Fediverse memes

I used to be critical of this but I've come around because:

1. Creating memes takes ideas/time.
2. My ideas are wacky and untested.

So I might spend 20-60 minutes making something only for people to hate it. (This happened a lot more often in the beginning because I was bad and my ideas took a lot of photo editing.) I still make memes when I think the idea is worth it. Of course, I could just pander to what I think people want to hear, but I make memes for more organic reasons than that.

I am guilty of this, mostly because if I have to repost memes from somewhere, I'd rather it be somewhere off the fediverse so people don't see double. It would be hard work to only post oc, and my oc isn't always received as well as reposts. I personally aim for there to be regular posts by someone in the communities I post in, and collecting reposts allows me to build a backlog I could never build with oc alone.

Besides, I don't believe in meme ownership unless it took a significant amount of artistic talent to create. Since that includes none of my posts, I do onto others as I want done onto me.

I mainly wish people would add a little something if they did that. Some kind of context, or a particular bit of the articles they share that makes it significant to them, etc. Basically anything that would make it seem like a human posted and not a repost bot.

I pull a lot of my content from Facebook since most sources are photography hobbyists and charities, which just use that as a free quick and easy platform to reach the most eyes so they can focus on making content. But I try to contextualize what is going on in photos, can provide background to the species or the procedure being done, and answer any questions about things, which I feel is a good value add service by me sharing it here.

I will post things from my personal work too, but the animal thing isn't my day job, so other than my weekly clinic shift or vacations, there's only so many opportunities I get to shoot my own owl photos! 😜 But I still get to bring a lot of daily joy to people that won't touch those other platforms, and I add a lot of research and experience they wouldn't get by going to the original source.

There is still use being a straight content curator, but I think it's just really going the extra mile by adding something to it yourself that can enhance it.

👁️👁️