you're only offended because you don't ~get it~
+ I just read about Amanda Palmer's latest fail (a bit late, yes). Ironic hipsters are going to be the death of me.
Instead of ranting against her, because she's only one famous person and this stuff happens all the time, I will just link to the sparkymonster's post on the issue, because it's all about why calling the KKK 'ironic' in any context would make someone an asshole of the highest order, and it needs to be seen by as many people as possible.
+ In other news, I have so much respect for the staff over at Dreamwidth. I wish the LJ staff could be one tenth as mature when they get called out for things.
Most of you know this, but I do have a DW account; (feel free to add me there). I mostly use it to keep up with friends and communities there, and I crosspost from there to LJ because hell -- it's really easy to do. I'm not sure if I'll ever completely stop using LJ; there are still so many people and communities I follow there and I'm not annoyed with any of them even if I'm annoyed with the LJ staff a lot of the time. But I know a lot of youse are switching or have switched.
Anyway, this and a conversation I had with a friend this morning about Tumblr vs. LJ have got me thinking about e-relationships and social media and fannish drift. Or something.
All these new things keep cropping up. New places to go and post things and communicate with people. Some of it doesn't catch on, like Google Wave/Buzz, and some of it does, like DW or Tumblr or Twitter. I'm one of those people who'll try anything - and I have done. Some of these things work for me and some mostly don't (looking at you Facebook), but I think they're all good.
The thing is, every time something new hits the scene, there's a natural resistance to it, to having to keep up with friends who move to a new thing or start using the old thing less. We miss each other when we feel like we're drifting apart. And while it's normal to feel that way and I've felt similarly myself, I remember things like the wank when people started moving to Dreamwidth, and more recent grumblings about people using things like Tumblr more and LJ less, and ... past a certain point I can't understand it.
I get we all have our time constraints but the internet makes it very easy to keep up with things and there's nothing good or bad - it's what you make it. I could move to DW and read my entire LJ f-list via feeds. I can add Tumblr feeds to G-reader or LJ, and I can read my Twitter feed in my Gmail sidebar or with a Firefox extension with little-to-no effort. I can get emailed if there's a new post at my favorite comm on DW. If I didn't have a DW account, I could still play at Camelot Fleet parties with OpenID. In most cases, no matter where my friends go I can still keep up with them. No one's trying to shut me out of anything -- it's just that it gets harder to make the internet come to me.
Any relationship takes effort but if I like you and want to keep reading what you have to say, I'm going to keep doing that wherever you are. Finding things that suit our interests, schedules, or principles better is a good thing; it's what's so cool about social media in the first place.
Anyway, just wanted to say that.
+ In still more news, I bought a Kindle and it will be arriving today! I AM EXCITE. I've been wanting one for a while (I was going to go for a Nook but I got wary of the first-gen thing), and it's one of the few chunks of my tax return not going to bills or things that need to be replaced. Wheeeee.
Instead of ranting against her, because she's only one famous person and this stuff happens all the time, I will just link to the sparkymonster's post on the issue, because it's all about why calling the KKK 'ironic' in any context would make someone an asshole of the highest order, and it needs to be seen by as many people as possible.
+ In other news, I have so much respect for the staff over at Dreamwidth. I wish the LJ staff could be one tenth as mature when they get called out for things.
Most of you know this, but I do have a DW account; (feel free to add me there). I mostly use it to keep up with friends and communities there, and I crosspost from there to LJ because hell -- it's really easy to do. I'm not sure if I'll ever completely stop using LJ; there are still so many people and communities I follow there and I'm not annoyed with any of them even if I'm annoyed with the LJ staff a lot of the time. But I know a lot of youse are switching or have switched.
Anyway, this and a conversation I had with a friend this morning about Tumblr vs. LJ have got me thinking about e-relationships and social media and fannish drift. Or something.
All these new things keep cropping up. New places to go and post things and communicate with people. Some of it doesn't catch on, like Google Wave/Buzz, and some of it does, like DW or Tumblr or Twitter. I'm one of those people who'll try anything - and I have done. Some of these things work for me and some mostly don't (looking at you Facebook), but I think they're all good.
The thing is, every time something new hits the scene, there's a natural resistance to it, to having to keep up with friends who move to a new thing or start using the old thing less. We miss each other when we feel like we're drifting apart. And while it's normal to feel that way and I've felt similarly myself, I remember things like the wank when people started moving to Dreamwidth, and more recent grumblings about people using things like Tumblr more and LJ less, and ... past a certain point I can't understand it.
I get we all have our time constraints but the internet makes it very easy to keep up with things and there's nothing good or bad - it's what you make it. I could move to DW and read my entire LJ f-list via feeds. I can add Tumblr feeds to G-reader or LJ, and I can read my Twitter feed in my Gmail sidebar or with a Firefox extension with little-to-no effort. I can get emailed if there's a new post at my favorite comm on DW. If I didn't have a DW account, I could still play at Camelot Fleet parties with OpenID. In most cases, no matter where my friends go I can still keep up with them. No one's trying to shut me out of anything -- it's just that it gets harder to make the internet come to me.
Any relationship takes effort but if I like you and want to keep reading what you have to say, I'm going to keep doing that wherever you are. Finding things that suit our interests, schedules, or principles better is a good thing; it's what's so cool about social media in the first place.
Anyway, just wanted to say that.
+ In still more news, I bought a Kindle and it will be arriving today! I AM EXCITE. I've been wanting one for a while (I was going to go for a Nook but I got wary of the first-gen thing), and it's one of the few chunks of my tax return not going to bills or things that need to be replaced. Wheeeee.