Some random LJ musings.

[valis2]

The other day I was wandering around LJ (yeah, big shock) and I happened upon a friend of a friend's LJ. Then I was looking at the LJ of someone I've seen on FicAlley before.

They had this common theme. They've both had their LJs for a year or so. They've posted lots of entries (one has 760 entries in one year). And they both have almost no comments at all in their journals, and under ten friends.

It really made me think about the varying depths of the LJ experience. Some of us have giant flists, and are almost a community; some of us have medium flists; some of us have massively disproportionate friends/friends of lists. We all develop a strategy while we are chronicling our entries.

I was also just reading a really interesting entry on gmth's journal, where she mentioned that someone had friended her once who had absolutely no entries, and never commented (an empty journal), and that it was a bit creepy. LJ is such a fascinating social experiment to me.

I didn't know anything at all about LJ when I started. The main reason I started, actually, was so that I could post comments on pottersues. Then I went off on a trip, and while I was away I began to ponder writing an entry about the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and when I returned I posted it.

At first I was very, very lucky, because a few of my RL friends have journals, and they friended me right away. Otherwise I might have given up quickly...but they were so fun and helpful that I really started off on the right foot. I eventually started to friend people right and left, not really knowing what I was looking for, and basically just choosing people whose comments I liked. Eventually I figured out how to use LJ more efficiently, and I found the friends page, which made it really easy to keep up with everyone. As I progressed I began to see that some people did not automatically friend me back, and that some people had such enormous flists that they didn't read my journal in return. I became much more familiar with the different types of LJers.

I monitor about 100 LJs. There are some LJs that are simply "updates"; that is, they are repositories for some sort of continual stream of information, like the aforementioned pottersues. There are some LJs that I read simply because the LJers are artists/writers whose work I like to see/read. There are LJers that have some sort of unique background that is fascinating (they're Cuban, or they're Australian, etc.). There are LJers that are incredibly funny and make me laugh. There are LJers that are fandom "centers" who influence fandom/fans and disseminate information. There are LJers that I know in real life. There are LJers that have a similar background or similar interests who share their lives and their daily experiences.

Sometimes you can guess a lot about a LJer simply from looking at their flists; sometimes that tells you nothing. Over the year I've become what I call a "low-to-medium format LJer". I have 100 friends of/79 friends. I can just about keep up with that number, especially because some of the 'friends of' are information-only journals. Unless I am friending simply to see art or read fic, I now like to friend the journals of LJers that like to share the communal experience. Meaning they are posting entries and commenting and that we have things in common (generally, that they're part of a fandom I enjoy, though that isn't always a prerequisite).

So it was really amazing to me to find two people in one day who obviously are into LJ for something else entirely, who have the strength of purpose to keep posting entries, sometimes multiple entries in one day, even though nearly no one is commenting on them. I'm certainly not saying anything is wrong with that; on the contrary, I'm impressed with their fortitude. See, I've never been able to keep a journal for more than a few days, myself. I get bored very quickly. LJ changes that because you keep a journal where lots of people can add their own scribbles. I love that.

If I were posting entries and no one was commenting, it would feel, to me, like I was throwing my words out into a void, and I'd get all frustrated and stop within a few days. Obviously I am a ham and need far more social approval than those two. More power to them.

LJ is quite the change in my life. I appreciate it very much. And thank you, flist, for being so continuously interesting.

If you're bored and feel like being communal, let me know why you started a LJ, your thoughts on friending/defriending, how the size of your friendslist impacts you, etc...

Comments

[pen-and-umbra.livejournal.com]

Oh, excellent! Metacommentary, and I get to talk about me! ;)

Urr, LJ. October 2004, I think it was. Primordial ooze, yadda yadda. I originally started it to be able to comment on pottersues and to have a place where I could put my Holmes/Watson slash stories so that they wouldn't be stuck on just the mailing lists. Well, mailing list, singular. People from said mailing lists came around and friended me, I think, and that's how it started. (I feel sorry for these people, actually. I haven't posted anything Holmes/Watson related since last year... though I do have something I've been writing on and off.)

Enter HP. I did deleterius sporkages and that, I think, brough the first wave of people friending me, of whom I friended back mostly those whose names I recognised from comments and such. No pattern, no deep thought behind decisions. Sometimes, it was just "ooh, shinyyyy!" that moves me to friend people. That's when the f-list hovered at about 60+ friend of/20 I'd friended back. Stayed like that for a long while. I did drunken Photoshopping, wrote some Snape/Harry, the people commenting were usually the same. Calm and comfy.

Then, at some vague point in the not-so-distant past, the "friend of" list decided to go on a OMGSPLOOGEMUSTPROCREATE!!!! frenzy worthy of bonobo monkeys and it shot to somewhere around 200+. I wasn't paying attention to it at that point so I really don't know WTF prompted it, but I swear it happened overnight. And now I get a regular stream of people friendling me daily, so it'll touch 300 sometime in the near future if the trend continues.

The heck?

I still don't know why and how these people find me and friend me, but there they are. I friend back random people, usually names I recognise from comments, and keep them friended if they post stuff I find interesting -- fandom-related or not, I don't care. I de-friend those whose entries I never comment on, or people who talk about stuff that just doesn't happen to interest me. I don't get the "OMG you de-friended me you h0r" railing... and I think the term "to friend" is very poorly chosen in the first place. Friends are not made with the push of a button, s'all.

Anyway. I don't post very often, every couple of days or so, and it's 95% fandom (HP or Alan Rickman) stuff. I probably would post more personal stuff if it was in any way interesting, but it isn't, honestly (though I've been thinking of doing a series of posts entitled The Memoirs of Your Friendly Neighbourhood Dominatrix ;P). The odd meme, that's about it.

I've found the LJ experience to be interesting. I've had similar fandom experiences in my past fannish obsessions on mailing lists -- met many people who are now real-life friends and have been for many, many years, etc. LJ is somewhere between the inchoate anonymousness of the Internet and the insular community of a closed fandom mailing list: anyone can enter the foray and participating is easy, but to get attention (i.e. friends), you need to participate and be smart about it.

(I also blame LJ and especially rickman_daily for turning my comfortable Kinsey-6 existence into a gleefully objectifying if gf-confusing Kinsey-5.8. But that's a whole another amusing rant and I've done my fair share of polluting your commentspace with my extremely drunken ramble. Thank you for a fascinating topic, BTW.)

[valis2.livejournal.com]

I remember seeing your comments on Pottersues and thinking you were hysterical. Then later I saw your sporkings on delet. and thought, I definitely want to friend her, so I did.

I did see the explosion on your flist...but it is quite understandable, considering how witty and interesting you are, how wonderful and professional the icons/wallpaper/graphics you create are, and how well-written your fic is. As you say, anyone can enter the foray and participating is easy, but to get attention (i.e. friends), you need to participate and be smart about it. I absolutely agree. The people with the largest flists all seem to be mega-authors/artists, or mega-commentary people. They put out quality work, they take the time to respond to others, and they involve the HP newsletters as well.

and I think the term "to friend" is very poorly chosen in the first place. Friends are not made with the push of a button, s'all.

Absolutely...I've talked before about how it might be nice to have "acquaintances" and "friends", though it probably wouldn't solve any problems, and might lead to more. Still, friending/defriending is a loaded issue, and I'm always sorry when it leads to controversy.

I remember reading an entry someone wrote where everyone talked about the largest number of friends on their list that they could still comfortably read. Everyone has a different number. I am at 100 right now, and I'm still wondering if it's too much...when I go away for a few days the friends page is just overwhelmed, and it takes a while to get back into it.

Thank you for a fascinating topic, BTW.

Heh...my pleasure...social interaction on LJ is totally interesting to me.

[pen-and-umbra.livejournal.com]

Aw, shucks. ;)

The interesting thing about the f-list is that I keep diddling with it; I think it's a piece of work that can never be perfected. These days, I'm mostly at two minds about communities. I really don't want to do a comms vs. people filter, either, because the whole point of a f-list (a collection of all the shit that interests me) would go away, too. I'd probably never read the comm filter, so it'd serve no purpose.

So, I've recently de-friended deleterius because there are only so many sporkings I can read in one day (alas, now I'm afraid I'll miss the deu_sex_machina entries there, so might have to friend back). Same with linguaphiles: love the convos, but it's just too active and sometimes, half of the posts on the f-list are from that comm... maybe I'll de-friend it and just keep linguafags). Ditto for angelinajolie. There's just so much stuff and so many pictures of Angelina that it's starting to feel like the time when you ate eight chocolate éclairs and decided never to do it again, y'know? Too much of an extremely good thing. Same could be said about fanficrants, because I have zero interest in all these anime rants.

I've also realised I've been moving away from picture comms. I'll keep rickman_daily because it's low-traffic, but the rest... eh. I read the f-list with picture placeholders because I've subscribed to fleshbot_feed (the RSS feed of a porn industry e-mag) and those are pictures you can't really have flash on your work monitor. Anyway, this means that to see pictures, I gotta click on the post link and to do that for 239283 pic comms? Nope. I'm not that big of a RHPS/Jamie Pressly/name-hot-chick fan.

[/randomness]

[valis2.livejournal.com]

Y'know, I keep thinking about which comms to de-friend, and I just realized that I haven't read a deleterius report in ages. In fact, I think I don't really want to anymore. I've read enough outrageously poor fics already.

deu_sex_machina is great, and they don't update so often; maybe I'll keep them and get rid of delet. After all, I know where it is, I can always check on it whenever I like.

The interesting thing about the f-list is that I keep diddling with it; I think it's a piece of work that can never be perfected.

What a perfect description! I agree entirely. There are a few people/comms that I wibble about defriending. When I first started LJing I ended up with a ton of comms; anything HP-related, really. Then, when I came back from a long trip, I was so inundated with commspam that I just thought, enough! I defriended most of them. The number has crept back up again, but they're mostly lower-traffic comms now. I could not keep customers_suck; they were a third of the entries on my flist at one time, and it was just too much. I don't have any pics communites except for photojournals and hpguys_daily and alanrickman because they're not too aggravating, usually, though pj is starting to get a bit boring.

I guess there's always this balance. With pj I only enjoy or interact with about 1 in 100 pics; so either I keep it and have 99 extraneous posts on my flist, or I forego seeing that 1 cool pic. Hard to decide.