Happy 21!
If any of you are still reading this, you know that I haven't posted here in a long time--except perhaps reposts from my blogs, Loose Threads: Yet Another Costuming Blog and The Cold Table.
So imagine my surprise when I got an e-mail from LiveJournal.com, crowing that they had sent me a "virtual gift" because I've been on the platform for 21 years!
My first reaction: "Ye gods, has it really been that long? Yes, it has!"
My second reaction: "I'm not really on the platform any longer--I just haven't bothered to take myself off the platform."
My third reaction was guilt; there are friends of this LJ who still use LiveJournal and miss the kinds of posts I (occasionally) posted here.
I guess it's really true that Internet platforms go in and out of fashion rapidly, which often means that good, but old, content gets left behind and is lost. I've seen that just reading other Blogger blogs on costuming and other subjects similar to my blogs; so many of them are dead because the folk who started them have transferred their energy to other platforms, such as Instagram. The Internet Archive and similar sites can't always keep up.
Don't get me wrong; it's wonderful that we have the nearly instant communication capacity provided by the Internet. But the flip side can be pretty awful; good content lost; casual and careless remarks destroying people's careers (and occasionally driving folk to suicide) before themselves being lost in the flood of new content.
And here's food for thought for young people who despise the dated communication styles of older net.denizens. Using computers does not require you to be physically fit. Or physically agile. Or even to have good eyesight (just get a big monitor and crank up the size of your fonts). All it really requires is mental agility and the willingness to think, and write. In a way, it's a tailor-made communications form for old people.
Like the old person I'm fast becoming.
So imagine my surprise when I got an e-mail from LiveJournal.com, crowing that they had sent me a "virtual gift" because I've been on the platform for 21 years!
My first reaction: "Ye gods, has it really been that long? Yes, it has!"
My second reaction: "I'm not really on the platform any longer--I just haven't bothered to take myself off the platform."
My third reaction was guilt; there are friends of this LJ who still use LiveJournal and miss the kinds of posts I (occasionally) posted here.
I guess it's really true that Internet platforms go in and out of fashion rapidly, which often means that good, but old, content gets left behind and is lost. I've seen that just reading other Blogger blogs on costuming and other subjects similar to my blogs; so many of them are dead because the folk who started them have transferred their energy to other platforms, such as Instagram. The Internet Archive and similar sites can't always keep up.
Don't get me wrong; it's wonderful that we have the nearly instant communication capacity provided by the Internet. But the flip side can be pretty awful; good content lost; casual and careless remarks destroying people's careers (and occasionally driving folk to suicide) before themselves being lost in the flood of new content.
And here's food for thought for young people who despise the dated communication styles of older net.denizens. Using computers does not require you to be physically fit. Or physically agile. Or even to have good eyesight (just get a big monitor and crank up the size of your fonts). All it really requires is mental agility and the willingness to think, and write. In a way, it's a tailor-made communications form for old people.
Like the old person I'm fast becoming.