LJ Idol Week 10: Welcome to My Shop
Whose LJ is it anyway? Balancing personal expression and friends-list sensibilities in determining content.
It’s my LJ. That’s why I like it so much.
Nobody in my real life knows about my livejournal. Or, if they do know about it, I do not know that they do. It is my little place to come and have secrets, and I like having secrets because they make me feel complex and complicated. In fact, I even have some secrets that do not make it out into the relatively safe space of my friends-locked livejournal. I have a lot of secrets like that, secrets that are just for me.
But I like to tell secrets, or if not secrets, things I’m less than comfortable talking to my friends in real life about. I hate to refer to my non-online life as “real life,” because it implies that this livejournal, that the people on the other end of those names in the comments area, are somehow unreal. There is nothing unreal about this. These words are out there on the Internet and I know they are not easy to get back - in fact, maybe getting them back for good, forever, is impossible. They are out there.
The reason I have this livejournal is to express myself. To express things that are sometimes uncomfortable. To bitch and moan even when it might be annoying. To reveal little things here and there that might be too much information (though I rarely do - I like to keep the really private parts of my life private). I didn’t get a livejournal to make friends; making friends on livejournal has been an amazing, added bonus of having a place to put my thoughts down. Sometimes I like to put those thoughts down artistically and it’s nice to hear feedback on them. Sometimes I need advice and I get great advice. Sometimes I need sympathy or hand-holding or somebody to talk to whom I don’t see every day. Friends on livejournal have gotten me through some really tough stuff, especially recently. Part of it is that I can be uncomfortable bearing myself emotionally to my “real life” friends - especially here at school.
So I lay it all out here on livejournal.
I don’t know how my friends list feels about that, when I get emotional and drone on and on about my problems. It is probably not fascinating. It is probably not fascinating (it’s more like vanity, actually) when I post self-indulgent videos of myself or gush about new achievements. It is probably not the best read in the world. But ultimately, people are reading it by choice. And while I do not want to see anybody go from my friends list, if they do not like what I am writing, they do not have to read it.
Mostly, I think this is a non-issue for me. If people are offended by what I am writing here, their sensibilities are decidedly delicate. If something is going to be too much information, I’ll put it behind a cut. If something is going to offend somebody’s political beliefs, well, my friends list and I tend to agree on stuff like that, but if we do not…I don’t care, and I mean that in the best way possible. The Internet is a free market of ideas, and this is my storefront. Feel free to window shop, try things on for size, return things, buy things, tell me something’s ugly, come back tomorrow or vow that you’ll never shop here again. I just ask that you respect the other customers, try to respect the shopkeeper and please, refrain from shoplifting. I decide the inventory in my store. If an item is too risqué for me to carry it, it’s not because I think my customers will balk. It’s because I’m uncomfortable putting that item out there on the sales floor - in other, more storied words, it’s not you, it’s me. I swear.
To me, the dilemma posited in this topic seems pretty easy to solve. If some people on your friends list are going to hate what you’re posting, put it behind a cut. Or filter the post. Or put it out there and just don’t care about the disagreement to come. Or maybe, if the disagreement will be that bad, those people don’t really belong on your friends list. I suppose maybe it’s not so easy, after all.
Livejournal is my secret place where I am me, the parts of me I am in daily life and the parts of me I am uncomfortable being elsewhere. My journal is my space, and I am happy to share it, but what I’m sharing has to be me.
This entry was written for therealljidol. If you like it, please throw a vote my way. Thank you and come again!
It’s my LJ. That’s why I like it so much.
Nobody in my real life knows about my livejournal. Or, if they do know about it, I do not know that they do. It is my little place to come and have secrets, and I like having secrets because they make me feel complex and complicated. In fact, I even have some secrets that do not make it out into the relatively safe space of my friends-locked livejournal. I have a lot of secrets like that, secrets that are just for me.
But I like to tell secrets, or if not secrets, things I’m less than comfortable talking to my friends in real life about. I hate to refer to my non-online life as “real life,” because it implies that this livejournal, that the people on the other end of those names in the comments area, are somehow unreal. There is nothing unreal about this. These words are out there on the Internet and I know they are not easy to get back - in fact, maybe getting them back for good, forever, is impossible. They are out there.
The reason I have this livejournal is to express myself. To express things that are sometimes uncomfortable. To bitch and moan even when it might be annoying. To reveal little things here and there that might be too much information (though I rarely do - I like to keep the really private parts of my life private). I didn’t get a livejournal to make friends; making friends on livejournal has been an amazing, added bonus of having a place to put my thoughts down. Sometimes I like to put those thoughts down artistically and it’s nice to hear feedback on them. Sometimes I need advice and I get great advice. Sometimes I need sympathy or hand-holding or somebody to talk to whom I don’t see every day. Friends on livejournal have gotten me through some really tough stuff, especially recently. Part of it is that I can be uncomfortable bearing myself emotionally to my “real life” friends - especially here at school.
So I lay it all out here on livejournal.
I don’t know how my friends list feels about that, when I get emotional and drone on and on about my problems. It is probably not fascinating. It is probably not fascinating (it’s more like vanity, actually) when I post self-indulgent videos of myself or gush about new achievements. It is probably not the best read in the world. But ultimately, people are reading it by choice. And while I do not want to see anybody go from my friends list, if they do not like what I am writing, they do not have to read it.
Mostly, I think this is a non-issue for me. If people are offended by what I am writing here, their sensibilities are decidedly delicate. If something is going to be too much information, I’ll put it behind a cut. If something is going to offend somebody’s political beliefs, well, my friends list and I tend to agree on stuff like that, but if we do not…I don’t care, and I mean that in the best way possible. The Internet is a free market of ideas, and this is my storefront. Feel free to window shop, try things on for size, return things, buy things, tell me something’s ugly, come back tomorrow or vow that you’ll never shop here again. I just ask that you respect the other customers, try to respect the shopkeeper and please, refrain from shoplifting. I decide the inventory in my store. If an item is too risqué for me to carry it, it’s not because I think my customers will balk. It’s because I’m uncomfortable putting that item out there on the sales floor - in other, more storied words, it’s not you, it’s me. I swear.
To me, the dilemma posited in this topic seems pretty easy to solve. If some people on your friends list are going to hate what you’re posting, put it behind a cut. Or filter the post. Or put it out there and just don’t care about the disagreement to come. Or maybe, if the disagreement will be that bad, those people don’t really belong on your friends list. I suppose maybe it’s not so easy, after all.
Livejournal is my secret place where I am me, the parts of me I am in daily life and the parts of me I am uncomfortable being elsewhere. My journal is my space, and I am happy to share it, but what I’m sharing has to be me.
This entry was written for therealljidol. If you like it, please throw a vote my way. Thank you and come again!