Void if Removed
There's not much going on here, but I've started getting whispers of dissent from other parts of the web - Metafilter, Tumblr, FB - where people who have never had an account on LJ bemoan the lack of long form outlet, with room for comments, and good support for images, and less intrusive ads...that kind of thing. Mostly on Tumblr and in relation to Tumblr, actually. It's an appalling platform for any sort of conversation, and I regularly see the horrible fruit of lively discussion, three or four times, in reverse order. It's just not a place well suited to it.
I did dick around a bit over at ello, but was not impressed with the minimal everything. And it's kind of boring. And there's no-one there. Same story at g+, although that has the added problem that the interface and functionality changed every ten minutes. It's hard to develop a proficiency with a platform if things are different every time you go to use them.
At any rate, it's led to a sort of round-about suggestion that maybe ole LJ maybe overdue a revival. It is, after all, as vintage as a Mason jar and as retro as a fixie, so there's surely an audience for it. And it's always had a good set of tools for locking out the rabble, and it demands long-form content, thought and a lack of one-click interactions. You can't just like the thing, you have to leave an actual comment. You can't just click "share", so whatever you put on a post has to be worth the extra bit of effort.
So I am going to endeavor to produce the odd long post here and save FB for quick junk. Haven't decided if I'm going to lock things yet but for now we'll just stay vague and leave it open.
I did dick around a bit over at ello, but was not impressed with the minimal everything. And it's kind of boring. And there's no-one there. Same story at g+, although that has the added problem that the interface and functionality changed every ten minutes. It's hard to develop a proficiency with a platform if things are different every time you go to use them.
At any rate, it's led to a sort of round-about suggestion that maybe ole LJ maybe overdue a revival. It is, after all, as vintage as a Mason jar and as retro as a fixie, so there's surely an audience for it. And it's always had a good set of tools for locking out the rabble, and it demands long-form content, thought and a lack of one-click interactions. You can't just like the thing, you have to leave an actual comment. You can't just click "share", so whatever you put on a post has to be worth the extra bit of effort.
So I am going to endeavor to produce the odd long post here and save FB for quick junk. Haven't decided if I'm going to lock things yet but for now we'll just stay vague and leave it open.