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I did say something about today being my Eljayversary, and indeed it is. I just went back and reread my first entry and the day or so after it, and wow, am I shaking my head at myself. Not that I sound particularly younger, or different (I don't, not really). Maybe my tone is a little more confessional, a little more forthright, as I was jumping into LJ straight from paper journalling and the style had not yet adapted to accommodate the input and feelings of an audience, which is something that has hampered my writing in some ways since then (and why I have a "no one gets to see this" LJ account on the side). But really, the thing that's striking me most about those first couple days is a sense of "the more things change, the more they stay the same," which is both comforting and exasperating. Comforting because I'd be kinda sad if I had made some wild fundamental shift in self and personality. Exasperated because it does feel like I've made absolutely no progress at all on my bad aspects in eight years. But I know that's just my own bias talking - looking back I know there's been some growth, some scarring, some changes, and not all of them for the terrible. It just seems like the fundamental structural flaws were very much present then as now, though I didn't have the self-knowledge to truly recognize them then.
Still, eight years. God. That's like... the Mesozoic Era in internet terms. The. Hell. I know people (myself included) that have had world altering relationships begin and end in that time. There's a lot of history there, and in my obsessive sort of way I've tried to record it in various mediums from my perspective and post it all here. Whoa. But really I've done that my whole life, honestly. Other than a brief break in journalling while in college there's only a few periods in my life that have not been committed to the written record since I got my first diary for my 10th birthday.
I said something yesterday of wondering whether Livejournal, which is indeed showing its ripe old age, still has a place and a role to play in the shadow of Twitter, Facebook, Blogger/Wordpress and other things loosely gathered under the umbrella of Social Media. Maybe? I honestly don't know, and I don't feel like doing the comprehensive analysis necessary to answer that question for sure. But I have come to a few conclusions regarding my own experiences with LJ, Facebook and Twitter, anecdotal though they may be.
While twitter/facebook has been good for quick thoughts, and quickly/widely sharing "Cool shit I found on the internet" sorts of things, I find both incredibly restrictive, and often overwhelming. The restrictive comes in because I am not by nature a concise, direct person; I ramble, woolgather, digress, and tend to take the long way round to meaning and conclusion. I CAN be concise and direct when I want to be, but too much of it makes me... I guess, expressively claustrophobic? Overwhelming because things like Twitter and Facebook are an endless stream of such small blips of information to the the point where oftentimes I will turn it off because I can't handle it - it feels a lot like having a wall with three hundred channels on at once and following each one is tempting and eventually exhausting. And most of it is "Look at this cool thing" or "this person said something funny!" and yeah, there's only so much of that I can reasonably take in without my brain melting. Honestly I end up skipping a lot of it to mine out the occasional 140 or 280 character nugget of info or thought that I care about.
Not that the excuse for surfing isn't welcome at times - goodness knows I often need procrastination fodder. But honestly, I'm not really in this for the glut of "hey look cool shit," I'm in it for the connections. Mostly what keeps me on Facebook and Twitter is maintaining preexisting relationships, especially since many of said relationships have jumped ship from here. Which I don't judge... some people are more comfy with short form blogging than I am. (I draw the line at getting a tumblr though - I think having to keep up with yet another "look cool shit" platform would quite honestly drive me insane, and most of you that have it are kind enough to crosspost to somewhere anyway.) But it's not my primary reason for logging on. I do it to keep up with individual people, not the entire world. Livejournal honestly has been a much better platform for doing just that, simply because there is space to delve into the meat and potatoes of lives, brain workings, and why exactly you think the cool thing you posted is awesome and I should look at it. Livejournal, I think, just because of the fundamental difference in platform, gives me more insights of how my friends here think, tick, solve problems, deal with life, what they like and dislike, what drives them crazy, etc etc. Twitter and Facebook don't do that for me for the most part, just because of the shortness of the medium, and in facebook's case, cause most people have family or coworkers that you don't want to get all that personal with, so reading either is overall an unsatisfactory experience and I get bored/overstimulated with both in the space of five minutes.
Because of this I also find it hard to make entirely new connections on either twitter or Facebook. I've got friends on LJ that I have either never met in person or met here first due to random friending or mutual communities and met up in person a couple times later, and yet I would count them as close friends and even family simply because we've been sharing long-form insights, thoughts, life stories and oftentimes flat out crazy for so many years,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
_kyri. kshandra, kittikattie, bellarisa, austingoddess and masteradept being the more senior members of the long distance Andee Fan Club. There have been quite a few more of you in the years since. A lot of you are people that I knew casually during my years at Smith and quite honestly without LJ would have completely lost track of since leaving, but via LJ managed to make a stronger connection with these people. (Smithies say whut whut.) Mostly a lot of you are friends I already knew for whatever reason from wherever point in my life, and LJ is yet another way of maintaining connection; in some cases, the primary mode of doing so. Somehow for me LJ has the lock on the "you seem cool, want to be friends?" phenomenon actually working. I haven't personally had any luck making those sorts of connections on either Twitter or Facebook - I've experimented with doing so on both, and in all cases nothing really developed. My conclusion here is that it's not really possible to forge any sort of meaningful connection to another person if the entire conversation consists of "cool/important link!" repeat ad nauseum. That's nice, and the link may indeed be awesome, but what does that tell me about you? Apparently not enough, especially if I have no preexisting idea of who you are first. Just how I'm wired I guess.
I do understand why people are jumping ship from LJ though. The outages and problems for one, they are annoying as hell, not gonna lie. (I do find it darkly funny that some people who left over ambiguities in LJ's dubious ToS changes a few years back are now hardcore Facebook users. Really?) And some people, some days myself included, welcome the detachment and brevity of other platforms of social media. Sometimes all people want to share about themselves with the wider world is that they liked the latest funny thing on Kotaku or Cracked, and that's fine. Some people used their journal to do just that until Twitter/Facebook made it easier. Some people just find it easier to keep up with multiple people in 140 character doses, rather than the fair amount of time/emotional investment required to read and process a list of significantly longer Livejournal entries. I know a couple of people that quit LJ simply because they fell behind on reading their f-list and it was stressing them out. And then there's the time needed to actually post... and time is something that seems to be in short supply for everyone. Hell, I know I have many better things to do than to spend hours composing these lengthy treatises on my life and thought processes, however, if not here, I'd be doing it on paper, simply because I've done so in one form or another for 22 years and now I kinda need to or my brain spazzes out. Not everyone has this compulsion.
But yeah, I do sometimes mourn the fact that my f-list doesn't require a five minute refresh anymore and I wonder what all is going on with my friends on a deeper level. Sometimes I feel like I should close up shop as well... why am I even continuing to post here when it feels more and more like no one's out there even paying attention? Habit? bad handwriting? Not wanting to reawaken that addiction to pretty blank notebooks? A need for attention and feedback, even if it's only from a single person? Who the hell knows. Also in some cases, continuing to journal in this style often makes me feel vulnerable and at a disadvantage, like people that read my journal come pre-armed with knowledge about me and yet I'm at a loss because I haven't read much about them. So I'm often tempted to shut down defensively and disappear, just to create protective walls I'm not sure I actually need.
But whatever. Eight years in and the place has gotten emptier sure. But I and a few others are still here and still oversharing on a daily basis, and will be until this place finally collapses and closes up shop. Eight years of friends, connections and memories are a hard thing to walk away from, in my case, completely impossible. So... y'all know where to find me. Least until the Russians finally manage to shut it down, eh?
Still, eight years. God. That's like... the Mesozoic Era in internet terms. The. Hell. I know people (myself included) that have had world altering relationships begin and end in that time. There's a lot of history there, and in my obsessive sort of way I've tried to record it in various mediums from my perspective and post it all here. Whoa. But really I've done that my whole life, honestly. Other than a brief break in journalling while in college there's only a few periods in my life that have not been committed to the written record since I got my first diary for my 10th birthday.
I said something yesterday of wondering whether Livejournal, which is indeed showing its ripe old age, still has a place and a role to play in the shadow of Twitter, Facebook, Blogger/Wordpress and other things loosely gathered under the umbrella of Social Media. Maybe? I honestly don't know, and I don't feel like doing the comprehensive analysis necessary to answer that question for sure. But I have come to a few conclusions regarding my own experiences with LJ, Facebook and Twitter, anecdotal though they may be.
While twitter/facebook has been good for quick thoughts, and quickly/widely sharing "Cool shit I found on the internet" sorts of things, I find both incredibly restrictive, and often overwhelming. The restrictive comes in because I am not by nature a concise, direct person; I ramble, woolgather, digress, and tend to take the long way round to meaning and conclusion. I CAN be concise and direct when I want to be, but too much of it makes me... I guess, expressively claustrophobic? Overwhelming because things like Twitter and Facebook are an endless stream of such small blips of information to the the point where oftentimes I will turn it off because I can't handle it - it feels a lot like having a wall with three hundred channels on at once and following each one is tempting and eventually exhausting. And most of it is "Look at this cool thing" or "this person said something funny!" and yeah, there's only so much of that I can reasonably take in without my brain melting. Honestly I end up skipping a lot of it to mine out the occasional 140 or 280 character nugget of info or thought that I care about.
Not that the excuse for surfing isn't welcome at times - goodness knows I often need procrastination fodder. But honestly, I'm not really in this for the glut of "hey look cool shit," I'm in it for the connections. Mostly what keeps me on Facebook and Twitter is maintaining preexisting relationships, especially since many of said relationships have jumped ship from here. Which I don't judge... some people are more comfy with short form blogging than I am. (I draw the line at getting a tumblr though - I think having to keep up with yet another "look cool shit" platform would quite honestly drive me insane, and most of you that have it are kind enough to crosspost to somewhere anyway.) But it's not my primary reason for logging on. I do it to keep up with individual people, not the entire world. Livejournal honestly has been a much better platform for doing just that, simply because there is space to delve into the meat and potatoes of lives, brain workings, and why exactly you think the cool thing you posted is awesome and I should look at it. Livejournal, I think, just because of the fundamental difference in platform, gives me more insights of how my friends here think, tick, solve problems, deal with life, what they like and dislike, what drives them crazy, etc etc. Twitter and Facebook don't do that for me for the most part, just because of the shortness of the medium, and in facebook's case, cause most people have family or coworkers that you don't want to get all that personal with, so reading either is overall an unsatisfactory experience and I get bored/overstimulated with both in the space of five minutes.
Because of this I also find it hard to make entirely new connections on either twitter or Facebook. I've got friends on LJ that I have either never met in person or met here first due to random friending or mutual communities and met up in person a couple times later, and yet I would count them as close friends and even family simply because we've been sharing long-form insights, thoughts, life stories and oftentimes flat out crazy for so many years,
_kyri. kshandra, kittikattie, bellarisa, austingoddess and masteradept being the more senior members of the long distance Andee Fan Club. There have been quite a few more of you in the years since. A lot of you are people that I knew casually during my years at Smith and quite honestly without LJ would have completely lost track of since leaving, but via LJ managed to make a stronger connection with these people. (Smithies say whut whut.) Mostly a lot of you are friends I already knew for whatever reason from wherever point in my life, and LJ is yet another way of maintaining connection; in some cases, the primary mode of doing so. Somehow for me LJ has the lock on the "you seem cool, want to be friends?" phenomenon actually working. I haven't personally had any luck making those sorts of connections on either Twitter or Facebook - I've experimented with doing so on both, and in all cases nothing really developed. My conclusion here is that it's not really possible to forge any sort of meaningful connection to another person if the entire conversation consists of "cool/important link!" repeat ad nauseum. That's nice, and the link may indeed be awesome, but what does that tell me about you? Apparently not enough, especially if I have no preexisting idea of who you are first. Just how I'm wired I guess.I do understand why people are jumping ship from LJ though. The outages and problems for one, they are annoying as hell, not gonna lie. (I do find it darkly funny that some people who left over ambiguities in LJ's dubious ToS changes a few years back are now hardcore Facebook users. Really?) And some people, some days myself included, welcome the detachment and brevity of other platforms of social media. Sometimes all people want to share about themselves with the wider world is that they liked the latest funny thing on Kotaku or Cracked, and that's fine. Some people used their journal to do just that until Twitter/Facebook made it easier. Some people just find it easier to keep up with multiple people in 140 character doses, rather than the fair amount of time/emotional investment required to read and process a list of significantly longer Livejournal entries. I know a couple of people that quit LJ simply because they fell behind on reading their f-list and it was stressing them out. And then there's the time needed to actually post... and time is something that seems to be in short supply for everyone. Hell, I know I have many better things to do than to spend hours composing these lengthy treatises on my life and thought processes, however, if not here, I'd be doing it on paper, simply because I've done so in one form or another for 22 years and now I kinda need to or my brain spazzes out. Not everyone has this compulsion.
But yeah, I do sometimes mourn the fact that my f-list doesn't require a five minute refresh anymore and I wonder what all is going on with my friends on a deeper level. Sometimes I feel like I should close up shop as well... why am I even continuing to post here when it feels more and more like no one's out there even paying attention? Habit? bad handwriting? Not wanting to reawaken that addiction to pretty blank notebooks? A need for attention and feedback, even if it's only from a single person? Who the hell knows. Also in some cases, continuing to journal in this style often makes me feel vulnerable and at a disadvantage, like people that read my journal come pre-armed with knowledge about me and yet I'm at a loss because I haven't read much about them. So I'm often tempted to shut down defensively and disappear, just to create protective walls I'm not sure I actually need.
But whatever. Eight years in and the place has gotten emptier sure. But I and a few others are still here and still oversharing on a daily basis, and will be until this place finally collapses and closes up shop. Eight years of friends, connections and memories are a hard thing to walk away from, in my case, completely impossible. So... y'all know where to find me. Least until the Russians finally manage to shut it down, eh?
