loony_moony | Genius, psychopath, prophet, and other ad marketing campaigns

To everyone who's been discussing the opening of LJ's fandom culture to FB and Twitter via the link options, I would like you to read what

pir8fancier is saying in this post, and think about it carefully.

I'm not against fandom co-existing in other blogspheres, and I certainly don't think LJ is the main creative center of fandom.

I do, however, think LJ is one of the main cores of fandom, and it's that for a reason. It's the same reason why people have fought against TOS changes, and why other cores have the same spirit as LJ's fandom does: It's a loose environment. Yes, we have to warn for explicit content, and yes, we have to make sure LJ is (and by extent, we are) exempt of legal repercussions if underage people get access to this kind of content. And yes, we are oftentimes exposed to some very nasty actions caused by fellow fandomers.

But Facebook especially is not a place where a fandom can truly exist. Twitter is a gray zone of blogging, but FB is not. It has a TOS that aggressively attacks its users' privacy, no matter how many times the media and users retaliate. It's an incredibly overexposed environment, even if one locks their own information. I'm not saying this is not a similar case on LJ, but I am saying that LJ is a fandom blogsphere, and FB is emphatically NOT.

And this is why interconnecting the two should not happen, in my opinion.

Now, if you want to connect LJ and, say, TwoP, we can discuss that heartily.

Current Mood: blah

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

doubtful-salmon.livejournal.com

I seriously must be the only person in the universe who has no feelings on the matter. It strikes me as stupid and unnecessary to be sure, but it never occurred to me to be voraciously pissed off. Maybe this is BECAUSE I take pains to keep my LJ life and my Facebook life so separate, and the against-my-better-judgment cross-contamination odds for me personally are so slim. But, I dunno. I swear I've seen everyone being so pissed off about it, and I really just think it's like a superfluous addition that quite frankly only irritates me because I can't figure out how LJ thought that Facebook and LJ were ever meant to be together. They're totally separate platforms for a reason. It frankly makes no sense to me at all. If it's so important for one to connect them, then you can do it easily on a personal website. I could do it on my own website right now if I felt like it. Then, anyone who cares about me SO MUCH that they want to read shit I post on my Facebook AND shit I post on LJ could do so...but on the one hand I seriously doubt that anybody would care enough to look.

But I mean, I pretty much agree with you in the sense that Facebook is NOT conducive to being central to a fandom in the way that LJ or indeed any other blogging platform might be. Oh my god, last September 5th was when I went to New York. I just realized this. I'm sorry, I didn't do the math and figure it out until right this second and for some reason that's apparently an important anniversary to me. That's so fantastic.

Anyway but back to what I was saying (you got to witness this one-time event just now), I agree that Facebook and LJ are so different that I can't actually see why it was ever thought of as a generally good idea...but I don't think it's like an evil hellacious idea. I just think it's extraneous. For me, at least, Facebook serves the same purpose that somewhat more complicated text messaging would. It's a way to keep in touch with people when I wouldn't feel like calling them. I can send and receive pictures on it. What I say on it doesn't have to be important. It can be like, "I just ate a burrito and man was it good!" I mean I guess it doesn't have to be on LJ, either, but I'm not likely to post a long and complicated discussion of my feelings on Facebook. It's basically Livejournal without the sentiment, which is pretty much not LJ at all. Oh shit...I just realized I left water boiling in the other room half an hour ago because my dad is too stupid to fucking know how to do it himself. All right, I have to go and be pissed because my dad refuses to make spaghetti for my sister. Seriously, though, what is that? There's no way it's okay. There are two possibilities: that he seriously doesn't know how to cook spaghetti (which I don't actually doubt), or that he's too lazy to cook spaghetti (which I also don't doubt). I know it's not a huge thing to have to do it for him, but I was in the middle of something earlier when he interrupted me like four times to make me do it. It's like if I showed up and interrupted a phone call he was on four times to ask him if he could get me a glass of water. I mean, jesus, he could've done it himself like 14 times by now. God.

From:

loony-moony.livejournal.com

You mean, a two-time event. :D

Generally I'd agree with what you're saying, but here's the deal: Not everyone did what you're doing, in terms of LJ-FB separation. Not everyone feels the same way about fandom secrecy as you do, and facebook certainly is NOT just a place for glorified text messaging. I know this because a) I got two roommates out of it, and b) facebook claims all rights of everything posted on it to itself. Imagine how you'd feel about this if you were a fan artist whose work was reposted on facebook without his/her permission. Do you honestly think facebook cares about the online copyright laws? This whole thing is presumptuous on LJ's behalf, and destructive on facebook's behalf. It's stupid, intrusive and ultimately extremely unwise, and that's why I'm making this one tiny post arguing my point.

From:

doubtful-salmon.livejournal.com

I don't mean that I don't take Facebook seriously. I mean I just honestly can't figure out what was stopping people from reposting other people's crap as it was. I just think it's another thing to put on Facebook to make it more full of crap than it already is, which I consider sad just because I actually DO like Facebook. I call it glorified text messaging because...I can't believe this. My dad is actually doing EVERYTHING he can come up with right now to piss me off. I don't even know. Well, anyway, as I was saying again before I got interrupted by my dad being an ass, I just don't understand how the two could or should mesh. It doesn't make sense to me. Okay, maybe I DO mean I think of Facebook as glorified text messaging, but I failed to convey how important I think text messaging is. I think it's honestly vital in my communication with people; I seldom accept people I don't know as friends, and I rarely actually go out of my way to friend people, but I will say that I've made a lot of good friends through Facebook out of mere acquaintances. I don't undervalue it as a social platform...and I could say something very similar of LJ.

I guess I'm just confused as to what changed about things, apart from the fact that they put a button there. Do you know what most people do when they see a shitload of posts they don't care about flooding their news feed? They click "ignore." Once I took a poll out of curiosity as to how many people actually read entries on their friendslist that were tweets shipped to LJ, and almost nobody did--not even the people who did the thing themselves.

I'm not saying this won't get anybody in a spot of bother, but I also don't think Facebook and LJ were free of those issues as it was. I don't think Facebook cares about copyright laws. I don't think LJ cares about copyright laws. In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to find ANYBODY who cares about copyright laws except the people who feel their copyrights were violated, and in fact, it's extremely difficult to prove anything on the matter in the court of law since copyright law is in and of itself an extremely vague thing. Facebook and LJ can claim dumb shit like that all the livelong day, but I can also claim I own all rights to everything everybody posts on my journal. That doesn't make it so. Facebook would never be dumb enough to get involved in a lawsuit claiming they own somebody's art because somebody posted it to Facebook from LJ. That would be ridiculous, and apart from the fact that it would be a waste of time and money, they would lose and look like assholes. But to be honest, there's very little stopping copyrights from being violated once you put your stuff out there. In the US at least, it's a huuuuuuge legal gray area and to be honest, Hollywood would not exist as it is today if not for the fact. I'm not saying it's necessarily good, I'm just saying that I think people have very little understanding of what constitutes a copyright, and what happens if you have a copyright. It's a lot more complex than simply claiming that it's yours. Even if you can actually prove you made it. It's a total and complete clusterfuck because it's full of ridiculous myths and people who make outrageous and grandiose claims with no legal basis--not to mention it's essentially based on preserving the ownership claims of intellectual property, which is naturally difficult to prove (because no matter how hard you try, it's pretty difficult to conclusively and solidly demonstrate that you thought of it first).

And as it was, if I saw a piece of fan art that I liked and wanted to post it on Facebook, I could've done it. Like I said, I guess I'm confused about what changed. And I'm extremely confused why you would be furious that your LJ stuff got posted to your Facebook if you never took enough issue with it in the first place to do it before they put a button there.

So yes. I agree that it's stupid, and it's also unnecessarily intrusive, but I guess I'm also of the opinion that it's not so different from what it was before.

From:

loony-moony.livejournal.com

This certainly could've existed before, but putting a button makes it a feasible thing for many people who didn't think about it, and a lot less hassle to people who did do it before. I'm not saying the issue of copyright isn't problematic, but I am saying it's not the only one. The issue of secrecy, of photos, of occasions and acquaintances and whatnot. In SPN fandom, someone hated an LJer I knew so much, they exposed said LJer to their entire family, friends and their ex on facebook. I'm talking about the massive fuckery that just became transparent, shortened and easy for the massive amount of legitimately insane people who flock to LJ. They're not the majority, but they are the troublemakers. And facebook is a classic platform for fuckery which honestly I don't even want to think about.