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newcomersToday I’m going to take a moment to talk about a major cultural difference between Tumbr and Dreamwidth, and that is Audience. That is to say, the person or people you assume will be reading what you post.
On Tumblr, when you post something and tag it, you post with the assumption that anyone, anywhere can and might stumble across it at any time; you have to be mentally and emotionally prepared for the interactions you will face. Since many of the people who will potentially see your post are people who don’t know you, and who you don’t know, one of the things you have to be prepared for is Bad Faith Interactions: Where a person reads what you have written and comes to the worst possible conclusion about both the writing and about you, and is prepared to take their conclusion directly to the source.
Since Tumblr is a content aggregation site, if something you write takes off, the odds that it will reach people who will misinterpret what you wrote and are willing to fight over it are higher than they are on other blogging platforms. If you only have a few followers on Tumblr, the odds of Bad Faith Interactions are fairly low; however, it is never impossible, and the odds go up with every follower you gain.
On Dreamwidth, you have one primary audience (that is, people who are primarily there for you), and many optional secondary audiences (people who might be there for you, but are just as likely, if not more so, to be there for a more general subject).
When you are posting on your own journal, the majority of people who read what you post are your own followers, rather than any random internet user who happens to also be logged into the site. Sure, someone may stumble across your post on the Latest Things Page, but they’re much less likely to do so than your average Tumblr user browsing through tags, or even their own Dash. Your followers are your primary audience. For the most part, they already have an idea of who you are, and are much more willing to read positively into things you write than your random internet stranger.
Furthermore, because you are more likely to have an established relationship with them, you are more likely to be able to clarify what you wrote without things escalating out of your control. The odds of you getting hate-followers still go up with your general subscriber numbers, which is one reason why some Dreamwidth users have accounts that are completely Access-locked: To reduce or prevent harassment.
(Incidentally, this is why some people, yours truly included, consider it polite to ask before sharing a link to someone else's post: You're sharing outside of their established circle of relationships, and new people won't have the same context to build assumptions of good faith from.)
Finally, due to how Dreamwidth works as a social journaling site, you have more control over the interactions you have on your own space: You can disallow comments on your posts, freeze conversations that are going nowhere or crossing your boundaries, block people from commenting, make your posts private or visible only to selected people, or delete your posts entirely, comments and all. People who saw it may have taken screenshots of your post, but other than that, the odds of coming across a post that you regret, have learned better from, and apologized for years ago are practically nil compared to on Tumblr.
So that’s your primary audience interactions. Secondary audiences are those who follow communities you may post to.
If you've checked out the new "Community" feature on Tumblr, it's pretty similar to what's available on Dreamwidth: An account where more than one person can make a post. If you're not familiar with it, the closest comparison I would have is probably Tumblr accounts whose content is primarily made up of submissions.
The takeaway is that anything you post to a community will likely be exposed to a wider audience, or at least a different audience, than only your personal journal's followers. They are less likely to have only positive associations with you, if only because they are overall less likely to have interactions with you specifically. That said, there are still several differences between Tumblr at large and your average Dreamwidth community.
First, in addition to membership rules and posting guidelines (both of which can be extremely lax or very strict), there are moderators whose job it is to enforce those rules and guidelines. While communities exist with bad or ineffective moderation, they don’t always last long or grow very big, and groups can and do splinter away from them to form their own communities. A moderator can do all of the things you do in your own journal (freezing conversations, locking posts, deleting posts, and banning members temporarily or permanently) with the authority granted to them by the community itself. Moderators are how communities regulate their content, memberships, and interactions.
Second, the poster retains most of the control of anything they post. A moderator can go over their heads if something drastic is happening, or if they judge that a post goes against community guidelines (etc), but by and large, if you post to a community, you can change that post as you please, whenever you want. If you realize that you made a mistake, you can edit the post to own it and add new thoughts, and—this is the important part—that is the version that people will see. Again, they might have access to the old version through screencaps or the Wayback Machine, but whatever the current version is will always include whatever updates you’ve made to it.
Overall, between these two factors, the interactions you’ll have with people on Dreamwidth will likely be of a very different character than those you have on Tumblr.
Is it still possible to have huge flame wars and fandom wankfests on Dreamwidth? Absolutely; they happened with frequency on LiveJournal, which is the structure Dreamwidth was originally based on. But in general, it’s easier to control the types of interaction you have on Dreamwidth than on Tumblr, and that includes fandom content and interactions.
As always, if you think I missed or misrepresented something, want to point something out, or have any questions, please let me know!
On Tumblr, when you post something and tag it, you post with the assumption that anyone, anywhere can and might stumble across it at any time; you have to be mentally and emotionally prepared for the interactions you will face. Since many of the people who will potentially see your post are people who don’t know you, and who you don’t know, one of the things you have to be prepared for is Bad Faith Interactions: Where a person reads what you have written and comes to the worst possible conclusion about both the writing and about you, and is prepared to take their conclusion directly to the source.
Since Tumblr is a content aggregation site, if something you write takes off, the odds that it will reach people who will misinterpret what you wrote and are willing to fight over it are higher than they are on other blogging platforms. If you only have a few followers on Tumblr, the odds of Bad Faith Interactions are fairly low; however, it is never impossible, and the odds go up with every follower you gain.
On Dreamwidth, you have one primary audience (that is, people who are primarily there for you), and many optional secondary audiences (people who might be there for you, but are just as likely, if not more so, to be there for a more general subject).
When you are posting on your own journal, the majority of people who read what you post are your own followers, rather than any random internet user who happens to also be logged into the site. Sure, someone may stumble across your post on the Latest Things Page, but they’re much less likely to do so than your average Tumblr user browsing through tags, or even their own Dash. Your followers are your primary audience. For the most part, they already have an idea of who you are, and are much more willing to read positively into things you write than your random internet stranger.
Furthermore, because you are more likely to have an established relationship with them, you are more likely to be able to clarify what you wrote without things escalating out of your control. The odds of you getting hate-followers still go up with your general subscriber numbers, which is one reason why some Dreamwidth users have accounts that are completely Access-locked: To reduce or prevent harassment.
(Incidentally, this is why some people, yours truly included, consider it polite to ask before sharing a link to someone else's post: You're sharing outside of their established circle of relationships, and new people won't have the same context to build assumptions of good faith from.)
Finally, due to how Dreamwidth works as a social journaling site, you have more control over the interactions you have on your own space: You can disallow comments on your posts, freeze conversations that are going nowhere or crossing your boundaries, block people from commenting, make your posts private or visible only to selected people, or delete your posts entirely, comments and all. People who saw it may have taken screenshots of your post, but other than that, the odds of coming across a post that you regret, have learned better from, and apologized for years ago are practically nil compared to on Tumblr.
So that’s your primary audience interactions. Secondary audiences are those who follow communities you may post to.
If you've checked out the new "Community" feature on Tumblr, it's pretty similar to what's available on Dreamwidth: An account where more than one person can make a post. If you're not familiar with it, the closest comparison I would have is probably Tumblr accounts whose content is primarily made up of submissions.
The takeaway is that anything you post to a community will likely be exposed to a wider audience, or at least a different audience, than only your personal journal's followers. They are less likely to have only positive associations with you, if only because they are overall less likely to have interactions with you specifically. That said, there are still several differences between Tumblr at large and your average Dreamwidth community.
First, in addition to membership rules and posting guidelines (both of which can be extremely lax or very strict), there are moderators whose job it is to enforce those rules and guidelines. While communities exist with bad or ineffective moderation, they don’t always last long or grow very big, and groups can and do splinter away from them to form their own communities. A moderator can do all of the things you do in your own journal (freezing conversations, locking posts, deleting posts, and banning members temporarily or permanently) with the authority granted to them by the community itself. Moderators are how communities regulate their content, memberships, and interactions.
Second, the poster retains most of the control of anything they post. A moderator can go over their heads if something drastic is happening, or if they judge that a post goes against community guidelines (etc), but by and large, if you post to a community, you can change that post as you please, whenever you want. If you realize that you made a mistake, you can edit the post to own it and add new thoughts, and—this is the important part—that is the version that people will see. Again, they might have access to the old version through screencaps or the Wayback Machine, but whatever the current version is will always include whatever updates you’ve made to it.
Overall, between these two factors, the interactions you’ll have with people on Dreamwidth will likely be of a very different character than those you have on Tumblr.
Is it still possible to have huge flame wars and fandom wankfests on Dreamwidth? Absolutely; they happened with frequency on LiveJournal, which is the structure Dreamwidth was originally based on. But in general, it’s easier to control the types of interaction you have on Dreamwidth than on Tumblr, and that includes fandom content and interactions.
As always, if you think I missed or misrepresented something, want to point something out, or have any questions, please let me know!
no subject
Date: Apr. 25th, 2025 04:36 pm (UTC)I think the way you phrased it in your next reply to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ysabetwordsmith is quite helpful. I also think communities are bit closer to the experience of Tumblr? There's less of an expectation that you're involved with people replying to you, at least, and, of course, it often guarantees interaction with more people than just your journal would. (Yeah, your scenario probably won't occur... and if it does, it'd probably be just as well if the activity went over to the person's journal.)
Exactly! That seems like the thing people would worry about (I certainly might have, at the least). The reason I mentioned it is because it's the easiest way relatively random people can stumble on your posts (site search is a thing, but most people won't be motivated to do it).
Yeah, being slower is certainly a plus, and it makes moderation a lot easier!
(nods) I'm quite familiar with the difference, due to having watched Tumblr quite a bit (and even then, that's mostly for the people who post more in-depth to begin with).
For the rootedness, I think you're right with that. After all, someone bothering to get in a fight over here needs to have a higher level of investment than on Tumblr, and because of that, it'll probably rankle longer, too (especially if it happens between people in the same community).
no subject
Date: Apr. 25th, 2025 06:24 pm (UTC)I mentioned it above, but a fair amount of my approach to access and interacting with users one doesn't like was informed by conversations I had with a couple of Tumblr users who left Dreamwidth because of stalkers/abusers that Dreamwidth doesn't give them the tools to completely block. I do understand that there are a lot of workarounds for assholes these days as long as you keep posting publicly, but it still sucks for victims, and I wanted to be very up-front about that.
I've thought (and even possibly mentioned) before that Dreamwidth is more about depth, while Tumblr is more about breadth, and the relative spread and types of wank reflect on that, IMO.
no subject
Date: Apr. 25th, 2025 07:17 pm (UTC)Take your time! I thought it was just a curiosity in any case, after all.
Oh yes, I remember you talking about that over on Tumblr, and that's great of you!
I've thought (and even possibly mentioned) before that Dreamwidth is more about depth, while Tumblr is more about breadth, and the relative spread and types of wank reflect on that, IMO.
...I can't come up with a clearer contrast between "breadth" and "depth", to be honest. Of course, being in-depth makes trouble, luckily, easy to contain (which is another reason I'm happy to use this site).