This blog post was written by Anonymous
I’ve been using social media to engage with my interests since I was 13 – starting with DeviantART and forums, and now Tumblr, Reddit, and Discord. I use Instagram and Facebook too, but they’re more for keeping up to date with my friends and family than sharing my interests.
My favourite social media is Tumblr. When I first joined, my interests concerned young adult science fiction and fantasy novels and so my blogging would range from silly jokes and doodles of the characters created in MS paint, to in-depth character analyses (or ‘meta’). I also made side-blogs dedicated to specific books, one of which had over 30,000 followers. Now, my interests are more to do with fantasy roleplaying games and follow a lot of accounts who post about these topics. I sometimes make my own posts, but more often I am reblogging other people’s text posts, artwork, and GIFs. Just looking at a picture of my favourite character brings me a lot of joy.
Next, there’s Reddit where I subscribe to a lot of communities dedicated to my favourite games. However, I prefer to read the content on Reddit rather than contribute as I find Reddit can be quite confrontational. Recently, I tried answering somebody’s question about a specific Dungeons & Dragons module (which I’d consider myself to know quite a lot about) and somebody told me my ‘interpretation’ was wrong – even though I was quoting directly from the book. It made me very confused.
Finally, in the last year, I’ve joined a few interest-specific Discord servers. I like the organisation and Discord, as there are specific channels for talking about certain topics. However, I don’t like how Discord announces to everyone that you’ve just joined. Talking to people on Discord can also be anxiety-inducing, especially when everybody else already knows each other and I don’t know all the social ‘rules’ yet. I spent several weeks lurking, observing what kinds of emojis people tend to use for example, before I was comfortable participating. I started in the more structured channels, e.g. ones where you just answer questions with no expectation of it becoming a conversation. Now, I chat a few times a week, though I still prefer to respond to other people than initiate conversations.
Overall, I really appreciate being able to participate anonymously and find people who love the same things that I do. While my friends in real life have played some of my favourite games, that doesn’t mean they want to talk about it all the time! But in these communities, there are people who do. I can indulge my interests however I like, when I like, and as much as I like.
