A while back, I discovered
a thread over on Reddit where people were discussing the history of toxicity in fandoms and how it's really not as recent as some people make it out to be—that there have always been assholes in fandom and that it is just a lot easier to get dragged into a Flame Wars™ for a number of reasons, even if you aren't so much as attempting to get involved in drama. Among contributing factors, people mentioned the structure of the pre-social media internet—how fandoms used to be spread out across various forums, blogs, and websites like LiveJournal and that while there was certainly quite a bit of fighting in those places, they tended to isolated to specific pockets and thus it was a lot easier to avoid. By comparison, most of the popular social media sites—think Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, etc—have a very centralized structure and are designed to spread information around as much as possible. While this makes it much easier to find your people and have your posts reach a wider audience, it also means you're way more likely to bump into people whose opinions and values don't line up with yours and encounter things that you really, REALLY wished you didn't know exist. Naturally, this means fights are more likely to break out and when a site is designed to make sure your posts reach as many people as possible, this means flame wars have a tendency to spread like wildfire, making the toxicity situation even worse.
Both Dreamwidth and Pillowfort, by comparison, have structures that are much more reminiscent of older pre-social media websites (which, you know, Dreamwidth is a LiveJournal code fork, so that's a bit of a given.) If I were to use a metaphor for comparing the two to other modern social media, something like Twitter basically takes place in this giant room where the only thing dividing various groups of people are various clear panels that you can easily move between which. Dreamwidth and Pillowfort are instead a system of hallways connected to various rooms and if there's a room with people you don't like and/or posts you don't wanna see, you just don't go into it. Not only does this make makes it a lot harder for flame wars to stir up because you have deliberately go into those spaces to pick a fight, but if someone is genuinely being a dick to the people in that particular space, the mods can just ban them from the community and they won't be bothering anyone anymore. And even if a flame war does persist for whatever reason, it is ultimately contained to that space and you aren't likely to see it/get wrapped up in it as long as you stay away.
In addition, I think the communities feature adds an additional layer of filtering that a lot of sites are lacking in. This is more apparent on Pillowfort than Dreamwidth because its site is a little more open in its design for the purposes of discovering and reblogging posts, but I'll admit, even on sites with tag blacklisting features, I never found them to be entirely sufficient. Tag blacklisting is a system that needs collaboration in order to function—obviously if you want to avoid seeing something, you need to put it into your blacklist to begin with, but blacklisting only works if people actually tag their posts correctly. If someone is posting something that icks you out and they don't tag it correctly, it's not going to get flagged by your filters and you'll end up seeing it anyway. (Plus sites like Tumblr only hide the content of the post; it doesn't hide the post itself.) But with a community feature, people can post their stuff to those spaces and it's contained to that space without being out the open for everyone to see, so even if they did fail to tag it properly, as long as they posted to that community, it's still going to reach the people who want to see it while being less likely to be seen by people who may be icked out by the contents. And since communities are user-created, this means that if you're struggling to find a place that has everything you like and nothing you don't, you just make one yourself. (Also, unlike some other sites, blacklisting a tag on Pillowfort actually nukes any posts with the tag from existence instead of still letting it show up anyway.)
I think what's funny is that a lot of people who tried out Dreamwidth/Pillowfort and didn't like them often cited the lack of engagement on posts. Some of it just has to do with the sites just having smaller userbases than a lot of mainstream ones, but in Dreamwidth's case, it is a
journaling website—while people are allowed to comment on your entries so long as you have them enabled in your settings, it's more meant to serve as an archive for your thoughts and ideas rather than a place to advertise. As for Pillowfort? Again, it's the decentralized structure. Without any sort of general feed or algorithm, you have to actively go looking for people/communities to fill with what you wanna see, and if you're looking for interactions, passive likes and reblogs aren't enough—you actually have to comment on the post to let someone know
"Hey, I like what you said and agree!" And really, I think that does so much to foster better communication. Anytime I've gotten comments here or on Pillowfort, the interactions felt more meaningful because it was clear people were actually trying to talk to me rather than at me, if that makes any sense, and I really want to get better at commenting on other people's posts in return. (I think I'm still just a little shy because other sites have trained me to be cautious since it can only take a single poorly worded post to invite a gross harassment campaign.)
I still have my Tumblr and Bluesky accounts because I do need them in order to better advertise my illustrations and streaming shenanigans, but ugh. I know nostalgia does sometimes result in people looking at things through rose tinted lenses, but it's no wonder so many people are tired of mainstream social media and want something closer to the old internet. I need quieter, more relaxed spaces where people are looking for active conversation and discussions end up being discussions rather than heated debates at best and all out wars at worst.
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