i’m feeling very, mm, like i’m tapping into multiple different communitiea/arenas of my life, and i want to be whole in all of them, but i’ve also come to appreciate and value not being overly transparent and vulnerable without controlling who sees that?
i’m digging deep into my local kink community right now (Finally), and my fet links to all my various presences (my tumblr, wordpress, ao3, transition tumblr, nsfw tumblr), and i find in connecting with new people i’m asking “where do you live, on the internet?”
because yeah–i think of it as living, online, as frequenting spaces. not just “contact information” but, hey, what’s already integrated into your life?
for me, it used to be primarily tumblr–and i do still check it often, backread and have friends and people i follow who i consider important there, but it’s become less of a constant or a primary mode of communication. now i’m on discord, especially because the server style mutable groups is accessible to me and because the three people i’m closest to and i share a server. and because i get message alerts, and the noise and gui are good for me.
i’ve picked up line and signal for basically one person each who was important enough to warrant adding another app to meet them on their home turf. (that hasn’t happened with kik yet, though it’s on my radar.) and i still use wordpress sometimes, and Know Of pillowfort and dreamwidth but haven’t dealt with them as they feel more like Sites than Apps and that’s Different somehow.
i’ve started really using fetlife to keep track of events since the erobay calendar is…often lacking in details or timely updates? and in making new friends and having them All Be Kinky it is actually pretty nice to have that kind of site with status updates and pics and writings and interests and “maybe going to”s.
i’m…seriously considering my relationship with facebook both because i’ve made a few friends recently who Only use it (and instagram which is just, Not for me) and because i’m tentatively reconnecting with my extended family in a very adult, independent, informed, trauma-competent and open way. i’m not super sure how best to handle that, yet, particularly given facebook is home to most of my career’s networking groups, and even privacy settings are…blech. (and i know people who’ve had Two Facebooks for work-public and personal-private, and that algorithms mean their private gets recommended to work friends and Yiiiikes)
it’s really interesting to me and convoluted as a problem to have spaces for different facets of self, and what links to what. my facebook used to be a site of activism and celebrating national coming out day, and it still features my pronouns in my about but i’ve been rarely touching it even to catch up on friends n family, just to find out about events (often queer or kink ones i feel conflicted about rsvping to because publicly viewable). nothing links back to my fet because for a while that was the Most Private, but my fet links to everything and tbh this wordpress has a lot of Niche Obscure Scary Identity Shit that i don’t actually necessarily want casual fet friends to see (nonhuman spirituality kin shit for example).
it feels very evolving organic unplannable, yknow, particularly considering when i was on okcupid and did i link to my tumblr then i think so, and there’s always the spectre of too-searchable and irl names and doxxing, especially working in education even if it is as an independent contractor for collegiate level who’s not a teacher in any way and california should be relatively safe (though fuck if i don’t know trans folks campaigned out of schools).
mostly i’m really interested right now in talking more with my cousins about how Fucked Up our family is because wow we just had an incredible discussion in-person, and they seem mostly open to and caring around gender shit, but dear god linking things, and figuring out an online space to facilitate further processing trauma but without becoming a negative gossip whirlpool, and, fuck. this is new. and they seem to mostly frequent facebook and instagram but to censor themselves because family, and, what even do.
i dunno, i haven’t posted here in a while, in part because i’ve been doing really well actually and having my discussion needs met? i recently posted to fet about communication scales and that felt like maybe i could crosspost it here but also what if that makes it easier to searchfind my fet from here and connect Everything and link up the crazy and the Badbad fetishes and whatever and get me Blacklisted From Society idk. what even is confidentiality and internet safety in the modern age. i may be a dirk but i’m awful at splintering myself and coordinating those splinters which i mean maybe isn’t ooc at all actually.
god i dunno. i’ve really valued finally breaking away from how compulsively and damagingly open i was with my parents, and keeping my valued relationships to myself because they don’t need to know and don’t celebrate me enough to deserve that and it was hurting me to share everything and get confused semi-tolerance back. is that only about them? is it only about my older relatives, not my cousins?
i know also i’ve really admired friends who have cut ties with their families, and it’s really alien-new-strange for me to be reconnecting with pieces i never really got to connect with before. i definitely feel like parsing out carefully and slowly what is excitement about feeling seen and shared-experiences-with and insight and what is desperate hope oversharing feels-bad-after is gonna be extremely vital. still hard, but a thing i’m at least getting better at anticipating as being hard and telling other people who can help me monitor it.
and well i mean similarly the whole analyzing-careful-monitoring how i feel with all the new people in the kink community i’m meeting and whether they feel invigorating / like potentials who could be cool maybe let’s be optimistic / kindof off somehow, as main categories. particularly that middle one and not conflating it with the first. (because oh my god straight people and cis men and being so easily impressed by wow look they said one 1 good gender thing, and needing to seriously assess the overall Actual Savviness And Progress levels and how i feel the next day.)
((mmm. that’s a whole other post about feeling like i’m maybe Limiting myself by not being as FriendlyComfortableOpen to straight people and cis men as i Surely Could Be. and how do you differentiate between bad vibes and hrm automatic preemptive defensiveness bc bad experiences and institutional power-privileged groups. especially when hey if i could Only get over the latter i would have so many potential partners right))
afdhglh yeah family and posts about sexual dysfunction and attraction and kinks are Also A Whole Eek Thing
jesus christ how do be holistic on internet(which is also life)
[immediate edit to add: PLUS there’s wanting to have some kind of work-promo “hey i’m super willing to do captioning scent-free and work with braille interfaces aaand do queer or kink events and uh” how do you advertise yourself to multiple Different clientele without maybe losing business which Agh shouldn’t be an issue but it Is pragmatically. also having kinks that squick some of your kinky friends and fet doesn’t really have blacklisting or tagging and how even compromise]
epochryphal 