Or The Lazy Girls Guide To Flickr
Flickr Burn Out? It's definitely a thing. Something to be wary of, if you are active on Flickr. This post is about how I have learnt to enjoy being on Flickr and avoided being burnt out by it.
First, I should explain, in case some don't know, that Flickr is a photo storage and sharing website aimed at photographers. However, it has been turned into a form of social media by the transgender community, with a lot of Tgirls and trans women and trans men and crossdressers using it as a way of interacting with each other.
Basically, you post photos of yourself onto the site. You also seek out other users to view their photos, and before too long, you will have a list of people you follow. And hopefully a list of people who follow you. And you can comment on people's photos and they can comment on yours. There are groups you can join to post photos in, which gives your photos a wider audience, and you can join in discussions.
Unlike a lot of modern social media, these days, Flickr is quite old school, and very unobtrusive. It doesn't constantly try to connect you to other users, unlike Meta products like Facebook and Instagram. And it doesn't bombard you with unsolicited content that clogs up your viewing feed. If you are on the free version, you do have to put up with adverts, but other than that, you choose what content you want to see.
You can block or remove anyone who you don't want to be able to interact with you. In general, it's a good place to hang out and enjoy interacting with other people in the TG community.
I've found Flickr to be very important in my life as a Tgirl. I've made some very good friends on there. I've been inspired by many of the wonderful photographs of other Tgirls, and also by how many of them conduct themselves and live their lives.
I have had so much support from others, and had some wonderful comments on my photos which has helped myself to develop and thrive as my girl self. It's been wonderful and I will never leave it. It's been good to me.
But there is a downside to it. You can end up suffering from, what is essentially, Flickr Burn Out. But how does something that's so positive, end up burning you out?
With Flickr, it's entirely possible to do too much of it. It can become a little addictive. Getting positive feedback and lovely comments on your photos, really does feel good. And you have so many photos from other users, to view and comment on. It's great. And this is both the positive and negative aspect of Flickr.
It's possible to get yourself into a situation, where feel a need to post photos on a regular basis to keep yourself seen. And also to receive that positive validation that can come from getting lots of views, comments and people adding your photos as favourites. It can also feel good when lots of other users want to follow you. And you want to follow others. And it's always nice to comment on the photos of those you follow. And it's wonderful when they comment on your photos. You get a genuine endorphin rush when that happens. And surely that's good, right? Well yes and no.
It's always nice to receive positive feedback on how we look, or what we are up to in our TG lives. But we can end up doing too much of it. Ultimately, if we aren't careful, Flickr can end becoming a dominating factor in our lives. And it can become a chore.
Following too many other users. Feeling a pressure to post regularly, and for some that can mean several times a day. Feeling a need to actually create photographic content to post and suffering from anxiety as a result. Feeling a need to comment on everyone's photos. And feeling a need to reply to every comment on your own photos. All of this can make Flickr become a chore. It can take over your life. Before you know it, your constantly thinking about creating content, spending hours viewing other peoples content and commenting on it, and spending hours responding to comments on your photos. And if you fall behind on any of this you can feel a sense of anxiety. Your entire life can end up revolving around Flickr.
When this happens, shouldn't we just stop? Give it up? Go cold turkey? For some that may be necessary. I reached the stage of feeling burnt out by Flickr a few months ago. And recently, I've seen a few others withdrawing with signs of it. So it's time to get rid of it? Cut it out? Well not if you actually enjoy Flickr and want the benefits, but not make it a burden or a negative in your life.
Here's how I stepped back from too much Flickr use, without having to do rehab.
First I looked at how many people I was following. It was 600. That's a lot of people to follow. And some people follow thousands of other users! The activity feed can become a continuous blur of feminine loveliness to view and comment on. Too much feminine loveliness in fact. I decided that I needed to follow a lot less people. But who to keep following and who to cut from the list?
I began by cutting anyone who hadn't posted for a year or longer. The exception being some close friends who had sadly passed away. I kept them, because sometimes I like to reminisce and visit their pages. But anyone else who was inactive got cut. That reduced the list by about 150 people. Next I looked at people who I never really engaged with. Most of these were people who had followed me, and I had felt that I should reciprocate. Reciprocating is one way to guarantee an unwieldy list of people you follow. Only follow back if you really love their content enough to want to actively engage with them. Or if you like what you see and they begin to actively engage with you. By cutting out people who I never actively engaged with, I had the list down to about 200. Now I could see the wood for the trees.
Flickr allows you to apply filters to who sees what content. And some of these filters apply directly to your followers. These filters can be applied to each individual followers. You can leave them as a basic Follower. Or you can add them as either a Friend or Family, or both, so Friend & Family. You can allow content to be viewed by just Family, or just Friends, or just Friends & Family or by Everyone. As well as targeting the content for these categories, which I rarely do, they serve another very useful function. You can see them as separate lists of your followers. And this is a very useful tool for helping to make using Flickr manageable.
When you view your own Flickr Photostream, at the top of the page you have your avatar picture, and header with your name listed. Below your name is the number of people you follow, and the number that follow you. If you click on either of these, you access the lists of these people. You want to access the list of people you follow. This automatically brings up a list of all of everyone you follow. But at the top of that list you will see a box with Everyone written in it, the total number of people you follow, and an arrow indicating a drop down menu. Dropping down the menu reveals the categories as follows along with the number you follow in each category. At the moment mine reads.
Everyone (142)
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Following (79)
Friends (39)
Family (35)
Friends and Family (11)
And by clicking on each, you get a list of just those in each category. And that is a big part of how you keep Flickr manageable.
I try to keep my total list of everone I follow to around 200 or less. At the moment it's 142. That's still a large number, although much less than many people follow. If I was going to interact with every person who is posting regularly, and comment on all of their photos, I would be there all day. I used to actually have many more people who I followed, and I used to comment on all of their photos and I would be up into the wee small hours of the morning doing it, and going into work, bleary eyed with a couple of hours sleep. Definitely not healthy or sustainable. So I make the Following, Friend, Family categories work to help manage the situation.
Following
That's people who I don't interact with that regularly. But I enjoy seeing their content when I have the time. If I really like something they've posted, I might comment on it or Favourite it.
Friends
These are people who, in an ideal world, I would like to view their photos, comment on them, and maybe favourite them if I have the time.
Friends and Family
This is the smallest list. Never more than 15 people are on this list. This are people I follow, who I regard as my closest friends on Flickr. Some are people I have met, some are people I interact with regularly in some way, and some are people I just really like. I will always try and make time during the week, to view and comment on at least some, if not all of their photos.
So with these lists, I can now manage my viewing and interaction level depending on how busy my life is. For me personally, it's not sustainable to be able to comment on all of the photos of the people I'm following. That luxury tends to be reserved for a day when there's very little going on in my life, and I have hours to kill. That doesn't happen very often, but it's nice when it does. On these days I just view whatever is in my Activity Feed.
A more usual situation is that I'm able to view my Friends list and run through it, once or twice a week and comment on at least some of the photos they have uploaded.
Occasionally I am so busy that I can only manage a small window of time to spend looking at Flickr, so I will only view and interact with my Friends and Family list. These people are my closest friends and Flickr, and in many cases, in other ways. I care about these people and want to interact with them.
When things get really difficult for me, I step away from Flickr completely. No one is going to be any the worse of, because they didn't receive a comment from Deeanna Williams for a week or two. I usually make a post announcing that I'm going missing for a while. Just so no one expects anything or worries about my absence.
And I forget about Flickr for a while.
One aspect of Flickr that can create a rod for your own back, is comments on your photos. Not the comments themselves. But a need to say thank you to each comment poster. If you are especially popular and get lots of comments, you can spend hours replying to comments, thanking everyone. I have done this in the past. It can consume most of your alloted Flickr time, if you're going to do this. I now only respond if a comment requires a response. Perhaps they ask a question or make a point you want to reply to. That's ok. Just don't get yourself into an endless rut of typing, "Thank you for your lovely comment xx" time and time again. This way lies madness.
Now let's move onto posting your lovely images. Some people post all of the photos that took in a photo session, all at once. And most of those photos will have much fewer views and less interaction than the first 3 photos in the batch upload. Because people don't usually go far back beyond what they see in the Activity Feed. It's far better to upload between 1 and 3 photos at a time, rather than a dozen.
Posting daily can also create problems, especially if, like me, you like to write a narrative to accompany your photos. Quite simply, the more you post, the more you have to find to say. And you want to write something that people want to read. So you end up having to be constantly creative. I have found myself struggling to find a narrative to accompany a photo on many occasions. So I now adopt the mantra 'Less Is More'. I post when I have a photo and narrative ready to post. And I post it when I feel ready and not to some self imposed deadline. This means that I'm not too burnt out and frazzled to write a narrative for my photo. And to myself, at least, it feels like each photo drop is more of an event, rather than an endless task of posting photos. Posting on Flickr should not feel like the task of Sisyphus.
So that's my guide to keeping Flickr fun, and avoiding spending too much time and effort on it. Always remember, it's supposed to a pleasure using it, and never a chore
Deeanna
💋💋💋
