Recently there have been some discussions on my friends-list about lj and facebook and internet friendships and interactions again, and it got me thinking
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Yeah, but the fishtank, it is boring. I haven't gotten to know one sodding new person on facebook during my years there. It is all heavily connected to real life contacts, and yet people spend *hours* on there, with little of value to read and no new people to make exchanges with.
FB is also attractive, because it's fast and easy and shallow. People often claim they like it because they have "little time".
There are actually 2 "good" things with fb. One is that you can "find" people from your past, people you've lost contact with. Just the other day I became "friends" with a person from my middle school. It's not likely that we'll ever do anything further than be on lists, I mean my high school people are highly highly dormant on my fb, they just sort of "exist", but there it is. Some may even be people you regain contact with.
The second thing is events and invitations to those. There is a function for public or private events, which is handy.
Other than that...beats me. For the very internet dependent or lonely it may be some form of window to other people's lives and voices, although, since I don't think I am that way, it is very unfulfilling and even sometimes boring.
hm..wandering away is an interesting phrase in this context. Like Internet is an ocean and we were swimming completely unleashed and uncoordinated before facebook arrived. ;)
So true. A lot of good and important people are here, it really is the Bee's Knees. This here feels so different from a fish tank, it is an open house you visit, a little party. Sometimes it's a quiet art exhibition, sometimes it is an old movie aficionado meeting, sometimes a big party with loud music and booze, sometimes a wake or a baby shower. But it is a house, with thoughts and life and people making exchanges.
Yes,both of you & this. I often met people here first before meeting them in the larger (poetry) community, which has the cool texture of feeling liek you've met people as their written-almost-better selves.Migrations are strange.I have found I can only really keep up with two at a time.So if I picked up twitter, face might drop off.Honestly, I kind of thought facebook would have gone the way of myspace (which I liked for audio samples & it was easier to keep track of other people's events on that than FB. I still hold on to LJ because it still retains this journal format, which is primary and superior to all the other ones with pseudo-blog functions & it's easier to manage, security wise.
I am glad you're here Karen. If you went on fb, you'd find plenty of the slammer scene there, and ppl from the old poetry communities on LJ (hell, they even started a fb group for old poetryslammers, which was deader than a doornail as soon as it got created). Still, even though I have some poets on fb, we never do anything there, I haven't read a single blessed poem on fb in my 3. 5 years there.
I agree with you, that I'd too, have a hard time upkeeping more than 2 major cyber platforms at a time. There is a life outside the computer to live too, after all.
One lj friend ([info]chocolatebark) said the other day that LJ and the people who like it will become like vinyl aficionados, or people that like really old classical video games. I'm not sure I completely agree, or at least I think that is some time away from now,
Hey, believe me, I'm more than happy if I turn out to be wrong on this one.
I am bewildered by talk I hear that blogs are the new dinosaurs etc etc. It's probably my age -I'm a geezer in the cyberworld and I honestly don't see the glamour factor of being on twitter or fb, tumblr or blahblah. I especially do NOT understand why it is even an issue that a person has to make a choice - as if it matters one iota in life whether one finds one website more important than another for the purpose of expressing oneself. Then again, LJ wasn't even fashionable when blogs were fashionable - various yahoos (small y) told me that if I wanted to be read, I HAD to be on Blogger
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HA! your answer makes me want to go out into the LJ ether and find more creative friends. And to cyberhug the ones I have, which are a really interesting and nice bunch. I don't think blogging is outdated, but that fb has made it change a bit. There is a lot more posturing in certain platform blogs or theme blogs that I feel is a new phenomena. But that too, shall pass.
In regards to Kindle, since I am a new owner (since Christmas), for me it is a travel tool, and a tool for consumption reading. We are compact living, in a condo near the mountains in Boulder, where real estate is sky high, so our storage space is very very limited. I own thousands of books in storage, and nowadays I can only keep those that I truly love ("like" is not enough). So, I either read the books and sell them to get credit at The Bookworm, our used book store, or use Kindle to either try the books out (if I love them, I'll buy them in paper), or just consume books I know I'll find amusing, but not necessary to own on the shelf
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Like I commented over at "my place" I dislike the conquistador attitude some have about e-readers - that they can and will replace books, the sooner the better. I doubt I'll have one anytime soon, but I can see e-readers merging with ipad type machines in the not-too-distant future, and when that happens, I would buy a cheap one. I only got a cell phone last year and use it about once every 3 months...
Your comments and your friends comments on this post are very heartening, and not the kind of interaction that shows up on fb. LIKE! :-)
that they can and will replace books, the sooner the better.
That's just silly, and also an extremely privileged attitude. I'm not sure electronic devices will ever completely replace books, but if so, even in a limited sense, it is going to take a good long while before this can be distributed to the broad literature consuming public.
There are people I knew on LJ who have disappeared, and I miss them a lot--but I tell myself, with in-the-flesh friendships, too, sometimes people move away, and then they fail to keep in touch... it just happens.
I'm still delighted by LJ and by what my friends on LJ write.
Yes, I suppose it would fare me well to remember more often that you lose people in all kinds of situations in life, not only on LJ. There really are two sides to being a nostalgic word monger type with a elephant memory. ;)
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I haven't gotten to know one sodding new person on facebook during my years there. It is all heavily connected to real life contacts, and yet people spend *hours* on there, with little of value to read and no new people to make exchanges with.
FB is also attractive, because it's fast and easy and shallow. People often claim they like it because they have "little time".
Different strokes I guess.
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The second thing is events and invitations to those. There is a function for public or private events, which is handy.
Other than that...beats me. For the very internet dependent or lonely it may be some form of window to other people's lives and voices, although, since I don't think I am that way, it is very unfulfilling and even sometimes boring.
hm..wandering away is an interesting phrase in this context. Like Internet is an ocean and we were swimming completely unleashed and uncoordinated before facebook arrived. ;)
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I still hold on to LJ because it still retains this journal format, which is primary and superior to all the other ones with pseudo-blog functions & it's easier to manage, security wise.
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I agree with you, that I'd too, have a hard time upkeeping more than 2 major cyber platforms at a time. There is a life outside the computer to live too, after all.
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Hey, believe me, I'm more than happy if I turn out to be wrong on this one.
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In regards to Kindle, since I am a new owner (since Christmas), for me it is a travel tool, and a tool for consumption reading. We are compact living, in a condo near the mountains in Boulder, where real estate is sky high, so our storage space is very very limited. I own thousands of books in storage, and nowadays I can only keep those that I truly love ("like" is not enough). So, I either read the books and sell them to get credit at The Bookworm, our used book store, or use Kindle to either try the books out (if I love them, I'll buy them in paper), or just consume books I know I'll find amusing, but not necessary to own on the shelf ( ... )
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Your comments and your friends comments on this post are very heartening, and not the kind of interaction that shows up on fb. LIKE! :-)
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That's just silly, and also an extremely privileged attitude. I'm not sure electronic devices will ever completely replace books, but if so, even in a limited sense, it is going to take a good long while before this can be distributed to the broad literature consuming public.
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I'm still delighted by LJ and by what my friends on LJ write.
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Great post, very thought-provoking.
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