The Interwebs.

[rogueslayer452]

Taken from last week's thefridayfive:

01. Which website do you go to more often than any other?
Tumblr, DreamWidth, YouTube, Archive Of Our Own, Reddit, and Dropout.tv are ones that I visit daily. Although I would say that out of all of those, Tumblr is the one that I use the most frequently, as in checking and reblogging pretty damn frequently throughout the day.

02. Which website have you stopped going to, that you used to go to a lot?
LiveJournal is the most obvious answer. I used to live and breathe that place since creating an account there in 2003, and it's heartbreaking how it has devolved into what it is now, just an utter wasteland of inactive users and communities that used to thrive back in the day. I stuck it out as long as I could, but things got questionable with those running it and, well, as sad as it was to leave that place behind it's for the better.

There also used to be some news blogs I used to check out, mostly for fannish news and things in relation to geek and pop culture, but over the years it became kind of obvious that those places shifted into being more heavily bias and their articles became less reliable and filled with inaccurate information that wasn't ever edited or acknowledged even after many commenters would point it out. After noticing this pattern I just stopped visiting altogether and go elsewhere for that kind of stuff, honestly.

03. What is the weirdest or most unusual website you have bookmarked?
I mean, I don't think this is weird in the slightest, but I check Weibo from time to time which some might find unusual since I cannot read Chinese. I don't have an account there, it's just to keep tabs on current updates on the actors that I like when certain fandom accounts elsewhere haven't gotten to it yet.

04. If you shop online, which online store do you buy from most often?
Hot Topic it seems most recently, unapologetically so. Though to be honest it overall tends to be equally divided to the regular places I usually go.

I used to shop online a lot more years ago, but a lot of the places I often visited ended up closing down over the years which made me very sad. Since then it's become more and more difficult to find something that was equivalent or reliable, as most things you search in Google tend to just give you the most questionable fast fashion scam websites, or just places that used to be inexpensive but have now ridiculously upped their prices. You have to be really careful even on places like Etsy where there are now resellers of fast fashion bombarding that place when before it wasn't like that at all, at least to the rate it is at now.

05. Which online store do you browse but almost never buy from?
Does Zillow and Trulia count? Because I love just searching for the most expensive houses for sale, fantasizing what it would be like, and then just click away afterwards. This goes for any online shopping, really. I sometimes will just go searching for what is the most expensive items and wonder if this is something I would ever buy if I had the money, and if so what I would do with it, etc.

Comments

[author_by_night]

Interesting about the news websites. I never really got into some of the places I think you're talking about, and while I can't fairly say I remember exactly why, it does seem to me that was part of it. They could feel very clickbaity. Also, one started switching to video, and while this may seem petty, as someone who needs headphones it was a pain. Now I mostly listen to videos while doing things anyway, not to mention these days, I expect 50% of a site's content to be video. So now it actually wouldn't be an issue, but at the time, yeah. I had headphones, but I didn't want to scramble around for them.

I like Ao3, but I should probably start figuring out how to use tags so I see multiple fandoms.

At this point, tumblr is kind of my new LJ, except less personal. That's my biggest beef with it. That, and the fact that you can't really protect your posts, which means there are things I haven't shared...

[haebin]

LiveJournal is the most obvious answer. I used to live and breath that place since creating an account there in 2003, and it's heartbreaking how it has devolved into what it is now...
THIS^

[rogueslayer452]

Yes, they were very clickbaity, sometimes obnoxiously so. And some of the authors of those articles would have particular patterns of bias about the subject they're writing about, which becomes more and more obvious the less refined their writing got as their opinions tended to take over (not to mention the obnoxious tone of the articles, acting like their opinions were fact when they weren't), and it became more annoying as time went on. I know some people still link to these particular places every so often, but I ignore them because while the subject might be interesting, I don't trust what the article might be saying.

That, and the fact that you can't really protect your posts, which means there are things I haven't shared...

That's why I prefer DW for making posts, because it's a way of controlling who sees what I'm posting. While Tumblr has that fannish community vibe that we often got with LJ back in the day, it is a microblogging site that is meant to share anything/everything for people to like/reblog. Even if the place has made it so you can make your posts non-rebloggable it's still public for people to see.

[rogueslayer452]

It's honestly sad, especially when you look back at when it was thriving. People were posting multiple times a day, there were tons of active communities, it was the place to be. And now if you look at it, it's barely recognizable. The only place that seems active is ONTD, which is always behind on anything celebrity/pop culture news anyway.

[autumndaze]

How do you usually check weibo if you don't mind the ask? I've tried to make an account there so I can follow artists, but it seems to be limited to Chinese folks. And it's hard to see much of artists pages without an account (you can see some things, but the website stops you after a short amount of time in my experience).

[got_quiet]

RIP Livejournal.

I spend a lot of time on Zillow too, faking myself out into thinking I could somehow afford a house someday haha. Sometimes the houses are really just cool to look at!

[rogueslayer452]

That's pretty much the same as I do it, yeah. There is only a limit to what you can do with the search (although I find that on mobile it's a bit different, I'm able to do endless searching, at least when it comes to individual accounts, whereas on desktop it's limited). It's not perfect, and I mostly just check for a few actors anyway, it's mainly to see what is currently being updated on events and interviews and whatnot. Some things are repeated posts so I'll check back every so often to see if there is anything new.

[rogueslayer452]

I really like looking at the architecture and interiors of some of the houses, because some of them are just really interesting. Sometimes it's cool, and other times it's more of an "what were they thinking with this design?" kind of way, which is also part of the imagining what would I do if I had that kind of money and how would I fix this place up to my tastes.

[svgurl]

Totally get you about LJ. I think LJ and FFN are two places I used to be on a lot and now I just sometimes crosspost to LJ and never visit FFN.

[rogueslayer452]

I haven't returned to FFN in a looonnggg time, I stopped going somewhere in the 00s when they started getting stricter and banning things (RIP to all the lost pieces of fic that I still remember and regret not saving at the time). The fact that it still exists astounds me.

[elizalavelle]

Shopping online really only works for some things these days. So much of what you see are scams and low quality. So you pretty much need to stick to a place where you know the products already or companies you know are good quality. There are so many ads all over social media and so many resellers and it's a lot of cheap garbage.

[rogueslayer452]

That is very true. I do tend to stick with the sites that I've gone to for years, and if there is anything new that I'm somewhat interested in I do research into the site to see how reliable it is and how satisfied the customers are (at least those who aren't heavily biased and are just reviewing based on their experiences with ordering from said website). I'm thankful that I don't really see much of these ads, and the ones I have seen weren't ever appealing to me in the slightest.

[elizalavelle]

Agreed, most the the ads I see I'm not really likely to click on at all. I don't like getting clothes online from any unknown brand because I need to try things on to see what fits so it's a pretty easy thing to skip over when the ads are for anything I can wear.