sincere | A treatise on Plurk

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A treatise on Plurk

I'm going to explain why Plurk is the bane of my existence, and why I have been so much happier without it. Every time I go back, I inevitably see something that makes me twitch and close it again.

For a while, Plurk does make me feel, and I believe did make me feel, more in tune with people. It's amazing! Now I can be in touch with almost everyone, all the time! But the magic wears off. On Plurk, you're inundated with the thoughts of people who are near-strangers to you constantly, and there's a lot of reasons this might be problematic. Maybe you feel compelled to share things that didn't need to be shared. Maybe things you didn't even care about before now irritate you. Maybe you learn new, ugly things you didn't want to know about the people in your social circle. Maybe you just suffer overload: empathy fatigue and information flood all the time, every day, constantly sucking you in and sucking your spirit out.

And once the magic wears off, you're left with a lot of the following:

+ My games that you're not in are amazing!!!
+ Here are all the things I hate about that thing you love.
+ This is a passive-aggressive plurk designed to tell people you know and like that I am upset with them without actually saying so.
+ This is a plain old aggressive plurk about the players, characters, or situations that I hate.
+ Click here for the most depressing world and/or U.S. news update I could find.
+ Here is my inflammatory opinion about a topic that is going to make you grit your teeth, either because of me or because of the arguments within.
+ Today I feel like the worst human being in the whole world and I want to quit everything and move to Antarctica.
+ [meme] Tell me how awesome I am or I will assume you hate me, even though I ask you to do this in various ways four times each week!
+ [meme] Plot with me, if you're one of my favorite players!
+ I'm not "into" your game. or Your game is making me feel bad. or Your game is inferior to my other game.
+ Do you have an impending sense of doom about everything you enjoy yet? Let me add to it with my deliberately nonspecific brooding.
+ omg omg one of my 159 friends unfriended me on Plurk and I can't sleep until I find out who

Every single day. I have tried scaling back; I have 100 friends on Plurk but I only follow about 30 of them. But even then I get 40~ updates per hour. It's a lot. And it's exhausting. And it consumes you.

I'm not saying I'm not partially guilty myself, and I'm not saying you're a terrible person if you have ever made one of these plurks. On the contrary, I'm saying Plurk brings out that petty part of people, because Plurk is, itself, petty. These are all things present in our daily lives, but not pervasive. They're pervasive because 30 or 100 people updating you 2-3 times an hour on their life is bound to go there.

And when I shut myself off from that, I slowly get pieces of myself back. Like my patience and my tolerance and my enjoyment of my life.

I'm sorry, Plurk. Maybe it's just me. But I'm happier without you. I think we should stay casual acquaintances.

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--ahahahahah oh man, I recognize every one of those plurks, yeah. I've managed to do a decent job of pruning my actually-following list to minimize that, but it's definitely a trend that the format encourages a lot. Stepping back from a timeline full of those plurks sounds like a really crucial sanity-protection move.

At first I went, it's like Twitter, but so much better, because I can communicate with people on it! But... it is like Twitter.

As the moderator of a game, I feel guilty unfollowing most of my game, although I know that as long as my plurk is open to them, I'm still available if they want me and I can change my mind if they're very engaging; and we do have an "official" plurk. But if I were really honest with myself, I think I would be following, like -- 10-15 people on Plurk. And at this point, I don't know if I could check it without falling back into the terrible habit of checking it every two minutes while at work. It's like a drug. But I didn't realize it until everyone's depressed plurks were weighing me down and I was feeling bad about everything in my life -- my game, my opinions, my priorities, my country, etc. ~~I can brood about those things on my own without anyone's help!~~

You and Plurk need to see other people.

"Here are all the things I hate about that thing you love."

Oh yeah, I'm tired of that kinda crap in general. We're talking about hobbies here, what people do for fun. Give the vitriol a rest, would you please?

AGREEEEEED.

I'm not a heavy user but even then I'd see some things that would make me want to slam my head against a wall. It's also incredibly scary when I friend someone who I initially thought was this really nice person and then... they plurk and suddenly they're someone entirely different. Someone I would like to avoid in the future because wow, they say these things? D:

I cut back some more and it definitely feels like I'm breathing out in the open again.

I think that's just what we're going to have to do.

To a certain extent, people are always going to have dissenting opinions. That's the amazing thing about opinions. That's fine. But on a format like DW, at least you have the opportunity to voice your thoughts fully, respectfully or otherwise, and you can take your time, and they can take their time responding... It lets you breathe. On Plurk it's immediate, 140 characters, right now, arguing in real-time and chances are that the accommodation for that is to just bluntly say "That? Yeah, that offends me."

Oh, okay. Because, you see, I was plurking about it because it made me happier about the thing that had offended me. But, uh, thanks... for sharing.

Exactly! It's just -- freeing not to be weighed down by all of that stuff. You don't realize how much it's burdening you to have all of that constantly coming at you and impacting your mood until you actually escape it for a while and go, "Wow. I miss talking to a few of the people, but there are so many parts of it I'm happier without."

Sometimes internet friends are better off staying kind of mysterious.

I've never figured out what Plurk was. I still don't understand the need for Twitter. All those social websites seem very interesting to me because, unfortunately, I have no interest in what someone is doing every minute of every hour of everyday. It's eventually why I never bothered with my Facebook. It's probably horrible for me to say something like not interested in other people's lives, but I think after an extent, I really don't need to know how someone felt after watching/reading/eating something. And I really find it hard to believe that anyone could have over 1000+ friends on any social website and say that they're actually that close to that person.

I like having a small group of people I'm actually interested in reading and communicating with rather than a horde of people I know next to nothing about because my stream/friends page is constantly being updated by the most annoying and pointless things. I think that's why I eventually came back to LJ/DW, because I can have those few select people I think are interesting and just all around fun to stalk. But to each their own. I honestly don't think I could last a day on Plurk or Twitter or whatever is out there right now.

I need to work on doing this too :( That week hiatus I took off from plurk felt really nice, but it's so easy to get hooked back into it.

Funny you should mention. I was just thinking in the last few days about how upsetting I find Plurk sometimes. For some different reasons, but nonetheless.

Definitely do what makes you happiest. <3

I agree. I think Plurk is part of why I came back to journaling: I missed being able to share things with people, but I wanted to be able to do it in a thoughtful way instead of an "every thought that comes into my head, every mood swing I experience, every aspect of my day" way. I wanted it to be "I have something to say, and I want it to be more than a blip on a timeline".

I'm happy journaling now. I know for some people Twitter or Plurk suits them better than journals, but I talked myself out of the mentality of "I have to compose long, insightful journal entries OR I CAN'T POST ANYTHING," so maybe there's hope. XD

Plurk has some good times, but overall, I think the amount it drags me down is just... too much. I am all about Plurk vacations, now, man.

♥ I will do so. Some people can deal with these things, and others can't. It just... makes me miserable to see other people being miserable or angry or frustrated or arguing etc. So it's all roses when everyone is happy and goofing off, but the moment things get serious I wilt.

I hope whether you take a break or not, you cheer up, too!

I know I probably contributed to the misery with all my RL drama, so I'm sorry about that. I tend to talk and talk and talk about what's bugging me like the obnoxious little extrovert I am. ^^;;;

In any case, sounds like you made the right decision for you. ~~I'll just pester you here instead!~~ :P

Yeah. I've realised that I'm only okay with Plurk when I'm in a good mood. With how bad I've been feeling lately, it's not a good fit. I've learned too much about people and have become a confidante for some people in a way that I'm just not comfortable with. I've been pulling back lately, including just closing that damn tab and distracting myself - but I'm not nearly as good at it as you!

Remembering - and not being afraid of - AIM helps, though. :3

It's okay!! I in no way mean to say "THAT SAFFRON WITH HER HORRIBLE HEALTH PROBLEMS IS ALWAYS BRINGING ME DOWN!!" I always appreciate talking with you, and I really do want to be there for you and wish you the best, so I would never have unfollowed you, and I'll miss not knowing what's going on in your life if I don't check Plurk for a while. But I'll always welcome your bothering. &hearts

I know that's not what you meant! But I do generally feel icky sometimes about spreading bad news all the time. But with luck I'll have good news soon(er or later)!

I enjoy talking with you too, and I definitely consider you one of the more supportive people on my plurk, so thanks for that (cozy). And since I'm actually using my DW now I'm sure you'll still be as ~~over~~informed about my stuff as everyone else. XD

/tosses all the hearts at

You should try taking a plurk break. It's beautiful. When you stop checking for a day it gets easier to just... keep not checking. ~~Like tags!~~

I will talk with you on AIM foreverrrrr.

A+ to all of this! (Even though I am guilty of 90% of those plurk subjects, sob.)

Yeah, the week I took a break from Plurk way back in November was the greatest week of my life. And then I got sucked back in. =/ I don't know if it is necessarily Plurk doing this or something else, but my tolerance for just about everything is zero right now.

My bus skipped my stop this afternoon. The next stop was one block away. And yet the first thing I wanted to do was march up to my laptop, open it and plurk to the world "MY BUS MISSED MY STOP!!! D<" And then I realized it was such a petty thing that I closed Plurk and went to go do other things for the rest of the day. But I'm guessing a lot of it is due to everyone pouring out their tiny (and maybe not so tiny) complaints that have whittled my tolerance down.

Who knows.

I think, also, that Plurk is, in many ways, a popularity contest (contest might be the wrong word here) but I'm not going to go into that right now because ahhhhh Plurk.

I should go back to taking a Plurk break. Maybe then I will remember how to be a normal, non-petty human being again. :(

I feel like Plurk is a combination of the instant brainvomit format of Twitter, with the ability continue on with it so it definitely leads to that. Though I personally feel that a lot of thing you're mentioning is also an issue of RP culture in general imo. A lot of these are things I remember seeing on LJ when it was the platform everyone else used. Stuff comes in faster because of the brainvomit character limit though, but I do know I've seen a lot of these points before Plurk as well.

That said, I do feel like the karma system definitely encourages more of the same behavior. I don't believe it causes it, but when you have a score that goes down when you don't plurk then everything on that list seems like a good idea to share. I know my relationship with Plurk got better when I froze my karma and didn't feel as much need to constantly update it for a number.

If stepping back entirely is what works for you then, kudos to you! Plurk has become so vital to the RP scene that I don't think I could do away with it entirely myself, and I commend your ability to do so.

Nah, I hear you there. It's why I've sometimes disappeared off of it for a while or I just stop responding to people or whatever. I feel like plurk's just become this exhausting requirement that shouldn't be for roleplay because of all you've mentioned. It really does add to the pettiness of roleplay. You don't really need to know what Jim Bob and Frank Philly are doing at THE MOST AWESOMEMEST GAME EVAR. Or that Dill Phoney was doing THESE BAD VOODOO THINGS or Peter Elis GOT BANININATED LOLOL I DIDN'T LIKE HIM ANYWAY. Or somethin'.

I get what you're saying. It just adds to much more extra baggage and drama to the scene. I mean, honestly, it's bad enough we have RP!S and Anoncomm. And those things you can avoid! If you maintain a plurk though, avoiding dumb shit becomes a little trickier. So, if you think stepping away from it would be for the best, I more than understand. There have been days I've thought of just deleting mine because of the extra petty, silly crap. I've never been a part of a roleplay community that was so "globally" petty before.

I can really see how someone who is emotionally sensitive to the feelings of others can have a really tough time with plurk. There's so much of it that's immediate and one person's good fortune is bound to bring another person down. Especially if it's a wave of good fortune across a fandom or group of friends that you're only on the fringe of. I've seen it. I understand it, and I do empathize with it.

I hope the break does you well and that you manage to wean yourself off of plurk altogether if that's what you wish. Good luck Li!

Although, I will admit that after freezing Karma, it really changed how I viewed and handled plurk as both a platform and as a thing I was tied to. I can ignore it for days if I want or an evening while I read. It's more easygoing and on MY terms so it may prove that for yourself too over time. I admit to being one of the few that likes it despite of its flaws (although I do wish there were fewer memes all around) because I can be in a conversation on MY terms and not someone else's. But I also don't feel compelled to be in every conversation and if one moves too fast, I simply close out and mute it. I know that's hard for a lot of people. It's actually the reason I can't be on aim hardly anymore because it's no longer my terms but theirs and it takes a certain kind of person to mesh with me on that platform so it's not emotionally and mentally taxing. You've always been one of the rare exceptions so hopefully we can continue to stay in contact that way, even if it's just once in a while.

I really do wish you the best. Good luck finding a happier mental status. It really is worth it and I support it wholeheartedly.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

A treatise on Plurk

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