Complaint

[poliphilo]

I've been on a drive to add more friends.

Here's a complaint: Too many American kiddies seem to think it's witty/ironic/Pythonesque to pretend they're blogging from some foreign country. I think, au contraire, that it's silly/disrespectful/patronising. And it makes a nonsense of LJ's grouping of bloggers by region. If I want to find a friend in Bangladesh I don't want to have to wade through half a dozen American high school teenies first. Listen up, guys- overseas isn't intrinsically funny and what you're doing is a dilute form of cultural imperialism.

Comments

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

I'm more amazed that people bother to waste their time in such a way! Give them more homework, I say!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Lots more homework!

[paroxysma.livejournal.com]

I have to protest that. I've never liked homework. Hated it in fact. Then again, I've never done what you are talking about.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's so long since I did any homework I can scarcely remember whether I liked it or not....

Pah, what am I talking about? NO-ONE ever liked homework!

[airstrip.livejournal.com]

I didn't know this happened.

I think I'll change my nation to Tanzania.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Agent provocateur!

[airstrip.livejournal.com]

On second thought, perhaps someplace more exotic is in order.... Saturn, perhaps, or Tahiti.

I could just mark it as a "territory."

[thewayupward.livejournal.com]

... but I'm actually a cheerleader from Ohio!! Can we still be friends???

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

And you've created this amazingly detailed fantasy life for yourself...

I'm in awe!

[ex-kharin447.livejournal.com]

I'm only disappointed that you have to choose from a list of countries. Bang goes my plan to enter 'Zembla' as country of origin.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Zembla- ahhh. Sooo romantic.

[red-girl-42.livejournal.com]

Yes but I hear the summers there are terrible.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Lots of mosquitoes...

Looking for friends

[methodius.livejournal.com]

When I go looking for friends I usually look at some of my interests and see who shares them. But this doesn't always work. I fidn my only interests that coincide with yours are Alan Garner and Bob Dylan. So How did I find you? It must have been a comment you made in a mutual friend's journal that cought my fancy, and I linked to your journal because I found it interesting.

The problem is that many of my LJ friends, though they share a lot of similar interests to me, rarely write much about their interests, but only about themselves. I don't think it's that I expect them to be detached observers, avoiding the first person in their writings, but rather the most interesting journaling is when people are looking outward, rather than inward, observing, commenting on and enjoying or criticising the world around them. I'm as introverted as hell, but you can have too much of a good thing.

looking outwards

[seraphimsigrist.livejournal.com]

Graham Greene said compassion is an
adult virtue, perhaps it goes with looking
outwards?

*Tony if getting this and thinking eh? it
is a response to metnodius note about the
limited pleasures of reading teenage angst etc.

Re: looking outwards

[methodius.livejournal.com]

I can even feel compassion for teenage angst, or try to, but there's not much I can do about it.

Re: Looking for friends

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think the link was probably seraphimsigrist.

I'm looking for three things in LJs I befriend:

1. Good writing (or artwork)

2. Information about lives rather different from my own.

3. Opinions (on topics that interest me) with which I can engage.

Re: Looking for friends

[methodius.livejournal.com]

And I think that's more or less what I'm looking for too, though for the last one I prefer newsgroups or mailing lists for prolonged exchanges.

Re: Looking for friends

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I've never gone for newsgroups. An oversight really, rather than a matter of conscious choice.

Re: Looking for friends

[methodius.livejournal.com]

The advantage of them is that discussions can go on for longer, if they need to, and one can have many different points of view. In LJ a post disappears from the radar after a couple of days, and then one has to go back looking for it.

On the other hand, newsgroups are open to all, and on some topics one finds trolls and spammers and flamers so that the signal/noise ratio suffers.

Re: Looking for friends

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I prefer the idea of talking one to one. I belong to the LJ Feminist comunity, but rarely join in; people there are so fierce!

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I've acquired most of my LiveJournal friends from my friends' friends list. Either that or I knew them from elsewhere first. (Mostly the Usenet group rec.arts.sf.composition)

I have never had any luck looking under interests or regions.

And I must admit that I mostly write extraordinarily dull stuff about me. *g* But to be honest that's what I like in other people's journals. There are plenty of professional journalists writing about current affairs far better than most bloggers.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

But you can't talk back at professional journalists.:)

[solar-diablo.livejournal.com]

I wasn't aware this sort of thing went on, but I guess it isn't surprising. Can't see the entertainment value in it, though. My life here in the States is surreal enough, thank you very much. I doubt pretending to blog from Istanbul would improve it.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's not that these people keep up the pretence. They're not taking on secondary personae or anything interesting like that. It's just that they think it would be amusing to have Bhutan or Myanmar on their info page.

[red-girl-42.livejournal.com]

Then that's even stupider.

I can see there being something amusing about creating a whole other persona and trying to keep up with it on LJ. But why lie about something if you're not going to go all the way with it?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, these people are indulging in a one-off joke; That's all.

I'm full of admiration for those who use LJ to sustain a proper, fully-rounded, fictional persona.

[sovay]

I hadn't even realized people did that. How truly bizarre. The only foreign-correspondent friend I have (schreibergasse, I'm damn sure he's in Konstanz.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I see LJ as- potentially- a window on the world.

[sovay]

I meant falsifying one's country of origin; that makes no sense to me. Is it supposed to be clever, or does it make you exotic and then your ratings go up, because nobody wants to read about a lifestyle they recognize, but everyone wants to hear about Bangladesh?

I see LJ as- potentially- a window on the world.

You may want to read schreibergasse, then. He's my current favorite ethnographer since Herodotos, and probably more accurate.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It would only make sense if you followed through, but these guys are just indulging in a one-off joke. The blog purports to be coming from Mongolia, but it's full of the usual stuff about what happened down the mall.

Thanks for the tip. I shall befriend schreibergasse forthwith.

[ibid.livejournal.com]

Oooh an ethnographer! Great (says the wannabe anthropologist)

[sina-says.livejournal.com]

in the best interest of honesty: i reallly am a mildly neurotic 27 year old from the backwoods of north central west virginia, usa.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

When I first started out on LJ I thought about keeping everything about myself- age, gender etc- a mystery, but I soon decided that this was both pretentious and boring.

[zephyrcrow.livejournal.com]

I'm actually blogging from... inside your house...

(cute ominous music)

[zephyrcrow.livejournal.com]

Haha! Cue, I mean.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to imagine what cute, ominous music would sound like.

The theme from the Twilight Zone, perhaps?

[red-girl-42.livejournal.com]

No no! Cute was better. :-)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Noooooo!

[kutsuwamushi.livejournal.com]

I used to pretend to be blogging from an obscure Uranian moon. Then I decided that the truth (Missouri, yah!) is much weirder.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

When I think of Missouri, I think of Jesse James.

[kutsuwamushi.livejournal.com]

I always think of the sky, for some reason. The really really weird sky.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Sounds good.

I love big skies.

[ibid.livejournal.com]

I've had that self same problem. Maybe look at community pages and see if there are people from wherever.

My friend hypermobility is currently writing about her trip to the Sudan which is fascinating.

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid I list my geographical location as 'Neutral Zone' because it sounds cool. I should change that.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's OK. It's not like pretending you're living in Botswana.