vanillalime

So, LJ is celebrating its 20th anniversary by making funky graphics for its members! Here's mine:

You can get your own card here!

I checked, and apparently I had my own LJ milestone 10th anniversary last month, although it was more than a full year before I made my first post. I originally got an account so that I could leave comments on someone else's journal--my first "internet friend"

ignazwisdom, who, alas, is now a strikethrough.

LJ informs me that my most popular post was my Two Beecher Brothers Are Too Many pic!spam bad!fic from 2015, which cracks me up. Good times!

I know LJ is dangerously close to obsoletion, but I still think it's concept/format is one of the best of all the social platforms around, no matter how uncool that is.

Well, if you're reading this, you probably already know the answer. A better question might be, "Why are you still here?" Heh.

(My answer: Because I'm as stubburn as a mule and also lazy.)

Last week, Slate posted an article/interview about a study that analyzed the migration patterns of various fandom platforms over the last 20+ years:

Why did fans leave LiveJournal, and where will they go after Tumblr?

I found it fairly interesting, although I'm slightly skeptical about much of the study's methodology. (To me, 1,866 survey partipants recruited via Tumblr doesn't sound like a representative sample, and there's no apparent breakdown by age, which I think would have been extrememly insightful.)

(ETA: I now realize I typo'd "participants" into "partipants" but it made me LOL too much to correct it. :D)

Here's the bit I found most informative, a graph from the study that summarizes platform usage over time:

One of the main points they made was that the biggest exodus from LJ (in 2012) actually happened a few years AFTER they'd pissed everybody off (in 2008), in theory because LJ users didn't really have an alternate platform to go to at the time. (Unfortunately, there was no discussion of the notable, albeit not overwhelming, increase in Dreamwidth users.)

And so, that's their explanation for why Tumblr and AO3 took off, because they finally offered viable fandom alternatives (Tumblr for the social, AO3 for the archive). Which, duh.

Actually, I'm mostly surprised by the fact that LJ has stayed relatively steady since 2014, although the author says that can be attributed to differing interpretations by respondents for what could be considered "active" participation (which, IMO obviously should have been something that was standardized -- like I said, some of the methodology seems sloppy).

I did like the study's conclusion, which basically seems to be, "People are slowly realizing that Tumblr isn't all that it was cracked up to be." Which is what I've been saying for about 3 years now. But the fact that the biggest question, "Where will everyone go from here?" remains unanswered is scary. I've watched the Oz fandom get smaller and smaller with each passing year as its members don't seem to be going anywhere else, they just go. And I wonder if other fandoms will likewise experience not so much fragmentation (as bad as that is), but downright disappearance. :(

I know in the Grand Scheme of things (i.e., stealing elections and/or personal data), this is small potatoes, BUT... I still find this incredibly annoying and (even moreso) outright mystifying.

I was updating my Master List, which is a pinned post at the top of my journal, when I noticed that it suddenly had 9 (?!) "heart likes." And I thought, WOW, maybe there are some new Oz fans checking out LJ ! (or at least me) But when I clicked on the hearts to see who they were from, only one was a legit LJ user. I checked out the other usernames, and they were all inactive Russian Federation accounts. Most had last been used 10+ years ago and had only a handful of posts. And I thought, "Huh, that's weird, and stupid, because what could someone possibly be trying to accomplish by artificially liking my fanfic?"

I sort of shrugged it off, until I noticed that the exact same thing had happened to the post for current drabble tree at

oz_wishing_well (8 likes). And the master list for the most recent

oz_magi (8 likes). And the latest story posted to

hardtime100 (7 likes).

SO WEIRD

I guess Putin is trying to cover EVERY base? Maybe he enjoys some slashy porn in his downtime? I want some answers here, LJ !

Which means it's probably just a glitch that will soon be corrected. Heh.

As I mentioned in my last post, one of the reasons why I was slacking off on

oz_daily was because I was running out of storage space in my LJ scrapbook. It was at 90% capacity (906 MB out of the 1 GB allowed for nonpaying users like me), mostly due to the nearly 1,000 images I have stored in my Oz Daily album. Photofuckit was obviously no longer an option, and I was too unmotivated to search out another hosting service.

BUT NOW

I looked at my scrapbook page, and saw that it's only at 17% capacity! Which just about gave me a heart attack, because I thought LJ had deleted some of my albums or something. (There would've been hell to pay if I'd lost any of my Lee picspams!) But no, everything was still there! So I did some poking around in the account settings, and apparently, LJ quietly upped their scrapbook storage capacity from 1 GB to 5 GB! Just out of the goodness of their hearts! I guess? (I'm certainly not paying for it.)

HOW ABOUT THAT

I wonder what I should do with all this new storage space? ;-)

I decided I was bored with my journal style and layout and decided to do something new. I went with a periwinkle blue color scheme and made a new (blue!) Leeloni header to go with it. Which would probably have been more appropriate in the spring instead of the fall, but whatever. Check me out!

While assembling the Leeloni header, I realized how relatively few pics there are of the Chris and Lee together as themselves (i.e., outside of Oz), considering they've been friends for nearly 20 years. I guess the ease of digital photography since Oz's heyday has warped my perspective, since now the smallest of celebrity activities and events yields countless pics on various forms of social media.

Can you imagine all the pics and vids and gifs there would be of the kiss at the GLAAD Awards if it happened today? Instead, all we have is one grainy YouTube video and some extremely low-def photos. Which is better than nothing, obviously, but still. Tom Fontana likes to post all these behind-the-scenes pics from his last show "Borgia" to his Instagram account, and I can't help but be jealous that the techonogy wasn't available for him to be able to do the same for Oz. I think Tom Fontana needs to hire me to go through his old photo albums and scan and upload all his Oz-era pics for him. ;)

Actually, this would be a good time to mention that I have an "Oz Fandom" Instagram account, which I originally thought might be another way to help promote fandom activities like I've done with Twitter and tumblr. I opened it up while planning the Oziversary fest and posted my Oziversary graphics to it, before realizing that it really wasn't a good platform for what I was trying to accomplish. But then Tom Fontana discovered it (presumably because I followed him), and for a while he was my one and only follower. And now he tags me whenever he posts an Oz-related pic. O_O

(Although the icing on the cake was when Robert Closhessy followed me after I liked a cute vid he'd posted of him with his mother. :D)

BUT

All sorts of doomsayers are predicting a LiveJournal Armageddon, and I want to have my ass covered if and when it all goes down. Therefore, this weekend I blew the dust off my Dreamwidth account (which I've had for 4 years and used exactly once) and uploaded my LJ to it.

So I guess I feel better?

Anyway, if any of you are thinking of leaving LJ permanently and going to DW instead, you can friend me there if you want. My account username is the same: vanillalime at DW.

The latest shenanigans at LJ are annoying and disconcerting, but frankly, I find the atmosphere and innerworkings of Facebook to be 10x more sinister. (But maybe that's just me.) I personally don't see myself leaving LJ anytime soon. What remains of the Oz fandom still seems entrenched here, and I worry about it fracturing itself into non-existence. So, I'll continue posting here and at oz_daily and maintaining the leeloni comm. I'll amuse myself, if no one else. LOL

In a week full of immenient gloom and doom, I'd like to thank "Evans John" for giving me the laugh of a lifetime. I cannot wait to work the phrase "super driver on top" into the next bit of porn I write.

Very helpful! ~~Sounds like Trump wrote this.~~

YOU GUYS

I finally figured out how to make an LJ header!

And I ended up revamping my entire journal!

Look at me! Look at me!

It all started when I made THIS graphic for

mazephoenix's birthday. I was so pleased with the results of the coloring effects I used in the B/K photos. And I was, like, "You know what? I should use these photos again!"

(I hope you don't mind me re-using your gift, Maze.)

And once I sat down and took the time to really study the process and coding for inserting a header, it really wasn't that complicated. (Although, it was certainly a lot more complicated than it needed to be, given the other forms of social media that I've used headers for.)

I'm not 100% sold on the style I've selected, but I think it'll do for now.

Next on the To-Do List:

oz_daily!!

It's great to know that my journal is currently in 6,670 place in the user ratings. How nice of you to use your site "improvements" as an opportunity to keep my ego in check. *eyeroll*

On a related note, I've opened a Dreamwidth account here using the same username, although I'm not sure exactly what my next step is going to be. But I think it's a step in the right direction?