O RLY LJ?!

I so miss community. I miss threaded conversations. I miss being able to post a question or ask for a beta at a community and getting responses that were always helpful/supportive even if they weren't immediate solutions. I miss the way you didn't have to be a Big Name Blogger to gain audience because of the way communities provided spaces for individuals to gather. (Something I wrote in a response to a comment where the commentator and I were commiserating over the Tumblr culture vs LJ/DW culture.)

I complain a lot about the "click like" culture of Tumblr; with no communities you'll often go unnoticed when posting unless a Big Name Blogger in your fandom/interest reblogs you, and you should be grateful for a "like" let alone a reblog and as for helpful commentary, it is like gold dust.
And yes at LJ/DW journals the constant "no comments" on your entries becomes soul destroying, but that's the thing about journals, the modicum of effort required to participate goes beyond a "I clicked like" interaction. And comments allow for conversation.

Yet now LJ wants to introduce a "like" feature: http://lj-releases.livejournal.com/91232.html
And they haven't even learnt from the FB debacle that finally led to the use of different emojis to be used instead of just the thumb's up - because you don't want to "like" someone's tale of woe, you want to sympathise.

I'll be over here, still missing community in the sense of belonging and communities in the sense of shared spaces where individuals can find each other without needing to be super popular. And I'll no doubt succomb to the laziness of the like culture when I can't be bothered to write even "nice fic" or "interesting post", and I'll hate myself for it but I'll argue that it's "better than nothing".
Settling for "better than nothing" is something I already do far too much.

Asexual Bingo - you're not asexual you're broken!

Asexual Awareness Week is over, but, just as gay people don't exist only during Pride, asexual people continue living their lives facing the same hurtful prejudices throughout the year. Until people stop with the following arguments it will be Awareness and not Pride week for Asexuals, as we try to educate people that asexuality is not necessarily a lack of libido but a spectrum of a lack of sexual *attraction*. It is not a illness and we do not need our fucking hormones checked or to be counselled into "normality" any more than a lesbian just needs hormones to become straight or a trans man just needs a dose of the Bible to shut up and accept being a woman because of the genitals they were born with.

You can fill in this card using the comments on any article on asexuality in the mainstream media, like the most recent Guardian article I mentioned in my links round up. It's soul destroying.


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