01:50 PM
Internet· Observatorium· Rants & Whines Who is that blob and why should I care?

A continuation of yesterday's rant on LiveJournals...

All those icons on the LJ pages and especially the comments pages is really distracting, half the time, I'm trying to figure out who the heck is in the icon cause it's big enough to notice but not big enough to really make out anything and half the time it's some original or anime character that I wouldn't know anyway. Oh yeah, what was that you were saying?

Which is the point of the LJ or blog, right? To talk? But there's all this gunk all over and I can't get to the words.

LJ starts off with a black mark from me anyway because you have to *know* someone, you have toget a code to get in and that kind of exclusivity on the net, which is all about inclusiveness, about being open and available to all, just really bugs the hell out of me. It's not that I can't get a code, I've had various opportunities to get one but I refuse, I don't care if everyone in the world gets an LJ and makes everything private, I refuse, it reminds me of all the worst things of high schools, the cliques and so on. I refuse to perpetuate that kind of idea, that kind of segregation, of mean-spiritedness, of "I'm in and you're out, nyah-nyah-nyah". And it is perpetuated at LJ, thru the codes and the "friends" list and it matters to people if they're on someone's friends list and if they're taken off, they get all these hurt feelings. Why do people deliberately do this? This is high school junk, judging ourselves as good or worthless based on whose friends list we're on. It was dumb back then and it's even dumber now when we're mostly older and should know better.

And then there's the really boring templates, so many of the sites are exactly the same, slightly different colors but all the same bland layout. Apparently you can't change the template without upgrading to the pay version of LJ so it's all this conformity thing like the Pep Squad uniforms. Yeesh.

I'm just generally grumpy today, so you should just generally never mind me. The weather sucks, stupid stuff from the gulf chock full of humidity has kept us in a sauna and pushed that promised cool front to the north and so it's just icky. And this kind of weather really affects me, especially since I hold my breath all summer and try not to bitch too much and wait for the fall and it's freaking October and there's no fucking fall.

So never mind me.