Keep Hoping Machine Running (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thefourthvine) wrote2006-02-11 10:52 pm
thefourthvine) wrote2006-02-11 10:52 pm
Entry tags:
Super-Wanky Special Poll: Nobody Loves Me, Everybody Hates Me. I Think I'll Go Eat Trolls.
Except, see, I really don't want this to get wanky. I'm just not sure there's any way to discuss this without wank, although I'm going to try. Try really, really hard.
And please keep in mind, as you read this and select various boxes of clickiness, that I am not asking why no one loves me. Because, actually, I feel very loved. (Um, yeah, the title of the post and the poll would seem to argue otherwise, but my feeling is: if I'm going to post on a topic of potential wankiness, I might as well make fun of myself. That way, at least it will be amusing. To me, I mean.) LJ has been good to me.
It's just that anniversaries are much on my mind lately. (Best Beloved and I will be celebrating our, um, somethingth year together tomorrow. We still haven't figured out just what number year it is, though.) And my LJ anniversary is coming up, so I've been reflecting on it, in my usual mature, considered manner. ("Hmmm. Two years? Really?" [pause for thought] "Oooo! Porn!") And I've noticed that, over time, my experience of LJ has changed. For example, I'm much less likely to make friends (actual friends, not friends-list friends) now, and when I do, it's as a result of me seeking other people out.
Also, I've been getting strange responses to the comments I leave in other people's LJs lately. Used to be, people just responded. Or not. Whichever. Now - well, I sometimes get responses that indicate major astonishment that I commented on a friend's post at all.
This is weird. Isn't it? It's new to me, anyway, and therefore weird to me.
Admittedly, I'm not the biggest commenter; I don't comment on 99.5% of the posts I read, because I'm just not very social. (People who know me in real life are invited to take 10-15 minutes to laugh helplessly on the floor at that understatement.) But that's always been true, the not commenting and the not socializing. So I'm kind of wondering if the subtext of these new, weird responses is, "Wow. You actually came down from your high horse long enough to leave a comment in my LJ! A very long and pointless comment, let me add, which I'm kind of astonished you thought I'd be interested in." (Because when I do comment, I do it to excess. You should all be very glad I don't comment any more often, actually.) In other words, I'm wondering if my bad LJ habits (lack of comments, spotty replying, a dearth of posts) have made me something of, um, a Notorious B.I.T.C.H. (I'm spelling it! For purposes of delicacy! See? No wankiness here!)
Which, hey, if that's the case, I'm fine with it, actually. (Yet more evidence for bitch-hood, I realize.) But, okay. You know how we are all destined for hell because of all the fun we're having? I suspect I will not be frolicking on level 2 with the rest of you lusty folks, but rather wherever it is they store the excessively curious. (I'll be asking "Why?" in hell, in other words. This is a very suitable fate for me.) I'm okay with my LJ experience changing; I'm still having just as much fun here - more fun than is legal in most states, in fact. But I want to know why it's changed.
So I'm asking you.
But, seriously, this is not a request for you to tell me you love me. (Love doesn't need a season! Or a reason! Or a wankfest!) Instead, I invite you to speculate on why other people don't love me. Or, at any rate, why they seem unwilling to talk to me, and why they sometimes act shocked when I talk to them.
Plus, it's an occasion to post a poll. And is there ever a really bad reason to do that?
[Poll #671603]
And please keep in mind, as you read this and select various boxes of clickiness, that I am not asking why no one loves me. Because, actually, I feel very loved. (Um, yeah, the title of the post and the poll would seem to argue otherwise, but my feeling is: if I'm going to post on a topic of potential wankiness, I might as well make fun of myself. That way, at least it will be amusing. To me, I mean.) LJ has been good to me.
It's just that anniversaries are much on my mind lately. (Best Beloved and I will be celebrating our, um, somethingth year together tomorrow. We still haven't figured out just what number year it is, though.) And my LJ anniversary is coming up, so I've been reflecting on it, in my usual mature, considered manner. ("Hmmm. Two years? Really?" [pause for thought] "Oooo! Porn!") And I've noticed that, over time, my experience of LJ has changed. For example, I'm much less likely to make friends (actual friends, not friends-list friends) now, and when I do, it's as a result of me seeking other people out.
Also, I've been getting strange responses to the comments I leave in other people's LJs lately. Used to be, people just responded. Or not. Whichever. Now - well, I sometimes get responses that indicate major astonishment that I commented on a friend's post at all.
This is weird. Isn't it? It's new to me, anyway, and therefore weird to me.
Admittedly, I'm not the biggest commenter; I don't comment on 99.5% of the posts I read, because I'm just not very social. (People who know me in real life are invited to take 10-15 minutes to laugh helplessly on the floor at that understatement.) But that's always been true, the not commenting and the not socializing. So I'm kind of wondering if the subtext of these new, weird responses is, "Wow. You actually came down from your high horse long enough to leave a comment in my LJ! A very long and pointless comment, let me add, which I'm kind of astonished you thought I'd be interested in." (Because when I do comment, I do it to excess. You should all be very glad I don't comment any more often, actually.) In other words, I'm wondering if my bad LJ habits (lack of comments, spotty replying, a dearth of posts) have made me something of, um, a Notorious B.I.T.C.H. (I'm spelling it! For purposes of delicacy! See? No wankiness here!)
Which, hey, if that's the case, I'm fine with it, actually. (Yet more evidence for bitch-hood, I realize.) But, okay. You know how we are all destined for hell because of all the fun we're having? I suspect I will not be frolicking on level 2 with the rest of you lusty folks, but rather wherever it is they store the excessively curious. (I'll be asking "Why?" in hell, in other words. This is a very suitable fate for me.) I'm okay with my LJ experience changing; I'm still having just as much fun here - more fun than is legal in most states, in fact. But I want to know why it's changed.
So I'm asking you.
But, seriously, this is not a request for you to tell me you love me. (Love doesn't need a season! Or a reason! Or a wankfest!) Instead, I invite you to speculate on why other people don't love me. Or, at any rate, why they seem unwilling to talk to me, and why they sometimes act shocked when I talk to them.
Plus, it's an occasion to post a poll. And is there ever a really bad reason to do that?
[Poll #671603]
no subject
But I do notice - and I'm talking generally, now - that posts, in general, tend to become longer the longer the person has been on LJ. And they become more, hmmm. Performative? That's not quite the concept I mean, though. Okay, take me as an example. These days, I tend to regard various things as potential LJ posts. Like, if I'm pissed off about the text on the side of my tampon box? Instead of just ranting about it, I rant about it in LJ format, even if I'm just doing it in my own head. Does that make sense?
Possibly not. My point is, I think we acquire a sort of documentary urge after a certain amount of time on LJ, and we're always taking notes of things to put in our journals. Also, we tend to loosen up in style and structure. Which, all taken together, can result in either a very interesting and personal journal or a very boring and personal journal, depending on the writer.
Hmmm. This comment kind of wandered off-topic, I note; sorry. I actually also meant to talk about your second paragraph, but now I'm afraid to get into it too much, for fear I'll end up with, like, a fifteen-page essay. So, in short: I agree. Part of the LJ experience is these loosely-structured running conversations that start in journal A with four comments and then, two days later, pick up in journal B with two more, and so on. I suspect much of what I was sort of subconsciously noticing was that I don't do that as much anymore. And probably that's the case because I don't answer comments consistently.
Of course, that's mostly my fault, although it would be very helpful if LJ would send me my comment notifications. But that is a rant for another time, and I have already way over-responded, here. (Seriously, I am very grateful for the comment character limit. Without it, I suspect I'd never finish any comment, ever.)