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I've been watching some impressive forms of LJ drama go down over the last two days. I've more or less stayed out of it on LJ. More fundamentally than anything else, it's about two people who have strong personalities (or not having met them, it could be strong virtual personalities - but I doubt it) who are mutually opposed, and the rest of it is just people lining up along the magnetic personality lines of force.
However, I'd like to take this post in a different direction, and wonder why these dramas seem more extreme, stormier, on LJ than on, say, a mailing list or an irc channel.
There are multiple factors involved, and I'm going to mention several of them before getting metaphysical with one of them. First up, LJ has no controlling element, no list-owner or admin. Each individual can control, to some degree, who or what s/he sees, and so there's no need for an admin to be constantly on-duty. This is also true of some other virtual environments, such as LambdaMOO, but they're more immersive and less populated.
Second, that previously mentioned control is somewhat illusory - unless you think very carefully about what you're doing, you will end up seeing things you might not want to see, or showing other people things you don't want them to see.
Third, and this is the one that looks trivial, and isn't: LJ uses the word "friend" to signify someone you want to read, and someone you will normally allow to read your more private posts. That "and" there can't be emphasised enough - because if you think about it for a minute, these two categories are not always the same.
I've dealt with this by simply never posting friends-only posts - every single one of my posts is out in the open, and anyone can respond to them, anonymous or not.
Further: Words are magic. It's a tenet of most forms of paganism that will is magic, and words are just a focus, but this seems not to be the case. Words make huge differences. And the word that the LJ admins have chosen to use here is "friend" (possibly derived from the friend toggle on talker lists - or some common root). If they'd chosen to use the words "permit" and "follow" for the two functions of the friends list, people would feel very different about it. If they'd used just "list", or "track", things would be different again.
I'm not suggesting that this be changed, as such. But it makes a difference, and for those of you who do a lot of livejournalling, it's good to see that difference.
However, I'd like to take this post in a different direction, and wonder why these dramas seem more extreme, stormier, on LJ than on, say, a mailing list or an irc channel.
There are multiple factors involved, and I'm going to mention several of them before getting metaphysical with one of them. First up, LJ has no controlling element, no list-owner or admin. Each individual can control, to some degree, who or what s/he sees, and so there's no need for an admin to be constantly on-duty. This is also true of some other virtual environments, such as LambdaMOO, but they're more immersive and less populated.
Second, that previously mentioned control is somewhat illusory - unless you think very carefully about what you're doing, you will end up seeing things you might not want to see, or showing other people things you don't want them to see.
Third, and this is the one that looks trivial, and isn't: LJ uses the word "friend" to signify someone you want to read, and someone you will normally allow to read your more private posts. That "and" there can't be emphasised enough - because if you think about it for a minute, these two categories are not always the same.
I've dealt with this by simply never posting friends-only posts - every single one of my posts is out in the open, and anyone can respond to them, anonymous or not.
Further: Words are magic. It's a tenet of most forms of paganism that will is magic, and words are just a focus, but this seems not to be the case. Words make huge differences. And the word that the LJ admins have chosen to use here is "friend" (possibly derived from the friend toggle on talker lists - or some common root). If they'd chosen to use the words "permit" and "follow" for the two functions of the friends list, people would feel very different about it. If they'd used just "list", or "track", things would be different again.
I'm not suggesting that this be changed, as such. But it makes a difference, and for those of you who do a lot of livejournalling, it's good to see that difference.
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