BlytheLife.com opened in July 2010 and is a blog and resource hub for all things Blythe!
A Necessary Evil: Facebook and Blythe
Written on July 12, 2013 at 12:00 pm by MichelleFiled under: Article with tags: Facebook
Image by sxc.hu user alicja_sto.
I’ve noticed that over the course of the last year, there’s more and more Facebook groups dedicated towards Blythe. For those who are blissfully unaware: there are a lot of Facebook groups dedicated towards Blythe. I love sharing Blythe with the world as much as the next collector, but sometimes it still feels strange to have Blythe on Facebook. I spent a lot of time establishing a presence online that was distinctly Blythe and not-Blythe. I started adding (and being added by) Blythe people on Facebook after Portland and meeting more Blythe friends in person. I’m expanding my social circle, which I enjoy, but it’s still weird seeing Blythe photos sandwiched between nursing school blurbs and status updates from people I went to high school with.
Since Flickr’s changes in May, I’ve been finding that I spend less and less time on Flickr. The overall design is less inviting to me now, and I find myself scanning through some photos and then making my usual visits to specific pages (groups, recent activity) before leaving. I now spend more time on Facebook than I do Flickr, which is odd for me because since beginning to collect Blythe I’ve spent a lot of hours on that website (mostly scanning through pretty photos of dolls and daydreaming about who the next dolly will be). Now Facebook takes up some of my online free time, because it can and it doesn’t cost me anything to keep a tab open.
Funny enough, I don’t actually go seeking out Blythe Facebook groups to join! Yet I am a part of quite a few. I’ve grown to enjoy it, although I don’t post very much in the groups at all. I get notifications when there’s new posts, so I can keep up to date when people are posting about new items in their Etsy shops (which is always exciting when I’m hoping to get something elusive), when someone has a new doll and just when someone has something new to share. In a way, it incorporates a lot of things that I enjoyed with the old Flickr (the social media/commenting aspect of it), but it’s still weird to see real people’s names with real people’s photos. Whatever happened to seeing avatars all the time? I’m far too used to seeing people’s dolls as ‘them’. This leads to the unfortunate aspect of me expecting that people look like their dolls. It’s like “What, you don’t have a giant head and four sets of eyes?”.
Needless to say, I think the influx of people into Facebook groups since Flickr decided to do a big overhaul has been a welcome thing on the internet. Not everyone goes to the forums, or onto Twitter, but many people do go onto Facebook! And it’s been fun seeing more pictures of Blythe on the good ol’ Book of Face.
Are you in any Blythe groups on Facebook? How do you feel about having Blythe mingling in with your non-Blythe cohorts?
I agree it is weird mixing my Stephanie life with my SparkleFriday life… but I also feel like I need to stop hiding my girls from *all* of my friends…right? if they truly love me they will love me playing with dolls too – and if they can’t handle it, they can unfriend me.
Side Note: My teaching partner saw some dolly site on my FB and “liked” it – now she drools over dollys… some days she will come to work and say I saw the most beautiful Blythe on FB last night. tee hee
Interesting post! 🙂 I agree, there seems some drift towards FB.
I use the grouping feature on FB to sort contacts, each thing I post is restricted exactly to those people I want to get access too (and everyone in the background who has access to the data anyway …), non Blythe people will not receive Blythe pictures, Blythe people will not receive any personal updates or discussion with my friends, contacts from work will not see the same information like family. I don’t hide Blythedolls or my doll activities in real life, but I don’t like mixing everything (family, friends, work, school, doll people) up on FB.
Anyway, I just left a few Blythe related groups on FB again. I realized that I don’t like using FB for Blythe related things and I’m really not much interested in all the personal info that some Blythe people post. I don’t care what people had for breakfast. I get more and more requests from Blythe people on FB, that I have on Flickr for years but who haven’t interacted with me really – so I do wonder why do they add me on FB?
To me, Flickr is getting like FB anyway. No matter if IG, Facebook, Flickr, Tumblr or Ipernity – in my opinion it is all getting the same dump.
I wonder where this is leading too! 🙂 Will FB be the new Flickr?