The Tumblr Decimation
When I re-joined Tumblr in November, I visited popular posts by people I remembered in the hope that I would remember names or faces in the likes and comments – and by and large that worked; I was able to compile a list of perhaps a hundred people to follow pretty quickly. Until today I hadn't stopped to think about who was actually paying any attention – at all – to the things I had posted – so I did something about it. A nuclear option of sorts. I un-followed everybody, and then stepped back through each post over the last month, and followed back anybody who had regularly liked or commented on something I had posted.
I know it's an overly simplistic method of filtering, but it also threw up some huge surprises. I discovered a number of names that I had expected to find, and hadn't realised that they were paying no attention to anything I posted. At first I thought “oh, they're probably just busy – like me” – but then each week of posts I checked rolled into the next, and I kind of resigned myself to the truth.
What am I saying here?
Maybe that these rag-tag online communities are a two way thing – you can't just expect to post, and receive feedback all the time. You are one voice among many, and should at least try to pay it forward when you have the opportunity. While some people see online communities as a potential audience – others see them as a conversation with friends. Neither use-case is necessarily wrong or incorrect, and at the end of the day it's up to each of us to forge our own bonds, our own friendships, and sustain them as we see fit.