Stomping the brainweasels

[liv]

So a perfectly lovely person posted a request for cut-tags on long posts, and happened to give an unfortunate example of the kind of thing they scroll past. It's pretty clear they weren't actually aiming at me, because I do in fact cut almost all my posts, but I've got suddenly self-conscious.

I want to post about my hobbies, but I shouldn't because that's boring to people who don't share my hobbies. I want to post about politics, but I shouldn't, because some people who disagree with me politically may be offended. I want to post about community stuff, but I shouldn't because most of my readers aren't Jewish and some of them really dislike reading about religion. I want to do a meme, but I shouldn't because people want original, personal content on their reading pages. I want to post something personal, but I shouldn't, because most people here aren't my personal friends and only want to read about ideas, not what's in my head. I want to post about my holidays, but I shouldn't because that's boring and alienating and offensive. I want to post an interesting, thinky essay but I ... can't. Not when I'm stuck on worrying about whether the topic is universally interesting and whether I can write well enough.

This is all nonsense, of course. I've been keeping what is essentially an online journal since 2003, and it's mainly for me, much as I love it when other people read and comment. I know full well that the only way I ever have the momentum to post interesting essays is if I regularly keep up writing about trivial things. I am already putting in a reasonable amount of effort not to make it deathly boring for everybody else. Simple descriptive text and content warnings where applicable is a good enough way of doing cuts; nobody is actually expecting me to grovel about how terribly boring my posts are and how I barely deserve to exist so please forgive me for putting this crap on the internet at all, but at least it's behind a cut so you don't have to read it. Following siderea's long-ago but very solid advice I try to include more links when I don't have time and energy to create my own high quality original content. But mostly I just post stuff so that it's a regular habit and I feel in touch with people and try not to let myself get intimidated.

So I'm mostly thinking aloud here because I know the brainweasels are wrong. I know that the kind, considerate person I'm thinking of would never have meant their reasonable reminder about cuts to set me thinking that my posts are not just boring, but clutter which actively gets in the way of people reading stuff they want to read. I know there's no point trying to be all things to all people. Some people really need cuts, particularly if they have cognitive issues and other neurodivergences. Some people really hate cuts, especially if they're trying to read the internet on devices and connections which are inadequate to lots of clicks and extra page loads, or indeed inadequate for someone who doesn't have ideal, pain-free mobility. In this case of clashing access needs, as well as opposing preferences, I do use cuts, partly because unwanted cuts feel less intrusive than unwanted visibility, and partly because there's a setting to "Display full content of cut entries" ie override cuts if you don't like them.

That goes for topic choice as well. All topics are boring to some people and most topics are potentially distressing to at least some people. And volume is the same; for ages people didn't bother with DW because it's too quiet here, it feels dead, there's not enough varied content to hold their interest. But since December and the influx of new and returning users, there's too much, people can't keep up with their reading pages, and that puts people off too. I am beginning to suspect that there was never really a golden age of LJ, that's just a chimera. There was a time in the mid-2000s when about three quarters of my main in person social circle had accounts, and that was lovely in a way, but I don't think DW in 2019 is worse than LJ in 2005, it's just different. LJ went from being horribly unreliable and awkward to use, to being overloaded with horrible intrusive adverts, to being sold to a Russian company and tangled up in weird politics. And there was always too much or too little drama or fandom or bigotry or political correctness or whatever.

We all say we want a chronological feed of all the content, but actually we secretly want exactly the right amount of exactly the things we want to see. And algorithms like FB's and Twitter's try to provide that, and people hate missing their friends' stuff in favour of nonsense with higher advertising value, but actually, most people are more comfortable with FB's (badly) curated feed than with seeing everything.

So I'm pretty sure, brainweasels notwithstanding, that the right thing to do is to keep posting whatever I feel like talking about, and label stuff as clearly as I can and make sure I'm not pressuring anyone to read anything. The balance will sort itself out by people using filters and skimming the boring stuff and unsubscribing if my posts are mostly a negative for them. (I am never offended if you want to unsubscribe; even if we're offline friends I completely understand that my posts are long-winded and annoying to some people, and that's fine.)

A bunch of DW power users were very eager to welcome the newbies from Tumblr, and posted technical guides and discussions of DW etiquette. I would have been one of them a few years ago, most likely. Anyway, there was kind of a backlash because some of the new people resented being told what to do, or were intimidated by all the apparently complex requirements. So the collective have come up with the idea of making February shitposting month. Lots of really cool ideas around that concept! I'm not really confident with shitposting as a genre, but I'm going to make February the month of posting whatever. (In my case it's more likely to be over-long posts than short trivial or silly posts, but you never know.) The point is that I'm going to break out of this cycle of, what if my posts are too boring and annoying and cluttery, and therefore never posting anything.

I am not especially looking for reassurance here, but if you do want to reassure me, please don't tell me I'm not boring. I am boring at least some of the time, even the best writers are boring to people who don't share their interests or don't like their style. I think what I want to hear is that it's ok to be boring, that it's not better to just shut up and never bother other people.

Comments

[sciatrix]

Well, for what it is worth, you write a lot of the sorts of things I think I would like to write, and even when they are not on topics to my taste, they contribute to making this platform somewhere that feels at home to me. Cut tags or no cut tags--and I am slightly guiltily thinking I ought to get better at them!

I am rolling around in the influx of people even though I cannot keep up with everything, because the conversations I do soak up are so interesting. In fact I can't keep up with all the links I am posting! It's a little overwhelming because I am constantly worrying that if I miss something good it will be the end of the world and I'll be sad when I can't have as much of these longform discussions I like again, but if the chattering keeps up I think that insecurity will die down again. I remember being this overwhelmed by c. 2008-2010ish DW, too.

I appreciate the things you have to say because even when you aren't talking about something I am interested in, thoughtful and slightly navel-gazey thought about a variety of personal and less-personal topics is the kind of thing I like to produce. And having it in my general background makes me feel more secure that if I natter on, someone else might like it, too. And I've been reading you for quite a while, on and off!

So. Uh. If that is helpful to remind the factually incorrect brainweasels, have at.

[seekingferret]

I've always been kind of philosophically opposed to using cut tags because to my own brainmustelids it feels like if I cut-tag what I wrote I am saying that I don't mind if everyone skips past it and therefore I am affirming the worthlessness of what I wrote.

[davidgillon]

That may come close to explaining my dislike for them as well. I'll use them if I'm putting najor spoilers into a book review, or for particularly triggery subjects, but generally not otherwise.

[hilarita]

Your journal, your rules. I'm always at liberty to unfollow, if I'm not enjoying myself.
I mean, I do try to be mildly considerate on my own journal about cuts, tags, and warning for some content, but ultimately, we all can curate our own internewt experience by stopping if we're not having fun.

[kaberett]

I enjoy the low-grade staying-in-touch even of posts that, yes, I'm not interested in the subject matter of; I'm interested in you, and I appreciate you taking up space, and I am very very pro people using their journals the way they want to, and pro people curating their reading experiences according to their own tastes.

[davidgillon]

+1 on that!

[independence1776]

I know I'm a silent lurker, but I do love seeing your posts. Especially the Judaism ones because I've been Jewish at this point for exactly eighteen months and seeing how much I don't yet know is, odd as it is to say, enjoyable. Beyond that, I like reading about other people's lives. Boring is a factor of life and it's not better to shut up.

[princessofgeeks]

Please keep posting. I am very boring right now and I understand that others are sometimes too. Also, boring is in the eye of the beholder! Some people's boring is someone else's interesting.

[sciatrix]

Yes this! Like, is it possible for any one thing to be objectively boring? Boredom is more like... a judgement of an engagement level between at least two people, and a unidirectional judgement at that.

No one can be interesting 100% of the time because no one can be interested 100% of the time; boredom happens when something that cannot compete for limited attention is nevertheless privileged above all things that can.

[davidgillon]

I had a similar instance several years ago where someone subscribed, and then immediately told me that unless I put cuts in they would be forced to unsubscribe. That felt like they were trying to control how I wrote, so I pointed that out, said I wasn't about to change, because that would be bad for my sense of self, and left it up to them.

It's not even as if I write huge posts as a rule, I'd say they're about average length for the people I follow. (To be clear, they weren't asking for cuts on specific topics, they wanted them as a universal rule).

But when you put a cut in, my automatic reaction is to click on it, because I'm pretty much guaranteed an interesting read. Even when I had no idea I was interested in what you're writing about.

[angelofthenorth]

I read because I'm interested in the whole of you, not just the bits that are superficially more to my taste. There are relatively few people that I follow for narrow reasons, and usually I drop them fairly quickly as I want to know the people behind the text, not just the text. As one wise woman said - a text without a context is a pretext.

[angelofthenorth]

That said, I'm glad of cuts, because I can click them to open in another window/tab and read at my leisure at the end of flicking through my friends list. Long posts are more likely to get missed, while a post with a cut in it is far more likely to be considered in depth.

[wildeabandon]

It is okay, and pretty much inevitable, that some of what one posts will be boring to some of ones readers. But nonetheless from my personal perspective your journal has a very high ratio of stuff I find interesting to stuff I skim over.

[elf]

I try to cut-tag politics, but not because people might disagree with my political opinions. I am increasingly firm about my political opinions, and since the staunchest "disagree" group is actual-literal-Nazis, I'm not concerned about offending their sensibilities. However, politics is a relentless hellscape right now, and I sometimes take a break from new political news and commentary, and I assume other people do, so... I try to put most of those comments under a cut tag, where they can read or not at their leisure.

Same goes for other things. Anything longer than a single screen, I try to cut because it's "this stuff needs actual thinky-time" rather than "scrolling past and catch the gist is fine."

most people are more comfortable with FB's (badly) curated feed than with seeing everything.

Most people are not on Dreamwidth for exactly this reason. I spend more time engaging with the content that's most meaningful to me, but I'm very glad the rest of it is here, whether that's just for context or sometimes because it sets off thoughts that don't immediately connect to anything but will matter later.

Short version: Thank you for posting stuff. Please keep posting stuff. Try not to listen to the brainweasels; they are not the people who have subscribed to your journal because they want to see the content.

a few thoughts

[redbird]

It's okay to be you, and post what you like, even if it's boring sometimes, or to some people.

There are such things as reading filters; when LJ was very active and I had less spare time, I had one labeled "priority" for the people whose journals I most wanted to keep up with. (It's still around, but I hardly need it.) I have another called "low stress" for days when I don't want to go anywhere near news or politics; some people might find filters like "personal" or "fandom" useful.

Someone I know (I can't remember who offhand) occasionally labels entries "don't be interesting, just post"—i.e., she's going to get something out there and if someone doesn't want to read it, so be it.

I use cuts mostly for things some of my friends might not want to see (that's mostly health/medical) or if I think a post is long-winded but either want the details for my own later reference, or don't have time to make it shorter. And occasionally for photos, to avoid messing up people's reading pages. (This may no longer be necessary; a few years ago it definitely was.)

Re: a few thoughts

[boxofdelights]

That's me! I was thinking about trying to explain why I do that, but I couldn't figure out how without implying that Liv isn't interesting.

It's okay to not be interesting to everyone all the time. If your posts, taken as a whole, weren't interesting enough to me, I wouldn't subscribe to your journal.

[melannen]

I feel like I want to post a long defense of boring journals now. During the quiet periods, sometimes it seemed like half of my reading list was a few people - some of them housebound (or nearly) with disabilities - who were posting every day as part of a routine, even if all they had to post was whether they got the laundry up from the basement or if the grocery store had their favorite frozen meal.

And those are still some of my favorite journals! Just, the reassurance that there are people living incredibly boring lives and still being interesting people and time keeps ticking over was sometimes 100% what I needed to read on the internet, and when I think about the journals that have made the most impact on me sometimes it's the 'I got a new phone game that I spent six hours on today' posts or the 'here's a update on how my goldfish is doing' posts way more than anything else. (It's the opposite of the thing people talk about on places like Instagram where we only see people at their most amazing, and thus feel inadequate: DW has always felt half-immune from that, because there are still so many people using it primarily as their own journal, with the social as a bonus, rather than using it primarily as a way to blast to their followers, so we more people willing to be just honestly average but true, and I think it's one of DW's strong points.)

The boring posts and journals tend to be harder to comment on so it feels like they're underappreciated, but I try to remember to speak up in their defense, 'cause they're so important. And they're something I'm really really terrible at, so I try to appreciate them more.

Also everything in your first paragraph is something I'm actively interested in, but you can probably take that as read anyway.

[hunningham]

It's the opposite of the thing people talk about on places like Instagram where we only see people at their most amazing, and thus feel inadequate

Yes, this! This is what I love about DW - the fragments of lives being lived out around me, and people thinking out loud.

[ambyr]

Post long! Post short! Cut, or don't cut! If I'm subscribed to someone, it's because I want to read their content. If I don't have time to read it in a particular week, I have the power to just . . . not.

Personally I find a lot of fannish content pretty boring, and I kind of actively hate link round-ups; I'm here because I like seeing how different people live their everyday lives. For other people fandom and linking are their main Reason For Dreamwidth. I exercise the power of the scroll.

ETA I cut tag mostly for my own convenience; it makes it easier for me to find specific entries when I scroll back through my journal.

[altamira16]

I like it when you write about Judaism because I grew up in an area with very few Jewish people. Now I am in an area with more Jewish people than I grew up with. When you write about Judaism, it helps me understand it just a little bit better.

I do not want the algorithms to decide what order things should be in. I want to experience today, today. I do not want the sorrows of yesterday dragged into today. I certainly do not need emergency weather notices from last week dragged into today. People on Facebook were posting hurricane-related news stories, and I could not tell if a storm had changed direction or not because Facebook would decide which of these posts that I needed to see (THE MOST RECENT ONE AND NOTHING ELSE, THANKS.)

I did not experience the influx of people. I tried to be friendly, but someone asked me to remove them because they did not know me personally.

[mrissa]

It's absolutely not better to shut up and never bother other people.

DW is opt-in. Anyone who reads your stuff has a choice in the matter. They (we) are choosing you over not-you. Hobbies, religion, household minutiae...the people who don't want your versions of these things have the entire wide internet.

[alasse_irena]

I think the best advice I ever got to this effect essentially went "It's your blog. Post whatever you want." Which was very reassuring!

[jenett]

One of the things I love about DW (as I did before on LJ) is the range of things people post. I love that there are longer pieces about a particular thing, and also short "I did a thing" and people writing to share things, and people writing to keep notes to themselves, and often those are all in the same journal.

I cut anything more than 4-5 paragraphs routinely, because I do think more than that gets long on many screens. I appreciate it when people cut anything much longer than that mostly because the cut text plus the subject line tends to give me a lot more info about how to stack reading that thing than the subject line alone. (And the cut makes a convenient thing to click on to open a new tab, especially if there's been a couple of paragraphs and the subject line has scrolled off the screen.)

On a pass through DW, I basically read the short stuff, and then open tabs for the longer things if I'm at all interested, and then work my way through, leaving any that take more brain or whatever for later if needed.

But I still really really love a wide mix of people talking about whatever they feel like talking about.

I will say the one thing I do really appreciate people cutting is explicit weight-loss talk: I'm a person for whom that is sometimes okay (especially the way some people do it) and sometimes not okay with it right now, and sometimes mostly okay with it but not at a particular time on a particular day, and the cut lets me make better decisions. Fortunately for me, this is the common approach among people I read. (For me, detailed exercise talk with numbers is a different category, though it's also often a "if I'm tight on time, I'll read other stuff first" so it's nice to have it labelled.")

I also sort of roughly think the same about stuff you wouldn't say at the dinner table without checking it was okay first (explicit medical details, etc.) as a personal guideline, but don't actually notice much if other people do that.

[ewt]

I recently requested cut tags on long posts, because a few people (not you!) we're making long posts on subjects that don't particularly interest me, and in scrolling past them (on a smartphone) I started to accidentally miss content that I *do* want to read. A lot of it was fandom-related longer-form memes.

I absolutely don't want to dissuade people from posting whatever they want to post, and if it was me, I'm so sorry to have woken up those brain weasels. I will try to word things better in future; you may not be the only reader affected by such weasels.

I think your balance of when to cut things is very good, probably better than mine. I read probably 90% of the entries that you cut, because I am generally interested in what you have to say. You are the very opposite of boring! But if you wanted to be boring, or post about boring things or whatever, that would be fine too. I mean, my own journal for the last few weeks has mostly been me live-blogging the equivalent of an essay crisis, which is about as boring as it gets.

[falena]

Yeah, ever since I started using DW primarily on my phone cuts have become more important because scrolling long walls of texts is much more difficult and can easily result in missing stuff.

[falena]

Your DW circle is so eloquent and smart, thus everyone has already said what I want to say, ten times better than I ever could.

I always read your entries even if I rarely comment because, by the time I get to the post, Smart and Eloquent people have usually said it all already. :D

Brainweasels sucks, you are awesome. End of story.

[finding_helena]

"So I'm pretty sure, brainweasels notwithstanding, that the right thing to do is to keep posting whatever I feel like talking about, and label stuff as clearly as I can and make sure I'm not pressuring anyone to read anything. "

I think this is the right thing to do.

[silveradept]

I have read this and agree with the commentary squadron that your space is yours to be as boring as you feel you are in.

That we also do not personally find you boring is an additional thing that can be shelved or used as extra armor as needed.

Well ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

I put resource links at the end of most literature I post. The vast majority of my readers adore this feature. Some of them urgently need it due to growing up without advantages that other people enjoyed. But there's always a few who feel compelled to complain, because to them it's redundant. I suspect the ratio is somewhere around 19:1.

The thing is, I'm not writing for the 1 who finds it boring. I'm writing for the 19 who find it interesting or essential, and are willing to skip any links that they don't particularly need.

It doesn't matter if some people find your work boring, as long as you're reaching other people effectively. At least that's my perspective as a writer and a reader.

[oursin]

If there are DW posting police, I daresay I may expect a virtual knock on my own virtual door sometime soon!

I try to cut for lists of things (the last time I did this it didn't work for some reason) or images.

People have their own idiosyncracies - e.g. the ones who will not read fiction if it is in first-person, or bounce off a certain stylistic choice I didn't even make consciously, ahem - but you can't please everybody all of the time.

[hunningham]

Myself, I have a slightly opposite problem. I think of dw as my private journal, and am always slightly surprised when someone comments, or indicates that they are reading me. And occasionally I get a little flustered out when there are multiple comments (more than 3 is lots), and I fail at being a good hostess because I am freaked by all the attention and hide under the duvet.

Definitely not thinking about an audience or anyone's reading list.

I wonder if this is an introvert / extrovert thing? (Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I had you tagged as very people-y). My journal is me thinking about my life out loud; it's mundane and frequently whiny, and it's mostly for myself, although other people do popup. You're writing to, talking to people, thinking about engaging with those people, and it's a lot more of a conversation vibe.

Oh, pls ignore if annoying generalisations are annoying

[sfred]

I like reading your stuff, and really, it's the everyday minutiae (sp?) that keeps me here.
My assumption with DW (and other social media!) is that people post whatever they want to post, and other people can choose whether to read it.