random thread: my first true social media experience was a Google Plus community and I couldn't be more thankful

for context of anyone not blessed by the experience of G+: there was a thing called communities which were very similar to Facebook groups. I was in quite a few, an rp community, a couple big anime and Bandom communities, etc.

however, the first one I joined and the one that actually got me into using G+ regularly was a small ATLA/TLOK fan community called The Order of the Purple Lotus. an irl friend invited me to it and ngl it kinda slapped.

I never divulged into fandom that much before this (I think this was around 7th grade? maybe 8th?) and quite honestly I wasn't even a huge ATLA fan but I joined it bc hey why not.

we were small, our member total never got over 100 but as for active member I can't think of more than probably 20. we just talked about ATLA and whatever else we wanted and I became pretty decent friends at the time with most of them.

any fandoms we got into kinda spread out through the group (this is where I met my VERY first FE friend, one guy got half of us into MLP and I got a few of them into emo bands). we laughed. we cried. we followed the final season of Korra which was a trip and a half.

but the thing that sticks out to me is the levels of trust everyone developed. very few of us showed our face, and no one felt pressured to. some of us were open about our struggles and those who weren't were still there for us. and it honestly worked.

most members of the community were older than me by a few years, an outlier was like someone in like college, and a couple were even younger. but I think to an extent, having similarly aged people be my first online friends helped me not be totally scarred on social media.

we never let stupid shit get in the way of us as a group? we leaned liberal, but it didn't apply to all of us, and we rarely had political discussions or anything of the like. we were all different people at different stages of life, and we never let that get in the way.

I had one particular group of people I got super close with and the 5 of us shared like EVERYTHING on our minds. two of them were older and I still talk to them sometimes. the other two were younger, and I still follow them on insta, very proud of who they've become.

I eventually just grew out of G+ as a platform and the fandoms I associated with it, but I never put into context how good of an environment the community was for me to start learning how to exist on social media until I compared it to my later internet friends.

around the same time, but a little later, I joined a minecraft RP group. they were mostly dudes WAY older than me who were high key dicks and in hindsight that was a terrible decision for 8th grade me holy shit.

my next major bouts were with asagao academy Tumblr (which with the hindsight of the Pr*Jar*d thing, oh god) and bandom and broadway Stan twitter/Tumblr, all pretty toxic fandoms I've yeeted myself out of.

the only fandom I've left due to no other reason than me growing out of was the BATB2017 fandom on Tumblr. while not secluded to the safety of a private community, as a whole it was a VERY similar expereince.

relatively small fandom, smaller group of close friends I trusted, people who never let stupid shit drive us apart, and I still talk to some of them to this day.

KNOWING what a good online fandom experience is like helped me understand when I found one again. no cancel culture or stupid fandom wars, just meeting people who love the same thing you do, and finding a few good friends along the way.

since the death of g+, I haven't thought about the Purple Lotus much. but today I saw a post about how 14 year olds shouldn't be on Twitter because this is a hellsite. and it is. 14 year olds should not see the shit people say on here.

better question: should 14 year old me have been on social media? probably not. but in hindsight did I pick a good place to start? I'd say so. my experiences in that little G+ community affected me more than I probably realize, but I don't think in a particularly bad way.

anyways: this thread is long as shit. tl;dr 14 year olds shouldn't find themselves on social media, but if they do, I hope to God they start off in a non-toxic space the same way I did.