Considered Socializing
Here are the trappings (let's just get to it, right?):
I flippedly made the short post on Facebook the other night that I'm going to begin using this as my primary social media platform from now on. Livejournal, for all it's lovely introspective self aggrandizing, where we present the self we want to see / think we see / wish we saw, can potentially be as much of an echo chamber as some of the more toxic Facebook groups in which people hear only what they want to hear, with a few notable differences. I think, at least for myself, Livejournal was a space for people to process as well as profess things; a creative exercise where instead of yelling at some Ben Cline supporter, I'm figuring out the voice I want and not one my frustration facilitates. At the end of the day, for better or worse, embarrassing or profound, this method of putting your thoughts into the world are at least some what considered and exist with almost too much nuance. But this extra level of detail and word vomit allows for a pretty concise picture, one that makes it difficult to project or make assumptions about based on our own personal biases. This new level of immediacy, which people only seem to have time for now with things like Facebook and Twitter, lends itself to both false communities, replacing your own thoughts with theirs, and ironically enough isolation. Never in my life have I been in touch with more people than I have through a platform like Facebook, yet though all the social media platforms I tend to jump from, the most enduring people I know virtually started here on Livejournal. Never in my life as well have I felt so isolated and upset by the public at large as I have on Facebook. So, while Livejournal may have once and still be my own echo chamber, the effect in it's verboseness is quite different.
Similar to the odd comradery and rivalry dynamics of being in art school, a platform like this challenges the users to go a bit further and keep up emotionally if not creatively as well. Livejournal can be the self we aspire to be. It's still an odd support group, people's concerns and fears taking center stage most often, a place to morn and remember a passing grandparent, or just a space to talk about how anything feels, but that drive to do and say more in a way in which you're aware of your viewership and friends creates for a better more human approach to opinions and feelings. The saddest aspect to Facebook to me is that somehow, through their infinite social interaction there, the end result isn't "Wow, there are so many different perspectives and thoughts out there" but "MY FEELINGS ARE FACTS!". I'm guilty of this to some degree as well, although, through means like this and the remembrance of what this once meant, I'm trying to change that. I imagine a call to Livejournal arms is probably in the near future again, if not right now.