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A homecoming of sorts.
Friday, 24 January 2025 14:14In a way, it really does feel like coming home. If you don't consider old fan-made message board forums as social media, then I guess the first place I started to establish any sort of online community was LiveJournal, back in September 2003, right after I started college. Every assorted random brain dropping, long post, dives into my early sex life, Character Battle contest, early photography, whatever came to mind, was on LJ. It was really the only thing we had. Or, more specifically, the only thing I had.
We were several years away from Facebook and Twitter, and even longer away from the enshittification of the entire Internet, where social media nowadays is nothing more than a cancer, an algorithmic meat-grinder that takes your anger and outrage and spits out more of it, while collecting all sorts of data on you so that it can be sold to the highest bidder.
On December 29, 2016, I ported my pretty-much dead LJ over to Dreamwidth in its entirety and have made really only a handful of entries since then. Long-form blogging like this has long since fallen out of fashion and favor these days. Hell, just a couple of days ago I made my first post in SEVEN YEARS here. And much has happened to me that's been chronicled over on places like Facebook, Bluesky, Pillowfort, and Tumblr.
And it's a bit eerie looking at this place again. In my profile, it still shows all the LJ usernames I was friends with, and the links to their still-existing, but abandoned journals. Kinda feels like a graveyard in some ways. It's essentially a time capsule of the first decade or so of my adult life, from my freshman year at SUNY New Paltz, to the friends I made back when I ran the Into the Lifestream message board and all the friends from Fantasy World Forum, and the friends I made when I lived on Cape Cod.
Some of those friends are out of my life, having moved in different directions after some years. Others vanished the moment I left campus. Others have adopted new identities. And some still remain very active in my life, 22 years after that initial LJ entry.
Don't know how many of you will actually see this since virtually none of you are still active on DW, but I'm not doing it for views and reactions. It's a quiet place, and against the daily endless outrage and anger everywhere else, so much of it justified, sometimes the luxury of quiet is justified too.
We were several years away from Facebook and Twitter, and even longer away from the enshittification of the entire Internet, where social media nowadays is nothing more than a cancer, an algorithmic meat-grinder that takes your anger and outrage and spits out more of it, while collecting all sorts of data on you so that it can be sold to the highest bidder.
On December 29, 2016, I ported my pretty-much dead LJ over to Dreamwidth in its entirety and have made really only a handful of entries since then. Long-form blogging like this has long since fallen out of fashion and favor these days. Hell, just a couple of days ago I made my first post in SEVEN YEARS here. And much has happened to me that's been chronicled over on places like Facebook, Bluesky, Pillowfort, and Tumblr.
And it's a bit eerie looking at this place again. In my profile, it still shows all the LJ usernames I was friends with, and the links to their still-existing, but abandoned journals. Kinda feels like a graveyard in some ways. It's essentially a time capsule of the first decade or so of my adult life, from my freshman year at SUNY New Paltz, to the friends I made back when I ran the Into the Lifestream message board and all the friends from Fantasy World Forum, and the friends I made when I lived on Cape Cod.
Some of those friends are out of my life, having moved in different directions after some years. Others vanished the moment I left campus. Others have adopted new identities. And some still remain very active in my life, 22 years after that initial LJ entry.
Don't know how many of you will actually see this since virtually none of you are still active on DW, but I'm not doing it for views and reactions. It's a quiet place, and against the daily endless outrage and anger everywhere else, so much of it justified, sometimes the luxury of quiet is justified too.
