What does everyone make of online journals?? Narcissistic waste of space or useful insight into society’s inner subconscious??
People can be surprisingly open in them, which can be fascinating… but equally, people can be complete morons obsessed with which quizlets they agree or disagree with or explaining for the 10,000th time in a row why they’re going to kill themselves tomorrow.
I am uncertain. Useful, fun, irritating, pretentious…? Or perhaps it’s just dependent upon the person.
What’s everyone’s personal preference?? Would you ever have one??
-James
P.S. If you have a livejournal, feel free to add ‘foxclot’ to your friends list. (I share it with a friend so don’t be surprised if the first post you see refers to itself as a female.) Yes, a hopeless quest for friends but we can all be shameless once in a while.
I’ve had a couple through www.opendiary.com. If you don’t read the suicidal, whiny teenagers who don’t know what punctuation is, I think they can be fun, in moderately sized doses. I’ve found several people that I still go back and read if I don’t have anything better to do.
One time I used one to test my writing abilities to see if I could fool the masses into believing I was a actually a 28 year old guy, single, living in Maryland. (I’m a sixteen year old girl). He was a bit of a weirdo, and I got an immediate response. I wound up having a blast, making everything up on the spot, and kept writing in it for nearly six months. I got a tremendous ammount of fan-fare, and my biggest fan was the only person to ever question whether or not I was putting them on. [Do I need to get laid, or what?]
I’ve kept a couple as myself, too, and those have been nice to have. A good outlet, and something to do when you’re bored.
And to answer your question, I guess they’re like fuzzy evil wombats.
Some people don’t like online journals?? Why don’t they just ignore them then?
Odd. Anyway I’ve always liked them. I like reading about other people’s lives and adding my own thoughts (mine is at http://www.opendiary.com/meridian , but it’s only accessible if you have an OD account too). I like hitting random and finding entries.
There can be some truly awesome writing on those pages as well as some truly horrid stuff, but it’s fun nonetheless.
I agree with Caesar’s Ghost in the sense that I just ignore them whenever possible.
I have online friends who apparently expect me and all the rest of their acquaintance to visit their journals daily and slog through all the “what I had for breakfast and how my parents are mean to me” minutae in order to find out if anything significant has happened in their lives. When I email one of these people or run across one on Instant Messenger and try to catch up with them (as friends are wont to do), they will express dismay that I haven’t bothered to keep up with all the scintillating details of their lives via their online journals.
Never mind that I have a fairly wide range of acquaintances online or that I have a pretty busy life right here at home; I should be taking the two to three hours a day it would require to read every single one of those people’s journals. Nah, that’s not self-centered.
I’m sorry, I forgot to add: Zenpea, this is one of the top ten thread titles ever! I plan to steal the “fluffy like kittens or evil like puppies?” line and work it into conversation as often as I can.
I don’t think an online journal can be either inherently evil or good. It’s like a newspaper, it’s a medium, and it’s only the thoughts expressed in it which can be good or evil.
I have an online journal myself. I started it because I noticed that I already wrote in my journal (which I’ve been keeping since I was six) as though other people read it. And because I spend a lot of time online, so it was convenient. I don’t expect anyone to read my journal and, short of my mother with whom I have an agreement, I don’t expect anyone to not read it.
I don’t read many journals. I don’t find most people who I don’t know IRL all that interesting, and most of those journalers I do know IRL rarely update. But lots of people probably think I’m dull, so whatever.
Hmm… it really depends. I’ve noticed that my Melojournal has become… well quite Melodramatic as the title suggests. I ramble on about whatever comes to mind, post up my poetry and when bored outta my head do lots of quizzes and put them up too.
Unfortunately I wasn’t thinking and have had the indication the guy I really like was reading it… and I scared him off. I ramble too much on it sometimes, and my thoughts get a little more intense then should really be made public. But I forget to put them in my personal folder… or I’m too drunk to remember to. I used to have a paper journal but I never wrote in it. My thoughts move too fast most of the time to write them out, and it’s easier to type it. I weird myself out sometimes reading past entries.
They can be evil, but sometimes they can be an interesting insight into people. I don’t read too many others though. Mainly the few online friends I have who are on there and that’s it. Oh and the odd person that pops by to say hello and asks intelligent questions or seems nice. Not the people who are just looking to gain Karma.
I rather like them myself. A few of my friends keep a journal and it’s nice to keep up with them that way. I follow the journals of several online writers I like to see when they intend to post more of a story. I even like reading journals of people I don’t know, just out of curiosity. Even mundane things I like. People feel so much more like people when you read stuff like that.
I do keep my own journal, too. As far as I know, only one person really reads it and I’ll leave links and stuff there for her, but I have gotten some really great advice and even just generally supportive comments as a result of putting stuff up. It’s really nice. Vain, maybe, but my online journal is much more likely to have people talking back at me than my paper journal.
I keep in touch with several friends that way. People I’ve known since grade school, and now we live far away from each other, and keep different schedules. Other people read my journal as well, although I don’t really write it for other people.
I enjoy it. Even when I take mini-holidays from the SDMB and everything else online, I still check my friends list.
I rather enjoy my Live Journal (thanks Cranky and Kyla). It gives me somewhere to waffle on about MPSIMS, frustrations, happy moments, whatever is happening at the moment. It offers a way to get to know other people - often very intimately - you may never know IRL. It is also a bit like having your own message board with no worries about tickin’ people off.
There are a few out there that, though they decry poor me, are rather sad but funny to read. Then there are those that are so sad you just say Damn and either post a sympathetic reply, or move quickly on. You can compare your own life to theirs and see that your own problems aren’t as bad as they seemed.
Most online journals can also be set with viewing preferences - public, friends, private, etc. You are in charge of who sees what so, unlike on a message board, you don’t have to worry about who’s reading about your dirty knickers…
I really couldn’t live without mine. It’s at http://loneraven.livejournal.com, and it’s better than a paper journal, which is what I used to keep before. The problem is, I want to keep a journal, but I can’t write naturally when I know it’s only me who can read what I’ve written. When I know there’s a chance someone else might read it, it flows.
The best thing about Livejournal, IMHO, is the friends list option. My bookmark isn’t to my own journal, but to my friends list. As the lovely boli once said, “Livejournal is great! You can keep up with what people are doing without having to talk to them.” I don’t use my journal to keep my innermost thoughts - it’s my own personal MPSIMS. I can blather on about whatever I like, and get snarky or wise comments from my friends (usually snarky, though). It’s just another way to connect with people. I find it very supportive, too; if I have a problem, I can discuss it and get valuable advice and loving words from the good people on my friends list.
I’m with InternetLegend on this one. I actually have a livejournal account that I never do anything with and when I did it was mostly stupid shit to confuse and/or piss off my friends that bothered to read what I had to say/think. I sit on my ass for 8 hours a night at work with the internet right in my face often running out of places to read and games to play and yet I still never have time to read strangers journals.
Oh don’t get me wrong, so do I. : D But only because they’re evil. Whereas kittens are fluffy.
Which is still a good thing.
So in fact, I can like and dislike kittens and puppies regardless of their evilness or fluffyness. In the same way, I can like online journals myself whilst recognising their fluffiness and/or potential for evil. (In the sense that some of the people who use it have EeeEeEeEEvil intentions to bore us silly or whatnot).
So the analogy thus concludes that kittens are inherently fluffy, livejournal is inherently fluffy (as in, a good conceptual idea, like kittens); puppies have the potential to perpetuate evil things, livejournal has the potential to perpetuate evil things. (But probably isn’t evil inherently, as it is an institution to be used, not a thing with moral properties of itself (like a newspaper compared with the writing in the newspaper), as pointed out to us way above).
I think that makes the puppykitten journal analysis clear, yes?
Thanks for everyone’s views on this so far, btw. Very helpful.
I like my livejournal. It gives me a chance to meet interesting people who don’t think I’m completely and totally insane. I’ve met some great people through it who have helped me through some real hard times in the last couple of years. And I also like the fact that other people can read it and comment on it since I’m kind of isolated at the moment. Helps me feel like I’m not on my own here, ya know?
Despite my heaping praises on it, I doubt this will make the site any less crashy at the moment. Beware the database maintenance.
I think it’s a good idea. I’ve got my own LJ, but haven’t done a lot on it. I guess I’m in a weird in-between: I like the idea that I can share my thoughts to others, and have them respond, and keep up with people, but at the same time I’m with InternetLegend in that half the time I realize that if someone really wanted to know what was going on in my life or in my head they’d just ask. I don’t really expect anyone to care one way or the other, but I appreciate it when they do.
