So naturally, social media is changing again and the way we experience the hobby changes with it. Back in the days when I started, forums were all the rage, we had local ones and international ones, even some companies had forums dedicated to them. These place held so much information at that time for us that it was a must to participate and we could only share our dolls on these platforms if we wished to reach a lot of people. Some dedicated a Livejournal to their hobby and that was it for a while. If you don’t know what livejournal is…oh sweet summer child. We learned html codes just to post pictures.
This was until facebook popped up with it’s groups. The masses moved there because people could reply in an instant, you could see who is behind the doll and so on. I admit that I was not a happy camper in those times, specially cause I liked the slower, more thought out posting. Slowly all the forums died off, and social media became the platform. Tumblr also comes to mind, I did have multiply ones but never found my footing there, it was a bit chaotic so most of my pictures were uploaded to Flickr, that is until they decided to have a limit on photos you can upload. And that when we kind of all moved to Instagram, where I currently am most of the time. There are multitude of other platforms that can be used for the bjd community, there are small groups on Telegram, Discord, VK forums and now we are popping up on Tiktok, Youtube and there are even people coding a bjd only social media platform. Every one of these have their pros and cons, and as social media changes, we also adapt our content. For years, pictures were the be all end all, as far as content goes; understandable, dolls are something you look at. There are writings and videos out there, but pictures were worth a lot. People bought expensive camera gears just to photograph dolls, but now, as technology allows everyone to have a decent camera in their phones alone, content is moved toward videos. Is this a bad thing? No, no change is bad or good. We adapt to these new ways. Photos are still very much relevant but if you really want to catch the audience, you need to make either Tiktoks, Youtube shorts of Instagram reels. Lucky for us, we are creative, so without further rambling about the good’o days, enjoy: