Online socializ(ing|ation)
Mar. 13th, 2010 09:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sereneA friend had a post about the different online social venues she uses. I responded with a comment too long to fit into one comment space, so I figure I'll reproduce it here.
As you've no doubt figured out, most of my social life happens online, because my introversion, resistance to travel, and health issues mean I vastly prefer being home over being anywhere else. I really like my (part-time) job, or I wouldn't leave the house for that, either. So that means I've spent the last 13 years having most of my social contact made up of text and a little bit of graphics, and I'm pretty happy with that.
Where I hang out online, socially speaking:
Usenet (chiefly alt.polyamory, rec.food.cooking, and soc.sexuality.general, but also alt.recovery.clutter and occasionally soc.motss, soc.singles.moderated, ba.food, and a couple others). Usenet is my (vastly) preferred mode of online interaction, interface-wise. I like threaded conversations that don't die unless people stop posting. I like the similarity to email, along with the one main dissimilarity -- that is, if I get behind on my Usenet reading/posting, no one feels personally dissed that I've dropped our email conversation.
Dreamwidth: I have a personal journal at Dreamwidth (username "serene"), and my posts are automatically cross-posted to LiveJournal and DeadJournal (though I never check DeadJournal, so I'm not sure why I bother). Once in a blue moon, I'll filter a post away from the eyes of someone (frex, if I'm dissing my sibling or angsting about parenting, I filter that away from the kid), but the vast majority of my posts are public, and I don't use any reading filters on Dreamwidth, and I'm unlikely to need to unless DW gets a lot bigger.
LiveJournal: Every now and then, I post an LJ-only post to my personal LJ ([info]serenejournal), but mostly, it's just crossposts from Dreamwidth. I have had a paid account at LJ forever, but I've let it lapse for the [info]serenejournal account. I dislike a lot of things about the way LJ is run, but not enough to bail completely. Yet. I also have a cooking blog at LJ, [info]serenecooking, which is currently LJ-only, partly because I didn't want it fragmented, partly because I like the way it looks visually, and partly out of some little bit of loyalty to LJ, which is where I first started blogging on my 35th birthday in 2001.
OKCupid: I like the journals there; they're like a little tiny LJ community. But I have drifted away from posting there, so now it's just the every-other-day-or-so checking of my Quiver. I'm not actively looking for partners, but I wouldn't say no to a new relationship. Thing is, I'm really not that likely to click with a stranger, and MUCH more likely to find someone attractive if I've seen them in conversations over some period of time, so OKC isn't really a place for me to find people to date; it's just another place where I'm me on the internet, and I frequently update my profile there, which is probably the most up-to-date, comprehensive laundry list of things I think about myself that exists.
Facebook: I do not friend people on Facebook whom I don't know, not even my good friends' boyfriends (my good friend was disappointed), so my friendslist there is relatively small. That said, the people I do know are not all people I want bombarded with my business, so I no longer automatically crosspost my blog entries there. I don't have secrets, but I also don't really need my boss to see me going on and on about how hot my boyfriends are or whatever. She's welcome to come over and *choose* to read that; I just don't want her to have to see my prolific rantings every time she logs in to her Facebook account. I have cousins there (not all of whom I like) and co-workers, and a few students from the University where I work, along with my actual friends, like you. I never friend students first, but I do approve them if they friend me. I selectively crosspost blog entries. I play Farmville and Cafe World there, and do my best to keep those status updates hidden from everyone except fellow players. I never thought about using Facebook as an address book, but that's a good idea.
I don't do Twitter, because it runs in the opposite direction from my Use More Words preferences, but I'm not one of those people who disdain Twitter: it's just not my style. I did follow a couple of the shuttle astronauts for a while, but since their tweets were, one presumes, all public, I didn't need to set up a Twitter account for that, just a bookmark. If you ever see me on Twitter, you'll know it's an imposter -- either that, or something really interesting will have happened that suddenly made me feel like 140 characters really IS enough for me. I somehow doubt it, and after reading all this, you can probably see why. ;-) Oh, I can think of one other possible development: if suddenly I had a smart phone (which I doubt I will, because I am poor) and wanted to stay online every minute (which I sometimes do), Twitter might feed that for me, but I don't know.
Oh, and I also have a lapsed account at NewbieNudes that I'd like to start posting to again, and I belong to several listservs, only a couple of which feel like "community" to me in the way these others do.
As you've no doubt figured out, most of my social life happens online, because my introversion, resistance to travel, and health issues mean I vastly prefer being home over being anywhere else. I really like my (part-time) job, or I wouldn't leave the house for that, either. So that means I've spent the last 13 years having most of my social contact made up of text and a little bit of graphics, and I'm pretty happy with that.
Where I hang out online, socially speaking:
Usenet (chiefly alt.polyamory, rec.food.cooking, and soc.sexuality.general, but also alt.recovery.clutter and occasionally soc.motss, soc.singles.moderated, ba.food, and a couple others). Usenet is my (vastly) preferred mode of online interaction, interface-wise. I like threaded conversations that don't die unless people stop posting. I like the similarity to email, along with the one main dissimilarity -- that is, if I get behind on my Usenet reading/posting, no one feels personally dissed that I've dropped our email conversation.
Dreamwidth: I have a personal journal at Dreamwidth (username "serene"), and my posts are automatically cross-posted to LiveJournal and DeadJournal (though I never check DeadJournal, so I'm not sure why I bother). Once in a blue moon, I'll filter a post away from the eyes of someone (frex, if I'm dissing my sibling or angsting about parenting, I filter that away from the kid), but the vast majority of my posts are public, and I don't use any reading filters on Dreamwidth, and I'm unlikely to need to unless DW gets a lot bigger.
LiveJournal: Every now and then, I post an LJ-only post to my personal LJ ([info]serenejournal), but mostly, it's just crossposts from Dreamwidth. I have had a paid account at LJ forever, but I've let it lapse for the [info]serenejournal account. I dislike a lot of things about the way LJ is run, but not enough to bail completely. Yet. I also have a cooking blog at LJ, [info]serenecooking, which is currently LJ-only, partly because I didn't want it fragmented, partly because I like the way it looks visually, and partly out of some little bit of loyalty to LJ, which is where I first started blogging on my 35th birthday in 2001.
OKCupid: I like the journals there; they're like a little tiny LJ community. But I have drifted away from posting there, so now it's just the every-other-day-or-so checking of my Quiver. I'm not actively looking for partners, but I wouldn't say no to a new relationship. Thing is, I'm really not that likely to click with a stranger, and MUCH more likely to find someone attractive if I've seen them in conversations over some period of time, so OKC isn't really a place for me to find people to date; it's just another place where I'm me on the internet, and I frequently update my profile there, which is probably the most up-to-date, comprehensive laundry list of things I think about myself that exists.
Facebook: I do not friend people on Facebook whom I don't know, not even my good friends' boyfriends (my good friend was disappointed), so my friendslist there is relatively small. That said, the people I do know are not all people I want bombarded with my business, so I no longer automatically crosspost my blog entries there. I don't have secrets, but I also don't really need my boss to see me going on and on about how hot my boyfriends are or whatever. She's welcome to come over and *choose* to read that; I just don't want her to have to see my prolific rantings every time she logs in to her Facebook account. I have cousins there (not all of whom I like) and co-workers, and a few students from the University where I work, along with my actual friends, like you. I never friend students first, but I do approve them if they friend me. I selectively crosspost blog entries. I play Farmville and Cafe World there, and do my best to keep those status updates hidden from everyone except fellow players. I never thought about using Facebook as an address book, but that's a good idea.
I don't do Twitter, because it runs in the opposite direction from my Use More Words preferences, but I'm not one of those people who disdain Twitter: it's just not my style. I did follow a couple of the shuttle astronauts for a while, but since their tweets were, one presumes, all public, I didn't need to set up a Twitter account for that, just a bookmark. If you ever see me on Twitter, you'll know it's an imposter -- either that, or something really interesting will have happened that suddenly made me feel like 140 characters really IS enough for me. I somehow doubt it, and after reading all this, you can probably see why. ;-) Oh, I can think of one other possible development: if suddenly I had a smart phone (which I doubt I will, because I am poor) and wanted to stay online every minute (which I sometimes do), Twitter might feed that for me, but I don't know.
Oh, and I also have a lapsed account at NewbieNudes that I'd like to start posting to again, and I belong to several listservs, only a couple of which feel like "community" to me in the way these others do.