*puff-breaths some dust off this place*

[iambliss]

It is Autumn, and maybe that is why, but I am feeling a li'l bit prickly-turtle-y and while I love the Googleyploos and the people there and stuff and thing, I am also... sort of kind of massively in the need of safespace, and Tumblr is marvelous but doesn't really count in the right way, and Twitter is only good for disappearing on, and the Book

Comments

[tenner]

I love others' long-form posts, and I love writing when I can, but my job and general lifestyle have made that type of self-reflection and -expression difficult.

When LiveJournal was in its heyday I feel that the barrier to become LJ friends with someone became higher the longer one's journal existed. Maybe I'm the only one who did this, but when becoming LJ friends I would immediately go back in time and read their last few posts. Sometimes I'd even go back years. Twitter and Facebook don't have an easily accessible past archive to allow for this.

There's so much whiny crap left over from when I started in 2003. To accept a new friend means sharing all of that with them. So the barrier to become LJ friends became really high.

Net effect: my LJ friends-list tends to be the group of people I was close with in 2006, but may not represent my current social circle. (In fact, I think you're the last person I added here, and that was in 2011.)

I will follow someone on Twitter if they breathe on me, either physically or electronically. (I have a great number of Twitter followers I've never met.)

I will friend someone on Facebook if I meet them at an event and have some kind of meaningful interaction with them. It doesn't take too much to make that connection. (I do have two or three Facebook friends I've never met in person.)

I met just about everyone I was friends with on LiveJournal. And even those I hadn't met when I'd friended them, I eventually did meet in some other venue after the fact.

LJ filters are perfect, though those secret posts are always one Russian coder's SQL slipup away from Google indexing. Still, I've always felt comfortable enough knowing the people I filter from won't see the dirt I'm trying to keep from them.

So, tl;dr, LJ was, and is, unique. I hate to say it, but I think the Plus is eventually doomed, and I'd love it if LiveJournal made a comeback at that point.