Alright then. If I'm going to do this LiveJournal thing I suppose I might as well make a stab at doing it properly. First up; a couple of policy decisions:
- Profanity.
Yes, there will be profanity. If you can't deal with that I suggest you go away and read something else. I heartily recommend Dan Brown or Phillip Pullman. They both pack the punch of a polystyrene pugil stick and contain enough derivative allegory to give you bogus ideas about cosmogony and philosophy without having to worry if you are a Christian.
- Friends.
I'm not having any. Yes, OK, very good, I appreciate the irony in this one. Basically my position is this; there is a huge amount of politicking and bitchery concerning LJ and I am going to contribute to it as little as seems reasonable. If I have no friends no one can complain to me that I should have made them my friend but haven't. This policy implies that every post I make that I want to be seen by anyone can be seen by everyone. This is all to the good. I have no intention of talking behind people's back; it is my general attitude (not always adhered to as much as I would like) to not say anything about someone that I wouldn't say to their face.
In addition having no friends (sic) means not having to immediately hear about whatever trivial or stressful exploits are currently occupying the brains of people I know. Sorry guys and guy-ettes but I really don't want to know who you slept with last night or what your cat had for breakfast and I can do without any additional methods of finding out.
If people want to add me to their friends list, that's fine. I have been given what I see as legitimate reasons for some people keeping posts private from certain groups. It's just that those reasons don't apply to me. Also, if people want to invite me to their private gossip parties they can but I don't promise to attend or be a polite guest if I do show up.
In essence, I see the Friends feature as a "convenience" that just isn't worth the associated drama. I may, however, consider implementing topic filtering.
- Invitations.
Guess what; there won't be any. This is another use of LJ that is supposedly convenient but I see as just creating more trouble and hurt feelings. Blanket invitations across the internet imply that theoretically everyone in the world can show up and if there are people you don't want to come you have to specifically dis-invite them. This elevates not inviting someone from an unfortunate necessity or simply a personal convenience into downright spite and malice! If you choose to invite people on an individual basis why not use email or, God help us, the phone? Friends-only invitations have the problems referred to in the above section, plus others. For instance, you wouldn't necessarily want to only invite only people you saw as your closest confidants to a party, or indeed eat vodka jelly and play Twister with someone to whom you had just revealed that you had been abused as a child. Overly dramatic, I know, I may be arsed to think of some better examples later.
This principle extends to what's going on in my life generally, not just specific events. If I want to know if you're going to the pub I'll phone or text you. I expect you to do the same for me. Neither my available internet time nor my interest level is great enough for me to check the journals of everyone I know to see what they're up to, even on a weekly basis. As for using a Friends page, see above.
BTW, I will expect people who know me and are on LJ to have read the previous paragraph. This may seem hypocritical (or, indeed, paradoxical or tautological) but it simply doesn't apply to people who don't have journals. (Or, at least, not to anyone with any common sense or consideration for other people.) If you're going to have a LiveJournal you might as well use it properly. God knows, you all piss and whine enough about other people not having read your posts. To maybe put this point slightly more clearly, if you want to know my attitude towards LiveJournal use, go read my fucking LiveJournal! Yes, that's right, it's within the first few posts! Doofus!
Also, it's a statistically recognised fact that (Shock! Horror!) some people don't have LiveJournals. I have to make the effort to get in touch with them and vice-versa. Why should I treat one set of my friends differently from another just because some of them choose to publish the details of their life as if it were some kind of ongoing soap opera? It's like with mobile phones, only worse. At least with mobiles, one system can automatically contact the other.
To summarise, if you hear about an event that I'm hosting, that you want to attend, but haven't been invited to I suggest you exercise your own best judgement and take responsibility for your actions. In fact, I heartily recommend that you do that for all your decisions, all the time. Or, you could stop playing navel-gazing, psycho-babble guessing games based on your inevitably deeply flawed mental models of me and just pick up the phone and talk to me. Come on, you copper twin-coiled bastard! Ring! Ring, damn your eyes, ring!
- Content.
The above principles raise some important questions. Like for instance; Jesus Christ, Rik! If you aren't going to use LJ for bitching about people behind their backs or sparing yourself the effort of talking to your friends to find out what's going on in their lives then what the hell are you going to use it for? Well, to be honest, probably not much. These points are partly why I have avoided getting one for as long as I have and complain vigourously about people who do have one at every available opportunity. I suppose I will be doing a certain amount of checking up on people and whining about stuff in my life that will inevitably seem (and, in fact, be) trivial to the vast majority of others if not everyone. Oh, yes and some bad fanfic.
Mostly, however, I intend to use this space for posting general philosophical rants about life and the universe as it appears to me in the hope of promoting debate. You are invited to find them interesting. Or not. We shall see.
- In Conclusion.
So, pretty much the same as every other LiveJournal then, really. The only difference, as I see it, is that when I meet people in the real world I will try not to expect them to know or care what has been written here or what I have used LJ for and I will continue on in the forlorn hope that they will treat me in the same manner. God, what a better world we could have for want of a little perspective!
Your Host,
Rik, occasionally known as neuralbuddha, rorschach, aetherboy, elothemiel, DevilBunny, Rickman, LongWindingRoad, Hendrik or, simply, friend.
Now, on with the nonsense...
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