ebb and flow

[flaviomatani]

Funny old livejournal -or at least my f-page, which of course I do not know whether representative of LJ in general or not.

In the last couple of weeks there had been a lot of posts, including a flurry of 'is anybody still here' ones from people who'd been away and, for various reasons, came back at least that one time. And then.... nothing much for the last couple of days; two posts yesterday apart from my own (and my alter ego, flavio_matani). And one was from grrm promoting his new cinema. Quiet quiet indeed. Not quite as dead as dreamwidth.org, mind. DW just came too late to the game, when people were worried about the Russian owners of LJ but were already moving tent to Facebook. Or maybe I just haven't found the right people over there?

One little thing about terminology of these things: I much prefer the Twitter use, 'following' rather than 'befriending', which invests it with connotations that make it harder when people (especially people you know) ignore you or don't 'befriend' you back. By 'you' I mean of course 'me..'.

Comments

[kruku.livejournal.com]

Dunno what to tell you mate.

Before the internet people used to write letters but only people with excessive leisure time. For most working class people writing a letter was important but was reserved for the weekend as they had a little time and everyone in the family said 'say hello to grandma for me'.

The thing is communication that does not convey the essentials such as 'pick up some chops on the way home', 'your mother's ill', 'watch out for the sex-pest in accounts' is either art(letter writing can be that) or gossip and both are distractions from daily living. Most people who write reams of text with no intention attempting to achieve any artform are wasting their time (it's their time to waste). I know I've done it :)
So only people who have a lot of time to sit down and compose ideas however puerile are likely to use such things as LJ. Twitter and streaming social networks have taken the place of any pretensions of creativity for most people.

I'm only writing this because this has been in my head for some time and it's not a big deal getting it all out like this.

Gotta go now. Only have a half an hour left on this library computer and I've still got to post another three jobs I can apply for and to find a tutorial to fix my computer.

Don't worry about it. It's better to create than follow the herd anyway :)

[flavius-m.livejournal.com]

I kind of disagree in one point: a lot of communication takes place sort of under the surface. When I say 'Hullo, mate, how's it going, aw'iright?' the words may be trite and not have much intrinsic meaning (and it would sound a bit funny if I used such a phrase with my forren funi accent) but underneath that there is the 'hello, fellow human being, I know where you are and I care' or some such. This also happens in written communication. Livejournal is better at it than FB, for some reason I can't be bothered to examine just now (may do later:) and also curiously Twitter is slightly better at it, in spite of the brevity mandated by the system. it is not necessarily gossip or art and I don't think it is unimportant. Creativity comes later, I don't think most communication by ordinary people in these media is about that, it is rather about that sort of exchange (and similar) of meta-meaning with other human beings.

Reading your comment again as I write this, it is not that different from what I'm saying, really ;) One little thing, though -I have known enough people who lived in barrios on hillsides around Caracas for whom verbal or written communication (I'm thinking of days long before internet, when I was living there) can be perhaps gossip but can also be a sort of art, full of pressure as their economically very precarious lives might have been.

Better discussed in person over a pint, so it doesn't become gossip or art :) :)

[beluosus]

I know nothing of Twitter, so I can't comment on that. But LJ definitely beats FB for communication; there's just so much more room to get your thoughts down. Plus, the interface doesn't randomly hide things from you.

On FB it's far too easy to make an endless series of brief and meaningless posts. No one will evennotice the brevity or vacuity, since every other post there is pretty similar. On LJ, if you post a one liner, it really stands out, so most people tend to say more (unless the one-liner is actually worth its own entry).

LJ gives you the space to actually explore your ideas. You also have to at least come up with one word to reply -- none of this 'liking' bullshit.

[redcountess]

Yeah, I only get about 5-10 posts a day on my feed (including GRRM and a craft community) but I like being back and actually took out a paid membership again.