Blog Topic #27 - How Women Use Social Media

Another amendment to the topic title...

Blog Topic #27 – How Women I Use Social Media

(Because “women” are not some kind of monolithic hive mind, duh. We are, however, made up of individuals with their own tastes and preferences, and here I am!)

I’d say I’m a bit of a social media junkie, in the sense that the moment some trendy new app or website pops up I get an account and attempt to participate. Whether I actually use it effectively or at all is a different story. Let’s break it down.

Facebook – I have a very love-hate relationship with Facebook. I’m always bitter that I can’t be done with its terrible privacy settings and delete my account, because if I did I’d have no social life. :P I basically use Facebook to keep abreast of everyone’s lives; places they travel to, changing jobs or moving cities, getting engaged/married/babies, etc. Aside from that, I use it to mostly post music videos I really like, or sometimes geeky/feminist articles that catch my eye. My status updates are mostly about hanging out with friends or bitching about the weather. I don’t really get too serious or political on Facebook. That’s what Twitter is for. ;)

Livejournal – My first real foray into social media, I’ve mostly abandoned it in favour of other avenues. But from like 2002 to like 2009 it was my lifeblood. As a blogging platform, it was perfectly suited for me to squee about my favourite TV show and obsessively deconstruct every nuance of plot and character development. And similar fans responded! We became friends in real life! LJ also gave me a venue to try another highly specific form of graphic design: icon design. Not to mention all the fanfic I posted there. Seriously though, where do the kids post fanfic these days??

Pinterest – Honestly I still don’t really ~get~ what Pinterest is for. I only pop over when someone links to a cleaning related lifehack or pretty nail art. Otherwise I’m like “ugh, people, stop posting about food, food is boring”. :P

Twitter – this is my main hub of social media these days. So many other apps and websites revolve around it, it’s easy to make it central to my online presence. I feel a lot more anonymous on Twitter too (less of my real life friends follow me there), so speaking my mind doesn’t feel so fraught. I mostly retweet other people or link to articles I like. I’m a big Instagram fan and everything I create goes straight to Twitter.

Tumblr – I like to describe Tumblr as “Twitter but with pictures”. That might have been how it started out as for me, but it’s grown into this weird, unwieldy vortex of timesuck that I tried to avoid because, well, timesuck. Once I get on there, I start reposting all the awesome stuff I come across and CAN’T STOP. I come for the gifs, but stay for the intersectional screeds of real-talk.