I am commenting things like ”Hugs and Love”, when love-word in seldom used in our culture. I have noted that I have started to act in the community differently than what is habit in my own Finnish culture. It is funny, that when you have done the blogging for a while you start to feel close with people you have never met. Overall the atmosphere among the bloggers is loving and supporting. I have not done this but I think it is nice because you get snail mail so really this days. The bloggers also send each other post cards and small gifts. It is short of way saying thank you for following me. There was also campaign called ”Plushies with Purpose” basically meaning that people would tell the reason why they are carrying plushies with them. There are also campaigns that go with certain hashtag, for example there was a campaign against bullyism. It was the first event that I took part in. In summer 2016 there was plushie Olympics at the same time the real Olympics took place.
Every Tuesday there is a tea party organized by one of the bloggers. Event meaning here that you take a part by posting a picture with certain hashtag. There are lots of events in the community. People took photos of their plushies partying his homecoming and added hashtag of the party to their posts. And when he got back home from the hospital there was a welcome home party for him. One of the plushie bloggers who knows him personally was updating information on Instagram about his condition so that everyone could know what was going on. One person (or human, as some of the people behind the profiles call them selfs) was in major surgery last fall and had complications when recovering from it. If someone is having health problems, people are commenting, on the post that the information is given, ”get well soon”. For example if some one faces cyberbullying on Instagram and the community becomes awere of this, there are lots of supporting posts against the phenomenon. The community gives its members support when needed and also takes part on their joys.
I do not have time to be part of two communities in two platforms. There is a community of bloggers in Twitter too, but I am not part of it even though I do my post on Twitter too. New bloggers are creating their accounts and as in normal communities you do not know everyone. It is hard to estimate the size of the community. And it is a real community even if it is mainly online. It also came to me as a surprise that there is tight community on Instagram among people who publish photos of their plushies/soft toys. And some good blogs you can go and see are for example Kerle the Squire, Honey Grove Bears and 2 Coll Toyz. If you want to check some of the blogs out on Instagram, you should try #plushiesofinstagram.
I call myself a blogger, because that is what I feel my photoplay is and I call other people that do the same thing on Instagram bloggers normally too and also in this article. Katriina Heljakka calls this phenomenon photoplay in her study Principles of adult play(fulness) in contemporary toy cultures : from wow to flow to glow (2013). What came as a surprise to me was that there are lots of people around the world like me, people who take pictures of their toys and carry them around with them all the time. Then I found Instagram and thought that this would be the right place for my pictures, so I started my blog there. I did not feel that normal old fashioned blog was for me because they are quite static and I have not been interested in other peoples blogs. Some of my friends said to me that I should start a photo blog.
I had taken holiday pictures of the toys before and published them on Facebook to my friends. I started to publish pictures of my soft toys on Instagram little over year ago.
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