During my angsty teenage years, LiveJournal was where it was at. I remember writing in it daily, and even though I came from a small town, I had an audience who interacted with my journal. It felt real and vulnerable.
Why did we stop using it? Facebook came out, and all of a sudden, the world lived through status messages. AIM → LiveJournal → Myspace → Facebook → YouTube → TikTok. We went from instant connection and long-form thought to building spaces that felt like our own, only to abandon them in favor of performing for the world. Somewhere along the way, we traded vulnerability for likes.
I miss the community.
That said, I've been blown away by the people I've been meeting here on Inkwell. It's been a pleasure getting to know everyone, and I hope to continue meeting many more. I also hope others find one another through here and make meaningful connections. The one thing I've noticed so far is that I'm meeting people all over the world. Right now, that feels important.
Who else used LiveJournal? And who joined for the appeal of long-form writing?
Marginalia2
I did use it around 2002 I believe after a friend showed it to me. Not long after, WordPress came out and seemed like the next big thing for blogging, even though setting it up was nowhere what it is now.
Facebook came out, but I never used that for blogging but more of a tool to connect with friends (emphasis on the tool, as I despise everything that is Meta/Facebook).
Signed up but never used it because I already had my WordPress site. Livejournal, Blogger, MySpace etc. only blew up because people wanted a voice on the internet. Majority of the world didn’t know how to build a website, so they filled that void with long-form posting. Facebook initially also had long-form blog posting called Notes. No more having to learn HTML or hiring a webmaster. Then Twitter came along and gave everyone instant gratification, real-time news, internet fame, the ability to organize large grassroots political movements and engage directly with famous people and that was the nail in the coffin for long-form platforms. Then Vine deteriorated what was left of the human attention span. Now we’re several generations in and they’ve never known the internet any other way than witty one-liners on social media.