I started using LiveJournal (LJ) in 2004 (before SixApart came into the picture) as an alternative to my first blog site. I liked the privacy controls and the ability to post things that only my real friends could view. I was selective about who I considered a friend because I shared thoughts there that I didn’t want everyone knowing about; therefore, I created user groups to manage the people that were able to see the things I posted. I allowed most people to read all of my posts, but there were a portion that were real friends only posts. At first, my LJ was a backburner to my blog, but I started posting more and more on my LJ. I enjoyed being apart of some of the communities for fandoms such as Supernatural and being apart of geek and other TV show communities. LJ just had one big problem in my opinion: super-selective people full of self importance with a list of “friend” requirements just to read their LJ.

Since I’d been on LJ for a number of years, I was aware of the elitist LJ users who had complicated friends list requirements. Here’s an example of some LJ friends requirements:

If you’d like to be a part of my friends list, there are a few rules I’d appreciate you following:

1. I’m a grammar whore! I don’t demand the same of you, but please don’t completely ruin the English language when you speak/type.
2. I write a lot in my journal, so I don’t expect anyone to comment on every single entry. However, I do require you comment sometimes. On LJ, all you can really do is leave the occasional comment to show you’re actually reading and caring.
3. I use emoticons. :O!!! For some reason, I’ve come across a few people who have this major issue with emoticons, which I think is dumb, but whatever. If you have an issue, just don’t add me because hearing you bitching about emoticons, of all things, is just really stupid.

I would laugh at the amount of thought and time these people put into listing out the things that you had to qualify for just to be on their friends list. On the surface, many of these LJs didn’t have anything appealing about them other than pretty, customized layouts. Since the entire journal was locked out to anyone but friends, you could only view their profile. For some people, a huge listing of friends must have meant that person was pretty cool and interesting, right? Hardly.

I had one experience with an LJ elitist that left me wondering (in hindsight) why I even bothered with the hassle. I met this person through another community, liked some of the things they wrote, and decided to add them to my LJ friend’s list; however, when I visited that person’s LJ, I found an elaborate list of requirements before they would even think of adding me as a friend. Since this person and I had exchanged comments back and forth in this community, I figured I could deal with it. I was wrong. While this person and I shared a common interest in the community we were in, I found that’s nearly all we had in common. Like the requirements I listed above, this LJ user wanted people on their friends list to comment. I found myself reading their journal but only commented on entries I found interesting, which weren’t many. This particular person seemingly lived for LJ, posting every day, sometimes several times a day. I wasn’t anywhere close to being that kind of poster; it was more important to write less frequent, meaningful posts over bombarding people constantly with posts that didn’t say anything meaningful. Since I had a life outside of LJ, I logged in after a couple of weeks had passed to read my friends list. When I didn’t see anything from that particular user, I went to their LJ and found a public post indicating that I, along with a couple of other LJ users, had been dropped. Why? I don’t really know, but I presume it’s because I broke one (or more) of their friends list rules.

I found myself wondering why some LJ users take the friends list on LJ so seriously. Why do they feel so special that they have to draft such elaborate friends list policies? I’ve even seen some friends list policies that requires you to have a “nice layout” and/or an individual web site before you can be their friend. It’s a bit ridiculous and is one of several reasons why I deleted my LJ account last year. A friend recently tried to lure me back to the site, but I bluntly refused. For one, I’ve outgrown LJ, but I also have no desire to return to that kind of environment. Naturally, the LJ community as a whole aren’t all nuts over their friends list, but I came across enough of them in passing to realize that many users think they’re far more important than they really are. It’s just the Internet, people. You aren’t a rock star of the Internet. That title currently belongs to Mark Zuckerberg…or Kevin Rose.

Posted on Monday, June 25th, 2007 at 9:18 pm in the category:Commentary, Life, Play, Web 2.0. Comment RSS 2.0 feed. Comment it , or trackback this post.