Pretentious Meta Post of the Day

[alchemi]

To me, it looks like livejournal is going the way of the personal home page. Two years ago, during a day my friends list would have 80 or 100 new posts, many of them interesting. Yesterday I think it was five. This is not an isolated incident - it is a year long trend. On top of that, I get the impression it's true of a lot of other people too

Comments

[discountsatori]

I have the same phenomenon happening on my Friends page -- 200+ Friends, and about 60 - 80 entries every 24 hours. And about half of those are by these two people who update at least once an hour during the workday (argh! I do not need to know that you are feeling gassy after lunch!) Three or four years ago, I would have definitely had twice that number of entries to read within 24 hours. I used to write almost every day, too. But for my LJ Friends, I know a lot of the drop in our posting frequency is just due to the nature of our lives -- back about four years ago, most of us were in college, and there was a lot more time and insistence to write in our journals. As we grew older there was less time, less insistence, and more worry that we'd write something that might get us in trouble at work

[alchemi]

Disable comments. Really. If they care that much they'll e-mail. Take this and put it in your journal with the relevent portions bold, explain that you're turning off comments and if you put something up without responding to e-mail, it's because otherwise you'd never post.

I very much agree with you about it being a result of people moving from 18-22 (prime journaling years thanks to that, erm, college thing) into days mostly defined by work and commuting. If you're doing homework, it's not hard to take a 10 minute break for a post. If you're in the middle of work, it's hard to do without getting fired.

[the_xtina]

I feel like if I update with a long entry (and most of my entries are long) when I'm not caught up with correspondence, I'm basically giving my readers / LJ Friends the message that, hey, I do have enough time to write this totally self-serving entry, but I don't have the time or energy to respond to the comments on my last entry or to the e-mail somebody wrote me two weeks ago.

Yeah, this, what you said, exactly.

[coraljune]

Your second paragraph:
Me too, precisely. I find the social demand of LJ going on my mental To Do list, and feeling stressed by having failed to keep up.

[vaysha]

I'm so glad you brought this up.
I've been feeling it too.
I don't update much anymore as I have terrible writers block.
I'm trying....
And honestly with three teenagers one of which I am homeschooling (the girl) I have no private sit down breathe and write time anymore.
Baila is going home in mid December though so that will change.
thank you Mike for writing about this.
I love lj and I have felt this demise in interest of which you speak.

[alchemi]

Thank you.

Life can be crazy. I definitely feel for you.

[coraljune]

discountsatori nailed it. The sentiment she described (almost) kept me from commenting at all. I've been overwhelmingly busy, and have sinned skimmed, and intend to go back and read and comment, especially to the Similarity meme/question, and I felt guilty commenting here out of order. Screw that

[alchemi]

Yup, I read you (skimming no more then typical). But I make the same assumption when people do not comment. And even knowing that, I still find it difficult to comment (and find the same thing about being hesitant to comment in their journal ... which is so critical a point I wish I had included it in the entry).

Ditto the point about reading comments. When I started on livejournal I'd often go back to look at previous entries. I didn't have e-mail notification on, so I had to in order to see if anyone responded. The result was that I got involved in a lot more discussions with people other then the author because I tended to read the comments a lot more carefully. Now, when I do comment, I may well do so without ever reading what anyone else has said. It's a bad cycle.

Also - I just about always think I don't have anything interesting to say. Part of why it helps me so much to post frequently (because I will much more often think something is interesting after I post it).

[finding_helena]

I agree with this comment.

[zougwa]

I am guilty of many of these, particlarly 1, 2, and 5. I have never been one for the "life update" sort of post, instead preferring to use this space for more discursive, reflective writing. But lately that seems elusive, and it doesn't leave much left. I look back on old posts and wonder where that part of my life went when I could write six paragraphs about my family or a book I've read.

It feels part of a larger problem, where I lack the focus to dedicate myself to one thing and be able to tune out everything else. Part of the reason I don't comment is that I can't even bring myself to read a long post on my friends' list. The same reason I can't finish a long magazine article.

[alchemi]

I have trouble with long posts too. Damnit. I sometimes have to force myself to do reading and I admit being more prone to skipping them. Particularly if the paragraphs are also long.

[uproar]

I feel like I've been on LJ for ages now. I can definitely see trends in my posting habits over the years.

I don't post nearly as often on LJ now in part because I just don't have the time, but also because during the week I try to make at least one post a day to my other blog, MissMalaprop. Which has an LJ feed, mind you.... I think the whole rise of RSS and other types of blogs is a big part of why there is less posting on LJ. I like LJ more for the community aspects of it, as far as actual LJ communities and comments and friends go. But for running a blog focusing on one main topic or whatever, there are much more effective applications out there, which I why I run my other blog on Wordpress.

These days my friends page feels fuller than ever, but I think that's actually because I've started subscribing to so many RSS feeds, which I read on my LJ friends page along with regular friend entries.

[alchemi]

I agree that there are better options for single topic issues. Heather is fascinated by wikis, for example, as an alternative to blogs. I don't get them though.