Five Years (what a surprise) (my brain hurts a lot)
I got my LiveJournal account April 1st, 2003. So it's my LJversery. Or something. Half a decade is a long time online; no wonder I'm not finding it easy to leave.
I think back at what brought me to LJ. I'd show you the post that convinced me to buy an account, but it's f'locked now. (Not specifically, I think; the whole journal's gone f'locked.) I'd joined for pretty much no time when I went to a sig-picture design group at delphiforums, and asked if someone could make this icon for me--I had the fairy-in-a-circle image, but wasn't skilled enough at Photoshop to put a rainbow behind it. And I wanted "sparklies," details unspecified. I was very, very happy with it. I still am. (I think it was by tx_leigh... but I can't remember for certain. And I should, and I'm sorry about that. Because anyone who can design the icon that still says "me" for the recipient five years later deserves a prize.)
I was most active in pagan groups, not fannish ones, when I first joined LJ; I had a lot of experience in different online pagan forums, and it was easy for me to learn my way around new ones--I quickly identified potential allies, people who were interesting even if they disagreed, and people who were active and I thought were complete twits. I knew how to spot the difference between a newbie-pagan who had picked up sloppy terminology from poorly-written books, and was all hope and sincerity, and a wannabe-pagan who had decided that this cool new trend would make them beautiful/popular/spooky/whatever.
Can't remember exactly how I found slash on LJ. I do know that I did some interest searches and some google searches, and started discovering it on my own; read rec lists and fics and didn't comment on anything (at first, 'cos a lot of the rec lists were for stuff not on LJ; later, 'cos I'm still not sure how to comment--I hate being the fortieth person to say "ooh wow this was really cool.")
And just as I started getting really comfortable here--just as I got used to the idea that I could be actively pagan and fannish, and still post the occasional political or home-lifey post and entertain people, just as I was getting used to the idea of writing fic, not just reading it, and participating in meta-discussions--boom, strikethrough. Damn. All gone.
Okay, not "all gone." But crippled. The LJ-that-was is never coming back. Too many flocks, too much spotlight, too many ads, too much offsite harvesting of public posts. People have scattered, have purged f'lists, have become more cautious about what they say. And dammit... we've lost something. Something important.
I want to bring up my favorite (if that's the right word) "meme" on LJ. The one that hit me hardest; the one I still think about and revisit. August 2nd, 2004, misia (whom I've never exchanged comments with, AFAIK), wrote a post about sexual abuse. It contained the words, “I wondered for a moment what it would look like if just for one day, everyone who had survived sexual violence were visible as a survivor, if we could actually see the extent of it, if we could all know just how very not-alone we are. I wondered how angry and sad it would make me to know. I wondered how much power there might be in the truth.”
I've never read it. By the time the meme got to my f'list, the original post had been locked; it's maybe been deleted. But it swept LJ, sparked hundreds of replies. (At the time I collected them, I could read them all. This is no longer the case; many have been flocked or removed, some journals have been deleted.) The first week of August 2004, I read dozens, maybe hundreds of posts that said,I’m ______. I’m a survivor of sexual violence.
No Pity. No Shame. No Silence.
If you weren't reading LJ that week, I don't think I can express how powerful it was. It felt like strikethrough without the wank. (Not that there wasn't wank. There were plenty of people saying that this was all some massive pity-party, or that Person X was faking it to get attention, or that some of these women should just get over it already. But the wank got the attention it deserved, and the supportive posts and shy comments and survivor comms and funding drives for shelters & self-defense classes continued.) If you had to read just one, I'd recommend joedecker's mostly link collection, in proper traditional LJ style.
And that's what we've lost, that's what 6Apart and SUP never understood as the magic and power that LiveJournal used to have. It changed people's lives... it wasn't just a window into the activities of fascinating strangers (we have television for that, and more reality TV every week); it was a way to interact with them and transform ourselves. And them. A way to share joy to increase it, to share sorrow to lessen it. A way to connect, not just with people who share our interests ('cos hey, the whole rest of the web exists for divorced ex-Rosicrucian pervy hobbit fanciers with Aspergers to set up communities), but with people who found us through friend of a friend of a friend (of a friend) who might say, "oh! I, too, had an encounter with a landlord's girlfriend on crack! Let me tell you what worked for me..." or "yes, I remember that song from childhood" or "no, I don't think flag-burning is [ruining/saving] America, and I'll tell you why..."
LiveJournal expanded our monkeysphere.
And all the wailing and gnashing of teeth at the corporate overlords will not bring it back, will not make them agree that any place, any software, any meme that can do that, for so many diverse people, is precious and needs to be cherished and nurtured, even if it doesn't make much of "a profit" in a way that makes sense to the IRS.
Because as our nation grows, as our world grows, we need to know each other as people. We need to share hopes, share fears, share random wanky comments. Because we can always empathize with "the poor starving children in outer Mongolia"... it's the street thugs in Brooklyn, the Republican dog-breeders in Montana, the psychadelic hippies still living in the 60s in Berkeley, the average housewife in Iowa, that we lack communion with. It's not the exotic and alien and downtrodden, but the person six miles away from the part of town you never drive through because they're not your kind of people, that we have trouble relating to, trouble believing their opinions could matter to us.
LJ showed that they matter. That we can celebrate our differences and still build on our similarities. The other journal clones don't prevent that... but it's harder to build what's already happened spontaneously. We're all a lot more cautious; the business-world is a bit more web-savvy so there's a lot more anonymity and f'locking; we're all a bit scared of being hurt again.
Oh, maybe I've got that wrong. Maybe "we" aren't. Maybe it's just me.
It's my five-year LJversary, and I just want to cry.
I think back at what brought me to LJ. I'd show you the post that convinced me to buy an account, but it's f'locked now. (Not specifically, I think; the whole journal's gone f'locked.) I'd joined for pretty much no time when I went to a sig-picture design group at delphiforums, and asked if someone could make this icon for me--I had the fairy-in-a-circle image, but wasn't skilled enough at Photoshop to put a rainbow behind it. And I wanted "sparklies," details unspecified. I was very, very happy with it. I still am. (I think it was by tx_leigh... but I can't remember for certain. And I should, and I'm sorry about that. Because anyone who can design the icon that still says "me" for the recipient five years later deserves a prize.)
I was most active in pagan groups, not fannish ones, when I first joined LJ; I had a lot of experience in different online pagan forums, and it was easy for me to learn my way around new ones--I quickly identified potential allies, people who were interesting even if they disagreed, and people who were active and I thought were complete twits. I knew how to spot the difference between a newbie-pagan who had picked up sloppy terminology from poorly-written books, and was all hope and sincerity, and a wannabe-pagan who had decided that this cool new trend would make them beautiful/popular/spooky/whatever.
Can't remember exactly how I found slash on LJ. I do know that I did some interest searches and some google searches, and started discovering it on my own; read rec lists and fics and didn't comment on anything (at first, 'cos a lot of the rec lists were for stuff not on LJ; later, 'cos I'm still not sure how to comment--I hate being the fortieth person to say "ooh wow this was really cool.")
And just as I started getting really comfortable here--just as I got used to the idea that I could be actively pagan and fannish, and still post the occasional political or home-lifey post and entertain people, just as I was getting used to the idea of writing fic, not just reading it, and participating in meta-discussions--boom, strikethrough. Damn. All gone.
Okay, not "all gone." But crippled. The LJ-that-was is never coming back. Too many flocks, too much spotlight, too many ads, too much offsite harvesting of public posts. People have scattered, have purged f'lists, have become more cautious about what they say. And dammit... we've lost something. Something important.
I want to bring up my favorite (if that's the right word) "meme" on LJ. The one that hit me hardest; the one I still think about and revisit. August 2nd, 2004, misia (whom I've never exchanged comments with, AFAIK), wrote a post about sexual abuse. It contained the words, “I wondered for a moment what it would look like if just for one day, everyone who had survived sexual violence were visible as a survivor, if we could actually see the extent of it, if we could all know just how very not-alone we are. I wondered how angry and sad it would make me to know. I wondered how much power there might be in the truth.”
I've never read it. By the time the meme got to my f'list, the original post had been locked; it's maybe been deleted. But it swept LJ, sparked hundreds of replies. (At the time I collected them, I could read them all. This is no longer the case; many have been flocked or removed, some journals have been deleted.) The first week of August 2004, I read dozens, maybe hundreds of posts that said,I’m ______. I’m a survivor of sexual violence.
No Pity. No Shame. No Silence.
If you weren't reading LJ that week, I don't think I can express how powerful it was. It felt like strikethrough without the wank. (Not that there wasn't wank. There were plenty of people saying that this was all some massive pity-party, or that Person X was faking it to get attention, or that some of these women should just get over it already. But the wank got the attention it deserved, and the supportive posts and shy comments and survivor comms and funding drives for shelters & self-defense classes continued.) If you had to read just one, I'd recommend joedecker's mostly link collection, in proper traditional LJ style.
And that's what we've lost, that's what 6Apart and SUP never understood as the magic and power that LiveJournal used to have. It changed people's lives... it wasn't just a window into the activities of fascinating strangers (we have television for that, and more reality TV every week); it was a way to interact with them and transform ourselves. And them. A way to share joy to increase it, to share sorrow to lessen it. A way to connect, not just with people who share our interests ('cos hey, the whole rest of the web exists for divorced ex-Rosicrucian pervy hobbit fanciers with Aspergers to set up communities), but with people who found us through friend of a friend of a friend (of a friend) who might say, "oh! I, too, had an encounter with a landlord's girlfriend on crack! Let me tell you what worked for me..." or "yes, I remember that song from childhood" or "no, I don't think flag-burning is [ruining/saving] America, and I'll tell you why..."
LiveJournal expanded our monkeysphere.
And all the wailing and gnashing of teeth at the corporate overlords will not bring it back, will not make them agree that any place, any software, any meme that can do that, for so many diverse people, is precious and needs to be cherished and nurtured, even if it doesn't make much of "a profit" in a way that makes sense to the IRS.
Because as our nation grows, as our world grows, we need to know each other as people. We need to share hopes, share fears, share random wanky comments. Because we can always empathize with "the poor starving children in outer Mongolia"... it's the street thugs in Brooklyn, the Republican dog-breeders in Montana, the psychadelic hippies still living in the 60s in Berkeley, the average housewife in Iowa, that we lack communion with. It's not the exotic and alien and downtrodden, but the person six miles away from the part of town you never drive through because they're not your kind of people, that we have trouble relating to, trouble believing their opinions could matter to us.
LJ showed that they matter. That we can celebrate our differences and still build on our similarities. The other journal clones don't prevent that... but it's harder to build what's already happened spontaneously. We're all a lot more cautious; the business-world is a bit more web-savvy so there's a lot more anonymity and f'locking; we're all a bit scared of being hurt again.
Oh, maybe I've got that wrong. Maybe "we" aren't. Maybe it's just me.
It's my five-year LJversary, and I just want to cry.