the sorrow of my favorite absence

[sciatrix]

...but wow, having been spending so much time over on MeFi, I really miss the whisperspace of favorites. (I'm stealing that concept off of greywash, who had a really interesting piece about it last week.) Here's her on the whisperspace of Tumblr tags:

What the tag whisperspace on Tumblr gave me, essentially, was a way of signaling a break between "this is the media-absorption experience I want you to have of this content" (a thing of which I am incredibly aware, in the specific case of fiction); and "also, fuuuuuuuuck I'm a moron, I totally posted this by accident, which is a thing that signals a sort of touching incompetence on my part that you may find amusing/endearing/cringingly tragic, depending on our social relationship."

In other words: I think a lot of what I miss about tag whisperspace was that it was a clear and intuitive way of signalling a break between the part of a social media post that is media and the part of a social media post that is social.

For those of you on my feed who aren't familiar with the way communication works on Metafilter, basically everyone has accounts and all the discussion happens on topic-centered posts in a nonthreaded chronological format. (It is wonderful. No one is ever going to fuck with my chronological read of threads.) There are no in-line images, no icons, no tags, and usernames only appear at the bottom of the text, so you only see who has written something after you've read it. (Well, ideally, anyway. Especially if they're long-winded, like me.)

But you can hit a little button at the bottom of any post or comment and it will say "you favorited this comment!" And you can see who favorited any given comment--lurkers cannot post or interact in any way, you have to have an account with a login to do anything--and if you follow how many favorites you've gotten for this or that post, you also see a list of everyone who has favorited that comment and when. (Here's an example from a recent comment of mine, which happened to be about Dreamwidth and how much I'm enjoying coming back here.) And anyone reading can see how many favorites any given comment has, right next to the username.

I actually really love this because it is a form of whisperspace communication: it's a part of the conversation that allows those direct social communications to happen totally distinct from the textual conversation itself. It lets community stand besides someone who has made a difficult comment or who is grieving; it helps people "read the room;" and most of all it lets me build the kinds of friendships that don't really require shyer people to come out and talk that much. It lets me, who is a loud person who will talk the ears off a donkey, say "hey! I'm glad you said that!" without actually saying so and derailing things.

Of course, people being people, there is also a strong contingent who think favorites are a popularity contest--and in some ways, they are!--and who think they twist discussion norms to hurt each other. (And there are people who claim to use favorites like bookmarks, kind of like LJ or DW memories/favorites, but I have never understood this arcane concept. I use mine as a medium of communication, which is I think very common.)

But I haven't mentioned the thing I use the favorites for that makes me love them best of all: the ability to do the equivalent of smiling, nodding, and projecting thank you for saying that in a rough conversation, especially one where I'm concerned the other person thinks I'm angrier than I actually am. The ability to try to smooth over a certain amount of conflict by sending affiliative communication over the line, even while I'm still in conflict, and to be able to receive that behavior too. I think it helps people drop defenses and talk to one another, because you can build norms of saying "oh, thank you for saying this!" in a way that lets lurkers participate but also encourages long-form, in-depth conversations and focus. It's very nice.

I'm pretty sure that it's not a high priority here, but it's definitely something I'm wistfully thinking about today.

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

Hey, do you have a definition of "whisperspace" as it's used on Tumblr? I googled a bit and ended up more confused than I was before, which hindered my ability to take in that post you mention.

[sciatrix]

You know, I don't think I do! I was taking the concept pretty closely from greywash, who is discussing it in the sense of a typographically set off place where communication is set aside in a textual piece with particular social

On Tumblr, I think the "tags as whisperspace" idea is that because tags are not carried from reblog to reblog, it is possible to think of each set of tags on an individual blog as a "whisperspace" where a user speaks privately to only the other users who follow them and happen to see that post in the feed, as opposed to a more public space like adding an addition to the reblogged post, where the conversation is carried permanently along the reblog and is easier to metaphorically "hear."

Other places I've seen described as "whisperspace" are the conversational footnotes that are popularly used in Terry Pratchett but also here, parentheticals generally, and small-text little "well but actually" asides that people will use to add social and emotional context to writing.

Does that help?

oh god I hope it does I'm always overwhelmed by the semantics and creating operational definitions for stuff I've seen but oh god it's everywhere

(That little addition on the end? That's whisperspace, or an attempt at it. I see it marked out with small and _sub tags here most often, or sometimes with all lowercase words.

[princessofgeeks]

So pretty close to the idea of a parenthetical or an aside.

But yeah -- all these platforms have so many options for this kind of thing!

Thank you. I thought it was a tag itself, at first, and of course that confused me completely.

[sciatrix]

Oh yes, that would be very confusing indeed! No, no, it's that tags on Tumblr are functionally worthless for organizing or finding things and also Tumblr is terrible at context and will pass reblogs around to so many different audiences that there's no predicting it. So people wound up using them as free-form commentary that would definitely stay to only their own followers, which wound up bleeding into other spaces--especially the Archive of Our Own.

[jesse_the_k]

I was so thrilled to learn about whisperspace from greywash--I had spent eight years wondering what all these hashtags were about. Then I fell into Sherlock fandom, whence they took over the AO3, and let me just say I'm feeling solid on my pins for the first time in a long time.

Your point about MF favorites The ability to try to smooth over a certain amount of conflict by sending affiliative communication over the line, even while I'm still in conflict, and to be able to receive that behavior too. is spot on! I think the very first ones I clicked were for just this reason. It's an "I see you!" button. Following kaberett's excellent example, I now simply reply "I see you" when it's appropriate.

and probably when it's not, but let's not go there right now

[sciatrix]

Ha! I have been trying to do that, or "thank you for sharing." It's a little more awkward, but it gets the job done.

...I hope...

[kaberett]

I think the way I implement this, which I haven't actually said anywhere yet, is: I make my main post, and then I... put the whisperspace stuff in the first comment to it? often in parentheticals?

[sciatrix]

Oh! I have also been known to do this, although not here mostly--again on metafilter, if I'm making a front page post I'll often make the post and then on the first comment pretend like I didn't actually make the whole thing initially and bring in my own commentary. But I think there posting, which I think of as being a little more like hosting than I think other people do, has a bit more weight of formality to it than it does here.

It's interesting thinking about all the social connotations of different platforms, especially as I'm seeing so many people bounce across communities and platforms to try new things lately.

[wellthisisnice]

A problem with tags as whisperspace in Tumblr that i encounter often is the use of Tag Viewer (part of the XKit browser extension), which is very common and disrupts that use of tags as social asides only to be seen by followers.

And i mean as in, a practical problem: I often use conversational tags as whisperspace, and sometimes even my organizational tags function in that way (like when i use the tag #witchcraft for chemical experiments and other cool stuff) with the assumption that only people that follow me will see them. However, because of Tag Viewer, i've had on multiple ocassions people come at me for my tag choice, because they didn't know the context, they didn't know that my fangirl tag is about fandom in general, or that when i talk about "our community" i mean the ace community, or that i tagged that username in this art post because it was related to their stories, not because i believed them to be the author. And so on and so forth.

[sciatrix]

Oh, absolutely. It takes a little more effort, but it can be done, and if you're interested in a conversation, putting in a little more effort to hear the whispers people are passing to each other isn't so bad. Which has interesting implications for eavesdroppers, and makes me think about the intended audience for whisperspace. Whispers are quiet for a reason: you're minimizing who "overhears" you, and you're aiming them at people who are near by and actively listening, but that doesn't mean that someone who is listening very hard might not hear... which might be neutral, bad, or good for the speaker, depending. Note that almost all of these typographical quirks that set off whisperspace make the text slightly harder to read and require a little bit of extra effort, like quietly focusing on and listening to someone who is literally whispering. (The only exception is all-lowercase communication, which is something I primarily see on MeFi and I think denotes sarcasm or silliness or just extreme informality as much as anything else.)

I've been thinking about whisperspace and other very quiet signals in my capacity as a biologist working in animal communication today, as I try and organize my notes to tackle a study of social context and the quiet chirps and squeaks and whistles that my mice make. (More from me on sensory modalities here.) The Internet is different from other modalities of communication, though, in that interested people can actually upregulate their receptive power--that is, if you're interested in what people are saying to one another in the tags, you can use XKit or another browser to help minimize the effort it takes you to pick up those communications, or you can go to the trouble of increasing the font size, or or or. Which the intended recipients of the conversation can also do, but which also requires a little bit of extra effort. It's something I can't really work out existing in other modalities and forms of communication.

(Except maybe smell, I guess, where you could upregulate your receptor densities for a particular compound to perceive it at lower densities. Smell is also probably the least chronologically sensitive sensory modality I can think of, come to that, but it's also the hardest for me to wrap my head around. Probably why it's terminally understudied, I guess.)

DW Personal Tags as Whisperspace

[jesse_the_k]

I've wobbled between freighted tags, like "witchcraft" for chemistry, and straightforward ones. When I encounter "witchcraft" on a post re: chemical experiments or cooking, I would be delighted!

Recently I've tried to harmonize my tags (nine hundred seven!) and been brutally reminded of my inability to remember what clever!me was on about 10 years ago.

[silversandbea]

Whisperspace is a great word for that! I'll check my favorited by others comments every so often, and I always have to fight the feeling that it's narcissistic. But most of what I end up taking away what people are reading at that moment, and it's always fun to realize that someone is going through an old thread or obviously doing a Star Trek rewatch.

I'll sometimes use favorites as a bookmark, but most of the time it's an 'I agree with you' or 'this is an interesting idea and you should feel good', which I think is pretty common.

The thing about using the tags on tumblr is that tumblr is so open that the whisperspace feels even more necessary. Everyone could click back and see my tags, too, but chances are only the people on my feed are going to see them. With dreamwidth, I'm not worried about my post going viral, but it would be kind of nice to have a low-interaction bump.

And now I'm thinking about kudos/commenting on Ao3, where there's a contingent that believes that the existence of kudos leads to fewer substantive comments, because people will take the lower energy route. I'm skeptical that the resulting comment would say much more than 'I like this', but hey.

[sciatrix]

Oh absolutely, total agreement! I do the same kind of casual check on my favorited comments, and I tend to think of it as a way to read the room vis-a-vis what I'm saying and take social feedback so I can be more helpful in the future.

I couldn't use favorites as a bookmark if I wanted to! I would never find anything, ha!

I agree with you re: comments vs. kudos on the AO3, tbh. Also, I like that these low-effort signals of "liked it!" don't necessarily require a response in the same way that more invested comments do. Sometimes I'm tired, too! It's nice to have a "I liked this, I liked you" nudge that doesn't require more attention to feed it back.

Possibly I am just in a weird place in my life right now, when exhaustion has eroded my energy levels.

[horusporus]

oh that describes it perfectly! i don't mind off-site media embedding because there are options, but i do like a quiet heart or like or kudos... i've taken to just commenting LIKE on some friends' posts now.

and i definitely miss the improv-y nature of tumblr tagging... i mean ao3 accepts it too, it does add a bit more character, even with all the verbiage one may already have in the body of the post.

[sciatrix]

yes! LIKE or :heart: or any of those little things--they're nicer now because the omnipresent culture of likes and favorites and hearts mean that we know what it means, I think. Less ambiguity!

[tozka]

I like what you said about a favorite (or a like) being the equivalent of a smile or a whispered thank you-- I tend to do that on Twitter/Mastodon. It's not really my FAVORITE tweet ever, but I want to send support to the OP, so I star it. On DW, I've been leaving little hearts in comments if I want to do something similar. ♥

May I link to this post in the next issue of thisweekmeta?

[sciatrix]

Absolutely you may. In general, I don't mind being linked by that sort of thing; if I don't get back to you to say no in the future, you can assume that you have blanket permission.

(I appreciate being asked, to be clear! I like the warning. Just, er, if you can remember person-specific rules--difficult as your sources of linkspam posts expand!--it's generally okay by me.)

And yes, I also do the same thing all over Twitter. I give hearts to EVERYTHING, including often anyone I'm talking to in conversation.

[tozka]

Thank you! I HAVE started a list of "doesn't mind any linking" users, which right now is, uh, three. Ha!

So in the future I won't specifically ask to link, but I will post a "hey, this is going in the next newsletter issue," just so you know where all the comments are coming from, if there IS an influx suddenly. :D

[sciatrix]

Thank you! I really appreciate that.

[jesse_the_k]

You can add me to the "fine to link" list, in the off chance I write something worth sharing :,)

[tozka]

Will do! Thanks so much. :D

[wanderingnork]

This is so nice. The two things I've missed about Tumblr, so far, are the lack of ability to directly "reblog" things (which I'm adapting to through linking to posts) and the tags. I've never heard the term "whisperspace" before, but it describes the situation perfectly.

I never really used tags as organization, but as implicit conversation - discussion that happened tangent to the post. A personal anecdote, a moment of further thought, a "note to self," it all got stuck in there. I didn't have to really interact, or worry about people shouting at me over a possibly controversial reply to a post.

Despite being chatty as hell, I'm also...kind of shy. Not that you'd really know it from how I've been interacting on this site so far, but still! If there were a way for me to "be a better lurker," and provide likes or use another form of whisperspace, I do feel like I'd be more comfortable in general. But, well, what can you do? In this case I'll say that the good of DW outweighs the bad, and I still prefer this site to tumblr!

At the moment, using the format of DW as it stands, I feel like cuts (for the person making the post) are possibly the only form of whisperspace I can really imagine. Still, it doesn't resolve the fact that people in the comments can't participate in that way...food for further thought, because I really do miss that part of tumblr culture.