a writing blog

NOT ME REPOSTING THIS AGAIN BC I REALIZED REBLOGS DONT SHOW UP IN SEARCH 😭🙄

Me: Ah, cool. Nice. My show is over. That’s cool. Lemme just hop on AO3 and Tumblr and stuff and get some more content. All’s good. 

“have you ever been in love?” “once.” “how did it end?” “it hasn’t.” (the get down, 2017)

“I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.” (hanya yanagihara)

when you kiss me, heaven sighs (la vie en rose / edith piaf)

“the heart is the toughest part of the body. tenderness is in the hands.” (carolyn forché)

oh, if only I could nestle in the cradle of your cabin, my arms around your shoulders, the windows wide and open (amoreena / elton john)

“the curtains stir. there you are on the bed, like a gift. like a touchable dream.” (carol ann duffy)

I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm, your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm (that’s no way to say goodbye / roberta flack)

“you’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won’t tell you that he loves you, but he loves you.” (richard siken)

love me always, love me always (oscar wilde in a letter to his lover)

“with you, intimacy colors my voice. even ‘hello’ sounds like ‘come here’.” (warsan shire)

if I could fly, I’d be coming right back home to you (if I could fly / one direction)

“have you ever been in love?” “once.” “how did it end?” “it hasn’t.” (the get down, 2017)

“I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.” (hanya yanagihara)

when you kiss me, heaven sighs (la vie en rose / edith piaf)

“the heart is the toughest part of the body. tenderness is in the hands.” (carolyn forché)

oh, if only I could nestle in the cradle of your cabin, my arms around your shoulders, the windows wide and open (amoreena / elton john)

“the curtains stir. there you are on the bed, like a gift. like a touchable dream.” (carol ann duffy)

I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm, your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm (that’s no way to say goodbye / roberta flack)

“you’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won’t tell you that he loves you, but he loves you.” (richard siken)

love me always, love me always (oscar wilde in a letter to his lover)

“with you, intimacy colors my voice. even ‘hello’ sounds like ‘come here’.” (warsan shire)

if I could fly, I’d be coming right back home to you (if I could fly / one direction)

People tell me I am a big name fan in my chosen fandom.  I don’t quite get that but for the purposes of this post, let’s roll with it.  On my latest one shot, less than 18% of the people who read it bothered to hit the kudos button.  Sure, okay, maybe that one sort of sucked.  Let’s look at the one shot posted before that - less than 16% left kudos.  Before that - 10%, and then 16%.  I’m not even going to get into the comments.  Let’s just say the numbers drop a lot.  I’m just looking at one shots here so we don’t have to worry about multiple hits from multiple chapters, people reading previous chapters over, etc.  And if I am a BNF, that means other people are getting significantly less kudos and comments.

Fandom is withering away because it feels like people don’t care about the works that are posted.  Why should I go to the trouble of posting my stories if no one reads them, and of the people who do read them, less than a fifth like them?  Even if you are not a huge fan of the story, if it kept your attention long enough for you to get to the bottom, go ahead and mash that kudos button.  It’s a drop of encouragement in a big desert. 

I also have a working background in online marketing. In social media 1:10 is what you would call a solid engagement score, when people actually care about your product (as opposed to “liking” your Facebook page so they could join a contest or whatever). If BNFs are getting 1:5 - and I do sometimes see it - that is sky-high engagement. Take any celebrity; take Harry Styles, who has just under 30M followers and doesn’t tweet all that often. He regularly gets 3-400K likes, 1-200K retweets. I’ve seen him get up to just under 1M likes on a tweet. That’s a 1:30 engagement ratio, for Harry Styles, and though some of you guys enjoy my fics and have said so, I don’t think you have as lasting a relationship with my stories as Harry Styles’s fans do with him. XD;

Stuff that is ONLY available for dollars are obviously going to have a different way of measuring this, but when it comes to ‘If people can consume something without engaging back in any fashion (hitting a like button, buying something, leaving a comment)’ the vast majority will.

And as a creator that is frustrating but as a consumer it’s pretty easy to see how it happens. I have gotten steadily worse at even liking posts, much less leaving comments on ones I enjoy, since I started using tumblr. It’s very difficult to engage consistently. I always kudo on any fanfic I read and comment on the vast majority, but then again I don’t read a lot of fanfic, if you are someone who browses AO3 constantly/regularly for months or years, I could see how it’s easy to stop engaging. I don’t remember to like every YT video or tumblr fanart I see, much less comment on them.

When we are constantly consuming free content it’s hard to remember to engage with it or what that engagement means to the creators. And lol, honestly that sucks. Certainly as consumers we should be better about it. But also like, as a creator be kinder to yourself by setting a realistic bar of what you can achieve.