Empty, open, dusty, dead: In which I am kind of an asshole. (LJ)

[azurelunatic]

... and by this, I mean, there are things that I consider appropriate, and things that I consider kind of overkill for the situation, and so when the SOPA/PIPA protests started, I looked at the available styles for LJ, because I was thinking about setting it to black-on-black in honor of the thingy.

S2 makes it a little harder to do that than I'm comfortable fucking around with, but I found a nice mostly-black style, and anyway I do like a nice dark journal theme. And while I was doing that, I realized that really, there was no need to show off any entries other than the most recent, so I set the skip number there to 1.

My old "btw not here anymore" top entry was getting needlessly edited and frankly overdramatic, so I created a new and simple one: Moved. I'd already switched to my "bomb tech" icon as default.

I fiddled around a little more, and realized that I was without a sidebar poem. Immediately on the heels of that realization came the line "Gone away, gone ahead--" and I was Googling The Question Song.

And that is where, in my own estimation, I am kind of an asshole.

That song was immensely hard-hitting in context, and rarely fails to raise the hairs on my arms even when I revisit it. Using it in a context that does not involve life-threatening danger or time travel is, to me, potentially frivolous and the mark of an asshole. But no other items were coming to mind, and it suited me to clearly mark my journal in signs that other fannish folks ought to take seriously.


I don't think that I am part of the core audience that LJ is courting. I don't think that LJ is interested in retaining existing users who are not also part of the core audience for whatever it is that they are doing with the service. Tell me I'm wrong. I have already packed up most of my stuff and moved, and I am not interested in collecting any more new comments over there that can be held hostage. I still have friends there, so I'm still reading and commenting (just as I read and comment on Facebook). I still have a permanent account, and it's long since amortized; I got it in 2001, for crying out loud, and permies amortize over 3-4 years, so it would be stupid to make some grand gesture by deleting it when I could take advantage of the no-ads and the maxed-out icons at no additional cost to myself, indefinitely.

I think a good chunk of my fannish friends over there, the ones whose attachment to LJ are the weight of their history of interactions with friends, and weight of content, and familiarity -- rather than the ones who are deeply involved because of volunteering (past or current) or similar -- may well not be the core audience either. And if they aren't, I'm afraid they're going to get hurt, and I want them safely out before something worse happens.

Comments

[cleverthylacine]

Man. I thought you were riffing on a Bob Dylan song.

(I read the Pern books in middle school but I can't say I liked them much after I became an adult; I've forgotten 90% + of what I ever knew about Pern.)

[azurelunatic]

I would not put it past her to have been Dylanizing, but no, it's straight out of The Question Song.

[silverflight8]

The more I hear people leaving lj, or thinking about it, or whatever, makes me stay more and more. D: Though I haven't touched the board in a few days.

[azurelunatic]

If LJ works for you, it works for you. Despite the excellent people who support it, it is no longer a place that I feel I can trust to keep the stuff that I want to see in the way that I want to see it, and I won't ever trust it with my personal loyalty again.

No matter how much you want to believe, please, please, if it ever gets to the point where you think poorly of yourself because you are angry with LJ, step back. Don't do like I did.

[silverflight8]

<3 It is definitely a personal comfort decision.

[emceeaich]

Having spent a substantial part of the evening recovering from the Newtpocalypse reading John Carter McKnight's blog and 'lo, there is a relevant post discussing a similar cultural imperative at my former employer. And I will note with no little amusement that the executives who were pushing that are no longer with the company.

But I wonder, if SUP has not decided to take the "get these horrible furies goreans slash writers out of my product" approach, but would rather they stick around so they can be strip mined.

"Our analytics reveal that women 18 to 25 who are are purchasing their first new car prefer it when Sam initiates sex with Bob. Please instruct the writers to put appropriate slash hooks in next week's episode."

[azurelunatic]

A lot of the rhetoric emanating from the place that I have heard tell of involves a departure from an ad-bearing model. So ... dunno?

[chagrined]

I saw that article linked from elsewhere, but then ...really, they linked it from the theljstaff journal? *blink blink* I can't tell if it's total cluelessness, someone trying to give a heads-up to the existing userbase, or if they're just trolling us.

[azurelunatic]

And the LJ twitter account too.

If I had to guess, I might guess heads-up under the guise of "Oh, look at this awesome article!"

[lacey]

I can't tell you you're wrong, and I wouldn't even if I could.

You're not.

[krait]

Oooooh, what a wonderful poem for this purpose. I may just steal that and park it in my sidebar...

Since New Year's I've been eliminating all the flisters I have on LJ who also post on DW, and weeding out the rest for those who are no longer posting, or out of all my fandoms; this is not just helpful to me in terms of evaluating "what exactly would I be staying for" but also a prelude to shutting down over there entirely, so. Good poem, if that's the conclusion I come to. (My feelings for Pern are an odd mix of early-discovery nostalgia and later-acquired squick/discomfort, but -- as a goodbye to a start in fandom? I can see it.)

On the other hand, I will probably keep my personal/RL journal on LJ forever, out of sheer inertia (both mine and that of the few friends I use it to keep in touch with -- it was hard enough getting them there, there's no way I could convince them all to move). As I post in it about twice a month, have about five people who read it, and am very content with the very basic free no-frills account, it probably might as well not even exist to LJ. (And thus is safe?)

[azurelunatic]

I think it really depends on whether the features you use and depend on are ones that LJ feels like keeping. Which probably depends on whether they're used more than 1% of the time. Like comment subjects.