Speaking Of Living On The Internet ...

[bloodyrosemccoy]

kadharonon linked to this here post by yuki_onna on the LJ Fatigue that seems to be going around, and the possible reasons for it. I think in my case, it was simply that I’ve added too many feeds and whatnot to my friends’ page, so now I get so overwhelmed trying to keep up with everyone that I wind up keeping up with no one. The reasons she gives are also surprisingly painful—having people leave for another site is more of a wrench than I’d have ever thought. (No, seriously, it was a blow when Ursula Vernon started her own blog, even if every post does get mirrored here.)

I probably still won’t be very timely with my comments, but I’ve been trying to keep up, especially with my core group of friends on here, because quite a lot of you are FRIENDS, and not just in the online Hey-We-Both-Like-Cake-And-Have-Blogs-We-Are-Now-Friends sense. I’d rather not lose that, so unless I get hit by a truck or something, I assure you I’ll definitely be sticking around.

Comments

[dormouse-in-tea.livejournal.com]

I'm glad to hear it!

I'm thinking of taking a few of my larger comms off my default view, and go read them manually, because yeah. I can go two pages and not see anything by specific people, and it's easy to skim by things. :/

[cougarfang.livejournal.com]

I have a filter which is only People (with a capital P, people I'm invested in and want to know about their lives regularly versus random peoples that I thought their journal had some cool stuff going on but I only want to check occasionally) and no big comms ever, and that's pretty much my default first tab on Firefox. XD;; I feel like even if I make friends IRL and then discover they have LJs, the ones that I LJ with become my Really Close Friends, because this is my main way of keeping in touch with people (something that I utterly fail at, generally) and knowing people beyond the superficial.

*hikikomori*

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wastrel/]

You could probably have guessed I'd find the feeling you described familiar. This sense of being overwhelmed by having too much to keep up with definitely played a role in my departure from public LJing last year (the triggering drama made it hard to come back for a while, but it was worth it to get over it enough to be able to come back for the right people, incidentally). Trust me, I understand that feeling well enough not to hold anything about how often or soon you comment against you. I pretty much think of you, along with the 3 or 4 others I still read, as closer friends than I've ever had in so-called Real Life, and I'm definitely reassured that you wouldn't be going anywhere.

[blackbyrd2.livejournal.com]

I have a DW account, and I'm not seeing that it's all that wonderful. It's an alternative to LJ, sure, but it has its own issues, and I'm not particularly fond of the interface.
And like yuki_onna, I've been here nearly a decade, and have grown close to my friends on here. I've never been able to get into the microblogging. I visit my facebook account every month whether I have anything to say not. (Usually not)
I'm just too damned verbose for that kind of limitation.

My biggest hurdle these days is finding time to post meaningful posts. Work ties up so much of my time now. And while I've added a couple comms that eat into my available time frame, there's a ready built "Journals Only" filter that I use when I just want to catch up.

I find that people who actually leave LJ end up not getting read as regulalry. Perhaps I'm just old, but it's difficult to find the time to go search out my friends who have left for their own blogs elsewhere. But that's just convenience. There's a bit of an emotional response when people move elsewhere too, and it's even worse when they're NOT bloggers with massive followings like Ursula. It seems more personal somehow.

And the exodus has been long and estensive. There are times when my friend's list lacks updates from so many people who used to post regularly. It starts to feel like a desert here- like I'm one of the last few luddites who hasn't moved on to The Next Big Thing, but frankly, LJ suits me way too well to consider a massive shift in both style and substance.

I'm glad you're going to be around. I would miss you a lot if you left.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

I've noticed it too. And I was disappointed when Ursula moved her blogging offsite, even though it's mirrored and she still comments.

FWIW I've always been more active in people's comments than on my own LJ. Actually, I first got an account just so I'd have a username in comments rather than being anonymous, and only started posting for myself much later. I got the permaccount so I'd have lots of icons for scans_daily, which kinda backfired when SD got the boot.

[asqmh.livejournal.com]

(No, seriously, it was a blow when Ursula Vernon started her own blog, even if every post does get mirrored here.

Man was it ever.

I'm cross-posting a lot from DW, but I've noticed that for anything that means something personally, its home is on LJ. I just don't "reach for DW first," you know? This is where my home base is, because those relationships don't just disappear.

I found myself trying to explain this (on Twitter, no less. To Posterous.) today. I have 8 years of life here. I was just a kid in college when I started this blog. Now I'm 30 and that's a lot of change to deal with -- and I've dealt with it all here. Cancer, my dad's death, the birth of my nephew (and later, my niece), my brother getting married -- all kinds of great and horrible things, all here. All part of me. And my flist has been there (growing and waning in turn, but always there and always with constants) through it all.

I had everything unlocked when I first began. Then came the time of filtering. The the friends only years with heavy filtering.... and now back to a time of openness with rare filtering. It's like the changes of a society -- I'm my own microcosm!

Or something.

Anyway, no matter how much I enjoy DW and how useful I find Posterous and how much fun I think Twitter can be for 2 second tweets from work, LJ is home. It's where I live. It's how my best friend and I kept in touch while she lived in Dallas and I lived in Memphis or how we met some of our now good friends. It cultivates friendships and helps us stay connected. Whatever corporate is doing, that's kind of worth more.

Sorry to totally threadjack, but it just makes me think.

[thoughtbubble.livejournal.com]

Just fyi. Your blog is easily the most entertaining of all my friends. It's really the only reason I keep signing on to LJ. It would also be really cool if you moved back up to Oregon. Just saying.