Ways LJ isn't Like Other Blogspace
Jul. 5th, 2006 03:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akirluEvery now and again you encounter someone on LJ whose "bio" comprises a bullet-point list of proclamations of how and when the user reserves the right to silence or ban others and generally control all discourse in their journal to a degree that even the editors of Pravda would stand in awe of.
I am baffled by these people.
On the one hand, the declaration is a case of stating the painfully obvious and redundant. Of course they have the right to control "their" journals, down to the point of deleting comments they don't like, or banning anyone who doesn't worship My Little Pony. Whatever. Saying I have the "right" to do these things doesn't make me any less of an asshole if I do them, though declaring my intention ahead of time does make it clear that I'm an asshole with malice aforethought. For whatever that's worth, warning-wise.
On the other hand, if they want a private playspace, free of the random influences of others' opinions, why the hell are these folks setting up their fiefdoms in frigging LiveJournal, of all things, in the first place? Last I checked, the whole blinking idea behind the LJ software was to build community by leveraging the interconnectedness of the conversational feeds. If someone wants Happy-Sparkly-Princess-MeMeMeLand, why not go set up a free-standing blog? Or, if that's not an option, why post publicly and why have a Friends List? It's this business of wanting to borrow the benefits of audience and community without having to put up with the grubby fact of other people that I really don't get.
Or rather, that I get morally outraged by, I guess I mean. Because as I'm thinking "aloud" about this, I realize that to me, this business of having it both ways seems a lot like free-ridership.
I am baffled by these people.
On the one hand, the declaration is a case of stating the painfully obvious and redundant. Of course they have the right to control "their" journals, down to the point of deleting comments they don't like, or banning anyone who doesn't worship My Little Pony. Whatever. Saying I have the "right" to do these things doesn't make me any less of an asshole if I do them, though declaring my intention ahead of time does make it clear that I'm an asshole with malice aforethought. For whatever that's worth, warning-wise.
On the other hand, if they want a private playspace, free of the random influences of others' opinions, why the hell are these folks setting up their fiefdoms in frigging LiveJournal, of all things, in the first place? Last I checked, the whole blinking idea behind the LJ software was to build community by leveraging the interconnectedness of the conversational feeds. If someone wants Happy-Sparkly-Princess-MeMeMeLand, why not go set up a free-standing blog? Or, if that's not an option, why post publicly and why have a Friends List? It's this business of wanting to borrow the benefits of audience and community without having to put up with the grubby fact of other people that I really don't get.
Or rather, that I get morally outraged by, I guess I mean. Because as I'm thinking "aloud" about this, I realize that to me, this business of having it both ways seems a lot like free-ridership.
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