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?