days it's morphed into something of a home base for any sort of longer-form rumination, be on media, world events, or personal life.
What has changed in my life? 14 years, mate. A lot in some ways, not as much as you'd think in others.
3. What are your favorite things about Dreamwidth? What do you dislike about it? What do you wish it had, or had more of?Top likes:
- Slower pace, much more control over personal FOMO; can put it down for weeks or months without great issue.
- Easier to have actual conversations.
- PRIVACY. Filters, feeds, easy tagging. Randos cannot easily stumble upon a post and thrust it out of its context.
- DW is one of the few places where it feels like I can be social about media without it being Social Media (TM). Less the drive to create for the sake of staying relevant; less people breathing offense down necks for not being good little consumers and reblogging their material; less generally feeling trapped in a marketing cycle, forever at the mercy of the nebulous mass known as The Audience.
- Easier to build up a circle of mutuals vs a horde of unknowns. Combined with the above point, much fewer mass depersonalisation issues? Not that LJ didn't manage to generate hideous amounts of drama; I'm sure DW could too if it were larger.
- Ficathons and Friending Memes! I just think they're neat.
- Icons are great and we as an online society lost so much when we forced people to mostly only stick to one at a time.
Image-hosting / sharing is a huge pain, though, the coding can be clunky, and I wish the platform were easier to use on mobile; honestly think the latter is a huge barrier to any kind of mass uptake. The circles I can build are smaller and more general - it's perfect for just kicking heels around in 'fandom' as a general concept, but if I want to find and get in the thick of
a fandom then Tumblr beats DW by miles. And, of course, most communities seem to end up more or less DOA. As much as I often lament the fade out of forums and old LJ communities, I think it has to be admitted it's just not what people want anymore.
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