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That Ever-So Essential Issue - Flists
Time for some pretentious musings on the flist. Woo!
This morning I performed the regularly scheduled flist maintenance, removing and adding some people. Feel free to add/delete my journal from your own flists as you like.
I've taken up the netslang term 'flist' because it doesn't contain the word 'friend'. That alone should tell you everything you need to know about how and why I keep up my flist. I look on it as a reading list and add journals that interest me and usually they fall under the following categories:
a) friend
b) meta
c) amusing
d) special interest
If I've defriended you it's probably because you haven't updated in ages, our interests have diverged, or because we never really connected on a personal level. I have never yet removed someone from my flist because of an offense (I'm easily angered, but not easily offended), though I have removed people for making annoying posts. An inability to use the shift key sends me into spirals of rage, as does excessive netspeak use and quiz and meme posting. I'm short-tempered like that. Usually when I'm removed I'll remove in return, mostly because I'm as bored with his/her journal as s/he is with my own, but I haven't gotten around to removing it. I find that overwhelmingly, one removal is logically followed by another because one doesn't up and remove one's friends or kindred journalists.
I don't feel particularly close to most people on my flist, no matter how many personal entries I've read, and I like it this way. I don't think that flists were designed to be personal support networks or cliques - the security features preclude this - and I haven't any interest in trying to create one. These things have to be organic or they won't work at all. There often seems to be a forced intimacy to the lj community, an expectation of friendship and liking. I think if we take a step back, we'd all realize this is absurd. Contact and proximity may encourage friendship but it doesn't guarantee it. This attitude is most visible in the blanket journal adding that many people engage in when joining a new community. Similarly, many people new to lj will add friends of friends. Neither of these is necessarily a good idea in the long term and trimming one's flist becomes essential.
LJ is a necessarily political environment, so it's not surprising that adding and removing journals is so often fraught with melodrama. Naturally there will be ridiculous power plays and snitty removals but thing to remember throughout is that it is all inherently ridiculous. And, well, kind of stupid. Generally, I figure that anything that fails to move me to pre-verbal rage on occasion isn't worth worrying about and journal politics just don't do it for me. Community politics on the other hand...
Last week there was a flist meme going around, wherein the journalist would outline what readers could expect of her. Behaviour, flist policy - that kind of thing. I think there's a case for adding a brief of the above to one's lj info, in one cares about such things. Personally, I'm so inconsistent and fickle that it would be useful, but for the emotionally flighty, it might be nice for that to be plainly listing. It might prevent some of the all too regular flist angsting, at any rate.
Please see this post for unPC flist remarks. I bet you two imaginary cents you'll laugh or want to spork me, unlike this post, which probably put you to sleep. Hell, I know I'm yawning.
This morning I performed the regularly scheduled flist maintenance, removing and adding some people. Feel free to add/delete my journal from your own flists as you like.
I've taken up the netslang term 'flist' because it doesn't contain the word 'friend'. That alone should tell you everything you need to know about how and why I keep up my flist. I look on it as a reading list and add journals that interest me and usually they fall under the following categories:
a) friend
b) meta
c) amusing
d) special interest
If I've defriended you it's probably because you haven't updated in ages, our interests have diverged, or because we never really connected on a personal level. I have never yet removed someone from my flist because of an offense (I'm easily angered, but not easily offended), though I have removed people for making annoying posts. An inability to use the shift key sends me into spirals of rage, as does excessive netspeak use and quiz and meme posting. I'm short-tempered like that. Usually when I'm removed I'll remove in return, mostly because I'm as bored with his/her journal as s/he is with my own, but I haven't gotten around to removing it. I find that overwhelmingly, one removal is logically followed by another because one doesn't up and remove one's friends or kindred journalists.
I don't feel particularly close to most people on my flist, no matter how many personal entries I've read, and I like it this way. I don't think that flists were designed to be personal support networks or cliques - the security features preclude this - and I haven't any interest in trying to create one. These things have to be organic or they won't work at all. There often seems to be a forced intimacy to the lj community, an expectation of friendship and liking. I think if we take a step back, we'd all realize this is absurd. Contact and proximity may encourage friendship but it doesn't guarantee it. This attitude is most visible in the blanket journal adding that many people engage in when joining a new community. Similarly, many people new to lj will add friends of friends. Neither of these is necessarily a good idea in the long term and trimming one's flist becomes essential.
LJ is a necessarily political environment, so it's not surprising that adding and removing journals is so often fraught with melodrama. Naturally there will be ridiculous power plays and snitty removals but thing to remember throughout is that it is all inherently ridiculous. And, well, kind of stupid. Generally, I figure that anything that fails to move me to pre-verbal rage on occasion isn't worth worrying about and journal politics just don't do it for me. Community politics on the other hand...
Last week there was a flist meme going around, wherein the journalist would outline what readers could expect of her. Behaviour, flist policy - that kind of thing. I think there's a case for adding a brief of the above to one's lj info, in one cares about such things. Personally, I'm so inconsistent and fickle that it would be useful, but for the emotionally flighty, it might be nice for that to be plainly listing. It might prevent some of the all too regular flist angsting, at any rate.
Please see this post for unPC flist remarks. I bet you two imaginary cents you'll laugh or want to spork me, unlike this post, which probably put you to sleep. Hell, I know I'm yawning.
no subject
Am rather interested in knowing what your 'alphabetical fetishes' are.
no subject
Yes. Yes.
There are certain people who have interesting things to say, at length, about fandom and philosophy of slash and other topics close to my heart, and I can not read their no-doubt fascinating essays because they don't use the fucking shift key. Ahem.
There are exactly two people on my flist (mmm) who don't shift, and they are there on sufferance because they only post short entries, wherein their shiftlessness (hee) is less of a problem.
Ok, time to unspiral my rage. Oh, and:
Last week there was a flist meme going around, wherein the journalist would outline what readers could expect of her. Behaviour, flist policy - that kind of thing. I think there's a case for adding a brief of the above to one's lj info, in one cares about such things.
I've had something along these lines in my userinfo for quite some time, although I tinker with it every so often. I think this is a good idea in general.
no subject
Unfortunately, I am still plagued with stupid uncut memes and quizzes everywhere on my friends page.
*grumbles*
no subject
Me. Too. I think that meme generator is the worst thing to come along for Livejournal...