salon weighs in
Jan. 10th, 2005 12:06![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
piranharegarding 6A acquiring LJ.
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on 2005-01-10 20:34 (UTC)Yay, go us!
Re: salon weighs in
on 2005-01-10 23:03 (UTC)It's so obvious when human interest reporting is written by people who don't really get it and who are trying to create reader interest in the topic by latching on to aspects of it they can dramatize for people who don't really understand it. The story isn't bad, and I wouldn't really argue with their facts, but the tone was just... ugh.
You could come away from reading that story with the idea that private LJs were nice but that the real point was all about communities. It reminded me of the stuff I've seen written about Usenet over the years that clearly just didn't get it.
Re: salon weighs in
on 2005-01-11 03:27 (UTC)I came here not because I felt an urge to blog, but because many of my old friends from elsewhere on the 'Net had gravitated to LJ and it was a place I could stay in touch with them. Over time, that small circle has broadened and widened, and my friendslist now touches several different but overlapping communities-of-interest, mostly made up of individual LJ users and their "private" journals.
I believe this has been fostered by the LJ filtering system, which allows one some measure of control over who can comment in one's journal.
I think the Salon writer got this part right:
"LiveJournal is not a lowbrow version of blogging; it is a practice with different values and needs, focused far more on social solidarity, cultural work and support than the typical blog."
Re: salon weighs in
on 2005-01-11 03:35 (UTC)For me, it was the single login for all commenting and, in particular, the RSS / journal entry aggregator that gave me the most feeling of community in LJ, rather than the comment filtering or the friends list restrictions that Salon mentioned, but I think they all together give people a feeling of LJ as a safe place that doesn't require a lot of work on their part to be safe. Running one's own journal is even safer in the sense of having total control, but you have to be technically sophisticated to exercise that control in a way that leaves you feeling safe, and you have to deal with more of the attacks. LJ does all of that for you.
I guess the Salon article may not be as bad as it felt to me on the first read. I was originally rolling my eyes a lot at what sounded like over-dramatic statements of how wonderful LJ was for people who would otherwise be persecuted, but the core of what the author was getting at was very true. I've heard "safe place" used about LJ more than I think I've heard it used about any other on-line service, by a wide variety of people, so clearly the combination of features and community that LJ fosters is creating that (extremely valuable) sensation for people.
I think LJ has become the sort of personal publishing that building one's own web page was supposed to be but never quite managed to be in practice, precisely because I think (speaking in large generalities about statistical averages) there are more people who want to have controlled conversations that they can walk away from, limit, or cut off if they're feeling unsafe than there are people who want to do publishing in the traditional sense of putting up something relatively static for a large but mostly unknown population. It's the sense of personal control and personal empowerment, made through a whole host of features, that creates that sensation of safety, I think.
Re: salon weighs in
on 2005-01-12 10:49 (UTC)I'm sorry it felt bad to you - i would love to know more. The article wasn't written by the ethereal Salon - it was written by me.
Re: salon weighs in
on 2005-01-13 17:43 (UTC)That definitely is part of my confusion, as I indeed did read the piece as general coverage of the sale as opposed to a focused bit only on how LJ helped one particular set of people.
Thank you very much for discussing it here! That impresses me a lot. It also teaches me that I probably shouldn't dash off off-hand reactions to things unless I've thought through them well enough that I can submit them back as letters to the editor as well, so that you don't have to hunt through LJ discussions to find critique that ends up being somewhat "behind your back." Ack! Many apologies for that.
Re: salon weighs in
on 2005-01-13 18:31 (UTC)Re: salon weighs in
on 2005-01-12 10:51 (UTC)Also, I would argue that friends-only LJ entries are about maintaining community (and these entries constitute something like 25% of LJ). The difference between this and formalized communities is that in protected entries, the author is choosing the boundaries of the community for conversation.
Re: salon weighs in
on 2005-01-13 17:36 (UTC)First, I'm sorry for having done that bit of mind-reading. It was highly inappropriate, I hate it when people do that to me, and I should know better than to make assumptions. I truly have no idea what you get or don't get, and phrasing it that way was just stupid on my part.
As a long time Usenet user, I've come to know and dread the articles that start with a review of the weirdos and the freaks. It seems like regardless of whether the article is positive or negative towards socially unacceptable subcultures, the result is a portrayal of the medium that's completely at odds with the average experience of the user of that medium. Yes, Usenet supports communities for alternative sexuality among many other things; it also supports communities for learning Linux, for discussing a capella music, and for talking about one's cats. But in part because of often well-meaning articles championing Usenet's "wide-open" nature and "lack of censorship" and other such things, there is an utterly pervasive view that all one will find on Usenet, if one is not particularly interested in free-wheeling free speech, is flaming idiots and porn. Never mind that Usenet was never like that, and still is not like that. I can't count the number of people who I've seen express that viewpoint of Usenet off-handedly without having ever even so much as looked at it.
The second page of the article is excellent; the first page I had problems with on exactly those same grounds. I don't believe that the benefit of LiveJournal is that it's safe for marginalized subcultures; I think the benefit of LiveJournal is that it's a safe space for everyone, and I think that's had just as remarkable of an impact on the people who are not part of a marginalized subculture as it has on those who are. The amazing part about LiveJournal to me is what it's done for the statistically average folks who didn't see much in on-line communities before now, but who have found something of deep and lasting interest in being able to share their weekly musings with various friends and form their own networks and support structures here.
In other words, I wholeheartedly agree with much of the second page of the article, but I really wish it hadn't been phrased in terms of the outcast. That's the part that I think is missing the point, and in a way that might cause people to root for LiveJournal while still thinking "oh, there's probably nothing for me there." LiveJournal is great at a lot of other things than just supporting people who might not otherwise get support, including serving as a great way to see the writing and thoughts of other people that one otherwise would never have met, or occasionally getting back in touch with people who one had lost touch with many years ago. There's something really freeing about having one's own space into which one can put whatever thoughts one wants, an idea that dates back to the growth of the web and personal web pages, but which I don't think has really clicked for the average person as well before as it's doing with LiveJournal right now.
I hope that captures the basics of what I was getting at. On communities, I think that was more a matter of my misunderstanding combined with a too-narrow definition of the term. When I think of communities, I think of the LJ communities, which are vastly inferior, awkward, and frustrating versions of Usenet newsgroups with very few redeeming features. You're talking about community in the broader sense, what I'd call a social network, and that indeed is one of the things that LJ is particularly good at (the RSS/journal aggregator being one of the significant drivers of that, I think).
Re: salon weighs in
on 2005-01-13 18:36 (UTC)Anyhow, i respect your wish that this article focused more broadly on LJ, but that wasn't what i was commissioned to do. The point was to cover the impact on marginalized populations - i just wish i had been more clear about that distinction.