calimac | why I'm here

why I'm here

A recent comment on one of my posts said that, in contrast to LJ, "I find Fb does a better job *for me* of keeping me in loose contact with a lot of different people," emphasis added as if I might disagree.

Of course I don't disagree. FB does do a better job of keeping people in touch; that's because more of the relevant people are active there. If they were on LJ, LJ would do better.

I wasn't attracted to FB in the first place, before it became popular (and long before I learned of the company's ghastly attitude to customer privacy), because it has such a lousy platform. By which I mean things like the strict limitation of post length, the awkward placement of longer follow-ups, the lack of archives. LJ can do short posts, and many people do; but they don't have to. LJ archives don't disappear, but you don't have to look at them if you don't want to. It seems to me that one of these platforms satisfies multiple needs, and the other only satisfies some.

The other reason I'm still here is because I already am. To a degree, that's generated by "Please don't make me learn another interface if I don't have to," but mostly it reflects my character. I'm loyal; I stick to the tried and true; if I'm not totally dissatisfied I don't drop it to run after the new and shiny. I came online in 1991 at the suggestion of

sartorias to join GEnie, and I stuck with GEnie to the very end. (When was that, 2000 or 2001?) I was literally still online at the moment they pulled the plug. After that I didn't have a regular online home until I joined LJ in 2004.

This principle works in other areas of my life. Since the topic of the discussion where this came up was retaining new members in the Mythopoeic Society, it's relevant that it's the reason I'm still in the Mythopoeic Society after 35 years. I've been with B. for 24 years. I have no interest in running after something new and shiny.

If I thought FB would last (and if it weren't so irritating to read, and if its management weren't so malignant), I might be tempted, but I don't want to keep chasing flocks of birds as they flit to the next thing and the next. If they'd come back to LJ, they'd find a system that can do everything FB does and do it better, and then we'd all be happy.

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*nodding in total agreement*

Our tastes agree on this question of platform. Though Facebook is marginally better than Twitter; my reaction to Twitter when I heard of it was, "I can't say anything interesting in 140 words!"

A lot of the argument for Facebook seems to be "everyone is on it; you can keep in touch with so many people, and have such a huge number of friends!" But why would anyone want so huge a number of friends? At a certain point they cease to be individual people and become points on a graph.

I recognize that, as an extrovert, I naturally have a tendency to interact with a larger # of people than many of my other friends. Part of what's been fun about FB is contact from school friends I've been entirely OUT of contact with for 30-40 and even more years.

Twitter is good for specific, real-time coverage of an event (e.g., Iran in 2009) or --if you have a lot of followers-- blasting out a single piece of data. It can interface fairly well w/FB but really does have a very limited kind of usefulness.

David, I disagree with your statement, "If they'd come back to LJ, they'd find a system that can do everything FB does and do it better, and then we'd all be happy." LJ *doesn't* do everything FB does and do it better - LJ really does favor those people who want to keep an online journal, to write out long, thoughtful pieces and interact extensively with their readers. Folks *can* do that on FB using Notes (and tagging those folks you want to make sure know about it) - but I don't have the time to interact with all those people on the level that LJ would require.

In other words, LJ worked as an interim location for me, after BloopDiary melted down (post GEnie), but FB works better *for my needs* than LJ did - and it doesn't have to do with "more people" being over there-- that's been the icing on the cake.

But, unlike you, I rather enjoy learning new interfaces - it's genuinely fun for me. And while I could go visit everybody's individual blogs, the truth is, I wouldn't, I'd burn out. And my friends' list on LJ takes me off the main page to read the whole post and takes me off the main page to comment to a post, even if it's short enough to appear in toto on my friends' page. It's much easier to move from profile/friend to profile/friend, I know who folks are, rather than the "I'm hiding behind an alter ego" username style of LJ (I regularly have to wrack my brain, "just WHO is xPrQ2! anyway??").

So you may believe that it's about the number of FB users vs the number of LJ users (and, for some, that may be true) - but it's not true for me.

It's okay that's you're not on FB - nobody is going to try to force you do it. I figure as long as we've got email, if someone posts something really important that they want me to see on LJ, they can email me - as you did (thank you!). Shoot, I've got a lot of friends who use both and when they post to LJ they put a link up on FB; I routinely follow those over.

Not to mention LJ's advertisements that derail the LJ experience with increasing frequency....

I prefer LiveJournal because it allows posts and replies to be long enough for nuance, and for discussions to be threaded so each tangent can go on a separate branch; it facilitates interesting discussion. Twitter, at its best, encourages eloquent, succinct writing with its 140 character limit; I think most of the people I follow on Twitter make their living as wordsmiths of one sort or another. (Sturgeon’s Law applies, of course.) Facebook doesn’t do anything to facilitate either one; I gateway my Twitter and LJ to it so people who know me on Facebook can see what I’m posting, but I rarely put anything original on Facebook itself.

I do both - I really like FB because it enables me to find out from quick updates what my friends are up to, and to post fun web sites I run across or look at ones that other people have found. This is especially great for me because I live so geographically distant from the majority of my friends. One drawback to fandom is that for tact reasons I have had to agree to "friend" more people on FB than I am actually interested in hearing from, but luckily there are settings that enable me to filter out their posts.

I am on LJ because I like having a place where I can post longer updates about my life, or thoughts about current events, or just ruminations in general.

I'm on Twitter mainly for the great one-liners from a lot of very funny famous people :->

I do think these outlets serve different purposes.

On the one hand, you complain that "my friends' list on LJ takes me off the main page to read the whole post." I don't understand that; unless the post is behind a cut, mine don't. But on the other, on FB you have to click on a Note in order to read it, do you not? Whether it's a separate web page or an expansion makes no difference that I can see.

I don't get any advertisements on LJ, and no, I don't have a paid account. I use Adblock Plus on my Firefox. Works like a charm, and wipes out all those annoying moving graphical doodads on commercial sites too.

I'd rather like to know who posts those great one-liners. When Twitter first boomed, I saw a lot of enthusiastic pointers to various famous people who were supposedly doing great twits.* I followed them and none of them were any good. I've found only one person who actually has the chops to be a good twitterer, and that's Mark Evanier.

*As long as it's called Twitter, I'm calling them twits.

"LJ worked as an interim location for me"

Because I'm committed over here, and because one of the things that encouraged me in my commitment was the presence of people like you, that makes me feel a little like a guy who's been dumped because it was just her rebound relationship, didn't he realize that?

I'd rather like to know who posts those great one-liners.

Some of my favorites for one-liners are Stephen Fry, Andy Borowitz (BorowitzReport), TheTweetOfGod, JoshMalina, Stephen Colbert (StephenAtHome), Steve Martin (SteveMartinToGo), Wil_Anderson (Australian comedian), and FakeAPStylebook. During the period of the excape of the cobra from the Bronx Zoo, someone set up a fake Twitter site from the snake that was very clever ("Enjoying a cupcake @magnoliabakery. This is going straight to my hips. Oh, wait. I don't have hips. Yesss"). People who post interesting links include Roger Ebert (ebertchicago), James Lileks (lileks), and KeithOlbermann.

As long as it's called Twitter, I'm calling them twits.

Seems a little sophomoric but your choice.

*shrug* I mainly signed up with both FB and LJ because of who was already on them. For Facebook, originally, it was my kids (and more recently other family members), and LJ mostly because of fannish friends like you. I'd say I still do my most meaningful online communication by email.

Surely, David, you aren't implying that my friendship with you requires that I *commit* to everything you do? We differ on some books, on theology, on some music, etc. We differ greatly on how we interact with computers and what we want them to do for us and what we want to do with them. THAT'S OKAY-- I really am serious, I'm not expecting you to come to "the dark side" but just to understand not everyone is as pleased with LJ as you are. And, again, that's okay.

I agree with that: meaningful (important, essential, personal or deep) communication is still by email and I don't see that changing.

LJ always takes me off the main page to make a comment; takes me off the main page to read a long post w/a cut (which is probably better than an uncut massively long post).

I'm fairly minimal in my browser-blocking because I want to see what websites are *doing* (related to creating websites myself) - but that's me.

I do genuinely prefer folks operate under their "real" names; I think there's a dangerous quality to the illusion of anonymity which screen names can provide - but again, that's my preference.

It's not just you, I said "people like you." Of course I don't expect that kind of commitment; you don't see me rushing off to FB to display it myself, do you?

The point is that part of what encouraged me to give my emotional commitment to LJ was that a critical mass of my own friends were joining. I thought they were here because they liked it; I didn't realize many of them were just marking time until they could jump ship to something else. In that regard the "rebound relationship" is an exact parallel.

The other point is that if I were the kind of person who thought in terms of planting myself in interim locations, I might have wandered away from the Mythopoeic Society when I found another Tolkien group, or hooked up with the serious Tolkien scholars (most of whom come to Mythcon only rarely), or when the online forums grew up, or when I resigned from Council in '99. But I don't do things like that, unless I'm driven off. (Even resigning from Council did not come easily: it had as much emotional impact on me as a romantic breakup.)

This is all because I'm a person of emotional commitment. That doesn't mean that people who do do these things are incapable of emotional commitment; I can't speak for them; all I mean is that I act these wasy because that is the kind of person I am.

And the main hope we do have for continuing the Mythopoeic Society, and even the hope we've had for it since the first wave died off in the mid-70s, is that we can get people emotionally committed to it. Otherwise why would they do the work, or regularly come to meetings or Mythcons?

Hmm. I might do that if I knew I could figure out how. Is there a clear algorithm on FB to make LJ posts automatically appear there? Do they just show up on FB as links you have to click on, or are they expansion pages the way FB extended posts and comments are?

Go to “Edit Profile”, connect your Facebook account to your LJ account, set the flag for automatic cross-posting. They show up on Facebook with the subject line and the first 50 words or so, with a hyperlink to the post on LJ. There’s one visible on my profile right now.

I guess I don't see much corollary between a commitment to a particular technological platform (e.g., I've never understood the Apple-fanboy thing: "great, you really like your Mac... uh, why does that require you make rude noises about my nonMac?!") and commitment to a group which is comprised of friends and friends-waiting-to-be-known. But clearly we are different, the way we internalize and process such things; I also struggled over leaving the Council of Stewards (after my first nearly-10-year run) but I wouldn't have compared it to a romantic breakup. So I'm sorry to disappoint you by not seeing LJ as comparable in essence, except for the number of participants - but I suspect that's where I'm more sensitive, seeing many essential differences between the two platforms, most of which you don't see (not having learned the other platform; I don't know anyway around that one).

There is no corollary. You're connecting the wrong parts of the analogies. The Mythopoeic Society is a collection of particular people in a particular context. LJ is a collection of particular people on a particular platform. If my LJ friends move to a less desirable platform, I'm torn; I like the people, but I don't like where they've gone. If Mythies drop the Society in favor of ... well, actually, in the late 70s a lot of the early Mythies did drop the Society in favor of Star Trek and Star Wars fandom, shows I don't consider 1% as good or enjoyable as Tolkien and Lewis (though a lot of energy was spent trying to prove that they were, just as some praise the FB platform now), I wasn't going to follow them there either. Because it's not just the people, it's the context as well. I love my Christian friends, but I'm not going to join their churches either.

I can't do anything about the fact that you've mischaracterized some features of LJ ("my friends' list on LJ takes me off the main page to read the whole post" - that's only true if they use a cut tag, which on my FL is rare, and if the post is long and cut, you don't have to follow it and read it if you don't have the time, same as you don't have to read an FB Note; and if you don't like moving off the main LJ FL page, you can open a new tab; I do that all the time, and I really see no fundamental difference between that and the balloon expansion that FB uses - see, I really do know something about how the FB platform works - same thing is true for making a comment; and, if you dislike LJ's advertisements but like the glitter on other websites, you can customize Adblock; in fact, that's how Adblock works: you point to something specific and say "I don't want to see any of those any more").

But regardless of whether the contrast between the platforms is fair, that may be the reason why you prefer the FB platform, but it's not the reason that "Fb does a better job *for me* of keeping me in loose contact with a lot of different people." FB does that for the reason I said: because the people are there. If you had few friends on FB, it couldn't keep you in contact with them. If they were on LJ, LJ would keep you in contact with them, and all the long posts and cut tags in the world wouldn't prevent that. In fact it didn't.

Ha. Nobody actually likes using Facebook, it says here. (Nobody? That sounds extreme. Still, that's what it says.) They use it because ... everybody else is there.

But that's a false comparison - ask the same people, do they prefer using Fb or LJ? I suspect "nobody actually likes using Fb" is about all the things we complain about ("they keep changing it" or "privacy policies change and I don't know how it make it the way I want it" etc.) - but put those same people WITH ALL THEIR FRIENDS on LJ and I don't think most of them would prefer the LJ platform.

For me it's kind of like the Mac vs PC debates... it's okay to prefer a platform; it's a little crazy to think folks who disagree are stupid or ignorant or just don't know better.

But you've never addressed my preferences: why hide behind screen-names unrelated to your real identity? Why limit photos and profile pics? (because LJ wants you to PAY to have more). There are a lot of little elements which add up to a strong preference for the FB platform, *for me* - it's icing on the cake that more people are over there. I think you need to consider the possibility that more people joined FB because they like that platform and found it did "enough stuff they wanted" to make them bother to join and learn the platform - that just didn't happen with LJ.

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