Because I'm your fan

[lolaraincoat]

I set myself up at Greatestjournal a few years ago when LJ was down for a few days. Now at least the fannish half of my f'list here seems to be migrating in that direction, or in many directions really, because LJ has been banning users whose content they don't like (depictions of fictional characters who appear to be under 18 having sex.)

I'm undecided about what to do - stay here but read journals on three or four other sites? move most of my posting over there but keep reading journals here? something else entirely? There's a fan-run not-for-profit journaling site currently in beta-testing, so that will be a good option soon but not yet. But I don't want to lose track of you while I dither. So! If I have you friended here, and you have set yourself up at Greatestjournal, and I haven't yet friended you there, it's because I haven't found you. Please ping me and let me know your username there. And if you're migrating to some other journal but not Greatestjournal, please let me know that as well. I don't want to lose track of you all!

cubby66, dailyplanet, mulberryfields, stillwell, slit, t_ktl, telurian: THIS MEANS YOU.

Comments

Re: ..

[whorlpool.livejournal.com]

I could be wrong about this, so take it with a grain of salt, but my instinct tells me that the censorship issue is being overblown. Fandom is an echo chamber, and those who are immature and/or frustrated and/or drama-seeking are fanning the winds of controversy to the point where any action by lj to censor something which is, after all, obviously controversial is immediately seen as a full-blown attack and the end of the world as we know it. I've seen this happen time and time again in lj, going back over six years, on many different kinds of issues.

I think, too, that there's no real solution. Fandom is an echo chamber; drama happens; people with more perspective still get caught up in it all because, as you've mentioned several times, the danger is a fracturing of the community, and maybe it's better to get caught up in it and move with the rest of the community than to keep one's head and be alone.

From my perspective, as an outsider to fandom, it's easy to come up with simple solutions, all of which simply require: keeping one's head and making small efforts to stay under the radar. In a word: compromise. But of course, it's not really that easy. Fandom isn't filled with outsiders; it's full of insiders who deeply care about what they're trying to do and for whom there are real things at stake.

But maybe people like you and cathexys and others who are, for want of a better way to put it, more grounded in life than some of those shouting "fuck you lj, I'm leaving" can find a way to damper the resonance. Or maybe I'm just thinking that while everyone is exploding, no one is writing or drawing. My guess is that for you (and maybe for many others), sacrificing a bit of the controversial matter would be okay if it meant keeping what's truly important: the community itself. Sex is a lightning rod, but controversial sex is a house without a lightning rod. *scratches head* (That's either clever or an utterly meaningless non sequitur.)

blah blah it's midnight and I'm losing my train of thought. I'm probably not telling you anything you already know; I just find it all frustrating to watch. And time-sucking in an endless-time-suck sort of way. Drama is addictive.