Friends only? I think not.

[mrph]

I've just been thinking about this again. More and more people seem to be going entirely friends-only on LJ.

I guess I can understand why, but don't intend to be one of them. There are a few reasons for this.

The most obvious one is that I do use Friends Only - and Friends Groups - already. If I don't want a post to be visible to the world, it won't be. If it involves Deep And Meaningful happenings or details of other people's lives, for example, then it probably won't go public. Likewise for evil world domination schemes (speaking of which - mrbear, don't lose that list... :)

Another reason is that, well, I don't see any need to prevent random bits of the world from reading general 'stuff' postings - there are a few people not on my friends list who occasionally drop by to read/post, and that's fine with me. My outlook is very much "make it public unless there's a reason for it to be private", not vice versa - there's really nothing in the public posts that I wouldn't say in person to J Random Stranger, and my (public) friends/interests list is far more personal than most of the things I write here. Maybe I won't think this way forever - but at the moment, I do.

Finally, I like the current LJ dynamic. There are a few people now on my friends list who I originally just more-or-less randomly run into on here (hi, random net people!) and don't really know in person. If I couldn't see their journal, and they couldn't see mine, would that whole "hi, saw your comments, then followed them back and glanced at your journal - so you like xyz/know abc too?" thing work the same way? I'm really not sure it would, y'know... and I quite like it as is...

Comments

Re: Why I went mostly friends only

[mrph.livejournal.com]

Looking at mine without being logged in, IMHO there's nothing there that someone couldn't find elsewhere anyway. I spend time in Browns. I like good food and real ale. There's a lot of stuff about books / comics / music that doesn't say anything I haven't already said in my profile. And as for the events I'm attending, a quick search on upg or netgoth/slashgoth would pull up most of that information.

As for my Views on The World, I'll happily spout them at random strangers, and after a decade on Usenet I doubt LJ trolls can come up with any line of abuse/attack I've not seen already... I mean, ok, they've now got some HTML available, but that's no substitute for a coherent argument... :)

I think in some ways "Mostly Friends" increases the cluelessness quotient of random comments, too - they don't see the context & prevailing mood, so they just merrily pogo-stick into the minefield...

Re: Why I went mostly friends only

[mina-laury.livejournal.com]

I think in some ways "Mostly Friends" increases the cluelessness quotient of random comments, too - they don't see the context & prevailing mood, so they just merrily pogo-stick into the minefield...

Well, I considered totally friends-only, but if I want to share an interesting link or something there doesn't seem much point in limiting it to an audience of thirty people. So as it is it looks as if I use the diary to talk about running games and occasional weird links. Which is fine by me - I'm perfectly able to cope with the odd 'all roleplayers are sad spods' that might float by.