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

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!