Friending Memes in 2024

[ysabetwordsmith]

Friending memes, or friendzies, offer a great way to connect with new people. It occurs to me that I can list them here, with links to my entries, and have a useful reference.

This is the best time of year to run such events, because lots of people dust off their blogs in January. Also, snowflake_challenge runs this month with challenges on odd-numbered days, and it's among the biggest events on Dreamwidth. (See my 2023 post on Friending Memes.)

Here are some resources ...


Communities

Some communities regularly run friending memes, questionnaires, introductory posts, or similar features.

* allbingo has "meet and greet" posts for some fest themes. See examples for Valentines, for National Crafting Month, and for Gothic. See the Friending Meme from 2024 and my entry from 2023. See the Three Weeks for Dreamwidth Introduction with blogging questionnaire from 2023.

* fandomcalendar is a bulletin board for fests, big bangs, memes, cons and any other fan-related activity. It is very busy.

* findingfriends is a community to help you find people to add to your Dreamwidth circles. It has a set questionnaire to use, and asks that if you use it elsewhere you include a link back to the community.

* friending_memes hosts new memes sporadically on a wide range of topics. It's a great place to look for older memes, and also worth subscribing if you want to catch new ones.

* dwdq - DreamWidth Daily Quiz is dormant but has previous posts of comedy, quizzes, trivia, humor, etc.

* pimpmethis is an advertising community. "Need something pimped? Pimp it here!" It's one of several places to find or share friending memes.

* promote is an advertising community where you can post about anything, including memes.

* promoting is the official, DW-recommended community for promoting everything that is not a Dreamwidth community. Memes can go here too.

* snowflake_challenge customarily runs an introduction and/or friending meme. See the Snowflake Challenge Friending Meme (from 2023, see my friending post and my introduction post)


Friending Memes, Blogging Questionnaires, Introductions, and Quizzes

Many friending memes, questionnaires, and other connective content has been created and stored. Some are marked with encouragement for other folks to reuse them. You can also look at previous examples for structual inspiration (there are often sections "about you," "about your blog," and/or "about your interest" in some form) or for individual questions you can adapt to your needs. If you want to use a whole piece and can identify the originator (bearing in mind that much gets passed around anonymously) then it's polite to cite that.

* Crowdfunding Friending Meme on crowdfunding (from 2024)
My entry in the Crowdfunding Friending Meme from 2023

* Dreamwidth Friending Meme on ysabetwordsmith, somewhat inspired by jjhunter (from 2012)

* Friending Meme on icons

* Friending Meme on journalsandplanners (for Planner Snowflake in 2022)

* Friending Meme by scarlet1989

* Friendzy Summer 2016: find active LJers who write the way you wanna read! by Belenen on LiveJournal
Although originally created for LJ, the same concepts should work on DW.

* Intro post and Friending meme on paradisediner, a kpop community (from 2022)

* Introduction and Friending Meme Post on polyamships

* Introduction / Friending Meme on reddit_refugees
This community supports people new to Dreamwidth, especially former users of Reddit.

* Introduction Questionnaire on birdfeeding (from 2023)

* Introductions and Interactions on crowdfunding (from 2010)

* Pimp-a-Friend Meme on ysabetwordsmith, originally on matching LiveJournal (from 2008)

* Poetry Friending Meme on jjhunter (from 2012)

* Spring Has Sprung Friending Meme on alwaysbeenasmiler (from 2019)

* Three Weeks for Dreamwidth: Blogging Questionnaire by ysabetwordsmith

* 3 weeks for DW FRIENDING MEME on pretty_panther (from 2013)

* Three Weeks for Dreamwidth: Introduction on crowdfunding (blogging questionnaire from 2023)

* Topics to Talk About on Conversation Starters World

* Twitter Exodus Friending Meme originally posted by xancredible and echoed on twitter_refugees


Here is a previous list of friending memes and questionnaires from "Improving Community in Fandom" by ysabetwordsmith:
-- The Easiest Multi-Fandom Friending Meme You Will Ever Fill Out
-- The 'Fandom What?' Friending Meme
-- F!S Friending Meme X
-- Fandom Questionnaire
-- Fandom Questions
-- Fandom-related Questions
-- Harry Potter Would You Rather Questions
-- Star Trek Would You Rather Questions
-- Prove You're A Nerd By Answering One Question For Every Fandom
-- 13 Questions Every Harry Potter Fan Should Be Able To Answer
-- 13 "Would You Rather" Questions That Will Stump Any Marvel And D.C. Fan
-- 14 Questions All Sitcom Fans Need To Answer
-- Ultimate Anime Trivia Quiz: 30+ Toughest Questions for True Anime Fans
-- 31 Star Wars Questions
-- 50 Marvel Trivia Questions
-- 50+ Would You Rather Star Wars Questions for Diehard Fans
-- 100 QUESTIONS TO ASK YOUR PEN PAL
-- links to fandom surveys
-- Icebreaker Questions
-- 40 Deep and Thought-Provoking Questions That Make You Think
-- 99 Mindful Conversation Topics For Deeper Connections
-- Make a BuzzFeed Style Quiz That Goes Viral


Useful Tools and Resources

* Common times when clusters of friending memes often appear on Dreamwidth include the Thanksgiving/Christmas holiday season, snowflake_challenge (January), Valentine's Day (February), Three Weeks for Dreamwidth (April 25-May 15), and sunshine_challenge (July). If you post a friending meme during these periods, that increases the chance of more people seeing it and participating. To search for friending memes, use the Interests page.

* "Finding people on Dreamwidth" by vriddy

* "Helping an Online Friend in Difficult Times" by ysabetwordsmith
This may be useful if folks feel stressed out by a friending meme; not everyone is comfortable in a crowd.

* "How to Boost Your Audience" by ysabetwordsmith
This was written for crowdfunding but generalizes well to other contexts.

* How to Do Online Profiles or Introductions with Less Stress by ysabetwordsmith

* How to Make a Graybar for Spoilers in Dreamwidth by ysabetwordsmith
This tool makes the text and background the same color; to reveal the text, just highlight it. People occasionally use this in memes to hide sensitive information.

* "How to Make Text Area" by vexed_wench on allbingo
This tool lets you hide a huge list of questions or whatever inside a tiny box, where folks can copy them, without cluttering up the page.

* "Improving Community in Fandom" by ysabetwordsmith
This post offers ideas for making and maintaining connections with other folks.

* List of Add Me friending communities by ysabetwordsmith from Follow Friday tag
Unlike a friending meme which typically runs for a few days, Add Me communities are always open and an excellent place to meet new people whether you post an introduction of your own or just read other peoples' posts.
(See followfriday for more recommendations of communities and blogs to read.)

* Making Friends on Dreamwidth Tumblr post by Apaintedmaypole

* "Membership Retention" by ysabetwordsmith
This helps hosts to attract and keep people in groups such as communities or a blog audience.

* Post a Transformative Works Policy aka Blanket Statement if you are into fanworks. This tells people whether and how it's okay for them to do things with what you've created, which can help make connections. You can also search for other people's TWP if you like making fanvids, podfics, translations, or such.

* PSA: Reason #342875 DW rocks (Spoiler tags that work in the comments too) by falena
This tool makes a little arrow pointing to a message. Click the message and it opens a longer list of things. It's another convenient way of hiding large sections so they don't clutter a post. Friending memes sometimes use this to collapse categories of questions when the list is long.

* Save meme pages (your own or someone else's) on Wayback and Archive.fo so they will remain available even if a post or whole website disappears. There are other archives too, but those are among the most popular.

* Use recurring posts to define the main topic(s) of your blog. Then when you answer a friending meme or make an introduction post -- which commonly include a question on "What do you blog about?" you can save time and energy by just linking the relevant tag(s) for your main topic(s). Another good trick to find your most frequent topics: Click "Most Popular Tags" in your sidebar, then at the bottom of the list, click "Manage Tags." Near the middle of the new page, in tiny type, it says "sort: alphabetically or by usage." Click "usage." The top 10-12 tags you use most often can be considered "what your blog is about."

* When reading a blog or community, look at the people posting comments. If you spot something interesting, check that person's blog to see if you want to read or subscribe to that blog too.

* When you find a friending meme that you like, copy it on your blog or at least post a banner linking to it, so that more people can see it. This increases the chance of all participants making at least one new friend.


Has anyone else seen a good friending meme? If so, please comment with a link so I can add it to the list.