ive been thinking about why im always getting so annoyed about how works are being interacted with on socmed (and particularly twitter, i think i have a good sense of maintaining my space on tumblr, but twt is inevitably a place where the fyp kind of ruins everything, even if i like interacting + engaging with those i follow/am mutuals with) despite there being times where ive been in fandoms (however, always on the sidelines and more passive, which im still now) where i have seen my fair share of bad opinions but it has also happened side-to-side with people wanting to engage with a work on their own terms.

of course there are always going to be ways of engaging with works that annoy me (posting endless panels, one-liners specifically said for engagement + as a way for marketing [also: are these people working for the publisher's marketing teams ... i have no insight into this so i am probably deeply embarrassingly wrong], reviews that repeat the plot of the work than giving their own opinions), make me uncomfortable (recently seen a lot of posts about comparing the thinness of character(s), or how their bone-structure, and/or musculature corresponds to the perfect level of thinness) and/or that i straight up detest (because of attaching its politics to their identities, or their refusal to engage with a work within fictional limits < also as a way to get people to agree with them on what fiction must do and what it mustn't).

& it's not that people should be disallowed to engage with works with lesser depth, while i find value in giving thought to what i read, not everyone does that nor does everyone read to and needs to do that -- i don't think i can assign a certain way of engaging with something as the proper way of doing it because across the years i have found my ways of thinking about what i have read and written about as wrong (because of a range of reasons but primarily because ive never been schooled / trained in literature and only taught it to myself at university level) & it's not as if i give every work i read the same amount of time/space to think about ... most stuff slips from my mind, sometimes i read stuff because it is an inspiration for something that was created later, sometimes i read a work because it has been recommended by someone, sometimes its peer pressure, sometimes its to rid someone off my back, sometimes its because i want to give something new and different a try (can and should a reader give time to what they read, yes, but does every work deserve the same level of time given to it, no).

but there's a need now to be urgent about reading through somewhat grasping it stylistically but refusing to give any thought to the content of the work itself, a work can be interesting or beautiful but it becomes disengaged from the poster(s) beyond that because there are already pre-held conceptions that inform what people post about; those being a presupposition of what they want the work to do or what they find personally appealing in a work (primarily always character-work than a strong, cohesive plot - which is another story entirely) that then reflects in what they post about, whether its threads of what they love about the work, or a captionless post, or a post many have already said in one-liners about different works.

and i think it's much as a platform problem (the fyp pages, and everything that is wrong with 2026-socmed) as much as a lack of curiosity or want to change the way you think in understanding a work, which then gets stuck in this repetition of a work getting popular because of a few panels posted of out of context, the works ultimately don't hold up to the expectations of the readers or sometimes even end up holding their attention for a certain period of time, then comes the need to hop on a train to post about a work without wanting to think a bit about why they were pulled to it, it gets the expected/wanted engagement and inevitably unimaginative or incurious

its similar the substack-ification to every topic in popular culture, where everyone wants to talk about what everyone else is already talking about, but now in their own words. everyone can say something and everyone should say something, but many also refuse to improve not only their politics so as to better their reading, but actively refuse to do so by ripping through works to know everything. for eg: i remember people posting endlessly about the innocence and purity of pyeonghwa from master-peace upon finding out a little about his past (even long threads of it) but that reading just obscures what the text is really putting forward (not that the text needs to put out one reading): the attention/need for his innocence (who is an innocent child, and how is he and why is he categorized as such, is another reading i want to get into later) to override his present self & actions and/or match as incheol's actions comes from the same need for the characters to leave their plots and narratives to fit into whatever trope-mould that has already been expected.

p.s in no way to i mean to disparage anyone's intelligence when i write this, and if i come across as so, please do let me know about it. 1. i don't believe in any concept of intelligence as it currently exists and do not find any value in looking at anything from that lens 2. if we are looking at it from that specific point of view though, then i do not believe this has to do with anyone's level of intelligence or their imaginative inferiority but rather people's refusal to change or be open to new ways to understanding texts, and therefore the world because ultimately what is being done is a way to garner attention while remaining static in opinion or expression. it's human to want attention when you engage with a work in any way, especially if effort has gone into it, but one also needs to realize at one point to stop giving into constant hyper-consumption and hyper-production.