![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
There’s a few things that can happen now. The unjustly deleted journals will be restored, or they won’t. Fandom at large will accept LJ’s inevitable official statement, or it won’t. Journalfen will open its registration long enough to take advantage of the confused and milling fans, or it won’t.
It doesn’t matter. Whichever way it goes, in year or so from now we’ll be gone from Livejournal.
See, by nature, we fans are clever but cagey creatures. Sure, fandom’s lost personal journals and longstanding communities, but Livejournal has lost our trust. We’re not going to stick around where we suddenly have to worry about someone watching us, keeping us in line, making sure we colour by the numbers... and LJ’s never ever going to convince us that it is a safe place again ever.
It’s over. We’ve lost LJ. Oh, sure, those under more direct attack will lock their posts and delete their interests and back up their comments and weather this perfect storm. We’ll be here on the other side – fandom’s still got good months left in the way things are, after all, and maybe a couple not-so-good months, where stragglers poke forlornly at abandoned corners of Livejournal.com and wonder why everything feels so lonely.
And mostly? I’m okay with this.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m pissed off. A lot of undeserving people have been hurt, losing work, friends, pieces of their identity without warning or recourse.
But we were always going to lose Livejournal. It has never been truly ideal for our purposes. It’s too scattered and too hard to search and almost impossible to filter, and the half-life of a work is too short to really pay back any amount of effort invested. It’s good at building community, yes... but we already have a community. We’re trying to fit a culture onto here, map our values and monuments onto LJ’s spider-thin network maps.
LJ has changed how fandom works – for the most part, for the better! We interact as much more complete people now – just like yahoo groups did, and bboards, and LISTSERV, and the usenet. Just like we owe so much of who we are, collectively, to the zines a majority of us have never actually held.
And just like everywhere else we have been, we’ll never completely, entirely, leave it behind.
I’ve made my home on Livejournal.com longer than I’ve lived in any wood and plaster RL building; I’m sure I won’t leave without hesitation, but I’m just as sure that I will, eventually, leave. I don’t know where we’ll end up – maybe![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
astolat’s archive will become the place we settle, maybe not – but I know that wherever we go, we’ll become something more amazing. We’ll take all the old pieces and all the new pieces and turn them into something fantastic.
Because that’s who we are.
It doesn’t matter. Whichever way it goes, in year or so from now we’ll be gone from Livejournal.
See, by nature, we fans are clever but cagey creatures. Sure, fandom’s lost personal journals and longstanding communities, but Livejournal has lost our trust. We’re not going to stick around where we suddenly have to worry about someone watching us, keeping us in line, making sure we colour by the numbers... and LJ’s never ever going to convince us that it is a safe place again ever.
It’s over. We’ve lost LJ. Oh, sure, those under more direct attack will lock their posts and delete their interests and back up their comments and weather this perfect storm. We’ll be here on the other side – fandom’s still got good months left in the way things are, after all, and maybe a couple not-so-good months, where stragglers poke forlornly at abandoned corners of Livejournal.com and wonder why everything feels so lonely.
And mostly? I’m okay with this.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m pissed off. A lot of undeserving people have been hurt, losing work, friends, pieces of their identity without warning or recourse.
But we were always going to lose Livejournal. It has never been truly ideal for our purposes. It’s too scattered and too hard to search and almost impossible to filter, and the half-life of a work is too short to really pay back any amount of effort invested. It’s good at building community, yes... but we already have a community. We’re trying to fit a culture onto here, map our values and monuments onto LJ’s spider-thin network maps.
LJ has changed how fandom works – for the most part, for the better! We interact as much more complete people now – just like yahoo groups did, and bboards, and LISTSERV, and the usenet. Just like we owe so much of who we are, collectively, to the zines a majority of us have never actually held.
And just like everywhere else we have been, we’ll never completely, entirely, leave it behind.
I’ve made my home on Livejournal.com longer than I’ve lived in any wood and plaster RL building; I’m sure I won’t leave without hesitation, but I’m just as sure that I will, eventually, leave. I don’t know where we’ll end up – maybe
astolat’s archive will become the place we settle, maybe not – but I know that wherever we go, we’ll become something more amazing. We’ll take all the old pieces and all the new pieces and turn them into something fantastic. Because that’s who we are.
