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[maggiedacatt]

http://amberwb.wordpress.com/2012/10/23/aging-out-of-blogging-bye-bye-livejournal/

This is what I've been doing for the last 1.5 hours instead of working. (And, seriously, 1.5 hours?? Time, where have you gone??)

Comments

[garote]

Another thing to consider is that livejournal as a service hasn't really remained static.

Eleven years ago, I could post a journal entry and it was likely it would be read by my core group of friends, and no one else. Nowadays, I'm all-too-aware that anything I post on my journal is just a google search away from being visible to everyone who knows my full name, or my nickname, or is interested in anything I've put my name (or email address) to online. Back In The Day, I was pretty much the only dude in my family, and the vast majority of my extended family, who had an online presence at all. Now, EVERYONE over the age of EIGHT in my entire extended family, has the internet in their freaking pocket. (Yes, all the nine-year-olds have either iPads or phones.)

Time was, I could post a photo of some hilarious clip from a porn site and be all "look at the post-modern garbage that people call sexy these days"! Now I have to think, "what's my nephew going to think of this?"

"Friends only" is a bummer of an option. Better just to take it to email.

[maggiedacatt]

I dunno, I think the ability to filter has been one of LJ's continuing assets for years (even still, the filtering capabilities are far superior to anything Facebook is willing to LET YOU HAVE). I know many people out there who have employed quite complicated layers/systems of filtering. So I don't think this is that big of an issue... if anything, it's one of the things LJ always had going for it--the ability to choose your level of exposure.

[garote]

Oh I understand how nice the filtering can be. I have a tidy collection of friends who post friend-only entries exclusively, and their journals appear as nothing but a terse disclaimer to browsing strangers.*

But I was never able to make any in-groups that felt appropriate for me. There was only the set of people who knew where I was online, and the set of people who didn't, and whether I felt like posting about the weather, my emotions, stupid puns, music, or inane geekery, my attitude was that if they didn't care about the subject they would just skip it. (I guess self-promotion is an "extrovert thing", and I've never had anything more than a shaky personal relationship with it. I could do a LOT better in that area.)

- - -

*As an aside, that leads to a different point, which is that as you age - or "mature" - you tend to search for new friends less often. A friends-locked stub of a journal is about as worthless as no journal at all to an uninvolved user, so one could say that the value offered there is unchanged by the rise or fall of the livejournal userbase. Instead what matters is how often you feel compelled to go out and search for other friends. I used to do that a lot here, and have it reciprocated a lot. But at some point I gained a critical mass of friends and my searching dropped off sharply. That critical mass is easy to describe, too: It was the point where I had so many new friends that I never managed to set aside the time to get to know them all, in depth and/or in meatspace.

You, for example. I feel like I know you pretty well after - what - seven years? More? Taking you and/or your family out to lunch during a SoCal visit has been on my to-do list for years now. When will I make the time? With that on my list, where does any urge to locate MORE friends come into play?

[maggiedacatt]

Let us know if/when you're in the area. Because I would really like to spend time with you IRL.