LiveJournal Censorship and Invasion of Privacy For the Win!
I find the "This content is for adults!" cut-tag thing deeply creepy.
Or rather - I found it slightly bizarre and off-putting, until I went looking for an awesome SGA story in which the central conflict was built around government control and invasion of the private lives of our boys...and discovered that it was behind one of those self-censoring tags.
The fine taste of irony that flavored my subsequent reading of the story didn't ruin it (it was too good for that), but it sure did shake up my sense of the author's relationship to her text. And the more I thought about it...well - that's when I started being creeped out by a system in which we self-identify as pornographers.
I do recognize that MAYBE the intent is to give LJ a way to say - we warned you! to anyone who complains about content, AND at best it would give the owner of an individual journal the same line of defense...but I don't see how that defense is going to be any stronger then the current MPAA ratings system which is already commonly used, and which utilizes an existing cultural vocabulary.
And on the other hand...it's sure going to make targets for future purges a little easier to identify, isn't it?
Continuing along those lines, I looked around the community which searches LJ for journals, content, keywords and what have you, and THAT was WAY creepy, because of course I searched for myself immediately, and found a bunch of people I've never met quoting a snotty question I asked in an admin journal, back during Strike Through.
I am pretty careful about not writing things in LJ which connect too solidly to my real identity - but I realized that I have also been counting quite heavily on the anonymity of volume.
Back when the internets first burst into my life, the false sense of safety came from the organic cultural limitations on its use. (Circular logic at best, but - I was an un-threatening smart, geeky girl - just like the other people who were attracted to and had access to the places I frequented - so the people reading the things I wrote self-limited themselves into a sympathetic jury of my peers).
Now the net is so big that it seems that no one could ever possibly find me except by accident - so the chances of trouble coming from this journal are no greater than the daily risk I run of getting mugged on the street. Sure, it could happen - but probably not - and if it did, it would have very little to do with me as Me.
I was talking to glendaglamazon the other day, and I told her that I very much feel that LiveJournal is a big dark empty cave, and when I post things, I am scrawling on the walls, writing ideas and stories that only an imaginary audience will see. She gently suggested that if I wasn't such a freakshow, her introducing me to a number of LJ friends live and in person would have shaken that up - and she's not wrong - but my id just hasn't made the leap.
See, although as time has gone on, I have done a tiny bit of social networking here, I still mostly show up for the fic. And by fic I mean porn. Or sometimes, just discussion about porn/fic/SGA. So my sex drive is what powers my relationship to LJ, to fic, and to all you ladies (and let me tell you just how pleased Sanboy was when I meta-ed myself to the statement that I am involved in a vast, spiraling - international! - network of cyber-sexual relationships with a bunch of smart chicks. It's like all his lesbian dreams have almost come true!) And my sex drive feels private - a feeling which colors what I think about the content of this journal - even though I am not locking or guarding the content in any way. Presumably, if you find your way here, you are interested in the same kind of things that I dig - if you're not, you'll never show (or if you do pop your head in for a minute, you won't stick around long enough to matter).
Posting and public discussions of sex-stories aside...(and when I say "aside" I mean I think I will return later to wonder aloud if part of our interest in slash comes from the way it is sexy and intimate yet distanced in some way from what most of us have personally experienced - and so allows us to maintain a shield of privacy over our actual sex-lives) - I also discovered something else!
I have been working hard to remain unspoiled for this season of SGA. I'm not really sure why - I was a GIGANTIC spoiler whore when I watched the X-Files... Maybe there is something about the delighted surprise that Space Gays on Crack often inspires in me...it's like I want it to remain pure. I want to be surprised right along with John when Caldwell and Ellis tell him that all he has to do to be promoted to full-bird is shave his head.
Anyway - I didn't read some of helenish's posts earlier in the season, because her cut-tags were all "Get Your Red Hot Spoilers Here" - but one of the links on the creepy search site showed me this!
The answer to the implicit question in her post, and, indeed, the actual point of this one is:
The pre-blowjob growl came at 24:20, and the other thing came at 26:46.
So - censorship, stalking and invasion of privacy FTW! The tools of oppression have just served to enable my big gay love for John and Rodney, and my ability to share that love with others! Hooray! Now lets get back to the porn.
Or rather - I found it slightly bizarre and off-putting, until I went looking for an awesome SGA story in which the central conflict was built around government control and invasion of the private lives of our boys...and discovered that it was behind one of those self-censoring tags.
The fine taste of irony that flavored my subsequent reading of the story didn't ruin it (it was too good for that), but it sure did shake up my sense of the author's relationship to her text. And the more I thought about it...well - that's when I started being creeped out by a system in which we self-identify as pornographers.
I do recognize that MAYBE the intent is to give LJ a way to say - we warned you! to anyone who complains about content, AND at best it would give the owner of an individual journal the same line of defense...but I don't see how that defense is going to be any stronger then the current MPAA ratings system which is already commonly used, and which utilizes an existing cultural vocabulary.
And on the other hand...it's sure going to make targets for future purges a little easier to identify, isn't it?
Continuing along those lines, I looked around the community which searches LJ for journals, content, keywords and what have you, and THAT was WAY creepy, because of course I searched for myself immediately, and found a bunch of people I've never met quoting a snotty question I asked in an admin journal, back during Strike Through.
I am pretty careful about not writing things in LJ which connect too solidly to my real identity - but I realized that I have also been counting quite heavily on the anonymity of volume.
Back when the internets first burst into my life, the false sense of safety came from the organic cultural limitations on its use. (Circular logic at best, but - I was an un-threatening smart, geeky girl - just like the other people who were attracted to and had access to the places I frequented - so the people reading the things I wrote self-limited themselves into a sympathetic jury of my peers).
Now the net is so big that it seems that no one could ever possibly find me except by accident - so the chances of trouble coming from this journal are no greater than the daily risk I run of getting mugged on the street. Sure, it could happen - but probably not - and if it did, it would have very little to do with me as Me.
I was talking to glendaglamazon the other day, and I told her that I very much feel that LiveJournal is a big dark empty cave, and when I post things, I am scrawling on the walls, writing ideas and stories that only an imaginary audience will see. She gently suggested that if I wasn't such a freakshow, her introducing me to a number of LJ friends live and in person would have shaken that up - and she's not wrong - but my id just hasn't made the leap.
See, although as time has gone on, I have done a tiny bit of social networking here, I still mostly show up for the fic. And by fic I mean porn. Or sometimes, just discussion about porn/fic/SGA. So my sex drive is what powers my relationship to LJ, to fic, and to all you ladies (and let me tell you just how pleased Sanboy was when I meta-ed myself to the statement that I am involved in a vast, spiraling - international! - network of cyber-sexual relationships with a bunch of smart chicks. It's like all his lesbian dreams have almost come true!) And my sex drive feels private - a feeling which colors what I think about the content of this journal - even though I am not locking or guarding the content in any way. Presumably, if you find your way here, you are interested in the same kind of things that I dig - if you're not, you'll never show (or if you do pop your head in for a minute, you won't stick around long enough to matter).
Posting and public discussions of sex-stories aside...(and when I say "aside" I mean I think I will return later to wonder aloud if part of our interest in slash comes from the way it is sexy and intimate yet distanced in some way from what most of us have personally experienced - and so allows us to maintain a shield of privacy over our actual sex-lives) - I also discovered something else!
I have been working hard to remain unspoiled for this season of SGA. I'm not really sure why - I was a GIGANTIC spoiler whore when I watched the X-Files... Maybe there is something about the delighted surprise that Space Gays on Crack often inspires in me...it's like I want it to remain pure. I want to be surprised right along with John when Caldwell and Ellis tell him that all he has to do to be promoted to full-bird is shave his head.
Anyway - I didn't read some of helenish's posts earlier in the season, because her cut-tags were all "Get Your Red Hot Spoilers Here" - but one of the links on the creepy search site showed me this!
The answer to the implicit question in her post, and, indeed, the actual point of this one is:
The pre-blowjob growl came at 24:20, and the other thing came at 26:46.
So - censorship, stalking and invasion of privacy FTW! The tools of oppression have just served to enable my big gay love for John and Rodney, and my ability to share that love with others! Hooray! Now lets get back to the porn.