It is odd, the "friends" thing. I find that I have a variety of kinds of "relationships" with people on my flist and that's just fine with me.
There are some people where it's purely a reading list thing--they make icons, vids or fic that I read. Then there's some where it's like a colleague thing--we talk about meta or writing but I don't necessarily know much about their lives. Then there are people who I'm really friends with--who I talk on the phone with or have met in RL, who i exchange emails with, who know about the ups and downs of my life and all the non-fandom stuff. And then there are people somewhere in between.
I'll admit right here and now to using many, many filters both to read my flist and to post and I do this as a result of the variety of kinds of connections that I have on el jay. And when I look at people who have flists MUCH larger than mine I'm quite incredulous at the idea that they don't use filters.
One of the main things I filter my flist for is communities because I can't handle that much spam but I sometimes post on comms (links to fic, etc.) or want to be able to access them easily via my user page so I want to keep them friended. In fact, the only comms I usually have on the flist that I generally look at are the Herald, the Cortex (the Firefly version of the Herald), Metafandom, and Fanthropology. I have Writercon on there now and sometimes I'll have topicals like wildphotos while that was happening or seasonal_spuffy during the posting time.
I admit to getting very confused about the whole friending etiquette thing. When I first started my LJ I used to friend back everyone that friended me but I just can't do that any more and it does feel weird. I can't do it because I don't have time to read that many journals or my head will explode. And there is this kind of producer/reader imbalance that occurs I guess. i.e. I'm a producer of fannish content so some people friend me to read my fic but either have "lurker journals" or mostly just post memes or rambling about their first year at Uni (which is fine and perfectly acceptable way to use your LJ but...) And since I don't lock fic or fandom stuff, my not friending them back won't affect their ability to read that stuff. So yeah, I have a "short flist" filter and a "short short flist" filter for when I have NO time but I want to keep up with the people that I'm really close with, etc.
As for my posting filters, I do that because I don't want to spam people with things they don't want to see and as I said I have a variety of kinds of relationships with people on my flist. I have very short filters for when I'm say freaking the fuck out about personal stuff, and I also have other broader filters for when I'm being "real" but it's not really, really private. I also have various fandom specific filters but I don't use those much really so I don't know why I have them.
Sometimes I also generally flock entries such as all of my discussion of my grad school process because I don't want that stuff to show up in google searches. I also do that if I don't feel like having the post linked for whatever reason, and sometimes that's just because I'm tired and I don't feel like fielding assloads of comments from strangers.
Does all of this make me a bitch? Because it helps me keep sane and tailor my LJ use to a variety of purposes.
no subject
There are some people where it's purely a reading list thing--they make icons, vids or fic that I read. Then there's some where it's like a colleague thing--we talk about meta or writing but I don't necessarily know much about their lives. Then there are people who I'm really friends with--who I talk on the phone with or have met in RL, who i exchange emails with, who know about the ups and downs of my life and all the non-fandom stuff. And then there are people somewhere in between.
I'll admit right here and now to using many, many filters both to read my flist and to post and I do this as a result of the variety of kinds of connections that I have on el jay. And when I look at people who have flists MUCH larger than mine I'm quite incredulous at the idea that they don't use filters.
One of the main things I filter my flist for is communities because I can't handle that much spam but I sometimes post on comms (links to fic, etc.) or want to be able to access them easily via my user page so I want to keep them friended. In fact, the only comms I usually have on the flist that I generally look at are the Herald, the Cortex (the Firefly version of the Herald), Metafandom, and Fanthropology. I have Writercon on there now and sometimes I'll have topicals like
I admit to getting very confused about the whole friending etiquette thing. When I first started my LJ I used to friend back everyone that friended me but I just can't do that any more and it does feel weird. I can't do it because I don't have time to read that many journals or my head will explode. And there is this kind of producer/reader imbalance that occurs I guess. i.e. I'm a producer of fannish content so some people friend me to read my fic but either have "lurker journals" or mostly just post memes or rambling about their first year at Uni (which is fine and perfectly acceptable way to use your LJ but...) And since I don't lock fic or fandom stuff, my not friending them back won't affect their ability to read that stuff. So yeah, I have a "short flist" filter and a "short short flist" filter for when I have NO time but I want to keep up with the people that I'm really close with, etc.
As for my posting filters, I do that because I don't want to spam people with things they don't want to see and as I said I have a variety of kinds of relationships with people on my flist. I have very short filters for when I'm say freaking the fuck out about personal stuff, and I also have other broader filters for when I'm being "real" but it's not really, really private. I also have various fandom specific filters but I don't use those much really so I don't know why I have them.
Sometimes I also generally flock entries such as all of my discussion of my grad school process because I don't want that stuff to show up in google searches. I also do that if I don't feel like having the post linked for whatever reason, and sometimes that's just because I'm tired and I don't feel like fielding assloads of comments from strangers.
Does all of this make me a bitch? Because it helps me keep sane and tailor my LJ use to a variety of purposes.