Beyond Selidor

1. I spent much of yesterday morning sitting in my favourite cafe drinking coffee, writing poetry, drawing and writing in my paper diary. Apart from making me a complete cliche of a humanities student, it reminded me how little I write in my paper diaries these days. Most of the reason for that is that so much of the part of me that is about words and thoughts takes place online. Whereas before, when I had thoughts I would write about them in my diary, I now take them to my blogs. I think this signifies, to a certain extent, an openness that I did not have when I began writing diaries. This openness was hard-won. I used to be a very untrusting person; I didn't trust the people around me to understand my feelings or to react in the right way when I shared them. I credit the internet and the people I've met online with this transformation, whose most important effect has been that I trust other people (both on- and offline) with my feelings, and that I trust myself enough to not collapse when someone misinterprets my meaning or intent when I reveal something of my interior life.

2. Someone on Twitter posted a link to this article about Google+ and it took me while to figure out why I found it extremely irritating. Then I realised it was the smug Twitter evangelising. Don't get me wrong: I love Twitter. But I love Livejournal, and I love Last.fm and I love my forums and I love Youtube and I even love Facebook, and I don't think using one or the other makes me inherently superior. Certain types of sites/social media will suit different people better; I like Livejournal (as I would probably like LJ-clones such as Dreamwidth or Insane Journal) the best because it suits me best for my own online activities and persona. I'm all about the words, reading and writing them. Livejournal's friends page function is perfect for me, as it's the best way to present all the words of others that I want to read, and obviously, being a blogging platform, its purpose is to give me the ability to post my own words online.

But other platforms might suit other people better. I imagine Tumblr really appeals to people who are into picspams and graphics, while Goodreads and Last.fm work really well for people who want to catalogue their reading or listening libraries and connect with people who share their tastes and interests. Evangelists for any type of site or social media forget that the internet is simply a tool, and its value lies in what its users make of it. And that's a matter of personal preference, intention and ability.

3. This led me to think about my opinion of Tumblr. I've had a Tumblr for about a year now, and I post really rarely. I really tried hard to avoid being one of those cane-waving 'get off my lawn' types about it, because I spent so much time defending Twitter to various real-life friends and their scorn ('it's just everyone shouting Facebook statuses at one another!') really irritated me. And yet...every time I went onto my Tumblr dashboard, I'd start to feel anxious and headachey. Everyone just posted too quickly, although I think graphics are pretty, I've never found them as appealling as words, some people just seemed to use their Tumblrs as a sort of extended IM session with artwork and cutesy hashtags, and after about five minutes I'd feel stressed because there seemed like this pressure to be constantly posting and reblogging.

So then I'd avoid Tumblr for another month before giving it another chance. I'd almost got to the point of accepting that it just wasn't for me, and then I tried something different. Instead of viewing the Tumblrs I followed through my dashboard, I switched to reading through the new posts on the few individual Tumblrs that actually interested me. Voila! It worked! No anxiety, no sense of pressure, and no irritation. I'm glad I didn't give up on Tumblr, because my experiences prove my point at 2 that if you want to enjoy a particular form of social media, you need to find a way to use it that works for you.

4. This then sent me spiralling back to point 1. While I'm really happy at the openness and trust that blogging has given me, it's also had one negative effect, which is that I'm pretty much incapable of thinking about anything privately. If I have thoughts or feelings, they need to be shared. But there are a lot of things I've been thinking about recently for which there is literally no place online where it would be appropriate to share them. This is because although I am happy for (and indeed want) certain people to know about these issues, there are others with whom I'd be really uncomfortable sharing them. Short of endlessly PMing thelxiepia or lucubratae (my go-to counsellors and confessionals), I don't really have anywhere to go. Maybe I should revive my paper diaries.

5. Finally, I had thoughts about shipping issues in Pagan's Daughter. But since no one my flist has even read the book, let alone obsessed over the Pagan Chronicles series for 16 years like me, I thought pagansfandom was a better place to share them. Count yourselves lucky.

...I will not be cross-posting my LJ or comments to Facebook or Twitter, and I will never cross-post anyone else's comments on Facebook or Twitter.

I have quite a large online footprint: I have two Wordpress blogs, I blog under my own name for the ABC Book Show and for my university department, I am an active member of two forums, I have a Facebook account, a Twitter account, a Tumblr, a Goodreads account, a Last.fm account and a series of non-LJ blogs which I follow and comment upon. I also have this LJ, which is mostly public.

While the readership of all these things overlaps in various ways (a lot of my forum friends are on LJ and Twitter, and are my friends on Facebook), I view them as distinct yet related parts of my online identity. I don't assume that because someone reads this blog, they want to follow my Tumblr; I don't expect that my Facebook friends want to participate in my books forums. I give them the opportunity to do so if they wish: there are links to my Wordpress blog on LJ, Facebook, Tumblr, the forums and Twitter, I have a Twitter feed on Wordpress and a Last.fm feed on LJ. I post links to my other blogs on LJ. If people want to click, they can do so.

I use the internet in a way that works for me and my circumstances. Everyone has different circumstances, and people should be free to use the internet in a way that suits them. Most importantly, they should be free to choose and maintain a level of privacy and security that suits them. LJ's latest move in enabling cross-posting to Twitter and Facebook is a threat to that freedom.

I will never cross-post other people's comments to Twitter or Facebook, in case any of you were worried I might do that.

Instead of writing a book review, I'm link-hopping.

I read this interview in today's Guardian. It's an interview with A-Ha (you know, the guys who got a new lease of life with the literal video version of 'Take On Me') and is hilarious. The interview wanders into Spinal Tap territory on several occasions (highlights include the band members arguing about the merits of various translations of Kierkegaard). I wish all newspaper interviews could be that good!

Yesterday Felicia Day posted this link on Twitter. (Come on, you know you want to!) It's photoshopped images of 23 film plots that could've been solved in seconds. Great stuff.

Finally, ellevee posted some great Star Trek (new!trek) macros. They use 10 Things I Hate About You quotes, so they're clearly reaching stratospheric levels of awesome.

( Macros behind the cut )

I think she originally found them on ontd_startrek.

Now I'm off to read Annabel Crabb tweet Question Time. That is as geeky as it sounds, but nowhere near as boring. Annabel is a family friend, and one of the best, and funniest political journalists in Australia. Her tweets are like Australian politics in a bottle, and a joy to read. If you're not following her yet, you should.

I'd like to thank all the uploaders, without whom I'd never have finished this dissertation. *tear*

I'VE FINISHED!!!! I printed the whole thing up at 10am, and the departmental secretary bound it for me, and I handed it in, and it's done, done, done! I spent the whole day wanting to dance in the rain, with random strangers, along the cobblestone streets. You'll be pleased to know I restrained myself.

I promised myself a lot of things after I'd written my dissertation, and I've already gone and got the first of them, a Twitter account. You should all add me, because I am awesome (also, at the moment I only have two followers, which is nowhere near enough to encompass my internet attention-whoring). But yay! Now I can stalk Neil Gaiman and Cory Doctorow and John Scalzi and all those cool people!

In other news, Mimi and I were talking on Facebook today, and I realised how desperately I missed her. I've spoken to her on Skype I think twice since 26th September, 2008, which is incredible for me. But talking to her today on Facebook made me realise how amazing it is to have a sibling (well, a sibling with whom you get on quite well. I imagine if you hated your sibling it would be different). There's really nothing else quite like it. You can have these conversations so full of internal references that they are incomprehensible to outsiders. Such as the one we were having today:

( You can't understand us because we are THAT awesome )

I imagine that makes sense to exactly two people in the whole world, and that's how I like it. I'd also like to point out that we were both completely sober at the time.