cardboard cut-outs

[spiritedflame]

I think there's something missing in a lot of people's lives who post just for the sake of it. I did a random search and found someone who had posted only once, but had 100 responses. What got me was not how many there were, nor that the person had only written a very boring this-is-my-first-post message well over a year ago, but that no one had

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[aspic_love]

Heya, your post got me to thinking. There's a lot to consider (not least of which, your roomate's cocktail making skills). It's true that many people limp along life posting meaningless shit, for the sake of posting. But I was thinking about why people have LJ's. For me, it allows me to easily communicate with my friends over wide distances (like Mel and Jen). Since our conversations are generally vapid and devoid of meaning, that is reflected in my posts.
Also, the ephemerality of the 'net really lends itself to breezy, casual, and yes vapid communications. The nature of the medium constrains the content. For example, some web experts point out, reading long articles on a computer screen is more draining than reading; thus, people tend to write in briefer spurts that may be more light on content. It's like IM'ing. it's hard to have deep conversations in IM'ing unless you are a fast typist. You necessarilly keep things short and clipped...
People who don't post meaningful stuff may also not want to express themselves fully in a public online medium. Hence the "friends only" option. The impression we get of others is mediated purely by what they present to us, intentionally or unintentionally.

[spiritedflame]

I really should have provided a link, but I didn't want to honour it with any more acknowledgement. The comments weren't breezy, casual, witty snippets; they were merely vapid. I could understand a few people doing that, but 100? It worried me. "This is the greatest post ever. I feel like we all found your year book and no one had signed it, then we all signed it and we've become a group of friends that don't know eachother." That was one of the longest posts. Doesn't that frighten you? It actually made me sad to think that some lonely person out there thought that there had been enough meaningful exchange to constitute friendship.

[aspic_love]

That example makes it sound like a joke or something. 100 replies to a post seems pretty suspicious. But I just thought about how