Why I hardly ever use my Livejournal
Joseph Dunphy
Livejournal seems to impose on its users at times, as explained in
this post on my 360 blog
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-Ic4OZGcydKumZcPZUAfwPxBrDATXgr72KXYfNQ--?cq=1&p=72
and in response to the question which I'm sure somebody will ask, yes,
I did open a support ticket and ask if there was any way around that
problem. Regrettably, Livejournal has bought into the current online
management fad of having the users help each other, instead of having
tech support do so, and that approach works out about the same way
everywhere it is tried. A group of BS artists who crave attention
write in and try to make their own reality, and some self-righteous
little gimp goes on to go ballistic in response to one's ingratitude
when one points out that the brilliant suggestions that one has been
given don't actually work. One wonders if management on some of these
sites have ever heard the saying about the blind leading the blind.
Then there are the people, some of whom are quite special. Consider
this stylishly incoherent response, posted in reply to the films which
I reposted to my Yahoo 360 blog
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-Ic4OZGcydKumZcPZUAfwPxBrDATXgr72KXYfNQ--?cq=1&p=94
copying a post from my barely used livejournal, by somebody who made
use of Livejournal's anonymous reply feature. The profanity was
softened by me, not by the author, whose words
"are you always such a piece of (excrement), or did a tech support
person murder your parents? stop being such an immature (epithet
referring to female genitalia)."
help illustrate one of a number of reasons why I stopped being a fan
of Livejournal very quickly. By the way, in case anybody was
wondering, yes, I did get the time and IP address of that post
2007-05-29 12:39 am (local) (from 64.229.14.86)
which Arin.net listed to Bell Canada
OrgAbusePhone: +1-877-877-2426
OrgAbuseEmail: ab...@sympatico.ca
and yes, I did write to them, asking them if they thought that this
represented an appropriate use of their facilities, which apparently
they did. Limited surprise there, as even anonymous cowards pay for
their subscriptions, but one may well ask what Livejournal gets out of
enabling them, as they try to troll anonymously and without
consequence for themselves. But then, as I've noted so many times
before, the morality of the online community does tend to be inverted.
Remember our good friend who became so angry when I started filtering
my e-mail because I was depriving some flamer of his right to use his
"heckler's veto"? Yesterday's troll, flamers, hackers and other
assorted online trash have a way of becoming today's ISP operators.
Regardless of why Livejournal has failed to act when it should have,
or even why it has acted to get done what should have been left
undone, one still has the reality that as a corporate entity, it has
just simply elected to not do its job, and at some point, one has to
give oneself the right to say "I've made enough of an effort to try to
reach these people, now it's their turn to make an effort themselves".
If one never takes such a position, one ends up spending one's entire
life cleaning up other people's messes, and let's face it, what else
can one really call this "let's get the users talking to each other so
we don't ever have to talk with them ourselves" but an attempt on the
part of Livejournal to shirk its responsibilities? How does such a
system even address the issue, when there are maintenance problems
which users obviously can't fix, or when Livejournal policy itself
becomes a problem?
My solution is to shrug, note that the Livejournal membership is free,
still allows me to post to other people's livejournals, and that I
need make no use whatsoever of my own for it to keep working. On the
whole, I've found that Blogger works very, very well, presenting me
with very few headaches, and that I really don't need to have a dozen
different blogs active at any one time. Watching each company do what
it does, I find that I can make an intelligent choice as to where to
focus my efforts. "Stuck in Limbo" will be going on hiatus, which
seems strangely appropriate, and "the Green Tortoise and Other
Travesties" will start seeing far more posting, as I stop scattering
myself all across the virtual map.
Joseph Dunphy
Point of correction: On examination, I find that Livejournal does
allow for the disabling of the anonymous commenting feature, and I
have disabled it.
The rest of my comments stand, however.
Joseph Dunphy
For further commentary on this subject or to return to where you were
http://groups.google.com/group/joseph_dunphy/web/livejournal-redirection