I ain't nothing but tired man I'm just tired and bored with myself

[enthusiastick]

Walking around outside in Boston the past couple of days its like watching the polar ice caps melting in miniature. Someone more clever than me is ultimately responsible for that notion. There have been a lot of discussions of the ridiculous storm, and how it layered various different kinds of moisture atop one another and then conveniently froze them all. And someone, I forget precisely who, quipped that they now understood how glaciers formed. And its true; there are these little hunks of ice everywhere that are remarkably resistant to melting. For the past couple of days we've had temperatures well above freezing and a healthy dose of sunshine, and so the little buggers are losing moisture without losing structural integrity, so everything that hasn't been salted or sanded is wet and icy and treacherous underfoot.

Twice in the last month I've made "friends only" posts, and its got me thinking. I don't like making friends-locked posts for the same reason I don't like using lj cuts. I didn't like them before theferrett laid down his guidelines (parts 1 and 2) for a succesful livejournal and forbade them. (And, whether consciously or not, I have used those posts and the ones related to it as a sort of style manual. I am aware of the ways in which I diverge from it.)

Ferrett more or less articulated what I was already thinking. I'm neurotic enough about friends-locked posts that I feel compelled to make public posts pointing to them, because I fear otherwise that they will go unread; people browse their journals without being logged in all the time. But that kind of defeats the point. Its like standing on the rooftops shouting "Look, look, I wrote something I don't want the whole world to read and its right over here!" As a general rule if I don't feel comfortable with the notion of an entry being public then it doesn't belong in my livejournal.

Except of course there are exceptions, because there are exceptions to every rule, and I just happened to run into two of them within the arbitrary period of the last thirty days. Sometimes there are things I want to say that I'd rather not everyone be able to read, for one reason or another. And I'm aware that friends-locked posts are far from secure, so its only things in that grey area that make the cut. It would be OK if other people read them, I'd simply rather they did not.

The whole thing is preposterous, really. There are scores of people in this world who's journals range from mostly to exclusively friends only. I count some of them as actual real-life friends of mine. I don't want my livejournal to be friends only, but if I'm going to make some sort of blog entry every weekday then every so often I'm going to come up with the sort of entry that makes me hesitate. I guess the trouble is that there's no easy litmus test, and that bothers me. Thus far I'm dealing with these things on a case-by-case basis, and I'd much rather be able to say "this post meets criteria XY and Z, and so it must sadly be friends-locked." And until I come up with one, I'm probably going to continue to be antsy about it, because sometimes there's no avoiding that grey area.

Comments

[dystopiac.livejournal.com]

My last entry was both friends locked and full of cuts. It must have filled you with rage.

Ironically, your LJ-related misfortunes were what inspired me to move from friend-locking some portion of my posts to friend-locking virtually all of them. And while I know friend-locking is not terribly secure, it makes me feel better. which is what counts.

besides, i maintain my LJ less as a public blog and more as a place for me to catalog the things i choose to remember, which i am pleased when my friends read and comment on.

[pooka-madness.livejournal.com]

Just because I find those things personally distasteful doesn't mean I begrudge other people using them. They're just tools, after all. As you said, you use your LJ in a different way than I do. I find cuts and friends-locking to be mostly contrary to what I'm trying to accomplish. You find it complementary. We're both getting what we want, so why should I be bothered?