musings on the meta
Oct. 15th, 2006 05:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_siobhanI've been having an onging discussion with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
the_axel over the last few weeks about the design of LJ and how I think it often serves to encourage really bad behaviour. Or maybe "encourage" is the wrong word. I think it creates a climate where certain kinds of bad behaviour are really easy to do and so people tend to stumble into them without maybe even realizing what they are doing.
If I understood the debate correctly (it usually happens over several beers) Axel's stance is that it's not the fault of the tool when somebody uses it badly. Whereas I think that by configuring tools in a certain way, you encourage certain kinds of use. Kind of a "if the only tool you have is a hammer, pretty soon every problem starts to look like a nail" kind of situation.
And I think LJ is a particular kind of hammer.
I've seen friends behave in ways that made me squirm with embarrassment for them, at how high-school and immature they were being. And I know they are doing it because they think they can't be seen, that invisibility makes it ok or at the very least harmless. I've seen people manipulate the facts or just flat-out lie to make themselves look like the victim and the good-guy. And I knew that they were doing it because it's really easy to get stroked and have people outraged on their behalf if they bend the facts just a little bit.
There are entire communities who exist solely as a forum for people to be assholes. And the people who post there encourage and applaud each other for their assholishness until everybody starts to think that such behaviour is normal and acceptable. And then they start tracking it out into the rest of their interactions with the world like dogshit on a sneaker. The entire![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
childfree community is a prime example of that particular flavour of bullshit.
And it's not that I think that people don't do shitty things in person, or through other types of communication. It's the LJ seems to be ideally suited for that particular kind of nonsense, with all the filters that let me choose who reads what I write. Or I could just slag people off in public and ban them from being able to defend themselves. And it's tempting sometimes. I hate that shit, it makes me break out in rants and still sometimes it's tempting when something has happened that has pissed me off. I could do it by email but it's so much more effort that it just doesn't occur to me. On LJ it's just a point-and-click away.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not on a LJ suxOrs kick and I'm not about to delete mine. I love the fact that I can have a little rantlet like this and get discussion and feedback from all kinds of people. But I'm occasionally tempted to leave LJ for some other kind of blog format, just because I don't like how high-school it can be at times.
And calling the reading lists "friends"? Dumbest idea ever.
the_axel over the last few weeks about the design of LJ and how I think it often serves to encourage really bad behaviour. Or maybe "encourage" is the wrong word. I think it creates a climate where certain kinds of bad behaviour are really easy to do and so people tend to stumble into them without maybe even realizing what they are doing. If I understood the debate correctly (it usually happens over several beers) Axel's stance is that it's not the fault of the tool when somebody uses it badly. Whereas I think that by configuring tools in a certain way, you encourage certain kinds of use. Kind of a "if the only tool you have is a hammer, pretty soon every problem starts to look like a nail" kind of situation.
And I think LJ is a particular kind of hammer.
I've seen friends behave in ways that made me squirm with embarrassment for them, at how high-school and immature they were being. And I know they are doing it because they think they can't be seen, that invisibility makes it ok or at the very least harmless. I've seen people manipulate the facts or just flat-out lie to make themselves look like the victim and the good-guy. And I knew that they were doing it because it's really easy to get stroked and have people outraged on their behalf if they bend the facts just a little bit.
There are entire communities who exist solely as a forum for people to be assholes. And the people who post there encourage and applaud each other for their assholishness until everybody starts to think that such behaviour is normal and acceptable. And then they start tracking it out into the rest of their interactions with the world like dogshit on a sneaker. The entire
childfree community is a prime example of that particular flavour of bullshit.And it's not that I think that people don't do shitty things in person, or through other types of communication. It's the LJ seems to be ideally suited for that particular kind of nonsense, with all the filters that let me choose who reads what I write. Or I could just slag people off in public and ban them from being able to defend themselves. And it's tempting sometimes. I hate that shit, it makes me break out in rants and still sometimes it's tempting when something has happened that has pissed me off. I could do it by email but it's so much more effort that it just doesn't occur to me. On LJ it's just a point-and-click away.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not on a LJ suxOrs kick and I'm not about to delete mine. I love the fact that I can have a little rantlet like this and get discussion and feedback from all kinds of people. But I'm occasionally tempted to leave LJ for some other kind of blog format, just because I don't like how high-school it can be at times.
And calling the reading lists "friends"? Dumbest idea ever.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-16 02:47 am (UTC)I think Ryan's got a bit of a point about USENET. There's *always* perennial victims, and *always* shitstirrers with long spoons ready to feed the victims. If anything EL JAY attracts them because the barrier to entry's a lot lower. When USENET was king, someone participating had to be 'leet enough to have net access, and at least a modicum of brains to set up a news reader. And, there was a least the likelyhood that they'd get to hear that USENET was a place of subtle humour, rapier wit, and some of the most disgusting ideas imaginable. Plus, people were all over the world. If you weren't on a newsgroup that specifically focused on a geographic region, odds are the people you were talking with were hundreds if not thousands of miles away. So local stuff didn't really hit a newsgroup and newsgroup infighting seldom hit the real world.
In a sense, I suppose, EL JAY is the anti-Convergence. Instead of getting a bunch of distant people together for a grand weekend of festivity, it takes the day-to-day festivity and adds all the elements necessary for distant misinterpretation.