Remember LiveJournal? Rachael 1/22 '19

I miss LJ and the way it used to be there. Here's a good article about it and about how George R R Martin, one of the last holdouts, has now left the building.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/the-linux-of-social-media-how-livejournal-pioneered-then-lost-web-blogging/?mbid=synd_digg&utm_source=digg&utm_medium=email&fbclid=IwAR1IF8o8vpbn6g7pCoh2DmC3mlbdQzKXghzxkZGtwV_51AdeUANYfRCmcp0

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1/22 '19 43 Comments
Most of the people I loved from LJ are here at OPW.
But I do miss those days, of course, I had a lot more time to post and comment back then.
I still remember when I “met” most of them at Diaryland! 😬
Beth Adele
I never was on Diaryland.

I’m here because of the LJ connection 🙂
Rachael
I'm here because of the Usenet/talk.bizarre connection, which became the LJ connection, which became FB and Twitter. When the Russians took over, I ported everything from LJ to Dreamwidth, where my account has largely languished. Then my friend Tom (from Usenet days) rolled out OPW and, well, here I am.

As for FB and Twitter, I sometimes tweet, but mostly only silly inconsequential stuff, but it's still too easy to get sucked in and dragged under by the tidal waves of awful. Facebook, I left some time ago; I had to leave because... I just can't ignore the ethical problems and came to understand that to participate at any level was to enable Very Bad Things—and if it were just about me, maybe I could've stayed, but being on the platform also makes everyone I know and have connections with vulnerable and me complicit in that abuse. [long conversation there; maybe another time]

Anyway, I like it here, it feels good posting here. All of my posts are friends-only, but I'm easy to be friends with. :) I mostly keep things loosely locked that way because I don't want spiderbots tossing my journal entries all hither and yon. I have few subgroups for posting and almost never use them.
Anne Mollo
You know that thing where you hear a story told several times, and eventually, you start to feel like you were there - even though you weren't? usenet/talk.bizarre is that for me. I wasn't there, but there are times when I could swear I was.
Matt Lichtenwalner
Also sp//dr bot from the new "Into the Spiderverse" - which I highly recommend:
Matt Lichtenwalner
I haven’t seen it yet, but I will since both you and Archer recommend it highly.
Shelle Klein Houser
Matt Lichtenwalner
Oh honey, the whole family jumped on that movie the minute it hit the theaters up here! LOVE.
Anne Mollo
Yeah - I've got a buddy who poo-poos just about every movie we see, and HE loved it, so...
Matt Lichtenwalner
I now declare you to have been honorarily present.
Anne Mollo
Aww - thanks!
Matt Lichtenwalner
You're not alone in missing those days - that's for sure. I pulled my LJ account over to DreamWidth.org and even still post there very rarely.

Generally speaking, though, I found a site I like a lot and gives me the 80/20 of that LJ love. Run by a buddy of mine named Tom. It's called One Post Wonder...
Matt Lichtenwalner
I also ported over my LJ to dreamwidth years ago, and never really used it. It’s sitting there unused and unloved.

Yet I still haven’t been able to pull the plug and delete my LJ even though I moved it to DW and even though I haven’t posted on it in years and even though it’s probably a bad idea to leave it up. What’s my problem? I have a hard time letting go. I started it in 2004, I think. That feels like forever ago.

Also, ha, yes 🙂 about OPW. I oughta try to broaden my horizons here...
Rachael
So speaking of that, one thing I do notice is it's harder to make new connections since LJ. So.... Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy
But here's my profile, friend me maybe? ;) (Totally your choice.)

I am not as big a poster as I used to be, but I read everything and hang out in comments. Either way, nice to have met you through Tom's nifty "Network" option.
Karen Kuhl
:laughs: :-)

Hello! Friended!

Oh god. You were, uh...talking to ME, right? Sometimes I can’t tell which comment was left to which comment.

(I overthink things) :-)
Rachael
HA! My inner voice was doing the: "Oh great, ask someone to friend them, then disappear for three days! *aagh!*" thing. So, you are in GREAT company. Yes, I meant you. :)

Yay!!
Karen Kuhl
It's all good, I was not worried a whit. :-)
Rachael
"(I overthink things)"

Oh dear - you _really_ are in good company here. :P
Matt Lichtenwalner
Yaaay! Well met, then, fellow over thinker :-)
Rachael
Hi! I found you through OPW's "Network" button. I also haven't deleted my LJ even though I ported everything over to DW. I made all of my LJ posts private so it kinda looks empty, but it's not.

My folks used to read my public LJ posts and then they started reading my public DW posts, but I've really fallen off the horse. I try to remember to x-post my public entries from OPW over to DW, but I'm laaaazy.
Jill "xtingu" Knapp
Hello!

Oh I am too, and also too unorganized. :-)
Rachael
I wonder if we could get Tom to look into working with IFTTT? (This is me assuming it doesn't already, but I suspect if it did, Jill would already be using that for cross posting purposes.)
Matt Lichtenwalner
I was trying to use IFTTT to x-post my tweets to DW but it looked like ass, but I suspect that was more Twitter's fault than anyone else's.

Not sure how easy it would be to IFTTT OPW to DW (or vice-versa), but copying/pasting isn't the worst thing ever. (I do hate losing all my formatting though and then manually fixing it, but whatevz.)
Jill "xtingu" Knapp
RE: "My folks used to read my public LJ posts" - yeah. I was recently at my folks' place and saw a favorite link to my LJ.

It kinda made me sad because I'm pretty sure (despite my changing the url for the link to my OPW profile) they haven't migrated.

We do weekly Google Hangouts with Ben and Josh and families, so that helps, but there was something nice about having a place that people would 'check in'.
Matt Lichtenwalner
I feel your pain. I _did_ manage to delete my LJ account, but my DW account is mostly unloved. It never caught fire like my LJ did. LJ (for me at least) reached that tipping point where there were enough of my people there to make for a good, active social network. DW not so much.
Matt Lichtenwalner
Yeah. And I was never one of those people who had a ginormous friends list of people following/commenting, but enough for it to feel like...enough, I guess.

Before LJ, I was on an email list called Tamson House, run by a bunch of fans of the author Charles de Lint (and his wife MaryAnn was involved too). We found each other on LJ after the TH list sort of dissipated, and kind of tried to emulate that sort of community and it did happen for a while, but of course LJ is/was a different thing than an email list...

And then Facebook, and omg is that a shitshow sometimes.

Well, anyway, hey there, Matt Lichtenwalner...want to be one of my OPW friends? :-)
Rachael
"enough for it to feel like...enough, I guess" - That's it exactly.

"Facebook, and omg is that a shitshow sometimes" - You can say that again. And again. And again.

"want to be one of my OPW friends?" - Sounds good to me!
Matt Lichtenwalner
I just logged into my LJ for the first time in like a year and damn, my friends list appears to be a giant mass of tumbleweeds. A few people appear to still be there posting, but not many. It's makin' me sad.
Rachael
Yeah. The biggest chunk of my people left when they sold to the Russian company.

Also, I heard somewhere that even George RR Martin left. ;P
Matt Lichtenwalner
Facebook, and omg is that a shitshow sometimes! ;-)
Rachael
Omg I heard about that list! I was never on it, but I <3 DeLint.

Also, Matt is one of my college friends, I vouch for his goodness.
Shelle Klein Houser
It was a super epic list, and I made friends there I still have today, 22 years later. Crazy that so much time has passed.

I've met Charles & MaryAnn, we had a great lunch and drive around town together once, and they are the most delightful people.

Good to know of Matt's vouchable goodness. :-)
Rachael
D'awww shucks. Thanks, chica.
Matt Lichtenwalner
You and Shelle went to Penn State? How did I not know this?! :) I assumed everyone was a UDel-er (not everyone, of course).
Karen Kuhl
Nope. I went to PSU. Shelle went elsewhere (this is a public post and I will leave it to her to out her life story). But we knew each other during college. I was a fan then, and since. :)
Matt Lichtenwalner
This is my new LJ. My people are (mostly) here. I am grateful to LJ though, if not for that platform I wouldn’t know some of my closest friends.
Shelle Klein Houser
Pretty much this, word for word.
Karen Kuhl
That’s great your people are (mostly) here.

I wish I felt like this was my new LJ. It’s not the same, though, I suppose in part because I only have a few friends here and the interactions we have isn’t the same. Wait, that’s not right. In many ways they are, and even better.

Also in part I suppose because, in spite of the fact that THIS post is public, most of my posts here are friends locked to only a few people (ya’ll know who you are 🙂). So that doesn’t help, probably.

Rachael
Oh I feel this too. I so love OPW and I love the set up, but I wish more people were on it. I haven't "met" people as easily as I did on LJ and I wonder if it's just more closed posts. I am hoping to, though. For me the discovery factor on LJ was really neat. I loved the "Friending Posts" that people would do, recommending other people to follow. It was really fun.
DaylightKatie
Yeah. I can't even remember how I found you on LJ, actually--can you? I don't know if you were a "friend of a friend" or through a Friending Post. I had no idea who you were, just that I loved how you wrote and thought about things.
Rachael
I can't remember! I wish I could, actually....
DaylightKatie
Me too. You know, I think it might've been Shadesong, actually. Maybe?
Rachael
Shadesong! The nexus of so many people.
Shelle Klein Houser