Ruffling feathers - the results of the social experiment

[higure]

My head’s been hurting so much all day, but I was so set to post that I just had to. If this makes next to no sense because of the headache, then I apologize.

So The Anti-friending meme. Ever since I first got the idea presented to me, all I could think of was ruffled feathers. I know it was one of the things that could do that. Ruffle feathers that is. I am sorry if it felt like too much, too negative and completely unnecessary, and I hope you forgive me my extravagant moment of hosting it anyway.

My other concern with it was that it could turn to flat out hate meme. But people were pretty good with it, other than occasional efforts of trying too hard to make their point and failing at recognizing when it is better to stop. Then the meme got killed by a true hate meme (I has impeccable timing), so maybe that is a reason why people were rather civil too. Thank god for that because I almost did not sleep that night, afraid of letting it go unattended. In a way, this too is a conclusion, fandom can handle itself on occasions.

The whole thing was rather interesting. I’m sure I had more conclusions, but by now, the following three stuck in my mind, so here you go:

Pairings preferences, or lack of certain pairings among your OTPs, is a huge criterion in deciding whether to friend someone. To me this is interesting because I don’t actually consider the (more or less) delusional OTP concept of gay sparkle-ness to be such a huge part of my fandom. It is a huge part of the fic fandom, but JE is about music, hilarity, variety, boys being hot all on their own, about selling dreams and personality patterns and shiny, and well I feel that liking certain pairings, if any, is only a small portion of it and does not define me nearly as much as let’s say groups I follow.

Coherence is important. Be it understandable English, state in which you make posts, or the writing/expression style. All those made an appearance. It is interesting, but in a way I understand. If I had several people whose entries I would find difficult to read and comprehend on my flist, it would turn what is supposed to be a pleasurable experience into a rather painful and tiring one. That said different people have different levels of tolerance when it comes to coherence (or lack of thereof – clearly this is my expression today). It is interesting how high or low the limits can be set.

Connectivity? Let’s call it this. Apparently it is a disadvantage if you do not have a twitter and/or tumblr or if you admit to not being active on it. This, to me is a little puzzling if not sad because the last meme (and all the previous once that did not specify otherwise) were LJ friending memes. I mysle do have tumblr and twitter, but I work average 10 hours a day, sleep some more of the day away, and in the rest of my time, the timeline on my twitter moves so fast I can hardly ever keep up, if I am on my PC that is. I got twitter because it has become better source of fandom info, while LJ unfortunately is loosing this function. But the more of you I follow, the less I find there too. It makes me feel I might be getting old for this fandom because I can’t keep up with the evolution. Coming back to the friending requirements, it is then rather unfair and (sad) that to be someone’s friend on LJ you need to be participate in other social networks than LJ itself. Otherwise, anons say, they'd find it hard to connect with you.

Especially the last point makes me feel even more detached to people on my flist who post rarely, do not talk to me in comments and are active elsewhere.

Anyway, personal result of the meme. I suppose I have always known that being RyoDa fangirl means people are cautious of friending you. But lately I have had such a steady and nice friend list that I almost forgot. The meme reminded me that RyoDa fangirls are considered crazy and more thread than an asset to one's friends list. Therefor I now love you even more for giving me a try and tolerating my crazy. I know my mind can get very one-track sometimes when it comes to my OTP, but I hope I do not annoy you with it too much.

After that very serious fandom analysis (LOL, fandom is serious business), have my Saturday night joy. I spent my Saturday at work, but took a walk on my way home and got myself something to liven up my kitchen. With the choice I made, it seems fall is really coming.



It is a pretty fall though! The weather forecast for the next two weeks is sunny and still around 20 °C or only a little less so this is great *____________* I took a walk up to the castle today after work, so I need to sort and post those pictures sometimes. It was rather pretty.

And lastly, my sister, chivakaza is safely in Japan, probably sleeping more than 24 hours of travel and official business away. I am relieved, she seemed to have handled it like a boss and now she has an amazing year ahead of her. (LOL she also sent her friends to my journal to find out if the plane did not crush and since she might not have the internet for a while, I figured I'd leave this public so that curious people not willing to wait 5 months before getting worried know she is fine and safe)

Comments

[spurious.livejournal.com]

The people who replied to mine saying they didn't want to deal with drunkenness made me really glad I warned for it, lol. I am constantly worried that I'm being totally annoying when I post/comment/tweet drunk, so it's...good to know that people have been forewarned but are okay with it XD

As far as pairings, I agree with what Ilana said about the meme not asking for favorite person in JE making pairings a bit more important. Also, if someone says they don't ship anything at all I'm inclined to think that they'll be annoyed/weirded out by my shipping/posting fic, so I'd be less likely to friend them and I imagine a lot of other people would. Aaaand lastly on the subject of pairings, I personally tend to avoid people who only ship one or two things because in my experience I end up getting in fights with them XD (Of course, some of my good friends only ship one or two things, so obviously it's not a hard and fast rule!)

As far as connectivity/use of other social networking sites goes, I don't really care if you don't use tumblr because I think it's an absolutely terrible forum for getting to know people, but it is nice to have twitter because I like to see all the little things that are going on in people's lives...does that sound creepy? XD Anyway, I think it's sort of come about because a lot of people are posting to lj less regularly, and since stuff like twitter and tumblr are much less low-pressure we're kind of spreading ourselves out there...I wouldn't choose not to friend someone if they didn't use twitter though!

Wow I...apparently have a lot to say about this! XD

[sashjun.livejournal.com]

That was exactly the purpose of the meme though. Finding out what to keep and what not. I think it is good to know people actually react to these things and take them into account. Then basically your warning is a keeper for the future!

That is an interesting thing to know about yourself. I wonder, isn't it more about those people not being open to the fact that someone else might see the people from their OTPs as parts of different pairings as well? Like eg if I was not only die hard ryoda fan but also kept giving out signals that this means I don't think Ryo could/should be shipped with Shige or Subaru or anyone else for that matter? (Btw I am actually quite a sucker for all those three pairings, lol.)

It doesn't sound creepy. I get it, but for me, it also feels like I cannot keep up with every little thing that goes on in people's life in such a fast track environment as twitter. So I would be much happier if they shared it to some extent on LJ :D This brings me to the fact that people stopped posting to LJ regularly because they started using twitter or tumblr. I might be reading your sentence wrong, but it feels like you see the causality the other way around? Also are the things you see all the little things of someone's life or only scattered fragments that are far away from having really informative value because it is often SO impulsive? I am aware of the fact that fragment means a small piece of something, so I am not sure if I am conveying my intention of differentiating the two of them and giving fragment a slightly negative context here. (well now that I said it . . .). I am not completely against twitter. I have it and use it at times, but I am not all that happy with how it influence my LJ experience (making me feel like people are starting to slip away) and I guess this shows.

Apparently, you are not the only one. Good part of my f-list does too. Look up! I just spent over an hour replying to all of these. And clearly I too still have tons to say . . .