Paid Accounts

[prixmium]

I just got a paid account again after letting mine lapse for about a year. I had meant to do it ages ago, but I just haven't been spending a lot of time genuinely thinking when I'm online lately. I go through phases of having a burst of creative energy, but for the most part I spend all my energy at work. The thing is, it's not miserable exactly. Most days my job is bearable to enjoyable. I still wish that I had more fannish and personal creative energy more consistently, though.

I mean, it's hard to blame anyone for feeling a kind of cloud of dread, even while bearing in mind and praying for those who are actually suffering living in a war zone and other things right now.

In the interest of fannish preservation, I saw some stuff today of certain people panicking about backing up LiveJournal stuff before Russian internet goes totally offline or state-locked. There were responses to the posts about how the need to back up LJ fandom history or lose it has been known for a decade or more and that there have already been substantial efforts to do so.

When dreamwidth and tumblr were both in their first days of fandom relevance, I pushed for dreamwidth to my friends before pretty photosets hooked me into tumblr for years.

Lately, I've spent more time on tumblr than I have in years, because I am very selective with what I follow and mostly run a "personal" that's a lot of pictures of animals, niche humor, low-stakes reference posts, and fandoms I don't have enough energy to devote a lot of time to and a YuGiOh blog. Years back, I liked hving the big mishmash of everything, but these days the focus helps me to get into a less "professional" headspace and not to worry about things so much. It's not like either get a lot of traction.

Today, half the internet went down. According to a tumblr post I saw it was because some kind of API (I don't know what that is) called Chromium (based on the name, I'm assuming it belongs to google) went down and lots and lots of websites use it. However, tumblr and (as far as I know) dreamwidth trucked on.

Recently, tumblr has introduced a "pay for ad-free" subscription at $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year. This resulted in a lot of users spewing vitriol at a lot of them and a lot of digital tongue-sticking-out at the fact that most tumblr users use some kind of browser extension to block almost all of their attempts at ad-based monetization and "relevance" beyond what users themselves curate. And I get the reaction, but at the same time, as tumblr seems to be becoming more and more relaxed on the whole NSFW ban that caused so much migration and disaffection with it in the first place, I think it is amazing to see them moving a little closer toward a "users as customer" instead of a "users as product" model which is the main appeal of this website.

I think they both serve different, if occasionally concurrent purposes, and I bought a dreamwidth paid account for a year at the same time I bought a tumblr one. That might be about $70 for a lot of nothing, but I feel like since I finally got a month where I'm not dead broke, it was worth "voting with my wallet" about thi kind of internet.

I'm also interested in playing with neocities if I ever get inspiration to do something with it.

I'm on Spring Break this week, and I'd like to write something fannish during it. So far the most fun-thing I've done is play Genshin (f2p) though. My best friend really likes it, and it's nice to share interests.

Comments

[oldtoadwoman]

I always say I'm going to do something with my neocities account, but I never do.

[prixmium]

Its purpose is to build kinda Web 1.0 websites, right?

neocities

[oldtoadwoman]

Yeah. I was so excited when I found it existed because I had that nostalgia for, "Oh, wow, I remember GeoCities!" except now... I don't know what I'd bother making a website for. Back when I was in college it was fan websites with my fic et cetera and that's all on AO3 now.

[kay_brooke]

The thing is, it's not miserable exactly. Most days my job is bearable to enjoyable. I still wish that I had more fannish and personal creative energy more consistently, though.

This is exactly where I am right now. It's hard; I want to write, but "enough time to write" and "enough mental energy to write" are not states that coincide for me very often these days.

But you have reminded me that I meant to renew my DW paid account months ago and then promptly forgot about it. I'll go and do that.

[prixmium]

The coincidence of motivation and energy!!! That's the trick.

What is your icon meant to convey? I'm curious!

[kay_brooke]

It's a drawing of a DNA base-pair (adenine and thymine). The text is DNA: my OTP. Because each nucleic acid in DNA will only ever bind to a specific other nucleic acid. Adenine and thymine only bind with each other, while cytosine and guanine only bind with each other. It's just a geeky science thing with a little bit of fandom flair, which I thought made for a good default icon.

[anneapocalypse]

I have found myself venturing back to tumblr mostly to look at (and reblog) fan art lately, though I don't know how active I will decide to be apart from that. Having had a paid dreamwwidth account for a couple years now, it is almost surreal to see tumblr users angry about a paid option (though I realize "pay to make ads go away" is different than "pay for extra features on an already-ad-free site). It may not be perfect, but any kind of paid account indicates tumblr leaning a little bit closer to being a product for the users first, and I'm definitely in favor of that! If I ever end up being very active there again, I'd consider paying for it. Like you said, it's more about supporting the kind of internet we want to have where possible.

Mentions of backing up lj to dreamwidth conjured up vague memories of a long-ago livejournal I used to have. We'll see if I can even remember the password! :')

[prixmium]

I briefly tried to mess around with my LJ several years ago, but ultimately I just decided to let it go with the TOS changed in order to accommodate Russia's anti-LGBT laws.

I think tumblr people have gotten quite accustomed to avoiding tumblr's attempts at monetization because they were the wrong kinds of monetization for its extant primary userbase. Then some younger user are mostly the ones who feel entitled to the platform being there forever without ever finding a way to be profitable (or even sustainable for that matter).

[anneapocalypse]

Yeah, that's very true. Tumblr has not exactly built itself a reputation for catering to the needs of its users and the userbase has kind of gotten used to having an automatically hostile relationship with any new features and especially any new attempts at monetization. That's a hard precedent to undo, even with the best of intentions.

[sideways]

Solidarity fistbump for the sad awareness of how much energy is being redirected from creative pursuits, even if the job itself is enjoyable.

I saw something about a Tumblr store with merchandise? Assuming it isn't a staff prank, I'll be amused to see what comes out of that.

[prixmium]

I think they're doing a sort of pop-up online store for the 15 year anniversary of its operation? I know I've been using it for 10 years at least.

[sideways]

...Yeah, I joined sometime around 2012/13. Ye gods.