lettered | Dynamics of LJ

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Dynamics of LJ

JB. I was going to say how much I loved lj's "save draft" thing for posts, but I retract because I lost half the post and apparently it wasn't saved.
O. speaking of lj, is there a way to mark posts on your friends page? I usually scan the list through to the last entry I read, taking note of the posts with fic, posts I want to read more thoroughly, and posts I want to reply to. Then sometime later when I feel like it I go back, but then I have to scroll so much and can't find/remember the things that were of particular interest. I'm a lazy bint who wants a system.
R. speaking of all that I don't know about lj, what's this "skip 20" or "skip 50" people sometimes mention as regards their friends pages?
G. speaking of "friends," that whole thing is distinctly odd. I mean, it's been said before, but I'll say it again. But even if the system wasn't called "friends", I think it would still have that weirdness attached to it. And I myself can't help feeling all weird about it. I fancy that the way I use the ole flist is objective; I use it as a reading list. But I'm starting to realize that the way I FEEL about it (and the way I feel about those of others) is still strangely emotional and sensitive, as *logical* as I've always tried to be about it.
E. speaking of that whole weirdness thing, what're y'all's thoughts about filtering the flist posts that you read? I know some people are way against it. I suppose others secretly do it. I personally feel like I would use them--not to completely knock anyone off and secretly not read them, but if I had a list I had trouble keeping up with, I'd probably have a filter for the people I'm most interested in, so if I'm really busy I can fly through very quickly. Then I'd have a filter for the others to zoom through periodically as well. Most of the time I'd just go through the whole list, but in really busy times it seems like the filter thing would be handy. It's not like I need it, though. I'm just wondering if there're angles of it I haven't considered. What do you do and how do you do it?
S. speaking of discussions about how you use your lj, I'm also wondering about locked posts. Some people are against using them. Some are against using them except for personal matters. Some seem to use them completely arbitrarily. Some, I guess, might use them for more...sinister reasons. And some feel the need to explain every time they flock. Anyway, I personally see nothing wrong with flocking something you're just not interested in discussing with everyone, either because you're feeling introverted or lazy, but again, I'm wondering if there're other things to consider? What do you do and how do you do it?

*

I feel the need to point out that this isn't in response to anything--people are always trimming or locking or skipping or what have you. Actually, it is in response to something. 3 things, actually.

1.

imnotacommittee informed me that there's such a thing as a rich text editor for when you post. I had no idea. Beats the shit out of typing out all that freakin' code, and made me wonder what other little treats lj has I'm too lazy to suss out.
2. I'm going to Austin tomorrow and will be gone for two days. I'm wondering what'll be up with the ole flist when I get back and how I'll ever manage.
3. Which really just made me wonder how everyone manages, and how all this crap works, and while everyone is always discussing it I'm interested in having stuff to discuss with everyone on my lj when I get back. Yay!

Look at the color of this text, yay!

P.S. I've discovered I hate the rich text thing. I've discovered that this post contains massive frippery and the title of the cut is misleading. It's much more difficult to edit such a thing when one is using this do-hickey. I throw up my hands I say, I throw up my...ouch, ceiling. And ew, throw up.

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Um...

I don't actually have anything to say here. I just wanted to tell you that I really love that icon.

*snerk*

Carry on.

To filter or not to filter.

I may have oh, five filters? Maybe six. The basics are communities vs. F-list. Pretty self-explanatory. *G*

Then comes the weirdness of friends vs. people I read and/or read me - not necessarily mutually exclusive, but there's a reason why people don't read 'OMG. I hate being female!' every month. *G* If I don't think they are interested in my rl, then I don't see why they should have my RL entries mixed with my fandom ones. Sometimes something will slip, though. That's the second reason why I created

kitteninthedark.

Finally, there's the 'TMI' f-lock. Here enter the poor souls who have the misfortune of hearing of THE RL problems.

And that's how I f-lock my entries. If we're talking about how I *read* my Flist... lol. I used to have a method; it was pretty. These days? It's a miracle if I actually manage to read 10 entries of Sharp Claws. Mostly I'll go stalk specific LJ's (*waves*) or go to

su_herald or

unfitforsociety when I want to read. There needs to be more pimpage for

imho_recs, now that I think about it. *G*

I'll try that Semagic thing. If you think that < > is annoying, try working with a keyboard that doesn't have these keys and where you actually have to type Alt60 and Alt62. LOL!

Tight-assed Yankees want to know: does Austin really have the friendliest people and the prettiest women you've ever seen?

E. I have zero interest in other fandoms beyond BTVS/Bones/Massive Dave Addiction, so I've wound up filtering folks who were probably edging out of BTVS when I came onboard -- and in most of those cases without the BTVS connection there's really nothing left in common.

Mostly, though I filter out comms that have only marginal interest. I check them now and again...but I probably should just drop them. :::rends hair in paroxsym of guilt and shame:::

S. My personal life is pretty public. I don't write about it that often, but when I do it's because I *want* people to read it. Why would I have a virtual journal if I didn't want an audience? So it's open season.

The only flocked post I've done was a bad!fic rant. If I want to have a conversation in private, I'll take it to e-mail or to the phone.

Im my early days, I could (and did) read Borges in the original. I too am a huge fan.

The posts I've locked tend to be things that I've needed to get off my chest but in an enviornment where I feel safe and with people I know have previously expressed concern about me. So that's about 10 people!
I do use a filter, but that's only to filter off some of the busier communities which, when I have time, I usually go back to and peruse (at the weekends!). My filter is basically still my f-list in any case.
I do agree that 'friends' is a troubling term, and can lead to all sorts of expectations on my side or one the side of people on my f-list. There are people on my f-list I do consider friends, and usually dear ones at that, but then again there are others I have no clue about. Still we all usually have something in common right?
I hate rich text too, because whenever I do a photo post, it eats the photos. Or it eats the special text I've used - lj users, bold, etc - whenever I put it behind an lj-cut. But, I still have a love-hate relationship with HTML ;)

Heh. Middler.

The thing is, I've been involved off and on in the periphery of fandoms for about 5 years. I know a bit about fic issues in particular. But then when it comes to lj I still feel woefully uneducated.

And totally agree about how there should be a way to differentiate AUs.

I've been using del.icio.us to mark fics I need to read. It's so handy!

I'm paranoid about missing posts too...I've just come back needing to skip like 500 to read everyone and I'm still telling myself I can do it. OCD indeed!

I did that for a second too!

I was just going to say I rarely post personal things, and then I thought about how some things are kinda personal even though I don't mean them to be, and how it's impossible not to be personal, really, and yet how I try to draw a distinction between personal and non-personal too much in RL too, and how introverted that makes me, really. Which is too say yeah, there're certain things I don't fancy sharing with the whole wide world.

Oh, thank you! This is so cool! I would've thought I'd have to pay for something like this!

Yeah, I think that's how I'd use filters if I used them.

And I did have fun, thanks!

Yeah, I see what you're saying about having filters for the different ways in which you interact with people. My problem has been lately that I have trouble distinguishing. I started the journal to be fannish--even if not about Jossverse specifically, to do things like meta and have lively and/or intelligent discussion. But I've found that a few of the people I've met through that are really people I consider friends, and I find that I care about many of the other people I've met, or am at least interested in them. And even the people I consider friends I still talk about MOSTLY fannish stuff with. Anyway, I was going somewhere with this, but I forgot where.

I still tend to friend most people back when they leave a comment, and most the time even when they don't. Part of it is massive arrogance--if they're somehow interested in me they must have good taste, and perhaps other good qualities follow? Seriously, that's part of what goes through my head.

Does all of this make me a bitch?

No. Well, to some extent this was my question. From what I understand, some people think there's something...deceptive? immoral? unfair? unkind? in filtering flists, and something underhanded or sinister or cowardly in filtering posts. It just doesn't strike me that way at all. Frankly, if you don't want to see it, I don't want you to look at it, and if someone else doesn't want me to see something, I don't want to see it either.

With the way I ramble in your journal, it's only fair.

I love that icon.

O. I need to get Firefox. Everyone has said it's better than IE (which of course everyone hates) but no one ever told me why. Now I know! I didn't know it had tabs.

E. Oh, yeah, I never actually thought about using a filter that way--I mean, using it to screen someone you want to defriend but can't. I can't understand why anyone would do that. I'd just defriend 'em if I really thought they were never ever going to say anything interesting.

2. But you're here today and tomorrow, right? I hope you have a good spring break--are you going home? mmmm, home cookin'.

Pink is love.

O. Tabs rule all.

E. Yeah, I hadn't thought of it either till I heard people talking about it on some other meta "is filtering bad" post somewhere awhile ago. Apparently people do. Hopefully not many people. That's kind of wussy behavior.

2. Well, I leave first thing tomorrow morning, so not really. And no, I'm not going home, I'm going to FLA. But it'll be a vacation-home-y thing and there will be a kitchen and I'm going with friends who are awesome with the cooking skills so, mmmm, home cookin'.

E. Sure is. Though sometimes I fear there's a fine line between being a wuss and just plain being kind. I don't think, however, that keeping someone on your flist when you never mean to read them is a kindness, so that was neither here nor there.

2. Oh! Cool! Have fun! I hope you join in with your friends on the cooking. Cooking's always been one of my favorite social activities. That sounds very lame but it is so true.

I really can't figure out what's bitchy about locking posts...unless you're doing something bitchy "behind" the screen of the flock. I mean, how can people get on you for maintaining your own sense of privacy or "speaking" to whom you choose?

The filtering flist viewing thing is...more confusing. Admittedly, I "should" probably defriend some people if I'm going to filter them most of the time but it feels so unnecessarily harsh especially if for some reason they want to read the more innocuous things that I flock. I don't know. Besides I do periodically check the whole list. *throws up hands*

I'll probably end up having to do some kind of friends-cut when I start school. *feels the angst*

O. Yeah, I was thinking it'd be so awesome if lj had a way you could mark all the posts you want to reply to when you're flipping through you're list, and then you click a button and the flist condenses to the ones you've marked.

I use del.icio.us in the same way. I have a complicated tagging system to say: this was recced me by the author, or not (because I always feel a much more intense obligation if the author herself recs herself. And I say I'll read it.) Hopefully one day I'll actually read them all.

E. I have a fear of missing things, too.

S. Makes sense. I think if I had a ginormous flist I'd feel the same way. Then again, if I haven't been friended by someone I myself have friended, I'm not INTERESTED in their locked posts. If they didn't feel it was something the world could see I'm not interested in it anyway--because if they haven't friended me back we're probably not close friends, you know? I guess what I mean to say is there seems to be this whole sort of social anxiety about what's behind locked posts. There rarely seems to be the same sort of anxiety about what's behind locked doors in RL, unless you're paranoid. Um, this was a tangent.

I do a quick scroll, tabbing, as I go along, everything I might want to respond to shortly. Firefox is love.

Yeah--del.icio.us is great for quick and organized bookmarking, but I usually respond pretty quickly to the posts of interest on the flist so I don't actually want to bookmark them. I need to get Firefox. I didn't know it had tabs. My brother always said it was a better browser--everyone always said it's a better browser than IE--but I never saw why before.

It makes me feel vaguely dishonest

Apparently a lot of people feel this way. I don't get it. I guess because I don't feel like being on someone's flist means that person is reading me...so I have no compunction about not reading some people on my own list some of the time.

I don't post a lot of intimate airings of my mental state or daily life, period -- my laundry is not for the world to see --

Me neither. But I was also going to say I didn't say many personal things at all, and then I realized I do sometimes, and then I realized even the things I think aren't personal at all kind of are. I think I try too hard sometimes to separate my personal/private issues from the world around me, because I don't want to share or worse, because I think other people don't want to know (worse because it makes me feel slightly conformist).

I guess one of my issues is that I feel a connection to almost everyone on my flist through our mutual fannishness, and even the people I consider real "friends" on lj are people with whom I still haven't actually shared much personal information--I just like talking to them about fannish stuff or meta or writing and feel a connection to them in that sense. And I guess my other issue is that most of my RL friends are people with whom I feel like I can't talk about things near and dear to my heart, like Buffy or writing or even abstract philosophically stuff like I can with some people I've met online. Omg, I'm whining. I think I try too hard to categorize and define things like friendship, which often defy definition.

I want to teach in a few years, though, so I may at some point decide it prudent to lock the photos and remove all markers that, if you're paying attention over time, indicate where I am and why.

Ha, yeah I can see that. Would've seriously freaked me to find my teachers on lj. What are you thinking about teaching, English? At university?

Lemme know if you're having issues

Thanks! I got del.icio.us when

viciouswishes did a post about it and I love it...and I dl'ed semagic and you're right, so far it's been terrific. Now I just need to get Firefox. Everyone's always said IE sucks, but I didn't know why until now--I didn't know Firefox had tabs! That rocks my socks.

There's no interaction, or if there is, it's limited to the point where we are being friendly, but we're certainly not friends.

That's it exactly. The thing is, I care about, or am at least interested in, almost everyone I have friended--I wouldn't have friended them if I didn't find them interesting. But I don't consider most my FRIENDS.

Which I guess is part of the issue with filtering and flocking. If my flist really was all people I consider friends, I *would* feel dishonest or deceptive or *something* if I filtered the flist or posts, because as friends, I would want them to want me to listen, and I would want them to listen back. But since most of my flist are not my friends, I don't feel touchy about either thing.

Heh! It's so nice to know there are people in the same boat. When I first got on lj I felt very green ... and I am continually surprised to find that all the questions I had were questions everyone has had, and that some of them are questions people are still asking!

Yeah, with a flist as long as yours, I'm afraid I wouldn't quite be able to believe you if you said you didn't filter!

Some people seem to flock not because the contained is personal but just because they don't feel like talking to strangers about the issue--either because they don't have the time or don't feel like arguing about it. I can totally see that...but I've only done it once or twice myself.

Posts that are long paragraphs and poorly formatted I tend to skip because it's just too hard to read.

Sometimes posts like this make me wonder. Do THEY read the posts on their flists with long paragraphs? I always approach writing my posts with that in mind--ok, what is a person going to see when they skim this, so how do I show quickly on the surface what it's about so they can decide if they want to read or not? --Also, how can I make this post appealing so that they'll click the cut and decide to discuss whatever I'm rambling about? It sounds...manipulative stated like that, but I'm truly interested in conversation, and it's so difficult to read and reply to everything on your flist that you have to pick and choose the conversations you want. So I try to make people pick mine. Okay, big tangent.

Yeah, rich text sucks! Have you tried this semagic thing though? It's pretty cool.

And Austin was ...interesting. We drove out to this little town in the Hill Country, listened to my dad throw up all night, and drove home. Oh, sad little spring break vacation.

My flist's not so big that it's unmanagable, and I hope to keep it that way.

But a filter would make it manageable if it got big! /devil's advocate

I used to be a lot more careful about my sooper sekrit identity. I never told anyone my real name, set up dummy email accounts, the works. I still try to keep my last name out of most dealings with people, because my last name is really distinctive and you could find me easily if you had it. And I do that not so much out of a fear that anyone will stalk me as yeah, I don't want anyone to google me and find my vampire porn. I want to be open and unashamed about it, but I keep thinking that if I get a job where that could be bad...then that would be bad!

We went to Fredricksburg! But didn't make it to Enchanted Rock, which was lame. I love Austin so much. Luckily we missed the SW x SW crowds--I'd love to go but I don't have the money for it!

Which is so cool because some works still haven't been translated, and on a lot of the more minor things the translation is crappy (or so I'm told).

Borges is dreamy. The same person who got me hooked on him had me read 100 Years Of Solitude. One of my favorite books.

I know what you mean about not wanting RL people to know who you are. I always want to be open and unashamed of it, but some of my friends are so . . . disdainful of stuff like this; I just don't want to have to put up with them giving me shit about it. The other thing is I don't want anyone to see how much time I waste online!

I think it'd be crappy to filter someone out completely--I hadn't thought of using filters for that until

semby brought it up. I agree, if you don't want to read someone, you should just defriend them.

Jorge Luis Borges is an Argentinean writer (of short stories, essays, poems, and literary critique). He's one of the most famous movers and shakers behind "magical realism", which means reading some of his stuff is strangely like looking at a painting by Salvador Dali (of melting clocks fame). I highly recommend his short stories. He's thinky, but FUN. He's like reading a dream.

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Dynamics of LJ

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