Thoughts on "LJ Nostalgia"

[alias_sqbr]

From a twitter conversation with Ravenari/Pia since it seemed relevant to here.

So Pia was complaining about a thing I also find annoying: people saying they want "something like lj" when dreamwidth is right here. But I realised while I was replying to them that what a lot of people actually seem to want is livejournal as they experienced it ten years ago.

The issue isn't just that lj was more active at it's height than dreamwidth is now, though that is absolutely part of it. I mean I have plenty of people to follow on dreamwidth, and get a moderate amount of comments. But it's mostly new friends I made on dreamwidth, and I post the sort of stuff that will get strangers with similar tastes to follow me. Most people on social media are more passive consumers, which makes it harder to make friends, especially since dreamwidth tends to lack the sort of active communities livejournal had where you can just show up and say I LOVE [INTEREST] and find people to squee with.

But the issue is also that dreamwidth can't provide a, say, 35 year old fan in 2018 with the experience of being 25 in 2008, with the friends and emotions they had then. Especially not when those experiences are being overlaid with a rosy glow of nostalgia. Nothing can provide that, which I also think fuels some of the more bitter anti-tumblr rants from older fans (but not all. Tumblr is genuinely pretty awful in a lot of ways) Being an older fan/blogger can be great, but it's not the same as being a young one, especially for people with full time jobs.

There's also the fact that a lot of people who were happy enough with lj back when it was new and shiny have gotten used to the sort of easy image and post creation and sharing offered by tumblr etc, and would now feel frustrated on dreamwidth. Those people will genuinely be happier on something like Imzy or Pillowfort that combines lj-clone features with tumblr-esque image posting and reblogging. Well, if any of those sites...lasted...(MAYBE PILLOWFORT WILL BE THE ONE. YOU NEVER KNOW)

All that said: if you genuinely do just want something like livejournal but without as many Issues, dreamwidth is pretty great!

EDIT: A factor I didn't think of but that a few people have mentioned is how much more fractured social media is now, everyone's stretched thin over multiple sites and so no one site gets the same focus.

Comments

[schneefink]

Yeah, I think the many active comms are a huge part of what people miss, and DW doesn't have those.

[alias_sqbr]

Yeah, sadly :(

[winterbird]

I definitely think active comms is a huge problem, Dreamwidth lagging behind (I think for several years) on porting communities meant a lot of RPers and stuff refused to leave in the first place, or had to go back and forth between sites, or had to abandon communities or try and restart them from scratch knowing that they had maybe 20% of their previous membership (if that)).

For me though, the people I know who complain the most about it were never active in communities. So then I think the issue is pretty solely nostalgia, and also probably missing...idk, thoughtful comments? Comment threads? I'm guessing. That's what I miss the most about LJ. But I also miss like...having more energy and having less places for that energy to go, so I had more time to be self-indulgent about blogging.

BUT, then I also think that if I got off Twitter and Facebook (and spent less time on Tumblr), I *would* have more time for blogging on Dreamwidth, and that's a factor too. Time management between social media now vs. like, time management then when people didn't have Twitter and Facebook wasn't hugely used and Instagram didn't exist or Snapchat or even Tumblr. It was possible to devote a lot more time to like, way less social media, and make it a richer place by association maybe?

There's also the fact that a lot of people who were happy enough with lj back when it was new and shiny have gotten used to the sort of easy image and post creation and sharing offered by tumblr etc, and would now feel frustrated on dreamwidth.

I feel frustrated by it too. Having to hard-code in photos for photo posts here is something that takes way more effort than the quick upload option on Tumblr, or uploading multiple photos on Instagram, or Twitter, or Facebook.

And maybe the thing I'm also complaining about is also just...the difference in attention and devotion to a site when you're spread between like, idk 5-10 social media sites vs. 1-3. When even if you're not active on those platforms, you may be reading them or following friends on them - like the people who only post on Twitter, or Instagram, or Facebook, or (insert something here). I don't have the energy to post on all those platforms, but I do visit them all to keep in touch with like, the equivalent of about 6 or 7 friendslists, and some of them are very outrage-inducing friendslists with random content that is invasive or intrusive or harmful.

So even I no longer have the energy to spend on places like Dreamwidth like I used to, even though they're quieter, gentler, more curated, and safer, and promise - generally - more engaged discussion than just about anywhere else (not exclusively though).

In that sense I miss LJ too.

Anyway this is a long incoherent rambling which is basically like 'yes I agree also the internet is harder than it used to be and maybe I need to stop getting mad at other people and just think about how I use social media' lol. <3

[bunny_m]

Excellent comment is excellent.

*applauds*

[yalovetz]

Yes, I very much agree with this. For me it's not about nostalgia for an earlier time in life, it's about wishing my social group wasn't so distributed across different platforms and finding it hard to put the time and energy into keeping up with everyone across the myriad of different social services (or none) they now choose to use, as compared to the days of LJ when everyone in my social group was neatly concentrated on one platform.

I also find that because of this distribution and the nature of the new platforms, the quality of discourse has waned. When everyone was concentrated on a platform that valued long form text discourse with threaded comments, there was a lot of in depth discussion. Now that things are distributed, everyone is time poor trying to keep up, and several of those platforms are ones that were built around short form text and/or images, it feels a lot harder to engage in in-depth discussion, as it's harder to get and keep people's attention in conversation.

[alias_sqbr]

Yeah that's a good point a few people have made and that I didn't mention goes off to edit post

[alias_sqbr]

Yeah the spread out nature of social media is something that didn't occur to me when I wrote this post but you're absolutely right, it has had a significant effect.

[ironed_orchid]

dreamwidth can't provide a, say, 35 year old fan in 2018 with the experience of being 25 in 2008, with the friends and emotions they had then. Especially not when those experiences are being overlaid with a rosy glow of nostalgia. Nothing can provide that

THIS IS 100% TRUE!

And it pisses me off in lots of ways when people complain that DW is too quiet, or too fannish, or whatever. But then I remember what it felt like to be on LJ in 2005, I get where that complain is coming from. It's just because I don't think that is ever coming back, I can't help wishing people would move on.

[alias_sqbr]

Yeah. I mean I get sad about it myself sometimes, but the world is what it is!

[jesse_the_k]

Good points -- as oursin taught, "distance lends enchantment to the view."

[alias_sqbr]

Yes, very much so!

[deborah_judge]

Yeah, I completely get this. I do miss livejournal from ten years ago, but it's not really the platform I miss, it's the people. I've stayed in touch with some people from those days but many I haven't. But that isn't the platform's fault, really.

[alias_sqbr]

nods