Aimless Ramblings

About once a year, sometimes for a month, occasionally for longer, I would take an LJ hiatus. It could've been prompted by various things--the desire to live in "Real Life" more fully, a REALLY boring stretch with nothing to write about, the flourishing of my anti-social flower garden--but it always ended. This time, I'm not so sure it will!

For me, LJ was always a place of refuge. A place where I could write about and freely discuss anything under the sun. Even though its name clearly announced, "Hello, journaling site!" those interactions with other users were frequently the most enjoyable part of posting my ramblings here. Add to that the fact that I never had to worry about accessibility or ease of use, and LJ was just about as ideal as an online hangout could be.

I've been an LJ member since 2004, and over those years I've heard all sorts of Doomsday prognostications from various folks. "LJ's gonna crash and eat all your entries," or "They're gonna start making you pay for everything," or "Beware, the Russians are coming!" By and large though, these LJ Cassandras were proven wrong. True, LJ would occasionally eat an entry or reply I was scribbling away at, but honestly, who could begrudge Frank a periodic snack? Yes, you had to pay in order to get stuff like a gazillion pictures or polls posted to your entries, but you could very easily get along without any of those frills. The Russians? Well, okay, I guess the Doomsday folks ended up being right about that one.

Sing it with me kids, In-sta-bil-ity! By my reckoning, that was the first really awful LJ-FLAW! You never knew just when it'd hit, or how long it'd last, but one thing was certain, it'd ruin your day if you had ANYTHING you wanted to do on the site. Enraged, the Edgar Cayce wannabes predicted a imminent exodus of every single user to Dreamwidth , or FB, or some other place, and yes, some people did precisely that. For me though, I was still happy enough, albeit occasionally frustrated, in my little corner of the Internet.

So, have I foreshadowed enough for everyone?

Initially, the last straw didn't look so bad. The LJ powers announced that they were going to introduce some site-wide style changes. Well Okay, I lie, they weren't nearly so straight forward as all that, but once they began babbling about making our friends pages look more like an FB feed, the writing was on the wall. Like I said though, the Friends Page, excuse me, Friends Feed, didn't look so awful once I really started trying to use it. In some respects, it was actually better.

See, for a blind Internet browser, the biggest challenge is often the how of moving around the screen. The Friends Feed simplified this chore by marking the beginning text of each entry as an HTML heading. So, MTA could jump from one entry to another by simply pressing H. Nice, right? Well, sorta! As somebody once said, "Never under-estimate the power of human stupidity."

Marking the beginning of each entry as a heading was a truly splendid idea, but that wasn't what the LJ powers did. They marked the "beginning text" of each entry as a heading, meaning that insignificant information, like say the person who had actually posted it, was located above the heading. With this preface, you won't be surprised to learn that my procedure for reading an entry went something like press H, then scroll up, then press H, then read the entry. Or, I could switch it up a bit, press H, read the entry, and try and guess who the author was before scrolling up. (Yes, the depth of my boredom can sometimes be a very scary thing.)

Then, LJ rolled out the new profile page. Information that had once been well organized and easy to find suddenly wasn't anymore. True, it wasn't yet as scattered and nonsensical an interface as FB, but it was getting there.

And finally… *drum roll* The new journal page. For me, this was the heart of LJ, the place where my shit was posted, the place where people answered if they cared to, and the place where I could POST! A couple of weeks ago, I dropped in for a look, and it was all different!

Am I over-dramatizing? Imagine walking into your home one day, and finding that someone had moved around all the furniture, and even hidden some of your most prized possessions. Then imagine that a favorite restaurant, a hangout where all your friends loved to go and gossip had been remodeled, and the new decor was not to your taste. Finally, imagine that your house and this restaurant occasionally locked you out for no good reason. What would you do?

Although it pains me to say so, I think I'm done here! The original creators of LJ understood that journaling was, at its core, about writing. Unfortunately, the new owners don't seem to get that. Their focus appears to be on new page styles, new features no one appears to want or ask for, and, most importantly, how to share your entry on another real social media site. For the record, I never once logged into LJ because I wanted to post on Twitter or FB, and I didn't need LJ to become my RSS reader--I already had one of those, thanks muchly! I wanted my blog to be about writing and sharing what I've written with my friends, not about attempting to navigate a poorly designed and counter-intuitive webpage.

To the member of my Flist who nudged me in hope of getting a real update, I apologize! Hell, if it comes to that, I apologize to all of you! Many of you are already my FB friends, but to those who aren't, you're welcome to friend me there as well. (I can't say I post very often there, but it's where my family is, so I have to check in sometimes. *grin*)

When I told a close friend I was writing this entry, she asked if I would be blogging somewhere else. The answer is, I don't know. If or when I make that decision, I'll be sure and post it here however. Her other question was, "But you're going to keep writing, right?" LOL Yes, I'll keep doing that until they bury me!

Best wishes to you all!

Dan