roadrunnertwice

From:

Shucks ... I'm a slave to nostalgia, always have been, and I'm disappointed that my group of #fret/GIA Livejournal friends all stopped posting (including me, so I'm definitely part of the problem). But you know, people grow out of old interests, get busy with adult life, with being wage slaves. Livejournal itself lost its popularity long ago, regardless of all that. And Dreamwidth doesn't seem to have taken off as hoped, partly because being an alternative to Livejournal no longer really mattered (an alternative to something people don't use anymore anyway?), and the call to arms a couple years ago for people to switch to Dreamwidth from LJ was confusing and off-putting. All of a sudden a bunch of your friends list mutinied, and asked everyone to come along or they wouldn't see their updates anymore, except you had to sign up for this new thing, remember a new password, blah. Livejournal itself instantly became less appealing, since people effectively lost big chunks of their friends lists. I have to wonder whether that whole episode did more damage than the other big thing around that time, which was the explosion of Facebook. Feeding your vanity was way easier there, and people just couldn't help themselves. Posting there is really frictionless since all it asks of you is tweet-like updates, and people can easily give you ego boosts (Like! Like! Like!), whereas LJ was all about big thoughtful posts, and others couldn't stroke your ego as easily with comments, because, you know, tl;dr. Which brings us back to the issue of busy adult lives, etc etc. A whole lot of things hitting at once, perfect storm.

Haha Teen Nick. I actually didn't dig through your site, just glanced at the CC section. And all I remembered of the URL were two random words, which I plugged into Google, which worked. Just luck.

Do people really outgrow being eager to please and needing reassurance? I sure as hell haven't.