(no subject)

[thebitterguy]

An interesting piece on the dynamics of LJ Friends lists.

Now, I don't claim to have read it in full (page six, baby!) or have even understood everything I've read (reading in between calls, baby!), so if any of you hyper-educated types want to explain the big words, go ahead.

Teefed from the cyberpunk community.

Comments

Thanks, Justin!

[papajoemambo.livejournal.com]

I'm about halfway into this and it's REALLy cool.

Great find, man!

Re: Thanks, Justin!

[thebitterguy]

Excellent. Yeah, he makes some interesting points about the whole 'friend' concept.

[uhlrik.livejournal.com]

This is actually quite interesting, and reads about like a lot of the writings I had to wade through in art school, complete with references to Derrida and Baudrillard. I can see why the writer says that Livejournal in particular is a postmodern space. It makes pretty good sense.

[uhlrik.livejournal.com]

Have you got any particular questions about it?

[creativedv8tion.livejournal.com]

How about a summation for those of us not edumicated enough, or too lazy as the case may be, to wade through 6 pages of it?

[uhlrik.livejournal.com]

In very brief, the on/off binary architecture of the friending system in LJ and the terminology attached to it mucks with people's expectations, aggravating an already-diffuse set of assumptions on what the word "friend" means and adding a whole lot of new ones in the process, thus creating lots and lots of A) confusion and B) drama. Hence, the binary structure and use of the term "friend" are problematic and should be replaced with something else in future versions of internet social networking sites.

[creativedv8tion.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Or maybe people could just realise that a term is just a term is just a term.

Nah, that'll never happen.

[uhlrik.livejournal.com]

Many linguists and other social scientists, theoreticians/whatever would argue that a term is not just a term.

[creativedv8tion.livejournal.com]

Pshaw.

What do they know? ;)

[thebitterguy]

Actually, it was pretty straightforward; the gist I got was pretty much identical to what you gave Terry.

[uhlrik.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it wasn't a particularly dense or opaque read (in fact it flowed very quickly, I thought), though it does use a fair amount of terminology that the average person doesn't have to deal with.