L.J. Writes

These days, other than spending minimum time on Tumblr to chat with friends and queue up posts, my main hangouts are here on Dreamwidth and over on Mastodon, specifically the Fandom.ink instance run by our lovely mod alisx. Though my longform stuff is obviously here and I love commenting and interacting with people in thoughtful ways, the place where I spend the most time online is definitely the Mastodon instance, with its cozy community, nearly real-time interactions, and old-school forum feel.

I think one of the things that keep me coming back to Mastodon, in addition to the factors mentioned in my review of the platform, is something I only mentioned in passing in that post because I had so much else to go into: The content warning.

The content warning (CW) is much like the fold or the cut in blogging software, complete with a text label that you can put on a post to tell you what's behind the cut. People can click on the 'read more' button to unfold the post and see the rest of it, if they so choose. Users can also choose to unfold content warnings by default.

( In which I wax lyrical about the CW )

Sorry about the blank posts I've been making, I guess I know now what my queue script does when the folder is empty XD I'll write in some error handling for that so it doesn't happen again. N00b problems and all.

Do you ever get sick of the DW Reading page? It's limited by pagination, you can't switch between title-only and full views, and in order to subscribe to offsite feeds for blogs such as Blogger or Tumblr you have to create feed accounts, which are essentially public offsite feed aggregators that don't require consent from the bloggers.(1)

With a feed reader and some initial setup you can get a seamless and customizable page of your subscriptions, navigable with shortcut keys, with alerts if you want them, in detailed or abbreviated view, and subscribe across sites without the moral rights and copyright pitfalls associated with creating an unauthorized public copy of other people's content. And yes, you still get access to your locked posts.

There are a lot of options when it comes to feed readers, from dedicated apps to online accounts, and everyone's needs are different. If you want a single page from which to follow social media accounts that don't support RSS/Atom feeds as well as blogs that do, something like FlowReader may be of interest to you.

In this post I will discuss setting up a browser extension, Brief for Firefox, which follows actual feeds and not all types of social media accounts. It doesn't have mobile synchronization, which I don't need because I don't like reading blogs from mobile. If you want more features than this extension offers I encourage you to look up the other options out there. If you're not sure where to start with feed readers, maybe this setup will be a way for you to get a better feel for their ins and outs and of your own needs.

( Setting up, using, and customizing Brief )

The second post in my series reviewing my experience and usage of social media platforms focuses on Tumblr, which was Fandom Central for a decade and arguably left indelible marks on fandom and online culture. A full rundown of Tumblr's history, fandom significance, and recent developments is beyond the scope of this post, which is about my personal experiences of the platform. Tumblr is well known enough that I won't be explaining some of its basics as I did with Mastodon, so if you need more information please refer to the links in this paragraph.

Current and future posts in this series are:

• Mastodon and its instances
• Tumblr trouble
• Living the Dreamwidth
• Snoozing on Pillowfort

Summary of platform: Multi-format blogging site with nearly limitless image hosting and unique--and problematic--reblog functions.

Platform usage: Image-heavy fan posts and meta, "collecting" content I like, discussions and discourse

( Tumblr, a personal history )

I've been meaning for a while to replace one of my old icons, called "workspace," with what my workspace looks like now. The old workspace icon showed my old setup from 2012-ish of my laptop monitor and a larger monitor serving as dual monitors on my desk. I now have a spare flatscreen as my main monitor across the room and a Dell pivot monitor set to vertical as the secondary on my desk, with my Macbook Air connected to both but closed and tucked out of the way in a desktop shelf when at home. (Macbook Air can't natively handle two external monitors, for the Dell I use a device that lets me connect monitors via USB.) Mark, inspired by me, has an almost identical setup but with an actual desktop. We set up our workstations side-by-side in the large north-facing room that's cold and doesn't get enough sun, and Mark's old workroom is now a playroom for our kid.

Here's the old "workspace" icon, a bad cellphone pic run through a bad sketch tag. I like my current setup much better, but it's one of the few pictures surviving from that era of my life.