[Discussion] It's so quiet.

[usononikki]

Has anyone ever noticed that? The Danganronpa fandom, at least publicly, seems to be so very, very quiet. I don't really know if that's something unique to Danganronpa itself or unique to this day and age, but it's so... difficult to facilitate extended discussion or community engagement in public spaces.

Now, the reason I put this here on Dreamwidth honestly isn't a dig, rather it's because this community and the inherent nature of Dreamwidth makes it much more likely to foster an actual discussion. If I were to post this on Tumblr, I doubt there would be much discussion to be had. The post may get some likes, maybe a single reblog, but other than that? No one would actually answer, I don't think.

Granted, talk of notes just kind of makes me sound like a whiner over engagement, doesn't it? But that's not really the issue here. The issue is nobody talks to anybody, for whatever reasons, and that's so weird to me. Fandom is about collaboration and building off of one another, isn't it? Why is it so quiet, then?

Theory posts and meta on Tumblr get primarily likes. If they're lucky, they may get reblogs, but there's no conversation in the notes or threads of back and forth discussion. Fanfic gets only likes. Fanart get silent reblogs with the occasional keysmash in the tags. People put their work out into the void and then nothing really comes of it? Nothing new is grown from the inspiration of that insight. It's just weird to me.

And then I see the proposal that people simply prefer to discuss and engage in the privacy of Tumblr communities and Discord servers, and say what you will about how damaging that it to the public fandom sphere, but at least in my experience it's just not true?

I'm in Danganronpa Discords, I run one, and it's dead quiet in there most of the time unless something particularly interesting happens that I talk about, only for the momentum to fizzle out within an hour and everything to go quiet again. I'm in a Kokichi Ouma community on Tumblr, and it mostly amounts to a post once or twice a week of art or a reblog or something that gets maybe a smattering of reactions but almost never any comments and discussion. I don't get it, I really don't.

What's the point of making things and posting them if no one wants to play with you?

Other fandoms I've been in before have not been like this. They're very lively and forthcoming, servers are always very active, people will reblog threads for days going back and forth developing compelling ideas. I did an impromptu three-way fic collab over a reblog thread from a meta I wrote once. That was fun! That's how fandom is supposed to be in my mind!

I try my best to engage in others' things, to facilitate that sort of interaction, but it gets tiring when it's so frequently met with radio silence. I like it here on Dreamwidth, where the primary mode of engagement is comments, so open discussion is a lot more common. Maybe I should start moving some of my posts from Tumblr over to here?

I just kind of wish that the main hub where everyone is actually felt like a hub, y'know? I'm not sure what else to do about it beyond doing my best to keep making posts and engaging with others' posts the way I'd like to be engaged with. Be the change I want to see in the world, but it's hard when no one is following that change. Thoughts?