if I can take you boy, it just might throw this town

[heather]

+ Cassie Hannah Murray as Matt Smith's companion? LOL, they must be trying to start wank. People whined because they thought Matt was too young and Hannah's nineteen ... still, if this happens, it might make me poke my head back into that fandom, like I did for Freema. :P

Comments

[thimble_kiss]

I locked mine for several months last year due to a possible RL privacy breach. I was worried that my adult fic would be discovered by family members. But I really hated having it locked. My journal hardly contains any private stuff that I'm worried for (and what little there was, was filtered anyway), and the fic - well I wrote it to share it, and putting it under lock is counterproductive to that. Nor was I happy to take the "friend me to gain access to my fic" approach, as I like my shy lurkers and felt bad about blackmailing them to come out in the open. I had to change my username to be comfortable unlocking my journal again, which sucks a bit, but it was worth it to me.

I'm not so worried about the bot journals now that I've read some good advice on recognising and handling them. (I report them at once, and they're almost always suspended within a week or two.) I wouldn't friend back an empty journal or anything written in all Cyrillics anyway as there'd be no point, and as long as the bots aren't friended back and given access there's nothing they can do that they can't also do if your journal is locked (i.e. add you).

I've never had trolls comment, but I can say for certain that if I ever start using my journal for personal entries or anything not strictly fandom related, I will lock and filter. It feels icky having stuff like that out in the open. The climate online has definitely changed, or else I've just lost my innocence somewhere along the way - six years ago when I first started keeping an LJ journal, I wrote in detail about my personal life (granted without names given) with very little worry at all.

It can be a tricky balance to strike - good luck with deciding the way that works best for you. :)

[heather]

You've definitely hit all the reasons why I hesitate to lock my journal down! It does seem sort of blackmail-esque to me (just when it comes to the fic in particular, which I can't imagine ever locking up). It must have really sucked to have to do that, and yet, I would've absolutely done the same thing if my family were that close to finding everything.

I've had a few people follow me here from other communities and comment anonymously, but it's rare. The climate on LJ is changing though, and part of it's because it's growing so quickly. More people know about LJ than used to.

Thanks for the advice! ♥ I'm leaning towards keeping it open and just locking selectively, but based on some of yall's input, there are some things I think I need to be more careful about.