Why is this webpage different from all other webpages?

[flemmings]

Online culture makes me blink occasionally, because its givens are so different from RL common sense. Possibly the most blinkworthy for me are those occasional posts from lj-users demanding- not civilly inquiring, note- that the people who've friended them stand up and identify themselves. 'Who are you? What are you doing here? Many of you have never left me even one comment- and I've been checking, don't think I haven't!! Throw down your guns and come out with your hands up!!'

Possibly I misunderstand the ethos at work. A live journal is an online webpage viewable by anyone unless it's f-locked. Why the objection to people viewing it? Why the objection to people using the tool provided- lj friending- in order to view it more conveniently? Why the hint of paranoid hysteria? "OMG this person is stalking me by reading the webpage I have online." (Stalking = reads someone else's journal? Sheesh.) "I've checked her through lj toys and she's come to look at my lj *every single day.* eww shudder scary"

Ahh-bwah? Someone reading your lj every day is scary? I thought that was the point of the thing. If it was any other kind of wp there'd be complaints that people *weren't* looking at them. The logic, she does not follow.

If people read me I take it as a tribute to my scintillating wit- or to the doomed hopes of the poor bunnies who think maybe I'll post fannish stuff- knowing that in all possibility they're just here for my friends list and nothing to do with me at all. Specialized corners of fandom can be most conveniently accessed through certain major termini, though I'm not one of them- am barely Uguisudani to the Ikebukuro or Shinjuku of people like incandescens or petronia.

People I don't know friend me, I go look at their ljs. Simple enough. Besides, asking people to say why they friended you comes perilously close IMO to begging for ego-strokes. You know it's going to be all 'I love the way you write' or 'I'm here for more of your wonderful fics' and no 'Your foaming insanity gives me my daily dose of LOLZ' or 'I want to be the first to report your next bit of idiocy to F_W.'

And the commenting thing- meh. Commenting is what I think strangers should be hesitant about, not friending. What we have here is an online journal accessible to everyone unless I say it's not, where everyone can comment unless I say they can't. Fannish ethos still doesn't suggest that anyone *may* wander into anyone else's journal and drop a comment out of nowhere. Seems to me that solecism is only considered reasonable if the post has been linked elsewhere, like metafandom or metaquotes, and the commenter says that's where she saw it- to avoid suggestions of that profound mystery, 'stalking'. Me, I beg to differ on that point. Metaquotes asks permission, mostly; metafandom doesn't; and it annoys me when people wander in from metafandom and start taking issue with a post, serenely confident that there's no breach of etiquette involved and the original post was indeed aimed at the world, hoping for the world's comments, and not at one's circle of readers.

So yeah- a random stranger wants to start a conversation with me here, fine. 'Some of my best lj friends began that way.' A random stranger wants to fap meta here, not fine. Take it to your own journal, please and thanks.

Comments

[mauvecloud.livejournal.com]

Besides, asking people to say why they friended you comes perilously close IMO to begging for ego-strokes

It is begging for ego-strokes by me. Those requests usually come together with the lonely "Friends Only" post, dated sometime in year 2999 and followed with 1000 ego-strokes comments begging to be let in.

Stalking = reads someone else's journal? Yesh! How else do I get the dose of attention I deserve if I am not allowed to accuse people of stalking me?

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

Ha! Yes!

I have no fear of reading someone's LJ, I figure if they post a public post it is there for anyone to read and if they wanted me to read their 'friends only' posts they'd friend me so I could see.

Commenting, on the other hand, I am hesitant to do. First impressions are as important online as they are off.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

I do ask, every so often, how people stumbled across my journal, because I like to know where I'm being linked. But other than that, well, I tend to assume they have their own reasons for reading me or not.

[stormcloude]

Besides, asking people to say why they friended you comes perilously close IMO to begging for ego-strokes.

I think part of it is wanting to know where the people come from-- what friends/fandoms you have in common, what about you makes you interesting to them (navel gazing through a reflected mirror) and just perhaps trying to start a dialogue with them. I know sometimes it makes it easier for me to introduce myself to someone I've friended if I think they are a little interested in me. I guess it's really how the request is worded that makes a difference.

One time a pretty well-known fanartist drew a piece of art for me and suddenly I had three new people friend me. Yet they never interact with me, never comment to me. I know why they're there and it doesn't bother me, but if I was suddenly friended by these people and I didn't know why, I'd be rather curious as to where they came from.

[incandescens]

(eyes list) I do seem to have accumulated a bit . . .

But yes. Posting on your lj is as public as sticking something up physically on a message board, unless you choose to lock it. I suppose one can be curious, but to demand information about all those looking at it is a touch strong.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I like the designation of "reading list" instead of "friendslist". People seem to take the "friends" thing a bit too seriously. I mean, I certainly like to see who's reading my LJ because they usually turn out to be interesting people, but I don't insist they participate or anything like that.

[author-kun.livejournal.com]

Oh, my. *waves sheepishly* I would be one of those people who happened to friend you, and I'm pretty sure you would have no clue who I am. I first found your LJ a long time ago when I was searching for Gaiden translations, of all things. Then I saw you on the Saiyuki comm (yes, I admit to being a bit of a Saiyuki fan) on a thread about Japanese in the manga. But I friended you because I happened to click over to your journal, and, well, I was interested in reading... so I added to the FL.

I totally agree. There's certainly nothing wrong with introducing oneself, of course, though I do feel kind of awkward posting out of nowhere with "You don't know me, but hi!" I do tend to be shy, though less so online than in person. But yes, I don't add people to my friends page because I want to stalk them. I just want to read what they post. I generally don't leave many comments, though.

I certainly don't mind if people read my posts, and they're free to leave comments, too. I would mind if random people wandered in and tried to start trouble because of some silly metafandom stuff, but luckily that's never happened to me.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Your way of finding me is pretty much my way of finding other people, the ones that aren't from RL. I know them from Around, from this community or that, or from someone else's FL, and they're consistently interesting enough that I want to read them consistently. As telophase said, often in lj it's a reader-writer relationship as much as, if not more than, a personal fan-fan one, and in reader-writer a certain degree of passivity goes with the territory. Silent readers are the norm, not anything to get fussed about.

(Not to mention my own ambivalent feelings about having people read what I write- to wit, I like it as long as I don't know it's happening. Granted that's for fic more than op-ed pieces, but still: the Vague But Appreciative Audience is a stock part of my mental world.)

[author-kun.livejournal.com]

There are also things like the random friend feature. I've had people add journals of mine, generally writing ones of all things, to their FL just because I'd posted, presumably without even looking at it to begin with. A couple still have them listed, which boggles my mind a bit, but that's how I am with anyone reading what I write, honestly.

I do hesitate to add people to my FL nowadays, mostly because I'd rather avoid making the paranoid people flip out. I do think it's silly to panic over people happening to find and read an open journal, randomly if not because of similar interests/comunities, but if they don't want visitors, then I don't really want to bother them.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

(Speaking of random, what's your icon from?)

Mhh well. I figure people's paranoia is their problem, not mine. If they're that paranoid they'll probably have lj toys' tracker on, and be registering the fact that you come and read them anyway, and be paranoid that you read them and *don't* friend them. No win.

OTOH paranoid people don't make for the most interesting reads, so probably no loss. Still, it seems self-defeating. One of the best features of lj is precisely that it lets you meet people you'd never have come across otherwise. Getting all squirrelly because someone you don't know comes to read your lj is like being on a ML and insisting that only friends may respond to your posts.

Another thing, actually- there's a couple of people I read regularly that I haven't friended, sometimes because I also read their FL but at least in one case because I like to look at their layout. Seems a pity for someone to make a customized layout that their lj friends will then never see because all posts appear on the friends' FLs.

[little-blue-me.livejournal.com]

Heh, I think I'm like author_kun myself too, because allthough you might not know me, I still friend you. Well, or let's just say that you might nor remember me. xD I'm the one who once, little while ago, sent you message to thank you for Gaiden's translations. Remember?
And now when I finally created this LJ account I thought that I would like to friend you, that's okay?

But I too think that it's crazy to call people stalkers (someones actually do that, huh?) for reading an entry that's for everyone to see.
When it comes to me, I'm actually glad if somebody reads my stupid and random writings. But if somebody doesn't then that's okay too, because I pretty much created this account for myself. I hate keeping a diary in the old way. Yeah. It's just that my handwriting sucks, and I don't even want to look at it after I have written something, so to me this kind of a "diary" is the best way to get things out of my chest.

Ans maybe I'm that kind of a person who hardly friends someone. I need to make absolutely sure that that person is fine even if I friend him.
Haha.
Ugh, I'm getting tired, better go to sleep before I start talking some completely random stuff...

Good night.