Friends Of

[andysocial]

Anyone who is interested in this sort of thing has already read the post Brad made weeks ago about the new capabilities of LJ. To whit, if you ban someone they get removed from your "friends of" list. I don't get why this was at all important.

I know there are people with pathological needs to keep their friends and friends of lists perfectly equal. Most of them even acknowledge that it's neurotic behavior. So why is it something that Brad et al felt the need to work with?

Let's get something straight. If someone on LJ lists you as their "friend," it makes no difference to you. The more apt term would be "someone whose journal I enjoy reading and who should feel no requirement to reciprocate," but that's kind of lengthy. Just because I have Lisa Rein on my RSS feed page, I don't expect her to pimp my blog.

I guess it all comes down to the fact that Brad created this thing as a way to update his website easily, and now people are using it as a near-CMS. Terminology that made sense for Brad and his friends seems peculiar when applied to thousands of strangers with interesting posts.

Comments

[rillifane.livejournal.com]

I agree with you entirely.

It is a reflection of the fact that, for many people, the internet is its own little world and one in which they live to the exclusion of the real world. In this world any criticism, difficulty, or annoyance is an event of earthshaking proportions. They care excessively about what happens in their computer world because they have elevated its importance to justify their abandonment of the real world.

Moreover, the internet is largely populated by the younger generation. and this current generation is the mnost self centered, self referential, self important group that has ever walked the earth. What hapoens to them, is said about them, touches them is more important than anything else.

They are also the single biggest bunch of whiners that have ever lived. I actually had someone tell me that being verbally picked on in school was worse than being black in the Jim Crow south.


Frankly, I think that no one with anything like reasonable mental stability and even a modicum of character should give a damn about who "friends" them, reads or doesn't read their journal, likes or dislikes them.

Friends or ??

[andysocial]

I've "known" a lot of folks on LJ over the past 3+ years I've been using it, and I'd not call any of them a friend in real life. Not that I don't think they could be, but they are not now. I visited Stacy a couple times when I was traveling for work, and we had long conversations over dinner. We're still not friends. Friendly, sure; but "friends" is a word with a lot of meaning to people.

It seems that a lot of folks get wrapped around the word "friend" instead of delving into what it actually means in the context of LJ. Maybe they're just dim (rhetorical).

[gullsgirl.livejournal.com]

THANK YOU! I couldnt figure the whole thing out. I thought I was missing something LOL

[andysocial]

The phrase "tempest in a teapot" comes to mind quite readily, in my mind. :-)

[andysocial]

It's just that - an illusion. You can ban people whether they put you on their friends list or not. And one should not feel shy about banning people, and turning off anonymous commenting, and logging IP addresses, and screening non "friend" comments. All those things are already in place, and they make it a moot point whether someone lists you as their friend.

So, who is your lesbian lover then? :-)