LiveJournal

Does anyone else here use LiveJournal? I've found it to be a fantastic source for not only keeping a journal for your own personal reasons, but it's a great place to network with others, meet and make new friends, and join communities and talk about common interests with other people. I've had the fortunate chance to meet five people online through there in Real Life and those are the few friendships I've really grown to value the most.

I think there's a lot to be said about meeting people online and developing a friendship with them before meeting them in Real Life because it takes away that initial face-to-face factor where human beings base too much on what they see and not the words they hear. Online social barriers can be broken down and people are on more equal ground. I think another reasons that those friendships end up working in Real Life as well as online is that they are friendships based first on communication, and everything else becomes secondary.

I'm angelforlife on LiveJournal, should any of you be LJers and looking for friends.

Livejournal is horrible, full of aggressive trolling ******** and idiotic arguments. I have no idea how you could meet nice people in there. %_%

Also, in my experience, people online are generally MUCH more rude and cruel than in real life. This is because online there are no constrains to hold them back, so they let their true personality shine.

Most humans are horrible creatures, given the chance to hurt someone who suffers, they always will.

For example: someone posts a thread (on livejournal, or some bbs system) saying "i want to suicide please help me", most replies will be "*crycrycry*", "lol emo", "hope you die soon", etc.

In real life they wouldn't be able to say that.

I think it can still be used to meet people, often in a good way, as Stardust said. There's definitely some static though.

The reason I never started using it, Stardust, is because if I ever do keep a journal I wanted it kept on my own server so that it's in my control. I wouldn't want to lose it if LJ shuts down, and I want to be able to change it if I need to.

But then how will other people find it?

LJ has a "random user" feature, and you can also comment on other people's journals and then everyone who reads can click on your name.

If you don't want to lose your journal, you should simply write everything in text files on your computer... with dates, and then post them on your journal.

I've been using it since 2001 and I love it. The beauty of LiveJournal is that if you want to write things that only you or your friends list can view, you can set the security to each post as such. You can lock down the journal so it becomes Friends Only if you like and then only friends can see the content. It's really what you make of it - people that don't explore the site and learn how to use it (and there's a fantastic FAQ and tutorials for such) often find themselves hating it.

So then if friends are the only ones that can see the content how do you make new friends? Easy, add a "Friends Only, Comment to Be Added" note in one viewable post to the public. That way people interested in friending you can ask if it's okay - you look through their profile and don't think you have anything in common or you know they're a troll from having talked to them on a community? Don't friend them. Have a friend that turns into a troll? Ban them from your journal. Simple as that, really.

But honestly, compared to MySpace? It's lightyears ahead and better. No ads if you go with the Basic Account and not the Plus Account (and both are free) and there's a lot of options for making a journal look cool.

Sounds useful.

mimizu said:

But then how will other people find it?

LJ has a "random user" feature, and you can also comment on other people's journals and then everyone who reads can click on your name.

If you don't want to lose your journal, you should simply write everything in text files on your computer... with dates, and then post them on your journal.

Click to expand...

Eh for a journal of mine I don't care if other people find it, only family and friends or people I refer to it.

If I were going to write everything in text files anyway, I wouldn't bother putting them on the internet at all I guess what it boils down to is I am interested in keeping a journal but don't care if it's not available to anonymous people, and I am lazy enough that I haven't kept a journal or configured myspace or my own site enough to keep it there.

Anyway, no point, except LJ seems useful even though I probably won't ever use it.