Truth is, I mostly agree with you. I don't have any intention of abandoning LJ unless I am forced to -- even on the occasions I post *from* DW, that's mostly pragmatic: because I can post via DW while LJ is down, and the posting will get forwarded to LJ once it's back again. So it makes a nice workaround for the DDoS attacks, at least from the posting side. All of my *reading*, which is the important part, is still on LJ for the time being, and I don't plan to stop reading here.
That said, I've been thinking about this for the past day, and I don't actually share the feeling that LJ is my home. The past year's taught me a lot of hard-won perspective about what I really care about: the *people* are my home, and I care about being where they are. I don't care about LJ anywhere near as much as I do about reading your words, and those of my other close friends.
LJ itself is just a thing. I cared about it more personally when bradfitz was still leading the charge to change the world through blogging; I cared about the SixApart folks somewhat. I confess, I don't even *know* who the current owners are, though, which means it's hard to care about the site itself quite so much.
Indeed, in some ways I actually care more about DW, precisely because it is so much a personal project -- a scrappy startup that's trying to make things better. I identify with that, for obvious reasons, and respect it a lot. It's not actually that DW is somehow perfect that makes me like it: it's that it started from the assumption that LJ is A Good Thing, and they are being fairly cautious about making little improvements while still keeping it nearly identical in most respects.
That said, I will admit that the recent attacks have actually made me care about LJ more -- not so much because of the site itself, as what it represents. It's being attacked precisely because it's the most conspicuous bastion of free speech in an increasingly repressive country; *that* matters to me. So I'm even less inclined to leave now than I normally would be.
And all *that* said -- like I said, it comes down to my friends. The DW account is mostly a fallback, and I don't *intend* to use it. But the signs indicate that the current situation isn't a random hacker attack: it may well be that LJ has found itself out and alone on the front lines of a really serious civil cyberwar. I dearly hope it survives, but these are uncharted and dangerous waters, so I'm prepping my life raft just in case...
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2011-04-08 05:54 pm (UTC)That said, I've been thinking about this for the past day, and I don't actually share the feeling that LJ is my home. The past year's taught me a lot of hard-won perspective about what I really care about: the *people* are my home, and I care about being where they are. I don't care about LJ anywhere near as much as I do about reading your words, and those of my other close friends.
LJ itself is just a thing. I cared about it more personally when bradfitz was still leading the charge to change the world through blogging; I cared about the SixApart folks somewhat. I confess, I don't even *know* who the current owners are, though, which means it's hard to care about the site itself quite so much.
Indeed, in some ways I actually care more about DW, precisely because it is so much a personal project -- a scrappy startup that's trying to make things better. I identify with that, for obvious reasons, and respect it a lot. It's not actually that DW is somehow perfect that makes me like it: it's that it started from the assumption that LJ is A Good Thing, and they are being fairly cautious about making little improvements while still keeping it nearly identical in most respects.
That said, I will admit that the recent attacks have actually made me care about LJ more -- not so much because of the site itself, as what it represents. It's being attacked precisely because it's the most conspicuous bastion of free speech in an increasingly repressive country; *that* matters to me. So I'm even less inclined to leave now than I normally would be.
And all *that* said -- like I said, it comes down to my friends. The DW account is mostly a fallback, and I don't *intend* to use it. But the signs indicate that the current situation isn't a random hacker attack: it may well be that LJ has found itself out and alone on the front lines of a really serious civil cyberwar. I dearly hope it survives, but these are uncharted and dangerous waters, so I'm prepping my life raft just in case...