Livejournal Questions

[lettered]

This actually has nothing to do with the recent drama.

I have a confession to make. I'm a genius. But I'm really tragically stupid also.


-how to put on a header. And why everyone can figure it out but me.
-what a DDoS attack is. Looked it up on Wikipedia. Still really don't understand.
-where everyone gets the equipment to do all the icons and everything they do. Seems to me that stuff costs a fortune.
-how to write short fanfic.
-who Rodney is.
-Henry Jenkins.
-GIP.
-how NOT to hotlink some images. I can do it if the image is in a format Photobucket will upload, otherwise I don't understand.
-how people keep up with their flists.
-how people keep up with stuff like which new cat macro is funniest.
-how anyone keeps up with anything.
-why seraphcelene can't be here RIGHT NOW, I dunno, making pie with me.
-how people find out people are talking about them when said people are not talking to them. It's not that I don't like gossip. It's that I don't understand it. I literally seem to have trouble paying attention to anything not aimed straight at me with a missile launcher.
-why I like Harry/Draco.
-flangst.
-how people not being able to post really isn't connected to the Great Strikethrough.
-how to play most online videos, or dl the equipment.
-birthdays.
-why I didn't find a plane ticket to NYC for an earlier day so I could watch DB with a2zmom.
-Spike.
-betas.
-most emoticons.
-who Jo is.
-what Due South is.


In other news, The Sound of Music in Sparta. (link courtesy imnotacommittee.)

Comments

[tkp.livejournal.com]

If someone is being discussed then whether good or bad things are being said depends on whether that person has done good or bad things recently, the fact they aren't present doesn't automatically mean only bad things will be said.

The fact they aren't present does, however, make it *easier* for most people to say bad things, and also untrue things.

if you have been brought up to get your news from other people then you know that asking is often the quickest and easiest way to get into the heart of the matter.

I do understand that it's often easiest. But since you need to go do your own research anyway, I don't always understand the point of dealing with someone's bias. However, if we're talking about wank in particular, asking feels like a way of getting involved, even if you ask privately. I stay out of most stuff until I have formed an opinion. Or hope I do. That's not to say, again, that asking isn't an excellent way to go. But I would also rather be lost and wander for 3 hours than stop for 2 min to ask directions. This is just an idiosyncracy of mine, mostly.

I agree with you completely on the idea that anything can be found and that those who say they didn't know anyone else would see are either ignorant or full of it. My point was I don't understand how people find out they're being talked about, but I know that they do find out, which is another can of worms.

I do disagree that because something you say about someone IS visible to everyone, those who say something negative about someone else are deliberately bitchy or provocative. When I say something on my journal I'm not talking to the whole internet. The whole internet can FIND it if they choose, as you point out and as I agree with perfectly. The whole internet can also choose to take offense and get their feelings hurt and think I'm a bitch. The whole internet can choose to respond. But dude, I wasn't talking to the internets, I was talking to peasant, so the fact that the whole internet decided to find out what I was saying seems to me like the internets was just lookin' fer trouble.

I do understand what you mean. I think it boils down to different ways of viewing the internet and the forum for communication we have. I tend to think this difference is fundamental and unlikely to change with most debates. Some people view it as a great big room where anyone can hear you, so you watch what you say and don't do anything you wouldn't mind a million people seeing. I personally view it more like a fairground with tents. You can do things inside it you might not as easily do without fabric walls for fear of embarrassment/offense/etc: get naked, badmouth everyone, have a freak show. But for all that, anyone can wander in, and you shouldn't be surprised when they do. And some view it as a neighborhood with locked houses you have to knock on to go in and get invited to.

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

Some people view it as a great big room where anyone can hear you, so you watch what you say and don't do anything you wouldn't mind a million people seeing. I personally view it more like a fairground with tents. You can do things inside it you might not as easily do without fabric walls for fear of embarrassment/offense/etc: get naked, badmouth everyone, have a freak show. But for all that, anyone can wander in, and you shouldn't be surprised when they do. And some view it as a neighborhood with locked houses you have to knock on to go in and get invited to.

Yep, I think you are absolutely right and we all tend to have a model in our heads but it is easy to forget other people have a different model. I know I am always blinking with surprise when someone asks if I mind them reading or if they can link to a post - I'm always thinking that I know how to manage my security settings and if I wanted to control what they did with the post in a different way I would have changed the security accordingly. (Of course some people genuinely don't have a clue about LJ features, so that is a whole other kettle of fish.)

The whole internet can choose to respond. But dude, I wasn't talking to the internets, I was talking to peasant, so the fact that the whole internet decided to find out what I was saying seems to me like the internets was just lookin' fer trouble.

I understand where you are coming from with this. LJ gives us this strange situation of having conversations that are nominally with just one person yet hundreds of other people can be reading. I guess I've just had to learn the hard way that even deep in a folded thread there will be other folk watching.

And I certainly don't subscribe to the idea that it was their 'fault' and looking for trouble if they find something they don't like - I am responsible for what I say and for allowing for who might be able to read it, so I'm not going to start pleading that they shouldn't have come looking. And I expect other people to accept the same responsibility. But I agree that if someone is being nasty in public then that doesn't have to mean they are being provocative - my point was just that it tends to come across that way because my default is to assume that other people have remembered they are in public. But maybe that's just because I am very security conscious on the net. I can't imagine responding to a thread and not knowing at the forefront of my mind what the security was.

My point was I don't understand how people find out they're being talked about

I think you are making the mistake of assuming everyone will always find out all the time, which obviously doesn't happen. There must be plenty of wanks avoided simply because the potential other side remained sweetly oblivious. So in every case where the other side does find out there will always be an element of chance. You see something on your flist that seems interesting and follow it across. You talk about it with your mates and they mention other things that might be relevant. You do a little digging around. And so on. We are all so closely interlinked in fandom that nothing is ever very far away. And of course if you suspect that what is being said is specifically about you or a friend of yours then you have a very good motive for digging harder, and even more so if it is defamatory. That's just basic human nature.

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

I've thought of a better way to explain it to you.

In fandom, even if A only has 12 friends, there is a very good chance that at least one of them will be a BNF, therefore if any of that BNF's friends (by definition a huge number) says something about X or of interest to X, the information is on X's friendsfriends page. If you multiply that potential information by 11 (the friendfriends pages of X'x other friends, because you can assume that her friends will tell her if they see something) then you are going to pretty much cover the whole fandom.

So you can't guarantee that someone will always find out - because not everyone checks their friendsfriends page all the time - but there is a good chance the info is only one or two steps away from them at any time.

It even works multifandom, because there are plenty of people who act as BNF type hubs between fandoms. I actually suspect that the Buffy fandom is very important in this regard because most of us these days have an active interest in at least one other fandom as well, so we act as an important crossroads.

I once had far too much time on my hands and tracked a meme back to its source. This is easy to do because people tend to mention who they copied it from. The meme was all over my flist, but the chain was only 6 links long back to the person who said they were creating it - and that person was in a completely different fandom (I forget which, but it was one of the small ones).

But really, if you want to understand how it works, just think back to how you personally found out about the strikethrough kerfuffle. My personal story was as follows:
I saw a couple of people on my flist mention possible backup systems and I wondered why they were talking about that.
Then someone linked to liz-marc's post, which I read and assumed it was a misunderstanding about the recent LJ deleted journal purge.
Then I spoke to a friend who explained it was something else and actually mattered.
I found and followed up some info on metafandom.
People started to mention fandom_counts and I joined myself.
and so on.

I'm not sure how much of that you would consider 'gossip' and how much just normal LJ info spread. I tend to think of all of it in the same category as news/gossip because that is how my personal definition and understanding of communities works. Mind you, I believe fandom can only loosely be called a community in the proper sense, but that's another story. :o)

[tkp.livejournal.com]

I understand what you are saying here. I just don't think all people who find something being said about them that was not initially directed at them are an innocent bystanders who were just poking around their friendsfriends. Some indeed *are* innocent bystanders, and admittedly it would suck to just be looking around and have to see someone saying terrible things about you.

At any rate, whether the person was actively looking to be insulted or really did in earnest accidentally stumble upon it, I agree, it is either ignorant or disingenuous of the one doing the insulting to say, "I never meant for you to see it," or "it's your fault for looking."

What I don't understand is the need for confrontation in this instance. Here we possibly come to another fundamental difference in viewpoint. I don't believe confrontation is necessary in this instance unless the person insulting you is a. a loved one, b. someone you have to work with, or c. violating your rights in some way. If the person was insulting you during an interaction with you, I would feel differently. If the person is insulting you elsewhere, it seems patently obvious that they don't really care what you have to say, which I don't see as problematic unless said person falls under the three qualifications listed above.

But again, the distinction between direct interaction and saying such things "elsewhere" is a distinction I can only make because of the way I view online/lj interaction.

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

I agree that there are instances when silence is the appropriate response - not dignifying idiots with an answer definitely has its place. But on the other hand we are talking about a society where reputation is very important. Most of the usual currencies are irrelevant here - age, wealth, appearance - and reputation is one of the two or three keys to access to the things that are most highly valued in our society, namely feedback and the ability to persuade others to pay attention to what we are saying and respond. So to damage somebody's reputation is to directly damage their access to those rewards. As such, I would never criticise anyone for wishing to defend their own or their friend's reputation. (And incidentally, that defence would include checking out rumours to find out if someone actually is being slandered.)

But again, each case is unique and depends on the circumstances, for example the reputation of the person doing the slandering. So those hate memes that spring up from time to time are usually best ignored IMO, since they are an acknowledged form for people to let off steam and are disregarded as a valid source of information accordingly, especially since the haters are normally anonymous. But if a MNF or BNF starts insulting another individual that is a very different matter, because like it or not the opinions of BNFs count for something on LJ.

Maybe as you say this comes down again to a fundamental difference in how we view LJ interaction. I am always aware of the larger audience, and thus always thinking about things like reputation, if someone sees LJ as a series of closed rooms then they will not allow for reputation and thus not allow for the harm that can be done.

Ultimately though, for me it comes down to a simple matter of 'are they being kind, or are they being helpful', if the answer is no then I am going to view their actions with suspicion and they had better have a very good alternative reason for their behaviour, because my natural inclination is to support the person being insulted and their right to defend themselves or have others provide a defence for them. And part of that defence is finding out about the (public) insults in the first place. As such I don't see gossip as a bad thing but a valid and useful tool for the dissemination of information that people benefit from having. Yes, sometimes we would all be happier if we never found out what people are saying behind our backs, but it is far better to come across the bad things at an early stage and try to nip them in the bud than to leave things to fester for years so that the bad-mouthers become more and more convinced they have some sort of right to be rude about other people in public. Personally I have a guilty feeling that if enough people had stood up to the wankers in the recent round of nastiness a couple of years ago, when this all started, then things would never have got to the current state where the fandom is pretty much irretrievably split in two (except for a few awkward souls left balancing on the divide, who have my sympathy because that is never a fun position to be in).

Anyway, this all became a lot longer than I expected, but the real question is do you think you can cross the question off your list - do you reckon you understand how and why people find out about these things? :o)

[tkp.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think we'll have to agree to see things differently. Thanks for your thoughts on the matter. I'm glad to have them, because even though I think we disagree on several key points, like you I think that it is important to think of other people when speaking/posting. Even if in the end it does not change my viewpoint or what I say when posting, it helps me to better respond to people who feel as you do.

On that note, you have also been extremely helpful as regards the statement in the list of things I don't understand. Similarly to "how people keep up with their flists", I think lots of people have a different answer to this and that it's not something that has a universal answer. But, you brought up several ways people find out others are talking of them, I think most of which probably are the simplest answer, so yes, I'm crossing it off. Thanks again.