Don’t flatter yourself. See that cute little “search” button under each and every post? One click told me that you’d posted in the fantasy football thread, and one more click told me why. There was no grand search for other threads to discredit you, nor was there much “caring” on my part.
Sheesh, and you call US narcissistic and arrogant…
(Yes, I’m kicking him while he’s down. Fuck off.)
Well I still think that the OP was funny. I mean:
is the kind of thing I want to see more of in the pit. Keep trying Outrider. I give it an 8.
OK your subject matter was flawed this time. And you happened to pick on something a lot of the MPSIMS share-everything crowd do, so you got a lot of negative response for it. But it made 9:30am on Friday morning a little more entertaining for me, so more power to you. I wish a few more OP’ers would show a little more of your lack of restraint in their rants; the pit is getting awfully tame.
pan
I just find it amusing that the same people who bitch at me for “sharing too much” and “being too dramatic” about my real-life events, posted here and elsewhere, are the same ones that have highly detailed LiveJournals, updated numerous times per hour, doing exactly the same thing themselves.
That having been said, the OP gave me my first laugh of the day. “Mood: Itchy”…heh.
I dunno. I still think posting one’s whiny bullshit to a message board one knows thousands of people read is a fuck of a lot more narcissistic than posting to a LiveJournal that few people probably read.
Am I narcissistic because:
a) I post to a journal that people I know may or may not read, and to which I don’t require any responses, or…
b) I post to a public message board to deliberately get people to read to my messages, which I somehow think are so worthwhile that at least a thousand other people will be interested in them?
shrug I couldn’t care less who reads my LJ. I also couldn’t care less who reads my posts. When I want people to feed my ego, I go ahead and include my sig which has a link to my web page, which is where my blob is. I don’t feed my ego by deliberately posting an inflammatory OP just to see what responses I get (by the way, that’s TROLLING, hello people).
The only issue at all I have with the OP is this, actually:
“What I was really looking for was something like what Odieman ended up saying - a well-reasoned, calm, logical attack on my points.”
Horseshit. If you a well-reasoned, calm, logical debate, you’d’ve posted this in Great debates. The fact that you posted it in the Pit…well, I suppose that just makes you a liar.
Meanwhile, read what I write or don’t read what I write; I don’t give a shit. I’m replying because I enjoy the sound of my own fingers on the keys; not because I could possibly care less about what some random yaboo stranger thinks of me on a message board.
So yeah, go ahead and call me narcissistic, juvenile…hell, infantile! - egotistical, deluded, deranged, socially maladjusted…whatever. The day it actually matters to me, I’ll actually be hurt. 'Til then I’ll just continue to enjoy the random ‘thudda thudda thudda’ of my fingers on the keys, not particularly worrying about what people I don’t know think of me. It’s sure as heck worked so far.
(And of course I have to include my sig…what kind of an egomaniac would I be if I didn’t? I’d have to turn in my membership card and everything.)
Oh, don’t get me wrong - I said nothing against LiveJournals, although I choose not to keep one myself.
And that’s not the way the criticism is put to me.
For one thing: Anthracite, I was talking to the OP…I didn’t think you were deriding the concept of an LJ at all. Although if you want to take a stab at it, I’d love to see you flame me. 
For another…there is a link in my sig to my blog, not to my blob.
Maybe I’m a little under the weather this morning due to…nope, won’t go there, because that would be whining, but regardless I seem to be not expressing myself well.
In the recent past I had received very harsh criticism, publicly and via e-mail, from people with LiveJournals who criticised me for sharing nearly anything “personal” at all, not just in my choice of media for the sharing. I was merely stating that I found amusing, ironic, what have you, that people that say you shouldn’t share some things about your life at all do the very same thing on their LiveJournals - almost like they feel that the LiveJournal is private, and that only trusted friends will read it. Something that, of course, doesn’t make much sense. That’s all.
I hope you are joking about flaming. If I have unintentionally offended you, I’ll just leave this thread rather than make things worse. 
Woah. I just checked out that “ego page” Hama and I couldn’t make heads nor tails of it. What the hell is a “blog” anyway?
Still love ya anyway.
Don’t you think you’re being a touch cruel though by making people confront their own narcissism? Or maybe it’s kind. Or sometimes I guess that you have to be kind to be cruel. Ya minx.
I mean, fair enough, you know and I know that the very concept of adding our own little bon mot to any piece of on-line glurge is fundamentally self-aggrandizing. But most people haven’t considered it in those terms yet and, frankly, I was happier before I did.
Aside from which I want you to consider this Hama - anything that we do could be equivalently considered narcissistic. Why stop at words on a message board. When you join in a conversation with RL friends, what are you doing? Why are you doing it? Is it because you want them to like you? How is that any different to interacting on a message board?
So life is, in Hama terms, an exercise in narcissism. I think this is harsh. Do you not think that there is a line between the simple enjoyment of interaction in whatever form and ego-feeding “look-at-me”-isms (again in whatever form)?
In the final analysis, is there a fundamental difference between not wanting to be ignored and desparation to be in the centre of everything?
I think that you know the answer to that.
It’s Hama time!
pan
I have a question. Some of the respondents to this thread have stated that they keep a live journal because they type faster than they write. Why not keep a journal on your hardrive or on a disk instead of on the internet?
Because while I don’t really CARE if I’m responded to, sometimes it’s nice to get a little affirmation from my friends or maybe answers to questions I have. I posted a big rant about my life in general yesterday and it was nice to get up this morning and see that there were two comments for me regarding it.
I don’t write things specifically to get a response, but if I do, it’s fun!
jarbaby
You’ve got to be cruel to be kind, in the right measure.
“Why not keep a journal on your hardrive or on a disk instead of on the internet?”
Because I do occasionally like my ego fed, dernit.
Some of my LJ entries are just blahdiddyblah about what’s going on in my life…some are questions which, whether theoretical or specific, I don’t NEED answered…but if people answer 'em, so much the better.
I dunno. No reason, really, come to think of it. Because I wanna.
Now, kabbes:
“Why stop at words on a message board. When you join in a conversation with RL friends, what are you doing? Why are you doing it? Is it because you want them to like you? How is that any different to interacting on a message board?”
Well…when I join in a conversation with RL friends, I can tell by visual and aural cues that they want me to join in the conversation, or don’t, or whatever. It’s a different kind of interaction.
A message board is more like…walking into a cocktail party and starting to talk about something that interests you, and hoping someone else hears it and wants to talk about it as well.
An LJ is like standing in a room by yourself talking about stuff that interests you, but there are open windows and someone may or may not wander by to see what you’re talking about and, possibly, comment on it.
Like I said, the only thing that really bugged me about the OP is the “I wanted a well-thought-out debate” line. I still say: Horseshit. Then post this in GD. If you post to the Pit, it’s because you want to either vent or piss people off…NOT have a well-reasoned debate.
Not that I’d know anything about any of that…
whistle
(And a blog is a weblog…an ongoing daily set of links that one finds of interest. Ain’t no thang.)
I take your point actually.
But does that mean that it is never worth going to a cocktail party?
pan
Ah, I’m always the last one to chime in, but only because I haven’t been to the sdmb much the last week or two. My opinion has already been aired much more eloquently by Odieman, but I feel compelled to respond on my own behalf anyway.
Do I write in my livejournal for the entertainment of others? Nope. I struggled with that for a while, because 90% of my life wouldn’t be interesting for anyone else. No, make that 100%. Who cares? I decided to write for myself, and not worry about anyone else. If you don’t care, then by all means, no one is holding a gun to your head. Your choice to go to my livejournal, or add me to your friends list. The content of my journal is my choice. I can gripe for half a page about the people who park in my parking lot, or my ex being behind in his child support payments if I want to.
Why livejournal instead of my hard drive? Because there are actually a couple of people who do care. Perfect example is my friend who lives in California. We’ve been friends since fourth grade. We’d love to keep in touch with the mundane and pointless stuff of our everyday lives, yet haven’t coordinated our schedule enough to do more than sporadic e-mails and occasional phone calls. We’ve actually found that by reading each others journals, we’ve regained some of the closeness that we lost.
As for the rest? I don’t even know if people are reading. Maybe they added me to their friends list in a moment of optimism, thinking I had wise and entertaining things to say, and have ignored me after they realized just how pointless my life could be. So what? I enjoy the act of writing for my own benefit. I re-read my own entries. I ponder over where I have been emotionally, and where I’m going. When I started writing in it, I couldn’t imagine that anyone else could possibly be interested. I honestly thought that no one would ever add me to their friends list. I was wrong, but I find that if I try to write specifically for amusement value, my entries not only suck, but they aren’t true to me.
I write in my livejournal the same way I’ve written previous journals, as if they were a letter to a close friend. And if you had ever been a close friend, you would know that my livejournal is a pretty accurate representation of my letter writing style.
First: My livejournal keeps me from scribbling on the walls in crayon. Or starting even more random pointless threads. I can babble to myself quite happily and livejournal will organize it with pretty colors and dates and times and keep stats all without me doing a thing.
Someone who likes football as a hobby thinks livejournal is a waste of creative emotion timespace? does keeping a journal discount any of my poetry, short stories, cross stitch, singing, theatre or music composition? Or just make them impotent?
What about volunteer work? does keeping a journal somehow detract from that?
Second: “humanity’s greatest achievement in communications”? You object to livejournal.com existing on the Internet that has goat felching pictures? This is the In-ter-net…you know, porn server to the world and keeping a journal is the most self centered use of it you can come up with?
I see two options, you were baiting in the pit and got smacked and are trying to back peddle or you were baiting in the pit and are now trying a pansy variation of the “you types are a facinating study, you know?” excuse.
pezpunk: He can share his ideas. We share ours. There is no hypocrasy in disagreement on either side.
I keep a LiveJournal for a lot of reasons. First and foremost is that I like to document things. I regret that I haven’t kept a journal in the past.
Whatever. I enjoy my journal. It lets me look back and see what I’ve been doing, and it also lets my friends keep up with me.
And just because it would benefit the collective ego of the SDMB, check out http://www.livejournal.com/users/sdmb
I kept my spiritual journal for over a year on my laptop, and something about using the computer made me keep it far more religiously (excuse the pun) than otherwise. Typing it into a groovy machine was more fun than the laborious and poorly marketed “pen & paper” concept. That said it just doesn’t seem to work on a desktop. I find the LiveJournal concept, for whatever reason, helps with that. I don’t think it is because other people are reading it… because as far as I know, no-one is. It’s because storing my data on a distant server rather than my own hard-drive is INHERENTLY cool.
So that’s why we keep LiveJournals. BECAUSE WE CAN. K?
I guess what I don’t understand, having looked at that site because of someone’s post over in MPSIMS, is- Don’t you feel a little creaped out that someone, some stranger out there, is looking in on every thought, every emotion, every… well I didn’t look at more than two pages over there, so whatever it is that you include in your journals, and feel a bit intruded on at others peering into your lives like that?
I’m not a diary guy, or a even a journal guy for that matter, but I understand why some people enjoy the process of writing stuff down. I also understand why they regard these jottings as deeply personal and private.
I my case, I think it’d be a huge violation of trust to sit down and crack open my girlfriends diary, or journal, and start reading away.
Am I missing something here? Would you people that use that site also be as willing to open up your diary to some stranger that asked you? Friends or relatives?
Not that I think there’s anything wrong with it, I mean, it’s definitely different, but different makes the world go round.
Just color me curious.
There are different ways to use the site. Each entry can be designated either Public, Private or Friends Only.
It is all very handy …
Public - I had a BLT today. It sucked.
Friends - I had a BLT today with this chick I got a crush on. Don’t tell her. The BLT sucked.
Private - I killed my mother today. Then I had a BLT.
Depends on how brave you are I guess.
CNoteChris:
I started my journal as an additional means of keeping in touch with my online friends. When I started putting more personal things on there (and there are some very personal things in mine, documented because of the mental and emotional changes I was trying to make in myself earlier this summer), those online friends became my coaches, my cheerleaders, my allies, and my “fans”. Which is why all that personal stuff is still sitting in public. It’s a part of me, of what I was, of what I became, of what I am now…they’re all pieces of my puzzle.
And the LJ is probably the quickest way to get to know me, period. I’m still fairly quiet and shy with strangers in real life. But my LJ is all me…in concentrated form. I have referred people I meet IRL to my LJ to learn more about me…call me weird…
jayjay