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hilsI love online friendships, and I am always a loud advocate for them being just as real as friendships with people you know in person. I'm friends with people I have known online for 20+ years whereas most of my in person friends from the same period have drifted away.
I think there's something magical about being able to yell about your interests with someone on another continent, and how fandom friends will drag each other willingly or not into new things.
Sometimes online friendships end up becoming in person friendships, and sometimes they don't. Both are valid.
The downside is when you lose contact with someone it's hard to get it back.
I've been talking to someone on Tumblr these past few weeks. We've been mutuals for about a year but we only started chatting properly relatively recently. She's always been very encouraging about my fic writing, and I've been doing the same. I watched Kei x Yaku because she'd written fic about it and I wanted to better understand the characters, she's the reason I watched The Devil Judge last year as well.
On Sunday she deleted her Tumblr account without a word. I'd literally spoken to her a few hours earlier. She was telling me she'd made a start on the latest chapter of her fic but hadn't written as much as she'd wanted. I filled her in on the progress with mine and wished her luck. A few hours later I went to message her about a show I'd started watching and her account was gone.
It might be that she just needed a break, or it might be that something bad has happened. I have no way of knowing. Tumblr was the only way we communicated (aside from commenting on each other's fics) and all I know is her first name and what country she lives in (because we used to joke about the insane time difference).
So, yeah, that sucks and I just hope she's okay.
I think there's something magical about being able to yell about your interests with someone on another continent, and how fandom friends will drag each other willingly or not into new things.
Sometimes online friendships end up becoming in person friendships, and sometimes they don't. Both are valid.
The downside is when you lose contact with someone it's hard to get it back.
I've been talking to someone on Tumblr these past few weeks. We've been mutuals for about a year but we only started chatting properly relatively recently. She's always been very encouraging about my fic writing, and I've been doing the same. I watched Kei x Yaku because she'd written fic about it and I wanted to better understand the characters, she's the reason I watched The Devil Judge last year as well.
On Sunday she deleted her Tumblr account without a word. I'd literally spoken to her a few hours earlier. She was telling me she'd made a start on the latest chapter of her fic but hadn't written as much as she'd wanted. I filled her in on the progress with mine and wished her luck. A few hours later I went to message her about a show I'd started watching and her account was gone.
It might be that she just needed a break, or it might be that something bad has happened. I have no way of knowing. Tumblr was the only way we communicated (aside from commenting on each other's fics) and all I know is her first name and what country she lives in (because we used to joke about the insane time difference).
So, yeah, that sucks and I just hope she's okay.
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Date: 2022-04-04 04:17 pm (UTC)My experiences with Tumblr are very limited but I understand it's not unusual there for someone to move to using a different Tumblr identity so perhaps she'll be back in touch.
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Date: 2022-04-05 03:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-04 06:34 pm (UTC)But yes, it's always such a shame if someone suddenly vanishes and you have no other way to contac them. I had this happen on LJ a few times; I'd loved talking with those people, mostly fandom stuff, and we only talked on LJ. And suddenly they didn't post anymore... The account wasn't deleted, there just wasn't any activity anymore. :( And of course I worried because what if something happened to them? But I won't ever know. :( Hopefully, they just moved on, perhaps life got very busy and then they found other interests etc.
Tumblr is a special case, though, because people tend to suddenly change names or delete side blogs or their whole blog to start over. I find this, uhm, kinda weird actually, but it seems to happen frequently. I have people I follow where I actually don't remember what name they used to have when I started following them because they have changed it several times. XD
But tumblr also seems to have the weird habit of shadowbanning accounts for mysterious reasons. It's gotten way better now with the new owners, but it seems to happen still. I don't know if the blog actually seems completely gone then, though. A shadowbanned blog definitely doesn't receive any notes, asks, DMs, though it seems sometimes ppl can send them DMs and asks. If they like sth it also doesn't show up and their posts also don't show up on the followers' dashs... But I think then the blog should still be there if you are not logged in and just typed the URL in manually. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Who knows, perhaps she was harrassed there and decided to delete it because of it. I hope that it's not something bad and that she'll get in contact with you again.
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Date: 2022-04-05 03:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-05 05:11 pm (UTC)But ugh yeah, that seems to just happen sometimes... It might actually be because she barely posts herself and only likes other people's stuff. Because that's what the bots usually do. They have an empty blog but like a lot of posts and follow kind of randomly. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Date: 2022-04-04 09:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-05 03:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-05 06:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-05 03:46 pm (UTC)