New public journals

[topum]

I often go to the list of LJ users and read a couple of random journals. This is how I discover new public journals here.

You may remember how I discovered George Bush's fall from grace a while ago (see here). And all kinds of random things catch my attention there, like this one.

A couple of days ago I went to the list again. This time it was full of neighbours writing about the same stuff. Here my LJ friend bunn and I are both talking about dogs just next to each other:



Our take on this topic in those entries couldn't have been more different I think (mine is just two entries below this one).

And here two neighbours were talking about the same thing again:



How do you discover new public journals here?

Comments

[diejacobsleiter.livejournal.com]

My way is less adventurous. Meet an interesting person in dialogues in friend's journals > read entries in the person's journal > meet other interesting people. Some of them are in my feed, others in bookmarks. In busy days, I read the feed only; in freer days, I surf through bookmarks as well.

[topum.livejournal.com]

But this way you need someone you know to discover the journal first. Is there a way to see a list of all journals started in the last week / month for example?

[diejacobsleiter.livejournal.com]

If by new you mean young journals, not just "new for me", then no, I confess with a deep remorse, I just don't search.

About 10 years ago, when I first began as caveman-jacob, somebody gave me a list of interesting blogs of a certain sort (I was more interested in hardcore intellectual talks then) and through them I was gradually widening the circle.

[topum.livejournal.com]

I mean both. I am trying to find a way to discover new public journals on LJ.

[diejacobsleiter.livejournal.com]

I admire your curiosity and activity, but I myself am a lazy blogger. Or I'd better say, a cautious one. I closed my first journal because I was becoming addictive. So now I keep myself on a short leash...

[altamira16.livejournal.com]

Do you have a paid account? If you do, you can use something like this where you do http://(friend).livejournal.com/friendsfriends and see the public journals that a given friend if following. That helped me at some point.

[topum.livejournal.com]

Yes I have a paid account and I have started looking through friends of my friends. Do you know if there is a way to see the list of all journals started in the last one (three, six, etc) months?

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I don't think that exists, but I agree, it's an odd thing for them to be missing. I wonder if it's because people often join LJ originally to read communities or friends journals and so journals can sometimes be a bit quiet to start with? Mine was like that, but then that was a long time ago.

Why did you pick Livejournal over the various alternatives? I would have guessed at Wordpress.com and blogger, maybe medium.com as the blogging sites that are perhaps more popular nowadays. But I am not sure that they have such an interesting range of nationalities?

[topum.livejournal.com]

I think old accounts are more likely to be dead here than new ones these days.

I wanted to avoid professional and commercial bloggers and censorship and wanted to have an option to be anonymous. I was also after geographic diversity (so that not everyone is from the US and only talks US stuff), reasonably long but generic posts and a bit of weird (LJ delivers here).

[gneu.livejournal.com]

I'm from the U.S. and I wish I could talk about anything BUT the U.S., but I don't have that experience.

[topum.livejournal.com]

I talk about the US too and I do want to hear people talking about the US, I just want to have other stuff in my friends feed too, I want to have a mixture.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

That's the way I do it, too!

[diejacobsleiter.livejournal.com]

Great minds think alike...

[found-world.livejournal.com]

Sometimes, I look at add-me communities and sometimes I look at a journal belonging to someone who posted a comment somewhere, mostly.

[topum.livejournal.com]

Most of them are friends only though, right?

[found-world.livejournal.com]

Hm. I don't look enough to get a feel for what is most common. The people on add-me.livejournal.com are looking for friends, sometimes very selectively, and their journals may or may not be friends only.

Sometimes, I go to http://maps.livejournal.com/ and enter information on my excursions. You can find other journals that way with entries by location at times. Have you been there?

[topum.livejournal.com]

No I haven't used maps, thanks for sharing, this is interesting.

[altamira16.livejournal.com]

I will look at the list of top 100 journals, or I may add people through a Friendzy. But I am more skeptical of the Friendzy now because I added some people who I had to get rid of fairly quickly because some people want everyone to agree, and I want people to have something interesting to say.

[theidolhands.livejournal.com]

I know these feels.

[topum.livejournal.com]

The requirements for potential friends people often set there sometimes sound to me like they would only friend their clones.

[topum.livejournal.com]

I do not do Friendzies either these days. I am never going to meet the tough requirements 90% of people there set for the users they would friend (I go "fuck off!" half way through reading them).

[altamira16.livejournal.com]

What? You do not write Pokemon Ghostbusters cross-over fan fiction? (joking)

[topum.livejournal.com]

I actually did not know what either of them were until the recent media frenzy about both. Specifying the area of interest is OK I think I meant other kind of requirements. I was told a couple of times that I was not commenting enough to be kept on a friend list (and in one case they counted how many comments I left in other journals since the last comment I left in theirs) and urged me to comment soon or be deleted. I thought that they were being weirdly hilarious and responded with "ha ha". I was also warned that shallow comments were not welcome and I am not good at deep stuff. The requirement to always read all their entries is also a popular one. Restrictions on the language I use are also common (too sexist, not gender neutral enough, etc). "Too much negativity" will also not be tolerated, which basically includes everything except agreeing completely and super enthusiastically with everything. Also people expecting me to somehow necessarily "click" with them or "forge real friendships" just by reading their blogs sometimes (oh boy...). At some point I just have to say that I am just looking for some fucking blogs to read not experience a nazi death camp with total control over what I do and think and how I do it. I am actually more interested in finding public journals to read here than all this weird friending stuff.

[altamira16.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes! That is how it started. I had added someone, and within a week they were posting all this "Comment or I am unfriending you" nonsense. And I really didn't think I had gotten to know the person enough to post comments yet. And I am not big on rubber stamp comments where you just agree with whatever a person says.

[topum.livejournal.com]

I thought it was humour the first time someone messaged me with "comment or I am unfriending you".

[altamira16.livejournal.com]

People messaged you?

Wow. That is over the top.

My experience was that soon after I friended this person, they were posting entries about how they were going to unfriend people who did not comment and posting that "Top Commenter" thing where you see who the top commenters on your journal are to pressure people into posting more.

[topum.livejournal.com]

They did.
I would probably not be able to resist mildly trolling my friends if they posted the "Top Commenter" thing. But just in good fun.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Good grief. I tend to think of LJ as a saner and more thoughtful space than say Facebook or Twitter. But clearly there are loons everywhere!

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Hah! very different kinds of dogs, yes indeed. Perhaps I should make an effort to flock posts where I admit to being a bit drunk too. :-D

To be honest, most of the time I find my friends page is already rather busy and since I like to see what other people have commented on others posts, and make a point of commenting whenever I can think of something to say, I don't really want it so busy that I can't easily scroll back a few days.

I sometimes friend people if they friend me, and sometimes not, depending on mood. Occasionally I go out looking for interesting people, either via the LJ homepage or friends-of-friends or in communities - but not often. My 'I should be working' guilt is at war with my desire to discover interesting new LJs!

Why, are you playing an obscure form of Pokemon with public LJs, and determined to catch them all...? :-D

[topum.livejournal.com]

Ha ha, I had no idea what Pokemon was until the recent media frenzy but I could definitely add more journals to my friend list.

[beautesauvage13.livejournal.com]

I really don't go looking for new LJs.   Sometimes they find me sometimes I find them in LJs of people who are on my lj friend list.  Sometimes I find them on Anne Rice Vampire Chronicals RPG forums - That is really where it began for me.  Back in 2000 or 2001.  I was a member of such a forum and some of the players got LJs so some of us members got them.  I had a different lj then one I ended up deleting.  I've had a few LJs since some are gone deleted others I forgot the password and user name some I still use for RPG purposes or working on my own fiction.  This lj is more or less a proper journal. 

Athena

[topum.livejournal.com]

I think I will do one of those promo things at the top of the start page and will let people with active public journals who are not in in LJ Top 100 list themselves in the comments for others to check them out and possibly friend / follow.

[gneu.livejournal.com]

Was I in a public journal forum?

[topum.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I do not remember how I picked you up.

[gneu.livejournal.com]

You came around soon after I posted to add_me, but I avoided you because your pictures took too long to load. But after a while, your journal was the only one with interesting enough pictures--those I really wanted to view--so I added you thinking I'd have to cut you right away, but I've never had a problem with the load time since.

[topum.livejournal.com]

Just in case, I am easy going on friending, unfriending and refriending back again whenever you want. I do not take it personally and want people to do whatever works for them while managing their friend feeds, loading speed, etc.