LJ and purpose
I have a friend who has recently posted about journaling and what he uses it for, and essentially why he is disabling comments in his journal. His reasoning has much to do with the concept “If I wanted commentary, you’d have my contact info.” I have some opinions of my own on the matter, but he’s disabled comments, thus negating any kind of public discussion on the subject. I’m not interested in calling him out on it (so feel free not to reply to this if you’d rather not, bud), but I do want to lay out in my own journal my own reasons and opinions for how I use my journal. This was inspired by that other post, but I’m not laying out what you should do with yours (why does everyone always think what I do with my life is how I think others should live, anyway?)
- I use my journal specifically for public discourse.
If I’m posting it is because I find or expect the commentary on this topic to be valuable or entertaining. I could just send out form letters about my life, but the cross-communication amongst my disparate friends is more valuable. If want private, I have that option, but frankly, I rarely use it. There are very few things going on in my head that I don’t feel someone would have valuable input on, and I’m not afraid of what people will think. I just accept that some people rush to judge. - Self-critique isn’t better when it is private
I assume first that I have a personality and intelligence strong enough to examine other peoples’ opinions as objectively and possible. I assume second that I am a fallible human being that will overlook vital thought processes if I am not challenged otherwise. A private journal is great, but by opening my journal up, I am confronting my (very human) tendency to rationalize what I want my conclusions to be. A solely private journal is more useful when a person is afraid to say things to others that you say to yourself. - I fucking hate having skeletons in my closet
I consider said skeletons a weakness that give others power over me in ways I don’t like. I realize this is a reversal from the way most people think about their private life. You do it your way, mine has proven effective for me. - I have very cool friends, and I love to see them discover each other.
Frequently, people have used my journal as a jumping-off point for new friendships. As a social being who thinks he has some pretty good connections here, I love to encourage that. - I think maintaining tight information control about my life leads to a lack of a life.
The details of what’s going on in my head and in my life are not jewels to hoard. If you don’t make phone calls, people will stop calling you. If you don’t remind people you exist, they will forget. There’s nothing to be upset over, it’s natural human behavior to concentrate more on what is in front of you, and any expectation otherwise is (IMO) extremely idealistic. - I have friends for which it is impractical to have in-person dialogue.
Some people live very far away, precluding a Denny’s run. Some people don’t have a cell phone. Some people are hermits, and rarely socialize outside of this medium. They’re still valuable people. - If someone else uses Livejournal to communicate on a daily basis, I am engaging them in their medium of choice
Why would I reply by email when someone has clearly made it possible and convenient for me to make a public comment, unless my comments are expressly inappropriate for public discourse? - The burden of obligation to reply is your problem.
Any communication method has this expectation of fulfillment – a broadcast method such as livejournal actually has less expectation of a response than email, phone, or in person. If I’m sympathizing with someone’s post, it’s because I genuinely feel that way, and if someone else is sympathizing with me because they feel required… that is out of my control.
Livejournal is just a communication application, one of many. It is no substitute for face-to-face communication, but I can not communicate face-to-face with nearly 200 friends on a week-to-week basis, let alone day-to-day. Just because I have many friends does not mean they are less valuable. I am not a pie to be apportioned amongst those I call my friend. That makes it, by far, the most efficient initial communication method for me. If conversations begun here extend to e-mail, phone, and in person (as they often do), so much the better.
As this (excessively long) post shows, I don’t just jot out “HAHA LOL!” replies and post meaningless memes, I use this thing to structure my thoughts and argue (and boy, do I love to argue) with a few hundred people that I’ve already determined are worth listening to.
Let me tell you, the minute I have access to a physical forum I can reserve weekly and have all of you there, every week… this thing is 86’d.
Until then, I’ll point to my Yearly Summaries as the most valuable way of looking back on my life that I have ever found. My life has changed in amazing, wonderful ways in the five years and three months that I have kept this (very public) journal. In fact, I probably would have never met the person who introduced me to the original poster, which would be quite a shame. Allowing public commentary on my thought processes has (yes) started arguments, raised questions that are difficult to answer, caused tension to flare, and even, perhaps, affected a few friendships negatively. However, I see all of that as productive. If someone likes me less because they know me better, who am I to say I never should have commented in the first place? I thrive on difficult questions. I learn not through agreement but through disagreement.
~ by Skennedy on June 22, 2006.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tags: discussion/rant, meta, priority, remember me, writing
22 Responses to “LJ and purpose”
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Interesting thoughts. There certainly are merits to private, personal journalling. But LJ is not designed for that. If I was going for private, personal journalling, I’d do it in a blank book by hand. My personal feeling is that if I let people see what I write, I should expect comments on it. If you don’t want comments, why make something public?
I use LJ for a variety of the same reasons you do. I started mine when I was overseas, and it was a great way to keep everyone posted on what I was up to. And still, I have friends and relatives in a wide range of places, and they can keep up on what I’m doing by reading my journal. And if they want to say something, cool. I rarely post “friends only” or filter anything. I know people who do both, and can see that for a variety of reasons, but I can’t see having an LJ and completely disallowing commentary.
This sort of thing seems to crop up every few months. Either it is determined that lj is not a suitable substitute for more personal communication or that what people are posting is not up to someone else’s standard of relevance. I happen to believe that lj means different things to different people and people choose to use it in varied ways. None of which are wrong or better than the way someone else might choose to use it.
If you don’t like what someone chooses to write about, either don’t read it or consider why you chose to read this person’s journal in the first place. It reminds me of debate that goes on in regard to television. There is a Power button and a myriad of choices of channels. You choose to turn it on. You choose which channel to view. If you don’t like it, make your choices but don’t harp on others for theirs. It’s a big world out there and people are not always going to see eye to eye and that’s okay.
Otherwise it all would be boring, boring, boring. Or is that cornflakes, cornflakes, cornflakes.
My comment to Matt, below, is similarly-minded. We all have different value systems.
random thoughts
many things that i have to say in my private entries would be wildly inappropriate for public consumption. this has less to do with any idea of skeletons in the closet than it has to do with private details and ways that i express myselfwhen i don’t have to censor for an audience.
sometimes, people do like me less because they know me better. that makes me sad, and i’d rather just not have it come to that if possible.
i think it’s a good idea that you have to get as much of your mind not only concious but public. not sure it would work that way for me. i find myself – whenever possible – refiniing statements util they as closely as possible resemble what i actually mean by them. when i haven’t done that, the things i say seem to make relatively little sense to anyone who might be listening. in my experience, an intent of communication frequently seems to muddy any subject at hand, because then it has to go through a yes i meant that, no i didn’t mean that, tangent tangent tangent process. hard to focus that way.
looking over this comment, it sounds like a bunch of naysaying. i don’t mean it that way. what i mean to be doing is tossing out there the things that came to mind as i read. i value you and your choices.
*smile* I read it as such, here. I find that process of “yes I mean that, no I don’t mean that” to be a valuable method of refining, on occasion. Not always, of course, but it seems to me that the variable there is the person I’m communicating with.
I do get the reasons for keeping a private journal, but perhaps I’m affected by my first experience with one – I started keeping one in second or fourth grade (they were consecutive, I don’t remember which), and I wrote an angry first entry. It was discovered publicly and spread before the day was through.
I didn’t mean to imply that I’m matter-of-fact on an emotional level when I discover someone doesn’t like me as they get to know me better; I can get pretty upset at that. However, it points to their liking me being, itself, a misunderstanding. I don’t have the right to hold onto someone in such circumstances – it’s like cheating. I could not tell a partner I cheated on them, but then they are maintaining a relationship under false pretenses, and with someone I am not (in this hypothetical).
I agree completely with your post.
By the way, were I to have left this comment at that, with such an abrupt “ditto”, would it be appropriate? I consider it worthwhile to inform you that I’m of like mind on social customs.
For me, another reason to LJ is to track my own social and ideological development. I hope to perform some kind of data-mining research project on my psychology in decades to come. I only wish I could also archive all my comments.
We have not known each other well or deeply, so particularly in these circumstances, an “I agree completely” provides me with a (proportionately) large bit of info about you. :)
Also, of course, (and we’re betraying my linguistic analretentativeness), the statement “I agree completely.” implies a greater amount of thought before posting than “yeah!” would.
Also also (wik), I try to keep in mind that what I use my journal for is VERY different from what other people do, and some people are not at all interested in laying it out there, in posts or in comments. That’s okay, too – it’s their choice.
Meh, I’ll bite.
My experience with LJ as a communication method is generally negative. I do not see a significant increase of good or bad communication when expressed as a ratio. That is to say, LJ increases the amount of communication, but not the quality.
In another view, I am aware that I now choose to treat *everyone* as a friend with the stipulation that a) meaningful dialog take place offline b) thoughts of mine that I would not desire to expose “just anyone” are reserved.
Lastly however, there is a semantic issue. I disagree with the friends=access list concept. I believe that if someone has a comment worth making they can make the effort to find me online, email me, or call me. Managing degrees of friendship is ridiculous. Like firewalls, it is more simple to set your access list to default deny. You then make exceptions to that on an as-needed basis.
Re: Meh, I’ll bite.
I agree that managing degrees of friendship is pointless and doesn’t take into account the complexity of you associations. We’ve simply taken opposite solutions – you go for default-deny, I go for default-approve.
Also, I do not feel comfortable with the idea of making it more difficult for someone to contact me. In other words, I don’t find my communication experiences to be so negative that I need to cull the weakest comments that waste my time, as someone might increase the price of their product to drop “less desirable” customers.
Should I find my journal flooded with irrelevance, I realize I might have to consider that option. As it is, the inconvenience outweighs my perceived benefit.
Re: Meh, I’ll bite.
PS, thanks for biting. *nod* I’m glad we can exchange views like this.
I can’t specifically rank the communication that occurs on LJ on a weekly basis with my in-person communication – it varies wildly. That said, As long as we’re speaking on an individual basis, I find an increase in communication to be a positive thing as long as it doesn’t prevent in-person communication.
And I think that is -really- where our difference lies, and that of anyone who has left LJ with such concerns – I find that it enables and enhances me in-person communication, while others find it replaces it.
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” -Socrates
LJ is a means for me to examine my life and for others to help me examine it too, and I can reciprocate that to them if they choose to allow it.
I agree with everything you’ve said here, and it really resounds with me. :)
Back when I first started journaling, unless you had a guestbook, you didn’t get public commentary on things you wrote. People sent e-mails. There have been at least two times I’ve disabled comments on my livejournal. Felt kinda good, and I lean towards it more often than not, as of late. I kinda want to abolish them for good.
*nod* So, why?
Because I am old skool, I guess. I started writing to an audience that had a tendency to respond to me on an indiviual level, and I deeply appreciated people who took the time.
More often than not, my entries either a) go ignored, or b) get over-ridden by a group party, which I often feel left out of.
It’s no one’s fault or anything, it’s just not really how I roll, most of the time.
Fair enough, I guess.
My first experiences on the computer were the Bulletin Boards, where there was the boards themselves and Private Mail. I often became the “Message Op” for a particular BBS because I was good at promoting discussion amongst the group.
Before Livejournal, I used a very small journaling community called Skinnytie (or, alternately named, Pleeb). It was much like LJ, but less so.
I think in a sense that’s why some people manage more than one blog or LJ. With different purposes, different content, different persona even…
I guess it’s a matter of whether you value the ‘community’ aspect of a blog, or just wish to use it for expressive purposes and such.
Of course, LJ’s strength is in its community :)
LJ has so far helped me a)keep track of my friends and b)make new friends. I used to use it as a dumping ground for personal stuff, but I got tired of doing that.
I’ve been lousy about updating about my life, mostly because I don’t have internet at home and by the time I’ve read and commented on everyone, I’m outta time. I’m such a voyeur.
*nod* I have a number of friends that don’t really post at all – they just comment on others. I think that’s totally a valid use of LiveJournal. Well, I don’t really think there’s an invalid use, but yeah. :)
Amen Brother!
I agree a great deal with what you’ve said here.
I prefer to be as open as possible. I feel that secrets destroy us. I don’t mean that people who aren’t as social as destroying themselves. Even “anti-social” people talk to someone even if it’s just their significant other. If we keep things completely internal, then they eat away at us. Those things might not even be as bad as we think they are. Putting them out in the open allows us to get a different perspective and maybe even a little assurance. I’d like to mention here that I appreciated your post about the HPV vaccine. It’s a topic very close to my heart.
That said, I’ve had a few complaints about things I’ve included in my journal. In fact, I’ve had a couple people unfriend me due to a particular userpic. I consider my LJ an open forum. I always post public out of principle. When I put up something serious, I love to get comments on it even if they express an opinion different than my own. I also prefer to get as many perspectives as possible before I make a major decision. In this respect, I agree with …If you don’t like what I have in my journal, then don’t read it.
Furthermore, digital media like LJ, MySpace, and IM allow me to stay in contact with people I wouldn’t normally stay in contact with. It’s a beautiful thing.
Unfortunately, at times, life can get a bit hectic and I don’t have time to make a serious post. I still feel like I should at least post something so people still know I’m alive, so I end up posting small quiz results or commenting on the journals of others. When I do get to post something substantial it’s a documentation of my life or an interesting question that I’ve been pondering. I welcome comments in all cases. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, I also do movie reviews every once in a while.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I like to share my life. It’s who I am and I don’t intend to change that for anyone.
P.S. I apologize if I’ve made any unappreciated quick “HAHA LOL!” comments on your LJ.
Re: Amen Brother!
I don’t find them offensive or negative in any way; I was simply commenting on a common complaint people have about livejournal – vapidness.
Yeah, I don’t get why people disable comments. To me, it’s easy enough to simply ignore them.
Re: disabled
Not that I’ve ever done it myself, but it occurs to me that disabling comments would eliminate any expectations the author might have about receiving comments, and thereby any resulting disappointment if the hoped-for comments fail to materialize.
Notwithstanding‘s very cogent point.