I watched the slow change in attitude in social media and internet interaction over the years and the very mechanics of the services used have a whole lot to do with that whiplash.
LJ may have not had the ability to make side journals, but the ability to make filtered accounts and LJ cuts, on top of the lack of reblog, I think mitigated a lot of the whiplash that could have occurred. It also taught people that they were allowed to pick and choose who they were comfortable with talking about certain subjects.
There seemed to be this sort of prevalent culture on LJ about keeping your feed tidy for your followers. Cutting long entries and sensitive subjects, providing warnings, even making filters for more sensitive subjects for those that didn't want to see it at all. Users didn't thrive on a call-to-action mentality, and there was no metrics other than comments to be concerned about and reblogs didn't splinter conversation or sully followers of followers. So much of that changed when tumblr became popular.
Tumblr was Always On and it's lack of selective privacy on top of the way it functions is mechanically what lead to what we deal with, now. The private blogs were terribly convoluted so very few people bothered with them and it lead to an era where everyone just dumped everything unfiltered and expected everyone to do the same. There were side blogs but they quickly became Fandom related, aesthetic and cute storage vessels. No one wanted to separate the bad from the good anymore, no one ever thought they had to and they were rewarded for endlessly venting to each other and getting reactionary likes and doing it all over again for the same thing. This slowly conditioned everyone into believing that it was good and 'honest' to dump everything in the same place and if you hid you were disingenuous.
I'm honestly so glad for DA setting the standard of having journals, posts, faves, and other interactions be something you can just opt out of. It's likely one of the single most reasons why other services after it followed in it's steps. (now if only we had more art gallery options for explicit porn)
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Date: 2020-03-03 08:11 pm (UTC)LJ may have not had the ability to make side journals, but the ability to make filtered accounts and LJ cuts, on top of the lack of reblog, I think mitigated a lot of the whiplash that could have occurred. It also taught people that they were allowed to pick and choose who they were comfortable with talking about certain subjects.
There seemed to be this sort of prevalent culture on LJ about keeping your feed tidy for your followers. Cutting long entries and sensitive subjects, providing warnings, even making filters for more sensitive subjects for those that didn't want to see it at all. Users didn't thrive on a call-to-action mentality, and there was no metrics other than comments to be concerned about and reblogs didn't splinter conversation or sully followers of followers. So much of that changed when tumblr became popular.
Tumblr was Always On and it's lack of selective privacy on top of the way it functions is mechanically what lead to what we deal with, now. The private blogs were terribly convoluted so very few people bothered with them and it lead to an era where everyone just dumped everything unfiltered and expected everyone to do the same. There were side blogs but they quickly became Fandom related, aesthetic and cute storage vessels. No one wanted to separate the bad from the good anymore, no one ever thought they had to and they were rewarded for endlessly venting to each other and getting reactionary likes and doing it all over again for the same thing. This slowly conditioned everyone into believing that it was good and 'honest' to dump everything in the same place and if you hid you were disingenuous.
I'm honestly so glad for DA setting the standard of having journals, posts, faves, and other interactions be something you can just opt out of. It's likely one of the single most reasons why other services after it followed in it's steps. (now if only we had more art gallery options for explicit porn)