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It Was Fun While It Lasted
Jan. 30th, 2019 09:36 am“The Linux of social media” — How LiveJournal pioneered (then lost) blogging
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/the-linux-of-social-media-how-livejournal-pioneered-then-lost-web-blogging/
But perhaps there’s no better microcosm for LiveJournal’s epic journey than the blog that belonged to the man behind Game of Thrones. Even though George R.R. Martin managed to hang out for a decade after the site’s initial downfall, nothing in particular seemed to trigger his 2018 move to a personal site. No fanfare accompanied it, just a brief message from one of the fantasist’s “minions.” Such is the nature of the erosion of our once-beloved digital spaces: there’s none of the collapsed majesty of a physical space like an abandoned castle, ivy threading its way through the crumbling latticework. Instead, LiveJournal moves forward as an aging pile of code, one day potentially rendered obsolete by something newer and better and remembered by those who lost countless hours to rigging it up in the first place.
The passage I quoted above is the conclusion to a wonderful essay about the rise and fall of LiveJournal and the creation of Dreamwidth. This is a bit narcissistic, but it always makes me happy to see people writing substantial articles about things that actually mean something to me personally. LiveJournal used to be a big deal to a lot of people, but I often get the impression that not even that many professional Media Studies scholars know what it was or how it nourished and enabled online cultures that have since become mainstream. Then again, the platform died almost ten years ago, and perhaps there are always going to cultural black holes like LiveJournal that exert a huge gravitational influence even though most people can't see or measure them.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/01/the-linux-of-social-media-how-livejournal-pioneered-then-lost-web-blogging/
But perhaps there’s no better microcosm for LiveJournal’s epic journey than the blog that belonged to the man behind Game of Thrones. Even though George R.R. Martin managed to hang out for a decade after the site’s initial downfall, nothing in particular seemed to trigger his 2018 move to a personal site. No fanfare accompanied it, just a brief message from one of the fantasist’s “minions.” Such is the nature of the erosion of our once-beloved digital spaces: there’s none of the collapsed majesty of a physical space like an abandoned castle, ivy threading its way through the crumbling latticework. Instead, LiveJournal moves forward as an aging pile of code, one day potentially rendered obsolete by something newer and better and remembered by those who lost countless hours to rigging it up in the first place.
The passage I quoted above is the conclusion to a wonderful essay about the rise and fall of LiveJournal and the creation of Dreamwidth. This is a bit narcissistic, but it always makes me happy to see people writing substantial articles about things that actually mean something to me personally. LiveJournal used to be a big deal to a lot of people, but I often get the impression that not even that many professional Media Studies scholars know what it was or how it nourished and enabled online cultures that have since become mainstream. Then again, the platform died almost ten years ago, and perhaps there are always going to cultural black holes like LiveJournal that exert a huge gravitational influence even though most people can't see or measure them.
