Because I sometimes have all these rambling thoughts that I’d like to get out of my head, but don’t necessarily feel like burdening the SDMB populace with, I finally started a Live Journal. But now that I have one, I’m not sure exactly what to do with it. I don’t know any of the tricks or tips, or fun things to do, interesting groups to belong to (I did add SDMB as a Friend, though).
So what now? Any tips?
Here’s a link , but it’s really brand spanking new so there isn’t anything interesting there at all.
Well, obviously, a good way to start is by friending people. Do a search on your interests and see what comes up. If the person seems interesting, friend them. Or, even more easily, look over the SDMB Friends List and see if you recognize any names that you like. Probably 70% of my friends on livejournal are Dopers past and present.
Otherwise, just treat it as MPSIMS and ramble to your heart’s content. That’s what most of us do.
A couple of things you can do to start building your ‘friends list’ (a.k.a. ‘FL’ or ‘flist’) are A) list some interests on your user info page. Other live journal users will be able to see if you share interests with them, which could attract people to your journal. and B) read the friends lists of people whose journals you like. If you see someone you want on your friends page, leave them a comment and let them know you added them.
Most of my LJ friends are people I ‘met’ on other message boards, a handful are people I know in real life, and two or three are ones who I ‘friended’ because we had common interests.
(I’m _foxymoron on LJ. Feel free to add me to your friends list. )
OK so is there a certain etiquette with adding people to your friends list? Aside from leaving a comment, that is? And, on the subject of friends lists, I assume that if I were to decide to lock an entry as “Friends Only”, only people on my friends list could then view it, is that correct?
There’s no real etiquette. Some people prefer you comment to their journal to tell them you friended them and some don’t… the only way to really know for sure is if they have some sort of message in their profile telling you to explain the friending. With Dopers, it’s generally more straightforward and no real explanation’s needed that I’ve ever known. If your name is familiar from the board and/or you are a member of the SDMB community, the reason for the friending is obvious.
And yes, friends locked entries can only be read by friends but be careful. If you want to divulge something truly secretive, create a more extensive filter with people you really trust. There’s a certain amount of melodrama that goes on in some corners of LJ that is sometimes fueled by locked posts being leaked. It can get very nasty if you wind up trusting the wrong person.
With that being said, it can also be a great thing. Even as social as this board can be, LJ’s a lot moreso. Most of my best Doper friends were found through LJ when I friended them because I liked their posts and then I wound up getting to know them even better. I’ve even gotten a job, two places to live, and an invitation to be the best man at a wedding because of it.
It’s what you make of it and I hope you have as much luck and fun with it as I have.
Do you have any favorite TV shows or movies or books that you really love? You can seek out people in “Fandom X”–for example, 99% of my flist are people from the Buffy/Angel/Firefly fandoms. Sure fandoms can be scary, wanktastic places, but they can also be a lot of fun and a great community.
Also, if you haven’t already, designing and personalizing your LJ can be a lot of fun, but you have limited options if you don’t have a paid account.
I’m pepperlandgirl4 if you want to check mine out.
I have had a LiveJournal for two or three years now (“jinwicked” didn’t see that coming, did you?) I used to just write about my day-to-day activities in it, trials, tribulations, post photos and art, fun stuff, things like that. But a few of my boyfriends’ classmates were harassing me and posting nasty things after they decided they didn’t like me “because I’m a filthy lazy Christian-hating liberal” (paraphrasing), and I got tired of strangers giving me unsolicited advice based on their very limited views of my personal situations (i.e. the tiny bit they could infer from what I wrote plus a heapload of assumptions). A few months ago I deleted everything, and restarted my jinwicked account as a journal purely for photos, PSAs, and stuff related to my comics/artwork. I don’t post personal info there anymore.
So if you post sensitive stuff, or personal things, or are just uncomfortable with being judged by strangers (I’m not, generally, but after months of harassment it gets old after a while), you may want to consider following others’ advice and making your lj friends-only. I ended up making a second lj account, and while I don’t write about anything overly personal, it is locked down so only people I specifically add can read it.
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