My 11 years on Livejournal
I was originally going to write this on June 8, 2015 - the 10-year anniversary of this account's creation. But then, I was busy. And then, I got fired/blacklisted from Pioneer Press/Tribune, and I didn't really feel like doing much of anything except trying to find a way to make money. By the time things got a bit more stable, a few months passed, and I figured that I might as well wait until the next anniversary. It isn't a nice number like 10, but the next nice anniversary number is 15, and who knows what happens by then, so...
It is kind of amazing to think just how much time has passed since I created this account. Youtube was in its infancy. Facebook was a mere whisper. Myspace was at its height of popularity, and Twitter and Tumblr didn't exist yet. Smartphones didn't exist yet. George W. Bush was president, the economy seemed pretty sound, and while United Russia was already putting in screws of authoritarianism, the Ukrainian Crisis and all the ways the screws have been tightened since seemed unthinkable.
For a long time, I thought I created this account in 2003, when LadyRogue of AIC BBS forums (not to be confused with randirogue) gave me an invite code (this was back when you needed one of those) - I just didn't use it until June 2005. But my profile seems to be convinced that no, I created it on June 8, 2005, so I guess I did.
I know I started actively using LJ for a simple reason. tweelore's LJ accounts were friends-locked, and if I wanted to read them, I would have to get one. I mostly use it to leave comments on her LJ, look up communities (in the parlance of the time, comms) and occasionally post in some of them. I got pretty involved with _night_watch_, and I read several fanfic sporking/literary criticism comms like literarysnark and canon_sues. And then, there were things like nerd_sex, which I mostly just watched. Oh, and I read Sergey Lunkyanenko's original LJ alot.
I didn't really start posting in this LJ until... Well, there's no getting around it... Until Lore dumped me. And I used this LJ in the most stereotypically LJish way possible. And then some. I mean, certain amount of angst and heartbreak is to be expected - getting dumped hurts, and getting dumped by your first girlfiend ever hurts even worse. But I also wrote some things that were passive-aggressive, and some things...I wanted to hurt her, plain and simple. And I can't excuse that.
For better or for worse, this is part of my LJ. Not the part I'm going to link to, but it's part of the history of this LJ, and I can't pretend it isn't there.
But my LJ wasn't all moping and sniping for that long. I started attending University of Illinois at Chicago, and I found myself spending a lot of time just wandering around. I was looking for something, anything to take my mind off Lore, so I started exploring the city. First, I set out to track down every single comic book store in Chicago. I got to see the neighborhoods I've never seen before, and I wanted to see more of that. Slowly but surely, that seeped into my LJ. I joined chicago-el to talk about public transit, and chicago_urbex to share some of my discoveries.
(It was actually thanks to chicago-el that I wound up joining Flickr. I made a map of all the possible 'L' expansion projects and tried to put it up on Photobucket (this was back when you could access your Photobucket account through your LJ), but people complained that the resolution was crap. I asked if they had any alternatives, someone suggested Flickr, and the rest is history)
Around that time, I also started paying attention to warren_ellis, which lead me to theauthority, nadya-lev, _yungfuktoi_ and, in a roundabout way, Brian Wood. I also started looking at other writers' LJs, like Greg Rucka's, jimbutcher's and Chyanna Chugston's and Bryan Lee O'Malley's.
(While putting together this entry, I discovered just how many of those LJs have been purged, which is a shame. O'Malley, for example, had some pretty cool behind-the-scenes stuff)
Somewhere along the way, I discovered the original scans_daily. I mostly just commented on other people's posts, only very occasionally posting scans of some Golden Age, public domain superheroes. Thanks to this community, I discovered Miracleman, Grant Morrison's Zenith, V for Vendetta, Phonogram and, yes, plenty of DC and Marvel comics. It was there that I first encountered linkara (back when he was just another Teen Titans fan), foxhack, shinga and mightygodking (and improved_archie. I also ran across queenanthai, but she didn't really register as significant until... Well, I'll get into it later in this post.
I treated my own LJ as a place to post my thoughts and share some interesting links I found online. Looking back at my archives, it's kind of weird to realize that my personal LJ use actually picked up a bit even as Livejournal usage outside the former Soviet Union started slowly but surely taper off. My mom was probably a big reason for that. By the time annanov told me that my mom had an LJ, people were already starting to think of it as more of a Russian thing. As years went on and my mom's audience grew to thousands upon thousands of Russian-speaking users, I realized that having her link to me could do wonders for my own readership. And so, I started posting stuff that I knew would interest her.
(And, over the years, my mom wound up influencing me in other ways. The LJ birthday cards - I shamelessly copied it from her. And my early trip logs only happened because my mom asked me to write about the first time I visited New York)
Around 2009 or so... Bear with me, because gets a bit convoluted. Scans_daily lead me to discover journalfan version of fandom_wank. Fandom_wank led to cleolinda, cleolinda led made_of_fail_pc, and MoF led me to its co-hosts - the aforementioned queenanthai and alliancesjr.
I didn't actually think to start looking at their personal LJs until late 2010. And even then, it took me months before I realized that the Kevin's fiance was Lore (long story short, it had to do with a few details that, at the time, would've only been significant to people who knew her IRL). Lore being Lore, she asked if I wanted to meet him. During the course of that get-together, Kevin made a reference to people tweeting about it... Which is what made me decide to join Twitter (I wanted to see what people were talking about). Which opened up a whole new world to me. I met a whole bunch of people I never would've otherwise met. It introduced me to the wonderful world of live-tweeting TV shows and Chicago City Council meetings. And, odd as it may sound, it actually encouraged me to use my LJ more.
I don't remember what I was ranting about, but I whatever it was, I wanted to write more than Twitter character limits would allow. I thought about using TwitLonger... And I remember thinking "This is silly. You have a perfectly good blog. Use that."
Most of my nedia-related posts in the past few years started out as twitter rants... Until, eventually, I just started skipping the middle step and went straight to Livejournal.
Speaking of media and Twitter...
In August 2011, I made a post about two Chicago community newspapers. One of those newspapers, the Skyline had a Twitter account. I tagged it in a tweet with the link, not thinking much of it. But, to my infinite surprise, the paper's editor not only saw that tweet, but proceeded to link to my post as "a great example of media journalism." I was on his radar - and I was determined not to let that opportunity slip by. I tagged him in some of my political LJ posts, especially Chicago stuff, in hopes that he'd retweet that, too (and, sometimes, he did).
A few weeks later, I got fired from a job that may have been crappy, but which was still a job. I needed the money. I wrote to the editor, asking if there were any openings. He said there weren't... But when, in December, he tweeted that he was looking for a regular contributor for Chicago Journal, Skyline's sister newspaper. By this point, my financial situation was, frankly, pretty dire, and my morale was pretty damn low, so I pretty much said "me me me pick me."
And he did. Starting next year, I was writing for Chicago Journal. While the paper shut down a year later, that lead to a gig with Pioneer Press. And, by the time I got fired/blacklisted, I realized that, somewhere along the way, I acquired three years of journalism experience. I don't know how much it helped in finding paying work, but it sure as hell didn't hurt.
Meanwhile, the English-speaking Livejournal was getting smaller. The numbers were already petering out, but right around the time I met Kevin IRL, Livejournal faced a series of DDoS attacks. They would continue over the next few months. For a lot of people, this was a straw that broke the camel's back. Some switched to Dreamwidth, crossposting their personal entries to their LJs. Others left Livejournal altogether. And after that... I can't count how many times I've seen some variation of "there's no one on Livejournal, everybody is going to Tumblr, so why should I stick around?"
By that point, I was already one foot in LJ-Russia, Even as many English-language comms died out and many English-speaking users jumped ship, Russian-language comms remained as active as ever. Having an LJ-Russia-famous mom whose links could send traffic climbing didn't hurt, either. Nor did the fact that some of said friends friended me, and kept reading my LJ on their own.
As the Ukrainian Crisis started brewing in the spring of 2013, I found myself in a unique position along Chicago journalists. I could follow Russian-language news sources, get information that English-language news sources didn't have access to. And, just as importantly, I had cultural context a lot of people didn't. I've made some mistakes, and sometimes trusted sources I shouldn't have trusted, but, for the next few months, I wrote with a renewed sense of purpose - and, to my surprise, some still-active English-language LJers started reading me. These days, I don't mention Ukrainian Crisis nearly as often as I used to, but some of those people still read me.
Livejournal proved to be indescribable when I was diagnosed with Hodgekin's Lymphoma in June 2014. The " Chemo Diaries" posts allowed me to vent and keep everybody up to date on how I was doing. And the supportive comments, on LJ and elsewhere, actually helped.
It has been 11 years since I first logged into Livejournal. I've barely used Myspace, I barely used Xanga, but I stuck with this.
In the end of the day, it comes down to one simple thing. I like it. I like some of the features unique to LJ, like the spoiler functions (which double as a convinient way to add sidenotes without bogging down the text) and the ability to create multiple cuts. The repost function makes translating Russian LJ posts very easy (to the point where you can keep the formatting). I like the threaded comments. Sure, threads can get unreadable if you go on for too long, but I like the fact that they can keep topics separated, without confusion in literally every other comment system, where it's not always clear who is replying to who. I like the ability to change avatars to suit the comment or the entry. I like being able to put in emotions and songs (which can add another dimension, or, in some cases, is a way to make a subtle(r) joke, or a cute reference). And, of course, I like that I can use friends lock to only show posts to my LJ friends, or just to some groups of LJ friends. There is no blogging platform or social media platform that has anything like that. Which comes in handy when, say, you want to give your honest opinions about your family without dealing with the inevitable family drama. Or sharing something you only trust some people without without having to send it to every individual person.
I like the fact that this is one place on the Internet that has the record of who I have been for the past 11 years. Not all parts are flattering, but I can live with that. This is me, warts and all. It's the same reason why I'll never take down my high school fanfics. They are out there, and they are part of who I am as a writer. Maybe I could go back and friends-lock some entries, but deleting them seems... dishonest.
And perhaps most importantly, Livejournal is one place where I can write whatever I want. It can be professional. It can be personal, it can be a mix of both. I'm not trying to create a perfect image, or build a brand. I mean, make no mistake - there are plenty of posts that I hope will be seen by as many people as possible, but not every single post has to be. Like I wrote earlier, sometimes, I just want to share something with a few people. And sometimes, I just want to vent, without necessarily expecting anyone to react, let alone reply.
If I want to write a review of a book I read, I can do that. If I want to write about social issues in Chicago and elsewhere, I can do it. If I want to write about an interesting place I visited, I can do it. If I want to post a short story I wrote, simply to share it, I can do it. If I want to just kick back and talk about my friend's kid, or what's going on with my family, I can do it.
It isn't a social media presence. It isn't a brand. It's just a journal of my life. A living, breathing journal.
Do I wish that more English-speakers would use it? Do I wish more English-language comms were active? Do I wish many people who left LJ would still be here? Do I wish more people would comment on my LJ instead of on Twitter and on Facebook? Of course I do. It's pretty obvious that I do. But I also get a peak into grrm's life and thoughts. With kaffyr, I can talk about Chicago journalism and fandom stuff. andrewducker's posts are full of interesting links, and abandonedplaces allows me discover obscurities I never thought of, and live_report, while not quite as busy as it used to be, still offers a kaleidoscope of unique perspectives. weepingcock still brings its share of weirdness. pauluskp gives a one of a kind perspective on what's going on in Ukraine, while tttkkk offers deep insights into the most secretive country on Earth - North Korea. ru_railway shows me just how far trains can take me and spb_ru lets me get some inkling of some of the interesting stuff happening in my home city.
Of course, there is always the big question mark hanging over Livejournal's future. United Russia's efforts to tighten the screws against media (online or otherwise) haven't gone unnoticed, and many users have been leaving for other platforms. The owners' long-term plans for the platform are murky. Plus, there is the fact that Livejournal is, for better or for worse, a platform for a different age. Embedding videos is becoming an increasing chore - some won't embed at all and, with others, you have to basically convert new embed codes into older embed codes and hoping that it will still work (so far so good). B
But, at this point, I want to stick around for as long as I can, for as long as Livejournal is still up and running, for as long as I can write what I want to write, the way I want to write.
Here's to another 11 years.
It is kind of amazing to think just how much time has passed since I created this account. Youtube was in its infancy. Facebook was a mere whisper. Myspace was at its height of popularity, and Twitter and Tumblr didn't exist yet. Smartphones didn't exist yet. George W. Bush was president, the economy seemed pretty sound, and while United Russia was already putting in screws of authoritarianism, the Ukrainian Crisis and all the ways the screws have been tightened since seemed unthinkable.
For a long time, I thought I created this account in 2003, when LadyRogue of AIC BBS forums (not to be confused with randirogue) gave me an invite code (this was back when you needed one of those) - I just didn't use it until June 2005. But my profile seems to be convinced that no, I created it on June 8, 2005, so I guess I did.
I know I started actively using LJ for a simple reason. tweelore's LJ accounts were friends-locked, and if I wanted to read them, I would have to get one. I mostly use it to leave comments on her LJ, look up communities (in the parlance of the time, comms) and occasionally post in some of them. I got pretty involved with _night_watch_, and I read several fanfic sporking/literary criticism comms like literarysnark and canon_sues. And then, there were things like nerd_sex, which I mostly just watched. Oh, and I read Sergey Lunkyanenko's original LJ alot.
I didn't really start posting in this LJ until... Well, there's no getting around it... Until Lore dumped me. And I used this LJ in the most stereotypically LJish way possible. And then some. I mean, certain amount of angst and heartbreak is to be expected - getting dumped hurts, and getting dumped by your first girlfiend ever hurts even worse. But I also wrote some things that were passive-aggressive, and some things...I wanted to hurt her, plain and simple. And I can't excuse that.
For better or for worse, this is part of my LJ. Not the part I'm going to link to, but it's part of the history of this LJ, and I can't pretend it isn't there.
But my LJ wasn't all moping and sniping for that long. I started attending University of Illinois at Chicago, and I found myself spending a lot of time just wandering around. I was looking for something, anything to take my mind off Lore, so I started exploring the city. First, I set out to track down every single comic book store in Chicago. I got to see the neighborhoods I've never seen before, and I wanted to see more of that. Slowly but surely, that seeped into my LJ. I joined chicago-el to talk about public transit, and chicago_urbex to share some of my discoveries.
(It was actually thanks to chicago-el that I wound up joining Flickr. I made a map of all the possible 'L' expansion projects and tried to put it up on Photobucket (this was back when you could access your Photobucket account through your LJ), but people complained that the resolution was crap. I asked if they had any alternatives, someone suggested Flickr, and the rest is history)
Around that time, I also started paying attention to warren_ellis, which lead me to theauthority, nadya-lev, _yungfuktoi_ and, in a roundabout way, Brian Wood. I also started looking at other writers' LJs, like Greg Rucka's, jimbutcher's and Chyanna Chugston's and Bryan Lee O'Malley's.
(While putting together this entry, I discovered just how many of those LJs have been purged, which is a shame. O'Malley, for example, had some pretty cool behind-the-scenes stuff)
Somewhere along the way, I discovered the original scans_daily. I mostly just commented on other people's posts, only very occasionally posting scans of some Golden Age, public domain superheroes. Thanks to this community, I discovered Miracleman, Grant Morrison's Zenith, V for Vendetta, Phonogram and, yes, plenty of DC and Marvel comics. It was there that I first encountered linkara (back when he was just another Teen Titans fan), foxhack, shinga and mightygodking (and improved_archie. I also ran across queenanthai, but she didn't really register as significant until... Well, I'll get into it later in this post.
I treated my own LJ as a place to post my thoughts and share some interesting links I found online. Looking back at my archives, it's kind of weird to realize that my personal LJ use actually picked up a bit even as Livejournal usage outside the former Soviet Union started slowly but surely taper off. My mom was probably a big reason for that. By the time annanov told me that my mom had an LJ, people were already starting to think of it as more of a Russian thing. As years went on and my mom's audience grew to thousands upon thousands of Russian-speaking users, I realized that having her link to me could do wonders for my own readership. And so, I started posting stuff that I knew would interest her.
(And, over the years, my mom wound up influencing me in other ways. The LJ birthday cards - I shamelessly copied it from her. And my early trip logs only happened because my mom asked me to write about the first time I visited New York)
Around 2009 or so... Bear with me, because gets a bit convoluted. Scans_daily lead me to discover journalfan version of fandom_wank. Fandom_wank led to cleolinda, cleolinda led made_of_fail_pc, and MoF led me to its co-hosts - the aforementioned queenanthai and alliancesjr.
I didn't actually think to start looking at their personal LJs until late 2010. And even then, it took me months before I realized that the Kevin's fiance was Lore (long story short, it had to do with a few details that, at the time, would've only been significant to people who knew her IRL). Lore being Lore, she asked if I wanted to meet him. During the course of that get-together, Kevin made a reference to people tweeting about it... Which is what made me decide to join Twitter (I wanted to see what people were talking about). Which opened up a whole new world to me. I met a whole bunch of people I never would've otherwise met. It introduced me to the wonderful world of live-tweeting TV shows and Chicago City Council meetings. And, odd as it may sound, it actually encouraged me to use my LJ more.
I don't remember what I was ranting about, but I whatever it was, I wanted to write more than Twitter character limits would allow. I thought about using TwitLonger... And I remember thinking "This is silly. You have a perfectly good blog. Use that."
Most of my nedia-related posts in the past few years started out as twitter rants... Until, eventually, I just started skipping the middle step and went straight to Livejournal.
Speaking of media and Twitter...
In August 2011, I made a post about two Chicago community newspapers. One of those newspapers, the Skyline had a Twitter account. I tagged it in a tweet with the link, not thinking much of it. But, to my infinite surprise, the paper's editor not only saw that tweet, but proceeded to link to my post as "a great example of media journalism." I was on his radar - and I was determined not to let that opportunity slip by. I tagged him in some of my political LJ posts, especially Chicago stuff, in hopes that he'd retweet that, too (and, sometimes, he did).
A few weeks later, I got fired from a job that may have been crappy, but which was still a job. I needed the money. I wrote to the editor, asking if there were any openings. He said there weren't... But when, in December, he tweeted that he was looking for a regular contributor for Chicago Journal, Skyline's sister newspaper. By this point, my financial situation was, frankly, pretty dire, and my morale was pretty damn low, so I pretty much said "me me me pick me."
And he did. Starting next year, I was writing for Chicago Journal. While the paper shut down a year later, that lead to a gig with Pioneer Press. And, by the time I got fired/blacklisted, I realized that, somewhere along the way, I acquired three years of journalism experience. I don't know how much it helped in finding paying work, but it sure as hell didn't hurt.
Meanwhile, the English-speaking Livejournal was getting smaller. The numbers were already petering out, but right around the time I met Kevin IRL, Livejournal faced a series of DDoS attacks. They would continue over the next few months. For a lot of people, this was a straw that broke the camel's back. Some switched to Dreamwidth, crossposting their personal entries to their LJs. Others left Livejournal altogether. And after that... I can't count how many times I've seen some variation of "there's no one on Livejournal, everybody is going to Tumblr, so why should I stick around?"
By that point, I was already one foot in LJ-Russia, Even as many English-language comms died out and many English-speaking users jumped ship, Russian-language comms remained as active as ever. Having an LJ-Russia-famous mom whose links could send traffic climbing didn't hurt, either. Nor did the fact that some of said friends friended me, and kept reading my LJ on their own.
As the Ukrainian Crisis started brewing in the spring of 2013, I found myself in a unique position along Chicago journalists. I could follow Russian-language news sources, get information that English-language news sources didn't have access to. And, just as importantly, I had cultural context a lot of people didn't. I've made some mistakes, and sometimes trusted sources I shouldn't have trusted, but, for the next few months, I wrote with a renewed sense of purpose - and, to my surprise, some still-active English-language LJers started reading me. These days, I don't mention Ukrainian Crisis nearly as often as I used to, but some of those people still read me.
Livejournal proved to be indescribable when I was diagnosed with Hodgekin's Lymphoma in June 2014. The " Chemo Diaries" posts allowed me to vent and keep everybody up to date on how I was doing. And the supportive comments, on LJ and elsewhere, actually helped.
It has been 11 years since I first logged into Livejournal. I've barely used Myspace, I barely used Xanga, but I stuck with this.
In the end of the day, it comes down to one simple thing. I like it. I like some of the features unique to LJ, like the spoiler functions (which double as a convinient way to add sidenotes without bogging down the text) and the ability to create multiple cuts. The repost function makes translating Russian LJ posts very easy (to the point where you can keep the formatting). I like the threaded comments. Sure, threads can get unreadable if you go on for too long, but I like the fact that they can keep topics separated, without confusion in literally every other comment system, where it's not always clear who is replying to who. I like the ability to change avatars to suit the comment or the entry. I like being able to put in emotions and songs (which can add another dimension, or, in some cases, is a way to make a subtle(r) joke, or a cute reference). And, of course, I like that I can use friends lock to only show posts to my LJ friends, or just to some groups of LJ friends. There is no blogging platform or social media platform that has anything like that. Which comes in handy when, say, you want to give your honest opinions about your family without dealing with the inevitable family drama. Or sharing something you only trust some people without without having to send it to every individual person.
I like the fact that this is one place on the Internet that has the record of who I have been for the past 11 years. Not all parts are flattering, but I can live with that. This is me, warts and all. It's the same reason why I'll never take down my high school fanfics. They are out there, and they are part of who I am as a writer. Maybe I could go back and friends-lock some entries, but deleting them seems... dishonest.
And perhaps most importantly, Livejournal is one place where I can write whatever I want. It can be professional. It can be personal, it can be a mix of both. I'm not trying to create a perfect image, or build a brand. I mean, make no mistake - there are plenty of posts that I hope will be seen by as many people as possible, but not every single post has to be. Like I wrote earlier, sometimes, I just want to share something with a few people. And sometimes, I just want to vent, without necessarily expecting anyone to react, let alone reply.
If I want to write a review of a book I read, I can do that. If I want to write about social issues in Chicago and elsewhere, I can do it. If I want to write about an interesting place I visited, I can do it. If I want to post a short story I wrote, simply to share it, I can do it. If I want to just kick back and talk about my friend's kid, or what's going on with my family, I can do it.
It isn't a social media presence. It isn't a brand. It's just a journal of my life. A living, breathing journal.
Do I wish that more English-speakers would use it? Do I wish more English-language comms were active? Do I wish many people who left LJ would still be here? Do I wish more people would comment on my LJ instead of on Twitter and on Facebook? Of course I do. It's pretty obvious that I do. But I also get a peak into grrm's life and thoughts. With kaffyr, I can talk about Chicago journalism and fandom stuff. andrewducker's posts are full of interesting links, and abandonedplaces allows me discover obscurities I never thought of, and live_report, while not quite as busy as it used to be, still offers a kaleidoscope of unique perspectives. weepingcock still brings its share of weirdness. pauluskp gives a one of a kind perspective on what's going on in Ukraine, while tttkkk offers deep insights into the most secretive country on Earth - North Korea. ru_railway shows me just how far trains can take me and spb_ru lets me get some inkling of some of the interesting stuff happening in my home city.
Of course, there is always the big question mark hanging over Livejournal's future. United Russia's efforts to tighten the screws against media (online or otherwise) haven't gone unnoticed, and many users have been leaving for other platforms. The owners' long-term plans for the platform are murky. Plus, there is the fact that Livejournal is, for better or for worse, a platform for a different age. Embedding videos is becoming an increasing chore - some won't embed at all and, with others, you have to basically convert new embed codes into older embed codes and hoping that it will still work (so far so good). B
But, at this point, I want to stick around for as long as I can, for as long as Livejournal is still up and running, for as long as I can write what I want to write, the way I want to write.
Here's to another 11 years.