ah, the internet. for a long time, I would make my journal entries public. I’ve been writing personal journal entries since about 2002.
amanda rootes is actually the reason why I got into livejournal. (i wonder if she ever lists her friend of list, I’d be able to spot my first journal ever.) consequently, blurty is the reason I got into roleplaying. for whatever reason, in my teenage naivety, it was a lot easier to make my posts public. they were pretty bad entries, proto-tweets in essence. time went on and it seemed like online diaries became really personal, entries became longer and in its own way, a lot of us got thrown into this underground subculture. that’s what this is, through the server moves, the fandoms, the celebrity obsessions, everything. i always thought it was awesome when people made their entries public though. and not even the entries that are well written, pompous bull shit about peace in Malaysia and saving the monchababas in Africa because someone read it off a blog and got inspired to write an entry about it for their friendslist - I just mean the emotional stuff. i really like that. i’ve always admired people who could openly write about things that have happened to them for better and for worse. someone who can sit and write about what the effects of being molested had on their bodies, someone who could write about what it was like to lose a parent not to death but something worse, someone who could write about their childhood in swahili -- things like that have always made me feel proud in certain ways. and it was kind of awesome to be able to say that I could sit and write about things that effected me in an open medium. because i've done it in the past and it's helped me a lot more than you'd probably ever believe. not to say that personal is a bad thing. or that being unable to write about our lives in a public forum is a bad thing either, but I don’t know.
two things. the first person I had a serious relationship with gave me their journal. he told me to read it and of course there’s always a sick perversion in being able to read what someone thinks because you assume this is the unfiltered brain of someone you know. but he told me that everyone writes a journal with the intention of having at least one person read it. like a sociopath who commits a crime. there’s always that dimensional paradox, the rush of being caught, not being caught, whatever. and obviously, I have inner conflicts about that idea because people do write private journal entries just for their eyes and people have diaries under mattresses, tucked into bedsprings, etc. so I don’t know really, how to argue against that point, but I do believe the driving point towards most of our personal writings are to find a connection or have someone read us or understand us. it’s all vanity. online journals are as vain as myspace. worse maybe? DON’T YOU WANT TO READ HOW INTERESTING I AM. etc. there’s nothing pure in this medium but aside from that, my main point is just that I miss making pubic entries, I miss finding journals that had public entries in them to be perverse, to easily find people to add. I mean, because it’s weird. there’s always going back to livejournal and doing it there but I feel like RP is such a gigantic hobby, I wouldn’t feel right keeping an online journal if I couldn’t scream (and not feel weird about it) about my online character’s vicarious romance/radiator exploding. aside from that though. the second thing, I think. (you know, if this was an outline, it would be like: I (a)(b)123(c)231III) I feel like the past couple of weeks have been this epic friends page cold war FBI thing. where. you post and then other people read the post and then other people are passive aggressive and just shit. and you know I’m not innocent in anything. I’m an asshole and whatever involvement I have is completely my fault. I can come to terms with that because it’s so easy to get caught up. and I feel like a serious shithead but in the same right, you know that quote I’m in love with that would make an awesome chest piece if it wasn’t so long (by jonathan safran foer) “why do bad things happen to good people?” “they don’t.” you take those words anyway you want to but at the end of the day, we’re just shoveling shit into buckets. which is cool. I had to literally shovel shitwater into buckets when the pipes at my old job exploded. there were waterbugs in the basement. it was fucking torture I thought they were going to eat me but I was on shift with all women and guess who the lucky starbuckian that got to transfer water into buckets like fucking donald duck shoveling buckets of water out of a sinking boat? oh yeah. but anyway.
I just mean that I’ve contributed as much as anyone else. and I decided whatever. what can I do to stop myself from being stressed. I could cut people off my friendslist. I could establish some hardcore filters.
I could quit the internet. i could delete my personal journal. but let’s sit here and talk about the probable results of these actions. cutting people out wouldn’t work for me because you never know who someone really is. even if you’re close, even if you drink caprisuns in their hammock, look. no one knows anyone and people change according to circumstance. the internet is a weird place that pulls out weird circumstances and turns semi-sane people into fuck faces. and etc etc. then to filter? let’s be honest, guys. how many of you log into other people’s journals. how many of you are not on my friends list and reading this not because it’s public but because you’re in your friend’s journal? yeah? thanks, a lot of you. so filtering is ridiculous in this sense because whatever you’re going to say is going to come out anyway. next. yeah I’m not fucking quitting the internet or deleting. I’m a creature of habit, I’ll be back and I’ve tried to purge myself of journals and I did it for a good while but look. this shit is in my blood. I’m going to design a writing course where my students make their characters journals in the future. finally, I thought. well. I can make a truce? I could say that i’ll make every single update of mine public. I can’t think of what circumstance would cause me to make it friends only, but let’s say only a dire one? like if I got herpies or decided to post nudes after my rendezvous with quinto and I didn’t want anyone to sell them to TMZ, then yeah. you know. I’m just thinking, as potentially bad of an idea it might be? it just seems like it’s easier to attack people or be more detached if you’re just a generator layout and an 100 x 100 avatar. you know, there will always be dick monkeys, but. maybe if we were more open, there would be a resounding energy to who we are. no maybe not. obviously i'm conflicted here. I mean look, I get that in the mechanical age, there’s always going to be detachment. but maybe going back to the rawness of public entries might contribute something. not just from me but from whomever, however. i just hate the idea of having something violated outside of my control -- in this sense it's privacy. and since i can't control it without going to an extreme, this seems like the better thing to do and a challenge to pursue. there’s no point locking anything anymore. not if you have beyond a certain number of people on your list. and even then? ahhhh.
so. fuck it. it's like. i don't want to really take anyone off my friendslist because it actually hurts my feelings when someone takes me off their list. it's close to being broken up with, isn't it? and why does it seem that way? because of the privacy we impose upon our journals. FUCK THAT.
![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
