Slowness and Meta Writing on Tumblr as Alternative Forms of Engagement in Online Communities

Abstract

How might we envision social media engagement practices that diverge from the individual, ephemeral experience of the dominant attention economy-driven social media paradigm into a collective, meaningful practice? Through a series of 13 in-depth interviews with long-form writers in a Tumblr community situated around specific media fandom interests, we identify a distinct set of practices centered around slowness. We find that users engage in: 1) Anti-viral engagement as resistance, 2) cultivating micro-communities as ‘comfortable corners,’ and 3) flexible temporal and curatorial practices as alternative forms of engagement. We argue that these practices create an experience on the platform that supports deliberate, meaningful community formation. This paper contributes to ongoing conversations about alternative social media futures that prioritize user agency and community well-being over engagement optimization and algorithmic governance.