Livejournal is wonderful

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I spent a large part of December 2004 being sad and upset. I was going through another “phase”, and everything: work, school, friends, family, and life in general, was pissing me off. I was pretty angry that I had yet another sucky birthday. But then, for I spent new year’s eve with some people I met at a concert two months before, and that’s when I realised, if I was so miserable, it was up to me to change that. Sitting in my room crying wasn’t going to change anything! So I made a new year’s resolution to put a smile on my face and meet some new people, and get out there!!

The problem was, I’m usually really quiet unless I’m around friends I know well, or have some opinion I must absolutely express, so how the hell was I going to meet new people??!

Enter the glorious, glorious internet!

I made a post on my local livejournal community, for new friends, and I added about 15 new friends from my area.

From those people, there was this guy who commented quite a bit on my entries. After commenting on each other’s entries back and forth for a little bit, we moved to chatting on AIM. You guys know, how sometimes when people who come across each other on the internet have awkward moments of not knowing what to say because they don’t really know each other and put some restrains on their words because they’d rather not take the chance to offend the other? Well, that didn’t happen, we chatted like we’d been friends forever.

After a little bit of chatting online, exchanging phone numbers, and text messaging each other, we planned to meet up, and I was a little worried that we’d talked about everything possible online, and would have nothing to say in person. Fortunately, that didn’t happen because we went out twice afterwards.

There must have been something about me on our last time out that entranced him because now he’s practically begging to see me again. cackles

Oh the internet is so wonder, but especially livejournal!

2

How funny that you should post this now, because close to the same thing happened to me tonight! I found a girl who goes to my college through LJ, but although we’d been chatting for a few weeks about life, people we had in common, casually commenting on each others’ posts, etc. etc., we just met over coffee tonight. Just as fun in person! (And some of my dorm mates snark on me for having so-called “internet friends…” pah, I say!)

3

My friend has a journal and I asked him if he ever meets anyone. In his experience he hasn’t. Will I if I register? Just what are the odds if I keep my journal entires interesting and well written?

4

I have met a lot of people through LiveJournal. Most of my friends have accounts now if they didn’t already, and since we’re all really busy and have conflicting schedules, that’s the primary means we use to keep up with each other.

Nothing wrong with meeting people off the 'net. I’ve met most of my best friends and several boyfriends that way. I muchly prefer talking to someone on the net and getting to know them well before meeting them in person. Not that I mind meeting people in person, but I’ve just found that online it’s much easier to find people with similar interests and hobbies to mine. The odds of me running into someone with my weirdass interests at random in person is pretty slim.

JoeSki, the best way to meet people on LiveJournal is to search communities by interest, and join the ones where people discuss stuff you like or have in common. If you never post anywhere but your own journal, you’re probably not going to have many random strangers seeing your writing.

5

So I would have to be a paying member? I know I can’t search Livejournals by region on a free account. And by communities do you mean blogs where I can leave feedback, or does livejournal have a net of message boards?

I would be willing to pay for a account of livejournal if it was the only way to meet people, but I wouldn’t be able to muster the cash for a few weeks since I’m planning on moving soon.

6

You don’t have to pay for an LJ account. They do have paid memberships, which go for as little as $5 for 2 months (they don’t cancel your account if you decide to not pay for it anymore, you just lose some of the perks of a paid account). You can start with a free account, then upgrade with a paid one later.

Communities are a little more like a message board, where you are able to post and leave feedback.

And I love LiveJournal, too. A good portion of my friends on LJ have come from the SDMB, and over 3.5 years I’ve had my journal, I’ve made some very close friends this way.

7

I’ve always had paid accounts so I’m not sure about being able to search by region. I’m sure even if for some reason the free account has some searching disabled, you should be able to find someone easily enough that will search for you. You can go over to the SDMB community and I’m sure that’s a good place to start. Lots of people here have LiveJournal and you may be able to find someone near you to give you a good starting off point.

8

First person to compare lj to myspace in this thread is a horrible person that deserves to be cast into the Pit for eternity.

9

For the record, I believe that searching by region is a paid perk, but that anyone can search by username or interest.

10

PAH! Tell them some of the ‘internet people’ marry other ‘internet people’ and have ‘internet babies’ with them.

Oh, wait. The baby’s too young to type. Never mind.

11

I have a free account and you can certainly search by interest, but searching by region is disabled. I had the urge to purchase a free account when I got my first credit card about a month ago, but after giving it some thought, the only perks they offered that I really cared about was the increase of user pictures, and I didn’t feel like paying just to get a few more pictures. If you are going to sign up for livejournal, definitely start off with a free account, and if you want the options of a paid account, then go for it.

I find that most of the time, if you want to find people by region, you search your city’s name by username and more often than not, a community for your city will pop up. You can also search your city’s name by interest, and a few communities relating to your community (for example, indie music in your community) will pop up too.

The thing you have to remember though, is that most people use livejournal for their daily dose of attention whoring. Many people see it as a place to update about their life to their friends rather than a dating service. I mean, once in a while, you get lucky and you stumble across someone great, and no one really minds if you ask for friends in your communities. But if you run around asking people to meet up with you right after you add them to their friend’s list, they might get skeeved out and get away from you. Case in point, one week after adding me, one guy commented once in my journal on an entry where I was having an angry rant about having a bad date. I suppose that entry let him in on the clue that I was single and possibly looking, so he messaged me on AIM, and persisted in asking me out. I avoid him as much as possible now. Don’t let that discourage you though. It might not be a dating service, but it’s still a very good way to meet friends.

And I have a weird use of livejournal. While I’ve met some people through lj offline, I don’t really have any close friends that I knew in real life before chatting with them online use lj. This holds especially true for the closer friends in real life. If they have an account, I don’t try to add them, because sometimes, they say or do something that upsets me, and I’d rather confront them in person than to let them see it online. So with that, I’m still wondering how I deal with talking about the guy without it getting weird because he’ll be reading about himself in third person. I suppose I could filter him out, but I’m always paranoid about clicking the wrong button.

12

Livejournal’s pretty nifty, yes. Although I suppose the SDMB is *most *responsible since I met her in #straightdope, the IRC chat, I managed to get a great job from Gr8Kat when she mentioned needing help in her journal and I was in desperate need of a job and a new place to live after moving a thousand miles from home following a really ugly fight with my family and unsuccesfully looking for work.

In the nine months since, she’s also shown herself to be a good person and great friend as well. I’m eternally happy to’ve met her.

13

Hee. Still basking in the glory that is livejournal. I keep on giggling like a school girl. :dubious:

14

LJ’s great. I’ve met my best friends there and stayed in touch and grown closer to older best friends through it.

I’d say LJ’s fantastic…if it were working right now. We were doing so well for so long, Brad – what’s the deal lately?!

15

Thanks for the answers everyone. This advice will come in handy. Making friends with people offline has never proved to be easy for me. Meeting people with similiar interests is tricky when those interests are best pursued at home. With having said that, I have plenty of online friends with whome I share the same sense of humor, taste in movies, books, outlook on life, and games with.

I see now. At first I thought people were refering to journals as communities. Looking through dozens of journals just to find a few people with some common interests would be very time consuming.

That’s not a bad idea at all Jin. I’ll keep that in mind. Also, I think your website rocks. You’re a very talented person.

Tons of usefull insight in this post. Thanks 7 Up Yours.
I hadn’t thought of searching by region by using the interes field. That works quite well…I seem to have already found a community of gamers interested in meeting other people for LAN parties. I’ll have to share that one with a friend.

I’m really not expecting to find the love of my life here, just a friend or two. Anyone with a great taste in the arts and entertainment and a warped sense of humor will do. The ability or desire to converse intelligently is also nice.

My friend has a Livejournal and I check it every now and then. He’s said nothing but good things about me. He knows if he has anything to say to me he can without having to worry about me flipping my lid. I’m well known for being mellow and considerate.