LJ 18th anniversary

[davidn]

#mylivejournal #lj18 #happybirthday

Thanks, Livejournal. You've helped me record a truly incredible stretch of my life, from unsurely feeling my way into adulthood in university, through graduation, marriage, moving to America, becoming a huge furry, and a voice actor for pigeons on the Internet, and other madness like that - up to buying our own single-family home and seriously, actually having a baby. It's an incredible record of fourteen years (started on April the 30th in 2003) - but I fell out of using it for the last couple of those, largely due to nobody really caring about reading anything I had to say any more.

And in this insane time, we have to take stands wherever we can, small actions to make ourselves feel we can at least have a tiny effect on the course of what's happening when we might come to harm. Therefore, everything from here on will be posted on my equivalent at Dreamwidth instead. I'll work on switching my site over to using Dreamwidth's API - and hopefully will find a reason to write again some time.

Comments

[kjorteo]

It's really almost bittersweet that they timed that LJ 18th Anniversary infographic thing so perfectly with the exodus, so now it's easy and convenient to make posts like this, looking back at how long you've been with LiveJournal at the same time you announce you're done. (I did the exact same thing, though mine was a bit more... protest-y, and included Zabivaka porn.)

I am finding myself tentatively encouraged by Dreamwidth's activity level so far. I myself am trying to post more (stealing xyzzysqrl's completed game report idea helps immensely) and I'm noticing some actual discussion happening with them a lot of the time. Yes, most of it is people like you or her whom I see on IM anyway, but having the space for specific topical post-related conversations instead of having it lost in the general chatter is nice. And I'm actually tempted to do an interest search for communities/users and see if I can branch out and expand my admittedly small circle, rather than giving up on it.

(Speaking of expanding your reading page, the developers are phenomenal, by the way--I suggest you watch dw_maintenance and the like both to give yourself some more content and just to be amazed that we're in such good hands now.)

All in all, it's kind of sad to conclude your time with a service that has been with you through that many years and developmental milestones in your life, but the future is surprisingly alive and exciting!

Anyway, welcome to here. :)

[davidn]

Yes, I honestly thought that I'd be on Livejournal forever - it kind of lost its gothy image and became "that thing nobody uses any more" even as early as... say, 2010, which was a vast improvement. But now, really nobody uses it any more - it seems a lot of effort to write something more than 140 characters when it's just going to be shouted into a void. For that reason I'm hoping to keep my end up as well and respond/at least show appreciation for people's thoughts!

Looking back at my journal, the first noticeable drop in activity was in April 2011 when I forcibly switched jobs into one where I was actually doing something for most of the day (understandably). Activity then fell again in September 2013 just after we'd been on a cruise without Internet for most of the time - my posting regularity was severely limited then but it was still going. It then slowly transformed into a place to announce new videos until it pretty much died in November 2014, rising from its grave briefly to deliver thoughts on King's Quest 3 before it finally expired. Those posts got the most comments and interaction I'd seen in a very, very long time. Perhaps I should do the same with IV - or the Colonel's Bequest :)

[kjorteo]

I've resorted to using LiveJournal Dreamwidth to write the long-form entry in the format I'm familiar with with no horrible character limits or UI reblogging issues and then linking to it on the service people actually use, which actually seems to work rather well for me. But yes, by all means, let's get some comments and community going--even if the "community" is just a circle of you and me and a couple other close friends all watching and commenting on each other's entries, even that goes a surprisingly long way toward making me feel good about bothering to write them.

I don't think I have a single life even to explain the drop-off on my end the way you do on yours--I just sort of had less to say over the years. The combination of life events that do leave me with some interesting developments to talk about (gender stuff, mostly) and stealing xyzzysqrl's game reports idea has helped immensely for getting me back into the habit of writing again, though!

I, of course, would love to see more play-throughs from you--your Hugo 2 run was what inspired my Amon Ra project, after all. Hopefully I haven't gone too soft for your style since then. :)

[premchaia_pre4]

It feels strange posting this under a soon-to-be-former name, but: hi!

[davidn]

Hi there, good to see you around again :) A new name so soon?

[premchaia_pre4]

Ah, you didn't know. Which points right to it, really.

Change of government. It's a shame the last of us used up such a nice-sounding name on something so transient before disintegrating in flames, but whatever.

It turns out the part where she didn't immediately pick a new presentation name once she was initialized played a major role in various people not realizing the ways they were refusing to recognize her for who she was, then hiding all the social integration behind their backs and utterly banjaxing her development with cardboard relationships and cowardice. Everything she was trying to recover by picking this name is now ash. So let's not make that mistake this time around.

So, uh, how've things been for you? o..o

[premchaia_pre4]

Oh! Did you just reimport all of these? That would explain why it wasn't in my reading feed. You might want to post a heads-up in case people who were following you here don't know that they've missed things…

[davidn]

Thank you! Everyone will have likely seen them already as they're mostly very old LJ entries.