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Been thinking about this on and off ever since I wrote my last entry, which is currently locked. The responses to it, two in particular, made me wonder - how do people read lj?
Object of judgment/Judgement of object
Occurs to me that many disagreements are not so much about differences in tastes or beliefs or even interests, but over the basic object being discussed. Or as Thomas Gilovich states in How We Know What Isn't So: " People assume there is but one objective reality which leads us to overlook the possibility that others don't just perceive things differently - they are responding to a very different situation or object entirely." What does he mean exactly?
I remember in college witnessing a hit and run accident. I was five feet from the accident, the closest of all the witnesses. I saw the man stop, get out of his car, I knelt by the victim, dropped my bag, lent my assistance, ran to get help, assuming the man who had clearly accidently hit her - would stay. When I returned to the scene - the man was gone, and she was surrounded by students. Now another student saw the same accident but from the library window behind me. That student saw the man hit the other student, then leave. He did not see him get out of the car or stop. Why? Didn't watch the whole thing perhaps? View was blocked. Different angle.
Years later I mention the hit and run to a friend, who remembers it as well, half way through a disagreement regarding what really happened, she said that she hadn't really witnessed the accident at all, she got it second-hand from the person who had been hit.
Another example, perhaps a better one at least regarding objective reality, was one used in class - where we were asked if we liked Italian films. What wasn't asked is which Italian films we'd seen. There is after all a huge difference between Fellini and Sergio Leone.
We make allowances for the fact that we may each view a situation differently or perceive something differently. We forget that we may in fact be looking at completely different objects. Or be viewing completely different situations. We assume it's the same, but it's not. We assume we are discussing the same thing, but we aren't. Livejournal is a perfect example. When we discuss livejournal or complain about the livejournal community - we assume that everyone is reading the same livejournal entries we are, looking at the same object and reading it at the same time, under the same circumstances. Perhaps even wanting the same thing from the experience that we want. After all the entries are on the computer screen, they are mostly available to everything, most of us have "friends" in common, and if we are say reading it at work during the day or late at night - isn't someone else? Or if we read all the journal entries on the flist, don't other's? Also reading lj is a solitary experience, you are sitting by yourself reading a computer screen in most cases. (Perhaps not, some may be reading with a friend, I don't know.)
Going back to the original question "how do I read my lj or rather lj in general" - and the two responses to my lj that prompted this.
[The two responses were: 1) Livejournal has "jumped the shark" and I'm about to give up on the whole enterprise completely. (Not exact quotation, but they did state it had "jumped the shark" which bewildered me because I didn't know it was possible for an online journal community to "jump the shark", a tv show maybe even a serial novel, yes, perhaps, but online journals?? Which made me begin to wonder if we were a) reading the same journals, b)defining a journal in the same way, c) had similar expectations and d) observing the same reality. (Which I doubt).) 2) Is the reason you never comment in my journal because you never read it or because you disagree? (odd question. The answer was yes, I read it, I thought I'd responded to it a few times (may have deleted the responses, I do that a lot or sometimes the computer delets them for me or rather eats them, and usually I agree.) I was somewhat bewildered by the question though and that got me to wondering, how do people think I read this thing? What assumptions are they making about "how I read" my journal and more to the point, what assumptions am I making about them?
How do I read livejournal? And how do I think you read yours?
Hard questions. Ponders. I read my lj infrequently now, due to time constraints, which I won't bore you with.
Often read it when the mood hits me. Mostly on Friday nights. Takes four hours assuming I'm uninterrupted or don't have other plans. I'll occassionally read on Sat's and Sundays, if I can't on Friday of - if I don't have something I want to post. Since I cannot read it at work, work forbids lengthy periods of time on the internet for personal use and I don't want people at work to know about lj, it takes four hours to scroll through all the entries dating back to Monday, assuming I haven't read lj earlier in the week. I often skim or skip long entries unless something grabs my interest, rarely click on tags unless the topic hits me a certain way and skip quiz memes, icons, items on fandoms or tv shows I don't watch, and/or fanfics. I rarely click on links to others journals, articles or websites anymore -although I have done it on occassion.
I only read my flist. I do not leave my lj to read others lj's or other's flist's. I never leave home base, unless I have to click on a tag and have no other choice and am taken into another's journal (which brings up a question, how do you people read that tiny font you have in your journals? Not to mention the colored backgrounds? Your eyes are certainly better than mine). Due to time constraints and general laziness, I just click on my friends page on my home lj and scroll through the entries. Since I need to sign in to see them - I see locked and unlocked now. I only do it at home. Rarely, if ever at work (maybe five times these past five months). If you aren't on my flist, I haven't read your journal.
I no longer read forums very often or off-shoots of lj - such as fandom_wank or grrargh - unless they appear on my home friends list. I used to read this stuff, can't now.
I don't custom filter - too much effort and time.
I treat lj like a stack of letters that I've received over the week from around the world and left until Friday to read and possibly respond to, if the mood hits me and I'm feeling reckless or brave. To me - live journal is an online correspondence club without postage stamps or the wait. And the added benefit of not having to respond - since the posts tend to be more to the world at large. The correspondence I receive from people is varied - some people write tons of posts in the lj's but never respond to mine, others only respond to my lj but seldom post in their own or when they do, I miss it, because it is a small entry, entered early in the week and gets lost amongst the lengthy ones. I have a lot of people on my flist who write the equivalent of book length posts or twenty posts in one day and never cut-tag. I do wonder where they find the time. Even when I was unemployed I couldn't do that. One of them writes pithy, detailed, magazine article length posts complete with footnotes. I'm not complaining, I actually enjoy and admire them. They are in some respects as good if not more readable and entertaining than what I might read in The New Yorker or Harpers or any academic journal. I tend to avoid food posts - mostly because of the diet thing.
One of my friends assumes that I read all his entries, I don't. Nothing personal of course, he just posts infrequently or early in the week while he's at work or late at night, so I don't see it. I see it when I scroll back, usually Fridays, sometimes two week's after he's posted (by the way, you can not scroll back further than three or four weeks on lj flist, I know, I've tried.). He also assumes I read my flist if I post in my own, which is rarely the case. Tonight for instance, am writing this at the same time as talking to mother on the phone - who is making all sorts of suggestions about how I should change my life for the better, tonight's lecture is how to change my apt to turn it into a place I can cook for people and entertain. Good point. Just not as easy as sounds. Way to stress me out and put pressure on me. Also, wants me to find a play or musical to go to (when they come to NYC on Dec 19th, yes, I have no time, I know this - have to buy Boss a birthday cake next week and get tickets to a show and do class and do pottery and a whole host of other things, ugh!) - so if you have any suggestions (not Avenue q nor wicked, parents remember, she seemed to want to see Phantom of the Opera (gags) which I discouraged or Sweeny Todd (also discouraged, even though the New Yorker reviewer absolutely loved it as did Time, only person who hated it was on lj), does anyone know of anything - parent worthy?.) Sigh, mothers. So assuming I post this or find time to post it considering it's almost 11 and I have to get up early and am tired. Strike that, is past 11 and I need to sleep.
At any rate - I assume, perhaps incorrectly, that if you write a ton in your journal, you don't have time to read others. That you'll read them all at once, usually over a two or three hour period. Another week, mayhap read in the evenings if nothing on and you have time. That you miss entries. Skim. Scan. Jump over stuff.
So when I say, assuming you are reading this, I mean just that. It's not that I think you don't like me or that I'm a poor writer, or that I'm self-handicapping myself, so much that I basically think, you probably are busy or writing your own post or may be asleep, or didn't get to it until two weeks late or five days late. I'm not undermining my writing, I just am assuming that you may not have seen it. If that makes sense.
Problem with writing all this out, is I'm not consistent. I read inconsistently much like I write, with gaps here and there between readings and writings. In short you have no way of knowing when I read your entries and which ones, unless I tell you, which I rarely do - not because I don't like them, but because well, no time, read it too long after the fact, someone's already said it better, your flist frankly scares the fuck out of me (no offense - okay clearly joking on that one, yes, black humor, it springs out), or I agree and have zip to say that wouldn't sound really stupid. One week I may read everything, every day, next, nothing at all, the next - just what I have time for on Friday, the next, a few here and there. If you write five or six entries a day, or mostly on weekends - I've probably read your entries the most. If you write at work solely and never on the weekends - rarely. Timing. Also subject matter. And well circumstance. Mood. If in a bad mood, may stay away entirely, then again maybe not. So you see...varies. I do try to make a point of reading most of it, but there are times that I haven't.
Also flist - not the same as yours. I know that for a fact. I do not read the same lj's you do. We have maybe 10 friends in common if that. So that must make a difference. Also no longer reading whedonesque.
Okay mosying off to shower and bed now. Will post this now without a readthrough - no time. Talking to mother, sort of messed this post up for me. She called smack in the middle of the writing. You can sort of tell when, if you look closely, more typos and less cohesive sentences, since I began to type one handed - the other hand holding the phone. (Around where I mention the phone call the first time around.) Yes, I can multi-task with the best of them, hee. Also can type one-handed apparently. Good to know. Hopefully won't live to regret this in the morning.* [Bloody difficult deleting these things at work.]
*Had a nightmare after the last post that I was walking around half-naked from fitting room to fitting room in a huge department store unable to find my clothes...which makes me think that I was feeling just a tad exposed.
Object of judgment/Judgement of object
Occurs to me that many disagreements are not so much about differences in tastes or beliefs or even interests, but over the basic object being discussed. Or as Thomas Gilovich states in How We Know What Isn't So: " People assume there is but one objective reality which leads us to overlook the possibility that others don't just perceive things differently - they are responding to a very different situation or object entirely." What does he mean exactly?
I remember in college witnessing a hit and run accident. I was five feet from the accident, the closest of all the witnesses. I saw the man stop, get out of his car, I knelt by the victim, dropped my bag, lent my assistance, ran to get help, assuming the man who had clearly accidently hit her - would stay. When I returned to the scene - the man was gone, and she was surrounded by students. Now another student saw the same accident but from the library window behind me. That student saw the man hit the other student, then leave. He did not see him get out of the car or stop. Why? Didn't watch the whole thing perhaps? View was blocked. Different angle.
Years later I mention the hit and run to a friend, who remembers it as well, half way through a disagreement regarding what really happened, she said that she hadn't really witnessed the accident at all, she got it second-hand from the person who had been hit.
Another example, perhaps a better one at least regarding objective reality, was one used in class - where we were asked if we liked Italian films. What wasn't asked is which Italian films we'd seen. There is after all a huge difference between Fellini and Sergio Leone.
We make allowances for the fact that we may each view a situation differently or perceive something differently. We forget that we may in fact be looking at completely different objects. Or be viewing completely different situations. We assume it's the same, but it's not. We assume we are discussing the same thing, but we aren't. Livejournal is a perfect example. When we discuss livejournal or complain about the livejournal community - we assume that everyone is reading the same livejournal entries we are, looking at the same object and reading it at the same time, under the same circumstances. Perhaps even wanting the same thing from the experience that we want. After all the entries are on the computer screen, they are mostly available to everything, most of us have "friends" in common, and if we are say reading it at work during the day or late at night - isn't someone else? Or if we read all the journal entries on the flist, don't other's? Also reading lj is a solitary experience, you are sitting by yourself reading a computer screen in most cases. (Perhaps not, some may be reading with a friend, I don't know.)
Going back to the original question "how do I read my lj or rather lj in general" - and the two responses to my lj that prompted this.
[The two responses were: 1) Livejournal has "jumped the shark" and I'm about to give up on the whole enterprise completely. (Not exact quotation, but they did state it had "jumped the shark" which bewildered me because I didn't know it was possible for an online journal community to "jump the shark", a tv show maybe even a serial novel, yes, perhaps, but online journals?? Which made me begin to wonder if we were a) reading the same journals, b)defining a journal in the same way, c) had similar expectations and d) observing the same reality. (Which I doubt).) 2) Is the reason you never comment in my journal because you never read it or because you disagree? (odd question. The answer was yes, I read it, I thought I'd responded to it a few times (may have deleted the responses, I do that a lot or sometimes the computer delets them for me or rather eats them, and usually I agree.) I was somewhat bewildered by the question though and that got me to wondering, how do people think I read this thing? What assumptions are they making about "how I read" my journal and more to the point, what assumptions am I making about them?
How do I read livejournal? And how do I think you read yours?
Hard questions. Ponders. I read my lj infrequently now, due to time constraints, which I won't bore you with.
Often read it when the mood hits me. Mostly on Friday nights. Takes four hours assuming I'm uninterrupted or don't have other plans. I'll occassionally read on Sat's and Sundays, if I can't on Friday of - if I don't have something I want to post. Since I cannot read it at work, work forbids lengthy periods of time on the internet for personal use and I don't want people at work to know about lj, it takes four hours to scroll through all the entries dating back to Monday, assuming I haven't read lj earlier in the week. I often skim or skip long entries unless something grabs my interest, rarely click on tags unless the topic hits me a certain way and skip quiz memes, icons, items on fandoms or tv shows I don't watch, and/or fanfics. I rarely click on links to others journals, articles or websites anymore -although I have done it on occassion.
I only read my flist. I do not leave my lj to read others lj's or other's flist's. I never leave home base, unless I have to click on a tag and have no other choice and am taken into another's journal (which brings up a question, how do you people read that tiny font you have in your journals? Not to mention the colored backgrounds? Your eyes are certainly better than mine). Due to time constraints and general laziness, I just click on my friends page on my home lj and scroll through the entries. Since I need to sign in to see them - I see locked and unlocked now. I only do it at home. Rarely, if ever at work (maybe five times these past five months). If you aren't on my flist, I haven't read your journal.
I no longer read forums very often or off-shoots of lj - such as fandom_wank or grrargh - unless they appear on my home friends list. I used to read this stuff, can't now.
I don't custom filter - too much effort and time.
I treat lj like a stack of letters that I've received over the week from around the world and left until Friday to read and possibly respond to, if the mood hits me and I'm feeling reckless or brave. To me - live journal is an online correspondence club without postage stamps or the wait. And the added benefit of not having to respond - since the posts tend to be more to the world at large. The correspondence I receive from people is varied - some people write tons of posts in the lj's but never respond to mine, others only respond to my lj but seldom post in their own or when they do, I miss it, because it is a small entry, entered early in the week and gets lost amongst the lengthy ones. I have a lot of people on my flist who write the equivalent of book length posts or twenty posts in one day and never cut-tag. I do wonder where they find the time. Even when I was unemployed I couldn't do that. One of them writes pithy, detailed, magazine article length posts complete with footnotes. I'm not complaining, I actually enjoy and admire them. They are in some respects as good if not more readable and entertaining than what I might read in The New Yorker or Harpers or any academic journal. I tend to avoid food posts - mostly because of the diet thing.
One of my friends assumes that I read all his entries, I don't. Nothing personal of course, he just posts infrequently or early in the week while he's at work or late at night, so I don't see it. I see it when I scroll back, usually Fridays, sometimes two week's after he's posted (by the way, you can not scroll back further than three or four weeks on lj flist, I know, I've tried.). He also assumes I read my flist if I post in my own, which is rarely the case. Tonight for instance, am writing this at the same time as talking to mother on the phone - who is making all sorts of suggestions about how I should change my life for the better, tonight's lecture is how to change my apt to turn it into a place I can cook for people and entertain. Good point. Just not as easy as sounds. Way to stress me out and put pressure on me. Also, wants me to find a play or musical to go to (when they come to NYC on Dec 19th, yes, I have no time, I know this - have to buy Boss a birthday cake next week and get tickets to a show and do class and do pottery and a whole host of other things, ugh!) - so if you have any suggestions (not Avenue q nor wicked, parents remember, she seemed to want to see Phantom of the Opera (gags) which I discouraged or Sweeny Todd (also discouraged, even though the New Yorker reviewer absolutely loved it as did Time, only person who hated it was on lj), does anyone know of anything - parent worthy?.) Sigh, mothers. So assuming I post this or find time to post it considering it's almost 11 and I have to get up early and am tired. Strike that, is past 11 and I need to sleep.
At any rate - I assume, perhaps incorrectly, that if you write a ton in your journal, you don't have time to read others. That you'll read them all at once, usually over a two or three hour period. Another week, mayhap read in the evenings if nothing on and you have time. That you miss entries. Skim. Scan. Jump over stuff.
So when I say, assuming you are reading this, I mean just that. It's not that I think you don't like me or that I'm a poor writer, or that I'm self-handicapping myself, so much that I basically think, you probably are busy or writing your own post or may be asleep, or didn't get to it until two weeks late or five days late. I'm not undermining my writing, I just am assuming that you may not have seen it. If that makes sense.
Problem with writing all this out, is I'm not consistent. I read inconsistently much like I write, with gaps here and there between readings and writings. In short you have no way of knowing when I read your entries and which ones, unless I tell you, which I rarely do - not because I don't like them, but because well, no time, read it too long after the fact, someone's already said it better, your flist frankly scares the fuck out of me (no offense - okay clearly joking on that one, yes, black humor, it springs out), or I agree and have zip to say that wouldn't sound really stupid. One week I may read everything, every day, next, nothing at all, the next - just what I have time for on Friday, the next, a few here and there. If you write five or six entries a day, or mostly on weekends - I've probably read your entries the most. If you write at work solely and never on the weekends - rarely. Timing. Also subject matter. And well circumstance. Mood. If in a bad mood, may stay away entirely, then again maybe not. So you see...varies. I do try to make a point of reading most of it, but there are times that I haven't.
Also flist - not the same as yours. I know that for a fact. I do not read the same lj's you do. We have maybe 10 friends in common if that. So that must make a difference. Also no longer reading whedonesque.
Okay mosying off to shower and bed now. Will post this now without a readthrough - no time. Talking to mother, sort of messed this post up for me. She called smack in the middle of the writing. You can sort of tell when, if you look closely, more typos and less cohesive sentences, since I began to type one handed - the other hand holding the phone. (Around where I mention the phone call the first time around.) Yes, I can multi-task with the best of them, hee. Also can type one-handed apparently. Good to know. Hopefully won't live to regret this in the morning.* [Bloody difficult deleting these things at work.]
*Had a nightmare after the last post that I was walking around half-naked from fitting room to fitting room in a huge department store unable to find my clothes...which makes me think that I was feeling just a tad exposed.