How to decide how much you should share online

Tech, Writing

I’m 30 years old and for the first time in my life, I got acne.

My immediate impulse was to share a before and after for my 6,666 Twitter followers. The before: me two months ago with my usual, youthful skin; the after: a scarred wasteland of regret (OK, maybe it feels worse to me than it really is). It’s a temporary situation brought about by a bad reaction to my new birth control, and I’m approaching it with humor. I feel like being able to laugh at myself when life sucks is relatable, and I wanted to share that with people.

But after logging into Twitter and doing my usual morning housekeeping (muting people with phrases like “deplorable” in their display names), I remembered, “Oh yeah. A lot of people in my online bubble don’t like me and are always looking for new ways to justify that dislike.”  

Which is fine. I mean, to an extent—I’d rather people don’t tell me when they dislike me, because their opinions about me are none of my business. But I don’t need everyone to like me or even know who I am, and I don’t spend any part of my day trying to win them over.

It’s a reminder though: social media is not just a hangout for me and my friends. It’s a place where more people than I’ll ever meet can follow my life if they feel like it. I know this well, because I follow and interact with many people I’ve never met in person.

Personally, I am more likely to follow and connect with people who know that even people without their best interests in mind will pass judgement on them, but stay vulnerable anyway. I love reading personal essays. I love bloggers who put their successes as well as their setbacks on display. I like living as many vicarious lives as possible.

For example, my favorite podcast right now is Bad With Money With Gaby Dunn. There are a dozen podcasts about personal finance, but I like this one because I identify so much with host Gaby Dunn. She shares everything—from an anecdote about crying on a sidewalk unable to pay her rent (boo!), to landing a huge payday and putting $8,000 in her retirement fund (yay!), to getting a therapist after her boyfriend dumped her (boo to the breakup, yay to the therapy!). These ups and downs remind me of my own life in fast forward mode. Day to day, I can only see one up or down at a time. But scrolling through a stranger’s feed (or listening to their podcast, or reading their personal essay) is like reading an amazing story that renews my faith in life.

Yes, sharing the negatives about my life gives strangers with bad intentions ammunition to justify their negative opinions, but they also give my readers authenticity. I don’t regret opening up to my readers about struggling with anxiety and depression in the past—even though trolls still like to dig that up as “proof” that I’m “crazy.” The community connection by far outweighed anything outsiders said to me. 

Also, sometimes it feels really good to get things off my chest. I recently blogged for Anime Feminist about my privilege—through a combination of scholarships and gifts from my parents, I do not have any student loans. This is especially important for me to share because whenever I talk about how I earn, spend, and save, it’s important to remember that my situation might be different. In this case, not sharing that part of myself is actually disingenuous when I offer advice, even though it is immensely personal, and technically nobody’s business unless I choose to share it.  

TL;DR, I advocate sharing plenty about your life—with a few caveats. Here are a few pieces of advice from spending more than half my life online:

You’re not a brand, you’re a person. I consider my account my digital identity more than my brand. I follow hardly any brands on Twitter, except Crunchyroll which is hilarious and frequently off-topic. I really like when people are willing to take a break from promoting whatever it is they believe in to make time for humor or personal stories. Recently, I shared a conversation I had with my 90-year-old grandmother, a story that has nothing to do with fandom or the other things I care about most. It was gratifying to share something so far from my “personal brand,” and reveal another side of my thoughts and beliefs in the same space.

Consider your own safety. Last year, after I wrote about a situation where I was harassed at work, my harasser was emboldened to send additional threats to me, my friends, and my family. You can “own your narrative” but remember that people who want to hurt you can own theirs, too. Never write about where you physically are, or where you soon will be, just in case.  

Find a middle ground. I like to share a lot online. My husband doesn’t like to share at all—he even has a locked Twitter account! So because we file taxes jointly and my finances affect his, I don’t include numbers in my monthly income reports. I still can talk to people about my business, but I can do it without making somebody I care about uncomfortable.

Take a break. Sometimes when I’m feeling strongly about something, my impulse is to tweet something immediately. I find that if I first take ten minutes to think about and process my thoughts, I regret it less. I’m also more articulate that way. 

This just might not be for you. Some people aren’t cut out for sharing anything, and maybe you are one of them. Don’t force yourself.  

Photo by Anthony Rossbach

Otaku Links: Never too late

Otaku Links

Illustration by Robert Syrett. 

Subjectivity: My plan for getting people to trust news again

Uncategorized

Last week, a New York Times writer published a review of anime streaming service Crunchyroll as an outsider to the genre. Plenty of anime fans took offense to this, with Thoughts That Move going so far as to call the review “either a failure to do his due diligence as a paid writer or as an intentional smear of Crunchyroll and anime.”

In extreme contrast, I also published an article of an anime streaming service last week, in Forbes. It was the result of my interview with Anime Strike, a company I have publically had reservations about. I see this as the other side of the same coin—there, somebody with zero opinions about anime formed an opinion after previewing a service; in my case, I had been using that service and others, and formed my opinion, long before I wrote the article.

This goes directly against my journalism school education, which preached objective reporting above all else. One of my most-repeated anecdotes from my master’s program is the time a professor warned us not to vote in presidential elections if we wanted to be journalists. After all, true journalists are always willing to hear both sides, but never pick one for themselves.

If you’re new to Otaku Journalist, you might not know about my Otaku Journalist manifesto. If my body of journalistic work has a thesis statement, this is it, and it’s in direct opposition to that particular j-school lesson. For the last five years, my manifesto has been the way in which I justify reporting on subjects I continue to have passionate opinions about. An excerpt:

“Human beings are opinionated by nature. If we try to suppress them, they might unconsciously come out even more glaring than if we’d addressed them directly. To pretend to be a robot is not only impossible, it’s dishonest.”

At the time I wrote this, it felt revolutionary. But in 2017, a time when people distrust the media more than ever, I don’t think I could find a straw man out there who would side with affecting total objectivity. (Because it always is affecting—humans simply aren’t objective. While the New York Times review was objective on the surface-level, we discovered his not-so-shocking dislike of anime fans later when he threatened to sue one over Twitter.)

Bringing this back to Anime Strike, I set out to write this article without concealing how I felt. I’m not just a reporter, but a member of anime fandom, and when Anime Strike gave bottled answers to ANN and refused to interact with fans, I felt offended, too.

So that’s how I approached the article. The very first thing I did was reach out to my own community and ask them, what would you like me to ask Anime Strike? And then, I immediately took those questions, many asked in somewhat unkind terms, and sanitized them, the better to get Anime Strike to actually respond. This wasn’t easy, as you can tell from me referring only to “Anime Strike” as an entity—I worked through a PR agent, and received no name for who answered the questions, simply “a spokesperson.” It was pretty faceless.

It’s not unusual for me to go into the reporting process with an initial opinion. Reporting is about people, and I’m a person, too. If I have a burning question, I ask it and hope it answers a question other people have, too, but weren’t in a position to get answers to. (Like when I wrote about bringing doujinshi home from Japan in Am I Going To Get Arrested For Bringing All This Cartoon Porn Into The US? Maybe you wondered but were afraid to ask!) But when I go in with a negative opinion, I’m always secretly hoping the interviewee is able to change my mind. For Anime Strike, all it would have taken were some sincere answers.

Of course, I didn’t get that. Out of the 11 questions I sent, I got four answers, and a bunch of “no comment.” The company also asked me to write my article in a way that did not draw attention to their refusal to answer most of my questions; I didn’t. For that reason I alone I tweeted that this was probably a “bridge-burner,” an article that would get me blacklisted with the company.

This happened to me long ago when I wrote up some bad press about Etsy, even though the company asked me not to, and it refused to send me press releases or official statements after that. (For the duration of that reporting job, I had to cover Etsy without any access to Etsy itself.)

However, Anime Strike’s PR thanked me for including some of the service’s positive features, and asked me to write back any time. I asked that in the meantime, they come up with some answers to the questions I wasn’t able to get replies to. It was probably my most unkind retort to a company, ever. I can’t do my job without companies, which incentivizes me to be nice to them so they don’t pull an Etsy on me. In turn, they’re incentivized to be nice to me, and give me free stuff. Journalism is just a bit broken, yes. No wonder nobody trusts it anymore!

However, I think we can start rebuilding honesty in news from the inside, by being honest to ourselves. For me, that starts with reporting in my own community—you won’t see me in the New York Times reporting on media I don’t like and know nothing about. Maybe local news is gone for good, but I can at least report on news that’s important to fans like me, from a perspective they can relate to. People don’t have to guess if I’m really objective (and nobody is) because I’m not hiding my viewpoint. They can take that, take the facts, and make their own opinion.

Photo by Jon S

Otaku Links: Burger time

Otaku Links

Screenshot via Paprika.

On failure and knowing when to quit (P.S. Asuna is free now)

Careers, Tech

Late last year, I decided to give myself a bit of a digital makeover. I left my last part-time web design gig with revamped WordPress skills, and even as I ditched the job I still wanted to make WordPress design and development a part of my career.

I added a Web Design section to Otaku Journalist. I created a portfolio site to showcase some of my previous work. And, most time-consumingly, in order to prove that I knew what I was talking about, I built my own WordPress theme from scratch.

It’s been five months, and I have to say, business is slow. I do have several recurring web clients, but not because I advertised my availability online—I got them all through work connections. Every now and then somebody fills out my “get a quote” form, but after pricing out a potential contract in the three figures, I never hear from them again.

It’s easy to ignore the web business failure, because I’m still getting web clients, just not the way I planned. As for the theme, Asuna, I’ve sold exactly one copy.

That stings because I spent more than 20 hours building Asuna to be absolutely perfect. If you check out the demo, you can see I gave it 13 points of customization out of the box, while your average WordPress theme only has one or two.

However, if before putting in that 20 hours I had taken one hour to do a little research, I would have noticed a couple major hints this wasn’t going to sell:

  • Most anime bloggers who use WordPress have a free theme, not a paid one.
  • Heck, most bloggers in general don’t pay for themes, since so many are free.
  • Not as many people like Asuna from Sword Art Online as I previously thought.

Long story short, enough is enough. Starting today, you can get Asuna for free.

Get it for free already!

I’m actually excited about this because it’ll mean more people than me are trying and testing my theme. Plus, since I’m a professional and you don’t have to worry about it being buggy or broken, I’ll at least be able to feel pride in my well done work helping people out.

More than that, I feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I was trying so hard for so long to make it happen, trying out different price points and advertising. Now I can give up and expend my energy elsewhere.

Additionally, Asuna has helped me find a clearer answer to the question, “What is valuable?” Just because I spent hours agonizing over it didn’t make Asuna a valuable product. On the flipside, just because writing is easy and fun for me doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value. This is why I even monetize projects I do for enjoyment.

Asuna was a failed project long before I decided, this week, to quit promoting it. So when in a project’s lifespan do you decide to give up? As soon as it starts to become more trouble than it’s worth. Asuna was a ton of work up front, and then nothing but minor maintenance and updates since then, so I was able to push it to the back burner in terms of time investments. Really, it’s the mental and emotional investment I freed myself from when I decided to start giving it away.

If Asuna had succeeded, I wanted it to be the first in a series of WordPress themes I design from scratch. Maybe I’ll still make another (I’ve got a design concept based on Holo from Spice & Wolf waiting in the wings) but it won’t be as a part of my business. I’ve closed the book on this attempt so I can free myself up to try new projects. Sure, they might be failures, too, but what if they aren’t? The only way I’ll know for sure is if I try.

Lead photo by Markus Spiske.