FRIDAY OPEN THREAD: God, Remember LiveJournal?

Hi hello welcome to this week’s Friday Open Thread! How many greetings can you pack into one sentence for me it’s three.

How are you this week? How’s it going over there? For me it’s — actually, listen, sometimes you can construct this full complete narrative of everything in your life and where you’ve come from and where you’re going and sometimes your to-list is just scribbles now and you can’t even remember what you did even though it was a lot and what even is life and all those retrogrades are finally over and feelings exist and isn’t that inconvenient and who even can remember to eat and to breathe.

Anyway where do people put that? I guess that’s what private twitter or a journal or therapy or bars or healthily engaging with and releasing thoughts are for but also I just want to talk about LiveJournal so this is as good a segue as any.

All those thoughts that didn’t make sense that now people would just subtweet or repress or make lengthy instagram captions about? That was what LiveJournal was FOR. That, and porny fanfiction. And trying to encapsulate a complex hormonally driven emotional state with the emo track de jour. And learning basic css or making friends or gossiping or whatever, I don’t know, mostly I wanted the porn and to recap my model Ontario parliament experiences and let my eight friends know that I wasn’t gay probably I just had a lot of feelings about a girl who was, also other girls but whatever, and I only wanted to be gay because she was which meant I wasn’t really gay and wait I didn’t mention a lot of feelings no you must be mistaken.

Was this also how people used MySpace? I was not allowed on slash was irrationally afraid of MySpace.

As well as LiveJournal, in elementary school I had a succession of Geocities websites themed loosely around an appreciation of tigers and fairies, in the mythical sense, though not together. I’m pretty sure both featured Enya-esque MIDI tunes on autoplay and prominent excerpts of “Tiger, Tiger,” a poem that I deeply misinterpreted as a child. What I did not have in elementary school? Friends. (Okay I was not cool enough to use Geocities it was Homestead, I give up now, bury me in MIDI files.)

I also welcome any feelings you might have about windows xp

This week I don’t want context. I don’t want care (except for each other). I want you to put enough of your week in here or that one nagging thought or honestly that one killer fanfic ship you actually really wish you’d jumped on board with or that song that’s stuck in your head or that thing you wish you’d said that you feel like you can set it down and finally breathe. Or I want to talk about your past internet selves. Vintage screenshots encouraged. Past usernames practically mandatory. Who were you when you were that person? Who are you now?

I also want your current mood and music, because, y’know, LiveJournal.

Current mood: I want a martini so dirty it’s actually just an unopened jar of olives.
Current music: Dance, Dance

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Ryan Yates

Ryan Yates was the NSFW Editor (2013–2018) and Literary Editor for Autostraddle.com, with bylines in Nylon, Refinery29, The Toast, Bitch, The Daily Beast, Jezebel, and elsewhere. They live in Los Angeles and also on twitter and instagram.

Ryan has written 1142 articles for us.

159 Comments

  1. Oh my god, Livejournal. And Xanga! I remember in middle/high school, I went to a bookstore with a group of friends and one of them thought it’d be funny to take money OUT of the barista’s tip jar. I didn’t say anything at the time but then I railed her on my Xanga…completely forgetting that the only ones who read that thing were that exact group of friends.

    I lost all of those friends (possibly good riddance… who knows what crimes she’s worked up to now) and have since switched almost exclusively to handwritten journals.

    • Also it probably goes without saying that my screenname was something along the lines of “xlivelaughlove89x”

      ::eyeroll::

      • I must have missed this. Does that make me old? Cause I like to just think of myself as Sailor Moon binge mornings over Pops Baseball cards in Coco Puffs while waiting for dialup to connect old…

  2. Current Mood: Same background anxiety as always.
    Current Music: Does the percussion of a running washing machine count?
    My Spring Finals were last week, and my Summer Term starts next week(I’m taking Precalculus Algebra)so this week was essentially my Summer Vacation.
    A few days ago, I got an email saying that a book I DID return to the school library(Theodore Grey’s Guide to the Elements)was listed as Lost, so I had to call and get that misunderstanding cleared up.
    Yesterday, my cat, Finnegan, discovered a shed snakeskin in our yard. I suspect it to have been shed by an Indigo/Black Racer snake, a species I’ve seen in the neighborhood a few times. Since I’m THAT kind of person, I collected the snakeskin in a mason jar and put it on display in my china cabinet.
    Last night my Mom and I made soapapillia cheesecake bars.
    This Sunday my Dad, my sister, and I will be going to see a ballet.

  3. So use of xanga and livejournal was split in my community. The kids who went to the hilltown schools used Xanga and the kids on my end of town used livejournal. I started off using weirdjournal or something like that because a boy who liked me used it. It was… bad. I had so many icons. SO MANY ICONS! My friend made custom emotion gifs so when I was feeling “quixotic” it was a gif from whatever our current obsession was.

    I also made so many geocities sites. I wish I could find them. So many.

    • I wish I could find mine! I definitely did not delete them but also I assume there is no possible way they could ever still exist but also sometimes it’s nice to think of them out there still.

      • Even if you had deleted them, the internet is like a meanie who says, “No Givesies Backsies!”

  4. Since the new Russian Federation-compliant Livejournal TOS came down (with all that implies), there has been a near-total evac of remaining users to Dreamwidth, which started as a fandom-friendly clone in 2009. Combining the remaining Livejournal userbase and the Dreamwidth userbase into a smaller platform has kind of meant Dreamwidth attained a level of critical mass all at once.

    Seriously it’s been kind of nuts. It’s not 2004, but it’s a long way from the depths of 2015. I’ve even been building them a mobile-friendly front-end for journals and reading pages because I discovered that you know, I’ve missed this format. I really have. And it’d be nice to be able to use it on modern devices.

    (I am not employed by Dreamwidth, for the record; they use a lot of open source, and this is me contributing to open source, so.)

    I think the biggest shock in all of this has been discovering that InsaneJournal is still around. Remember when there were like a dozen LJ clones, all tiny, some really weird and squirrelly? InsaneJournal, DeadJournal, RusciaJournal I think, a whole bunch of others with names I don’t remember? Well, Dreamwidth and IJ both made it, somehow. XD

  5. I spent my entire childhood and preteen years on LJ and I was “friends” with a lot of married women in their 30s and 40s, which is kind of odd now that I’m looking back from this vantage point of my mid-twenties. Anyway, while I was an impressionable youth of about 11, I saw an LJ post that I think about at least once a day. It was a post by a woman who had just had an orgasm that lasted four and a half minutes, and she was describing what it felt like to come for that long. To date I cannot get this out of my head. I cannot relate to it at all. How do you stretch an orgasm that long?? It doesn’t make sense and it’s very scary!!

  6. Oh my gosh, LiveJournal! And Xanga! I don’t remember my usernames but I know that they started and ended with xX Xx. Cuz ya know, artsy, or whatever. Does anyone else feel like Instagram is the grown up version of LiveJournal? ~*aRtSy*~ photographs with heavy filters and “deep” captions. It all feels so performative and yuck. I just don’t get it. Maybe I am too old a soul. The only social media I use is Facebook, and that’s usually just links and the occasional overly-earnest post.

    Anyway. I’m feeling anxious today, for like no particular real reason I think? It’s been a pretty good week overall, and I have a decent weekend ahead of me. I’m also calling in sick on Monday for a planned day of regrouping/rest/doing whatever the fuck I wanna do, so whoohoo!

    I posted a few weeks ago about feeling torn between two jobs, and I’m very excited to say that I accepted the job with a nearby tribe and will be starting in two weeks! This feels very much like the right fit for me, and I’ve very very excited. Thanks to everyone who posted really helpful and loving and supportive comments!

    I have a bunch of odds and ends to do that are dragging me down, and in some of my activism/community organizing work I’m feeling a little…yuck because the group dynamics are shifting in terms of people and it seems like it’s slated to become a space that is primarily filled with heterosexual couples and men as organizers, and I feel like that makes a lot less space for me as someone who strongly identifies with being a lesbian and wants to see more queer folks and women in radical spaces! So I’m trying to decide whether to take a step back, even though the work is deeply important to me, or continue doing the work even though the group makes me uncomfortable. Stuff to think about. I’m also doing this fun thing I do where I rethink all of my life choices and try to figure out where I’m going and make a plan for what I want out of life so that’s always a little unsettling and perhaps unnecessary?

    I hope all you beautiful people have a sunshiney weekend!

    • Oh, whoops!
      Current Mood: Anxious
      Current Music: “Portions for Foxes” by Rilo Kiley

      • Thank you! And thank you so much for your thoughtful, kind, and powerful words while I was agonizing over my decision and shouting into the Internet void for help! I didn’t get to tell you at the time, but your words really resonated with me and gave me some much-needed perspective. Hugs (if you like hugs!) and thanks and warm thoughts to you!

  7. Oh, MySpace. I put a Ditty Bops song on it and hoped that it would come out for me. Reader, it did not.

    Last night I had the strangest A-camp dream! Camp was being held in a town, and it was amazing as usual, and then a friend and I ventured over to the other, non-camp side of town to pick up a hair ribbon or something I needed for the dance, and omg.

    Everything on that side of town was gray and white. All of the people were (heterosexual) automatons. They slid to their jobs and home to their houses as though they were on tracks. There was no color in anything. Everyone had 2.5 kids.

    It turned out that the downside of Camp was that wherever we were stationed, we acted like psychic vampires, leeching all of the personality, originality, and queerness out of the rest of the town for our own personal use. That was why Camp was so amazing. It turns out being vibrant and amazing and loving people and being queer as fuck comes at a high price when those things are zero-sum games.

    IT WAS QUITE A DREAM.

    • Whoever says that the Internet is killing social skills doesn’t understand introverts. ahhhh yes

    • “There’s a girl that you might know, she’s a friend, at least I tell you so, but it might surprise you to find there’s something going on behind the door.” I love The Ditty Bops.

    • I am HERE for your Ditty Bops love. I actually had this really surreal experience with them once, where I was walking down an avenue in NYC with an ex girlfriend whom I was still on friendly terms with. I was so impressed with that first Bops cd that I bought a few copies for people I thought would like it (you know, support the arts and all). I had just given the ex the cd, and was in the middle of explaining who the Ditty Bops were and why they were awesome when I saw that they (the Bops) were walking right towards us. “Their sound is kind of like a mix between the Beatles and the Boswell sisters and OH MY GOD IT’S THEM…”

  8. My first real social media experience was on a Radiohead message board circa 2000, where I learned that I had a much easier time making online friends than face-to-face friends. I’m still friends with some of them! I travelled to places like Alaska and NYC and Brighton to meet some of them in their homes! Whoever says that the Internet is killing social skills doesn’t understand introverts.

    Anyway my username was “moonstorm” (which is a combo of what my first and last name supposedly mean), and I had this whole joke-identity on the MB as a furry blue two-headed dragon.

    Current mood: couch puddle
    Current music: kitty purrs

  9. Current mood: I don’t want to do my midterms!!! I don’t want to do any homework! Can’t I just graduate already?!
    current music: Kid’s Table by PWR BTTM (all of Pageant on repeat and repeat really)
    Big feeling this week is wondering if I’m actually ready, like academically prepared, for starting grad school in august. I’m nervous. I’m excited and hoping for the best, but what if I am so unprepared and don’t know enough. Basically cycling through all of my emotions a few times a week while avoiding my homework.
    I want to bake all the things for my friends and just hang out with them all the time but everyone is so busy and stressed out :(

  10. Current music: Spring Awakening soundtrack
    Current mood: AMAZING BECAUSE I HAD MATH EXAM TODAY AND I’M 99% SURE I DIDN’T FAIL AS I EXPECTED!!!

    I made some really stupid mistakes and I’m exhausted but whatever, couldn’t be happier. I’m going to drink wine and watch iZombie all night (before studying for another exams but whatever), finally.

  11. Ooh, I used livejournal and xanga and myspace. Can we talk about the customization of myspace pages? Because there were some that were normal, and others that blared emo music while hearts fell from the search bar and slowed down your computer. Backgrounds and text colors that clashed horribly. TOP EIGHT FRIENDS, the most vicious of popularity contests. Bulletins. (Please go look up Molly Lewis’s song about myspace.) I don’t remember my usernames from those sites, but my favorite AIM name was iamthemonkey90. I was not born in 1990 and I don’t know why I chose that number. “I am the monkey” is from Weebl and Bob. Oh, early flash animation.

    Livejournal was where I had all my closest internet friends. All my entries were secured, so I definitely let all my thoughts out there. I didn’t do much in the way of fanfic or RP on livejournal; most of that was Harry Potter for me, so we used actual forum boards and MuggleNet. My Harry Potter femslash fanfic is probably still up on MNFF, if that still exists. All my friends were from there, honestly. Everyone I knew on LJ was from MuggleNet or the RP boards I ran. I’m actually still friends with a couple of the MNFF people, although we’ve migrated to facebook now.

    P.S. Whenever prospective employers ask where I learned HTML, I do not tell them I used to design layouts for fan fiction roleplaying forums.

    Current mood: avoiding the news to prevent despair. Nostalgic, now.
    Current music: Bad Idea, from Waitress the musical

    • LJ was where all my closest online friends were too. There were a few IRL friends who followed it, but mostly I met people from a bunch of different places through communities based on fandom and other interests. LJ was also what got me into fanfic. MEMORIES.

    • I was one of those people with the very emo myspace pages. I think it was a photo of the stars as the background, with flashing hearts which dropped from the top. There was usually a Paramore song or a song called Her Song by Open Hand playing. There was other customization but I have no idea what it was XD

      I insisted Facebook was super lame for about the first 3 months of it-s popularity because it didn’t let me customise my profile. Oh and also because myspace let me say I was bisexual….my first (of a million neverending) coming out experience!

    • My entire pre-July 2007 interaction with the internet was with Mugglenet (my computer was on the most primitive form of dial-up so venturing farther afield wasn’t worth the 20 minutes it took each website to load).

      Oh memories.

  12. Current mood: sunny & hopeful
    Current music: Only Love Can Hurt Like This, Paloma Faith

    I never had a livejournal or other similar account, the closest I got was my tumblr that I made in ~2011? It’s funny to look back and see how it’s evolved from a glee/Dianna Agron blog to the haphazard mess of dog pictures and angry feminism it is today.

    If anyone wants to give me their opinion, I’ve been thinking about something for a while and would love to hear what others think. I’m unemployed at the moment and have been for a little while due to some pretty significant issues with anxiety and depression. I’m finally feeling better and am hoping to have a job soon, but I’m going on a first date tomorrow with a girl that I’ve been talking to for about 2 weeks. She has a masters and a real 9-5 job and I’m just not sure how to mention what’s going on with me without scaring her off? Has anyone else been in this situation (as a person with mental health issues or as their partner) and what worked for you?

    • So I tend to not go into much detail at first knowing someone, especially a first date. The main reason I even bring up that I have chronic illnesses is that…I just might need to cancel last-minute if my body doesn’t want to cooperate and don’t want them to think I’m not interested or whatever and that canceling isn’t a reflection on them, just that I have a body that is sometimes not great at the whole body thing.

      But just in general when people that know me a bit ask me what I’ve been up to, I pretty much limit it to “Yeah, I’ve been having some health problems that I’ve needed to work through/get under control before I can go back to work.” Since you say you’re feeling better, you can always add something like “But I’m doing much better than I was and I’m hoping to go back to work to [do your dream job or grad school or whatever] in the near future.” You can always disclose in more detail if you want, and when most of my issues were mental health issues vs physical health issues I leaned towards disclosing earlier because I didn’t want to deal with people who are going to be jerkishly ignorant about mental illness (y’know the “oh but you really don’t NEED medication” and “have you tried yoga?” and “you’re probably just not drinking enough water or exercising enough” crowd), but that’s more my personal preference because also disclosing mental health shit early on can be intimidating for someone even if they’re not jerkishly ignorant, so I know some people prefer to wait until it’s not going on dates and more relationship territory to disclose.

    • YES! Reasons people on tumblr still say “under the cut” even though that’s not what tumblr calls it. I love that that phrase endured past the popularity of LJ. I used so many of them in my day…

  14. Current Mood: Windows 95 Glitch Aesthetic

    Current Music: BANKS tiny desk concert

    I’m moving most of my crap into my apartment this weekend and I’m excited but also stressing about sofa specific thrift shopping. I wish I cared less abt interior design.

  15. I found out this week that my English teacher from last year is gay/bi (she has a girlfriend)! It wasn’t really a surprise (she’s the softball coach), but it makes me happy because she’s everyone’s favorite teacher.

    • I was convinced my junior/senior English teacher was secretly queer. I had the biggest crush on her; she was only ~10ish years older than me (and looks young enough to get carded for R-rated movies) was very LGBT friendly (this was 2003/2004), and she had been in only a handful of relationships.

      I have done Internet Stalking because I know her full name (she told me her middle name once because she said she hated it) and where she used to live, but I have come up empty.

      So Ms. Lucchese if you are out there and happen to read this, I’m now in my 30s, and also VERY single.

  16. Mood:ugh such pain. Why meds no work?

    Oh man, LiveJournal! Trying to remember my name there… that was LIFE in high school and college! I also briefly used MySpace around the time I was 18.

    Life is, ugh, this week. After spending like two months hassling financial aid about my stuff, finally they said they are “looking into it”. Ugh, I half want to just give up on going back. Work is hell, and pain level is high. Also our country is falling apart.

  17. I really want to start putting together Zines discussing houseplants, medicinal uses for plants, history of certain plants (i.g. how the watermelon was used against the black community), and indigenous plant knowledge.I am almost done with the content of my first Zine “Urban Foraging in Modern Spaces”, but I’m starting to look at the bigger picture and how I can continue this project. If anyone has any ideas, sources, advice, et cetera pm me or comment back. It would be greatly appreciated. I’m not getting much help from my current community so I’m really trying to reach out.
    Gardening is a for of resistance and decolonization.

    On another note: Has anyone had to tell an ex that they can’t give them anymore closure and they get angry?
    Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

    • That zine sounds like an awesome idea!!!

      I’m really rubbish at keeping plants alive in my basically eternally dark flat….buuuut I do have a certificate in herbal medicine if that would be of any use. (Although there’s a million people out there who probably know more than I do, but maybe just as a starting point…)

      • What would you like to write about? I’m not sure the theme of the second Zine, but I’m working on it.

        • Well considering I saw below you are specifically looking for woc which I’m not, I probably wouldn’t write. But if you wanted to discuss ideas or something then hmu :)

    • RE: The Ex. Is the angry ex constantly popping up? My last ex emailed me about two weeks after the breakup wanting to “set the record straight” which I took to mean hash everything out and argue and her try to get back together with me. I straight up said no and her response was an angry message that ended with “I never want to speak to you again.” So I guess I lucked out.

    • Hey, your ‘zine sounds awesome and I would love to purchase a copy when you’re completed, if you’ll be selling those babies online! I know some folks who might have some knowledge and writing to contribute/be interested in collaborating with you, but they’re all cis and straight and some of them are men, so I’m not sure how you feel about that.

      • I’m looking at black and brown people, specifically women. I do have a mini “zine” I wrote and put together in InDesign. I can email it to you if you want to know how to sprout lemon seeds. It’s a prototype. It can also be used as a portfolio piece (I’m still working on putting together a full portfolio).
        I would like to reach out to some of your black, brown, women friends to collaborate or pick their minds. Black and brown includes Asian and Native American. I’m trying to keep white women to a minimum because I am working on uplifting the minority.

    • Re. your ex – It sounds from your wording like you’ve already tried to give them closure, is that correct? If so, it seems quite possible that this is now more about them trying to maintain contact with you because they’re hoping something will change. Either way, you don’t owe this person any further emotional labour and you’re well within your rights to set boundaries. Setting boundaries often makes people angry but that’s on them, not you.

      • He said he wanted me to challenge and (something else I forgot) his ideologies. I’m not here to challenge men (or women for that matter.) I told him if he didn’t learn anything while we were together, our post relationship talk, and when we tried talking about these things DURING our relationship then I don’t see the point in talking anymore. Like challenge your ideologies? Seriously? I’m pretty sure he hates me now from his reaction. It’s really hard for me because he is friends with a lot of people in the queer black brown community and I already have problems making friends. I’m not cool like the other people lol. I’m not a huge drinker or partier and I hardly get invited to things as is.
        I will admit the only reason he opened up was because I called him out. I am attempting to network and (of course) everyone knows him. So I texted him, told him I was upset at some of the things he said and that I needed to get that off my chest so he wasn’t confused at my reactions towards him.

    • That zine sounds awesome and I would love to buy a copy when you get it finished!
      Plants are such an important part of life and communities that get overlooked all too often.

  18. Livejournal!!!! I was in college, and had probably four different livejournal accounts. One for friend IRL and one for my secret online friends/life, and one for special secret people from both, and one for crazy secret obsessions. Apparently I had a lot of secrets in college. Probably being gay while dating boys does that to you? I also had a deadjournal, with like, three friends, that nobody knew existed. I recently found an old file with a few random livejournal icons saved in it, and it was very nostalgic. I spent SO. MUCH. TIME. making icons for my various livejournals.

    I do miss livejournal a little. It was therapy to write out all the feelings about all the things and have people i only knew online maybe read them and comment, but in a very detached way. Now I have like… coworkers and stuff on my social media, and I can’t do that. And what started as my very secret facebook and very secret instagram with a name thats not my name, has now become a regular facebook and instagram with coworkers and family members… and my boss just friend requested me. I am currently ignoring the request like I haven’t seen it. I don’t want my boss on my social media and I don’t know how to do that without offending her, which is the whole reason I don’t want my boss on my social media!! Ugh.

    • Ignoring the request seems entirely reasonable as a response

      If she actually brings it up – which would be weird – you can just say “I saw your request, but I prefer to keep my social media life and my work life separate.”

      This is an OK thing to want!

      If you want to add legitimacy to your claim, up your privacy settings, don’t ID your workplace on social media, and consider not accepting friend requests from co-workers who you are not very close with.

      • Yeah, I pretty much have all that set already. I don’t have my work listed, I only add people I’m actually friends with and see outside of work. I add everyone else to the Facebook account I rarely use with my actual name.

        Hopefully she doesn’t say anything about it.

    • For the most part, I ignore the friend requests of board members and managers at work.

      My boss once wanted to share a photo with me on FB and said “oh, I realized we’re not friends!” So I friended her, but quickly changed my settings for her so that she doesn’t see my posts unless I directly tag her in one, and vice versa. That’s also a good option when you want to appear friendly.

      • How do I make those settings? Like a custom privacy setting that’s just always on?

  19. Okay I need to take (yet another) minute to express my utter delight at meeting KT Tunstall on Tuesday. Huuuuuuge fangirl moment, not gonna lie. I feel like I have to keep repeating the story to remind myself it wasn’t a dream. Here, have a picture…but WHY do people always take blurry photos when they take pics for me?!

    Soooo I never had a LiveJournal, but I did have a Myspace. And it was REALLY emo, with flashing hearts falling from the top of the screen and usually a Paramore song playing. I did not consider myself emo though, I was “alternative”. Apparently the account still exists (with some weird side scrolling formatting thing which I guess is myspace’s thing now) and although none of my posts still exist, a load of photos do!!! Look at me 10ish years ago!!

    Current mood: the anxiety from going to the doctor to say I have anxiety is now being fixed by beer :)
    Current music: Jenny Owen Youngs Two by Two and Rihanna S&M alternating

    Have a great weekend straddlers!!

  20. Ok so you ever do a google search of yourself and come across the past? Myspace. Oh god. But I had pretty rad hair, and was very emo before emo was a thing? Hipster emo? Also how did I not know I was hella queer, and was only thinking “maybe mildly into ladies”. Oh honey, if only you knew.
    Current mood? How the eff is it only 130 I need to escape this horrid cubicle prison, feel free to send me random fun internet things because I am bored.
    Current music.. random youtube bits- Vance Joy’s Fire and the Flood (with a Storks movie background?! AND THERE IS A MONTAGE OF FAMILIES WITH BABIES AND THERE ARE QUEER FAMILIES AND I LITERALLY CRIED BECAUSE OF A CARTOON VIDEO DON’T EVEN JUDGE ME)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCq0UBnXbBw

  21. I miss livejournal all the time. I recently went and re-read all of my journals (I had many, about half of which were secret) and felt pretty sad for my former self. It was incredibly enlightening to read all of my repetitive thoughts and see how many negative patterns lasted for years and years and yeeears.
    I wish there were some way to revive the whole LJ thing. I think it’d be way more fun now.

  22. my first foray into the internet world was posting on an aol message board. the teen christian music board. yes i was cool. friends i made there led me to both an indie christian music website with a message board and also to livejournal. i was much more interested in exploring all the new things back in the day than i am now, so i had livejournal and blogspot and xanga and friendster and myspace… i used livejournal the most, though, and i actually still make a post or two like once a year. i’m pretty bummed about their terrible new terms of service. i had forgotten about it and tried to log in the other day ’cause i’ve been trying to make a list of all the concerts i’ve been to over the years (inspired by the facebook meme), and there was the TOS waiting for me. i guess i’m gonna have to accept them at least temporarily? i don’t really have any interest in creating a new journal elsewhere, but maybe i’ll make a dreamwidth account just so i can import my old journal with no hassle. i don’t believe in just deleting things.

    my week has been weird and annoying. i’ve been trying to find new roommates so i can stay in my house for another year–my roommates were all planning on moving out. i showed the house to someone monday who was super interested, but then the next day i talked to one of my roommates who has decided she’d actually like to stay. i like her and i love her kitties, so that’s cool, but it’s also weird cuz the room the girl from monday was interested in was that roommate’s room. so it’s like ???. i emailed my landlord wednesday to tell him both of us want to stay and are willing to sign the lease whenever, and i still haven’t heard back from him, so i don’t know what the deal is or whether or not to keep looking for people? it’s kinda fucked given that my current lease is up at the end of the month.

    so like, three years ago, my ex and i broke up, and we stayed friends afterward. it was kind of hard and a process and i took forever to get over her which helped none of it. but we wanted to stay friends, so we worked through it. a couple years ago, she started dating someone new and i thought it was great and was excited for her, except. she started cutting me out of her life. at first, she was apologetic and was like sorry i’ll start acting like a good friend again soon just in the whole new relationship bubble, but eventually it was like everything i did was wrong. after several months of that, i talked with her and she was like you are too much you need to stop it. and that sucked? but i was like ok i will try to respect where you’re coming from. i texted her way way less, like, once every couple months or something. like last month, i admitted to her that i was kinda sad about what our friendship had become. she was basically like well our friendship was good when i was depressed and needed you, but now i don’t and i don’t have space in my life for you, and it’s not appropriate anyway. and i’m like um what’s not appropriate. and she’s like you message me all the time acting being needy and complaining about how you want more from me. like. a) no. completely untrue. b) she literally had not initiated a conversation with me in a year. so i said that and she just didn’t respond. and it sucks, y’all. i’ve always had a hard time letting go of…well, anything at all. stuff from my childhood, friendships, you name it. i put so much effort into trying to respect what she had to say and hoping if i backed way off, it would help mend things, and it was just a waste of time. she didn’t even see it happen. i was looking in my calendar to see when mother’s day is and saw that her birthday is in a couple weeks, and now it feels like even a happy birthday message on fb would be the wrong thing somehow. like “happy birthday (secret message: i’m still in love with you and can’t live without you)” fuck off i just give a shit about my friends and take it real seriously.

    blah.

    and my manager cut my shift today, so i’m just chilling at home in my bathrobe. how does anyone deal with hourly work. i’m thinking about just going shopping for stuff for a-camp in celebration of the money i’m not making today.

    over & out, autojournal.

    mood: frustrated
    music: thankfully the random terrible song from my work’s playlist is out of my head finally

    (ps sorry i took the treat this like old school blogging directive literally apparently)

  23. I was a loner in junior high/high school and was also only allowed 1/2 an hour of computer time per day, so I never got into LiveJournal or Xanga. My main haunt was Neopets, tbh. Unfortunately, I think my old account got cleaned up in a sweep a few years ago, but I do remember my profile was full of dachshunds and had “RIP Steve Irwin” on it, so.

    (By the way? Turns out he’s been gone for over a decade. I FEEL SO OLD.)

    I also had a MySpace for a while, but then Facebook became more widely available so I switched over to that. Does anyone else remember how elaborate their “poke” system was at one time? You could throw cows and cake and stuff at people. I had a blast with that and drove every single one of my FB friends up the wall.

    Oh! And I spent a LOT of time on MSN Messenger. I had plenty of screen names surrounded by some variation of ~*~*{{ }}*~*~ and written in upside-down text, and used lime green Papyrus font in my messages for entirely too long. Comic Sans may have made an appearance too. Cringe.

    Flashing forward to a somewhat more modern platform: I’ve recently been haunting the r/endo and r/endometriosis subreddits, and yesterday I found someone with diagnosed endo who’s going through very similar health issues to me. So yeah, it’s looking more and more like my Mystery Illness is, in fact, endo. And honestly, even though it can be a pretty brutal (not to mention nigh incurable) condition, having a name and a community helps SO much.

    • THANK YOU FOR MAKING ME FEEL NOT ALONE because I too spent most of my time on Neopets. I remember hardly anything except I had “interesting” neopets and I had lots of whatever the money was and I was in some community things and yeah no idea!

    • HEY I TOO HAVE A MYSTERY ILLNESS THAT IS PROBABLY ENDO. or like, endo is probably a contributing factor to the chronic pain. My “official” diagnoses around it are “pelvic floor dysfunction” and “myofascial pain” which like…okay you’re not wrong? but also super vague.

      • Ugh, I hate meaningless diagnoses. My “official” diagnosis thus far is “abnormal uterine bleeding,” which… no shit. I’ve taken to calling it “chronic ideopathic dunno-itis” because at least it sounds more impressive. But now I might have a real name, which is awesome.

        (Also, I used to get sharp headaches every day when I was in high school-ish. My neurologist’s official diagnosis? “Chronic daily headaches.” Gee, thanks doc. Also, it turns out they were something called ice pick headaches, and there are a few potential treatments out there…)

        Question, if you’re comfortable answering: do you use medical marijuana for pain/symptom management? If so, has it helped any?

    • Remember when your Facebook network was so small that you could say whatever you wanted online…those were the days.

  24. Current mood: Bored and hungry
    Current music: The hum of the office air conditioner countered by the hum of my desk heater (also, keyboard typing)

    Looking at people who had a Livejournal in elementary school makes me feel really old! I started one in college when they finally became free for everyone to use (anyone remember asking friends for codes??) I think the username was ThimbleIsland (I was obsessed with Rasputina) and as far as I know, it still exists. I honestly can’t believe I thought people would want to hear about my every day life. It wasn’t exciting, it had some drama, but other than that it was basic college nonsense that looking back on I don’t even remember happening. But I put it out there for the world to see because that’s what you did in the early 2000’s. At some point I wised up and started making the entries private. I also started an MSN group with a friend in high school and we thought it was just the best thing ever. Did anyone else have one of those?

    Anyway, as far as this week went, the latter half was blissful. I’m pretty sure one of my coworkers hates me and she has been off since Wednesday. I don’t know if she really hates me or is just contradictory/superior by nature. But it is really irritating. So when I found out she would be off for 3 days I did a little happy dance on the inside. Despite not having to dread talking to said coworker, this week has been pretty slow. I’m trying to get used to not having a million things to do at work. In a way it’s nice and in a way it’s awful. But it’s Friday, so hooray!

  25. I had a few different LJ usernames (remember how you had to PAY to change your username?), but my first was liv_laugh_love as an ~homage~ to Olivia Benson. I log into it periodically just to keep the account active so it’s not “deleted and purged,” but I am so averse to ever reading it again. From what I recall, it was a mix of writing my way through some of my worst bouts of depression, and pining over straight/closeted women and girls who didn’t want me back.

    This open thread comes at a time when people who were teens in the early to mid-aughts are getting nostalgic about their early online presence and the sites upon which they built that presence. The digital artist Molly Soda has been really into it lately; she built a fake MySpace page and crowdsourced back-in-the-day profile photos from her Twitter followers (I’ll take a look for the link once I’m not awkwardly trying to hide all non-work tabs on my office computer), and I think she also did an installation of beaded bracelets that spelled out people’s old AIM usernames.

    People who were on Tumblr in the early days – remember the Sharks vs. Cats thing? And Tumblarity? David Karp used to be weirdly obsessed with arbitrary ranking systems. OH, also – that one guy who proposed to his girlfriend on the home page, and it was like a drop-down thing or a sticky post or something so it just chilled there for a few days and was updated with a photo after she said yes?

  26. My parents never really let me use the internet because they were big into privacy and whatnot, but when I was in like 4th grade they put a super old desktop in my bedroom (because it was the only place we had for it) and I would wake up early/stay up late and craft my ~online persona~, a task which normally included just playing a lot of Neopets. I set my age high enough that I was able to DM other users and use more of the social functions.

    I was also pretty baller on this thing called “Nicktropolis,” which was Nickelodeon’s answer to Club Penguin and stuff like that? I don’t remember how the whole interface worked, but I do remember I had my avatar set as “male” and I spent most of my time flirting with “female” users, which I guess should have been a pretty big indicator that I was a lesbian. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    Now my online presence is “40 percent budding professional journalist, 60 percent wannabe comedian/music critic.” Nothing too shameful, save for my very fangirly Tumblr (which is only “shameful” when viewed by people outside the fandom community).

    Current mood: Content, but probably on the verge of a breakdown.
    Current music: The new PWR BTTM record, which is the thing my queer self needed this week.

  27. I wasn’t allowed on LiveJournal – and I was a Good Kid (ugh) – but I checked in regularly on a few digital artists’ blogs. I was on AOL instant messenger (guessed my age yet?) but can’t remember my screen name at all. I did always type in neon green Courier on a black background because then I felt like i was in the Matrix.
    I’ve be agonizing about labels lately. Someone used one for me that I would never use for myself, but maybe it isn’t up to me? If I dress a certain way and have a certain haircut maybe that decides things? I have to admit that it’s really been bothering me, but I have no idea how to resolve it. Maybe it isn’t a big deal, what words people use versus what I use?
    Anyway, back to binge-watching Lip Service! It’s been my escape-from-the-world this week. :)

    • I remember using the green on black Courier setup for AIM as well, specifically because of the Matrix! AIM was so much fun. I still have saved chats laying around.

    • Fun fact AIM is 20 years old and still around today, it’s just lacking some of the features(like voice calling and express, which was the web version). I was way into AIM in HS cause all the kids at my school was using it and the chat rooms were kind of interesting. I mostly went on the teen chats.

  28. Hello, welcome, salutations, and good day, Carolyn! We could probably pack more greetings into a sentence, but it would very quickly start to sound silly.

    Where do people put all their thoughts and scribbles and such? Mine tend to stay in my head, not on the Facebook account I rarely log in to, or the Twitter account that I rarely log in to, or the Instagram account that I rarely log in to, or the , well, you get the point, lol. I do remember LiveJournal and Xanga and Friendster. I did have a LiveJournal when I was a teenager, but I never really knew what to write in it. And that was a pretty bad period in my life anyway, way too much bad stuff going on in my life. Anything from that time is pretty much gone now, and in the end, that’s probably for the best. I’m still the same person, I guess, but things are better. So, that’s something.

    Current Mood: Calm

    Current Music: The Muzak they play at my work

  29. When I was an internet neonate I used to flirt with girls on the gurl.com forums… the website is unrecognizable now and I think the forums got deleted years ago. If I remember correctly my username was _miso_soup_ ? I had just learned how to make miso and I was proud of it, I think?
    I remember particularly talking to some girl who played the trombone and I thought that was the coolest

    • Oh my gosh, I LIVED on gURL.com as a tween/teen! That place was dope. You are right though, now it’s a sad shadow of its former self :(

  30. I remember having a GeoCities page, but I can’t recall anymore what I used to put on it. I think I wanted to make it something special about me, because that was the thing to do. Problem being that basically everyone had one so what was really the point. Anyway, enough introspection. I don’t really have stories to add about LiveJournal, but if you’ll allow me to branch out into, um, Everquest territory? That’d be great.

    Everquest was a kinky place to be for teenage me. I hung out with a crew of swingers who spent most of the game’s downtime sexting one another. I only know this because I accidently interrupted some of their conversations from time to time, it was a pretty easy thing to do, considering the private chat features were clunky – talk about awkward though.

    Eventually, I made connections with these players in real life. Some of them were pretty cool people too. I remember learning about one friend who grew pot plants in their apartment and led a pretty drug positive life. She was pretty cool. We spent a lot of time talking on Yahoo over webcam.

    I also remember getting married to one of these friends in-game, by that I mean my male character got married to their female character. We asked the Game Master to set our last names to be the same and everything. What I didn’t know until much later after the fact was that this friend I married happened to be the real life male partner of the above mentioned Yahoo friend. This caused me some confusion at the time, considering I was identifying as straight and male, but I look back on it in amusement now.

    Unfortunately, none of us keep in touch anymore. I think after the game started being more like a chore we all started to fall away from it. Though, I still recount those times as some of my best experiences online. Haven’t really experienced anything quite like it since.

    • That’s wild! I never got into RPGs but it sounds like they were really good for living out whole parallel universes, basically

      • I think that’s pretty accurate. It was really somet

        Yeah, and maybe I was just really impressionable at the time? I dunno. I remember one time choosing to play the game over seeing my grandfather who was visiting from Florida.

      • Drat. Okay, I hit the button by accident there.

        What I wanted to say was that it was really something special. Enthralling. Maybe even dissociating?

        I remember a lot of the good times, and try to forget some of the bad ones. I’m not gonna say I was addicted, but there was just something about that game.

  31. I never used livejournal, but kind of made friends with an ex neighbor(she was the loudly singing to N*Sync and 5:30am in the early 2000’s type of white girl) who was a huge LJ user. That is, until I discovered she and her friends are kind of antisemitic(they were celebrating 4/20 as not the stoner holiday but the racist holiday). Myspace on the other hand I was using it to try to make friends with people from my college and uni classes and follow musicians I liked at the time. Some people had really bad taste in pages, like a Paris Hilton’s song autoplaying along with a music video and glitter sparkling, which causes the page just to pretty much crash. I also tried to use myspace to meet and date people, I was unsuccessful(met one person, but she was just rude). This was also before I came out. These days its just all tumblr for me, and worked out reasonably well, as I’ve made a few local friends(even met with them in person) and no character limit like twitter.

    My week has been kind of long. I had a stomach flue for like 24 hours in the middle of the week, that was fun./s Highlight of my week was when I went to buy cement glue, and came home with a bottle of Bailey’s Almond Milk also. It pairs well with Trader Joe’s vegan vanilla ice cream and just by itself(it’s only 14% alcohol). Only downside is kind of pricey at target at $20 a bottle when the regular version is like $12 a bottle. I also haven’t had the best of luck trying to hang out with the person who I thought ghosted me so far. Like I’ve mentioned a few queer events and each time I have a party to go to, or I can’t make it. I don’t get people. I just may become the cat lady, well maybe more like one dog and one cat lady.

    Sunday I went hiking then took a quick dip in the water. It was really nice, but there also was a lot of flies and butterflies the latter of which I am allergic too(I rash up badly), but still had a great time out(of course was visibly queer).
    Lovely spot to just sit.

    Flowers are still in bloom and they looks great!

    Thank you for viewing and reading post. Have a positive weekend!

  32. Hey what’s up hello!

    :P

    Anyway, internet! Fun times. I met my ex on LiveJournal…and my current partner on a Twitter hashtag. Glad that one worked out :)

    Despite all that, LiveJournal was fun. It was an interesting place to go and vent and talk about life. I was obsessed with the communities – specifically (of course) the “Lesbian” community. While I don’t use that word anymore, seeing it made me feel better about all the feelings lol. Did anyone else on LiveJournal attempt those “101 things in 1001 days” challenges?

    I didn’t really care about who saw that I was queer on the internet back then, and I’ve been flip-flopping on it now since I work in (public) television. I put “geeky QWOC” and who my (trans lesbian) partner is in my Twitter bio, and a work friend and I put our pronouns in our email signatures just today :)

    Also I have a “…thing you wish you’d said that you feel like you can set it down and finally breathe.” My partner and I were snuggling in bed last night with our cat exploring our new apartment, and at that moment, I felt complete. We’ve been talking about getting married/being long-term forever, and last night I felt like I was meant to do just that…

    Current mood: full, ready for the end of the day
    Current music: I have “Changing My Major” from Fun Home stuck in my head?

    • I met one ex on LJ, another on Twitter, and another on Tumblr. #WINNING

  33. Does anyone remember Birls?? I used to lurk that community all the time before I knew I was gay.

  34. Current mood: relieved

    Current music: none just now

    Reasons for relief: (a) It appears that I’m going to keep my job for now. Which means I have some breathing room to work out what exactly I’m supposed to do when I grow up. (b) My Kid passed the math class that has bedeviled us both for this whole (community college) school year. And he’s feeling pretty good about the rest of this semester’s classes, which is nice for me to see. He even gets to spend a couple of weeks with his other mom, sister and nephew before his summer class starts.

    And I am assiduously, deliberately, and thoroughly avoiding the madness that descends on Louisville at Derby time.

    In short: for today, it’s all good.

  35. Current Mood: I just spent $36 dollars on fancy pens to try and gain some control over my life
    Current Music: Muse- Map of the Problematique

    Sometimes I feel like I’m living in a scifi alternate universe episode. Like one day I’m going to wake up in my Real life where I’m part of a team of awesome queer women who fight monsters or aliens and secretly save the world, or we travel through time correcting past mistakes and secretly save the world, or we travel together in a blue box through all of time and space and save the world. But right now I’m stuck in this Other timeline where the Stargate didn’t get discovered, or Zeframe Cochrane didn’t make First Contact with the Vulcans, or The Doctor died, or Druitt succeeded in stopping The Five from injecting the Source Blood and Helen Magnus didn’t live to be 160 years old and sweep me off into fantastic adventures.

    And the whole point of the Alternate timeline episode is that it’s terrible and everything feels wrong and we’re so happy when our heroes finally get back to their real lives.
    Where is my real life? When am I going to wake up?

    (This trip down angsty lane has been brought to you by a ridiculous amount of scifi shows and this lovely FOT topic.)

    I did Livejournal in college but apparently at some point I copied/printed out the entire thing and then purged and deleted it, which is cool because Russia but also not cool because I have no idea where I put it so it’s most likely just gone.

    Hoping everyone’s weeks get better!!!

    • OMG, now I really want a queer SG team! The Goa’uld wouldn’t know what hit them. I’m sorry to hear you’re in an alternate universe- that’s no fun. I feel that way about everything that’s going on with politics right now- did I go through the mirror and not notice? I can only hope that one day I’ll be back on the other side of the mirror and the world will make sense again, without all the crazy conservatives that want to do terrible things. And I remind myself about the one nice part of the alternate universe- it makes you really appreciate your universe when you get back to it. I hope you find your way home soon.

    • i think that was bigger in not the US. i used google buzz a lot for a hot second, but i never made an orkut account.

    • …I think I logged into Orkut, like, twice. I think.

      Wow that was a while ago. XD

  38. Oh man the past internet! I feel like I need to make the full confession that as a preteen/early teenager I was crazy active in the E! Online chat room about the playboy mansion show The Girls Next Door. I eventually worked my way up to becoming a moderator of the chat room but it all came crashing down when I let it slip that I was fourteen. It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time because I’d fooled everyone for so long. It was so sad to lose my internet friends! I used to belly crawl from my room to my playroom with the tv at eleven pm after my parents had gone to bed to watch the show on the lowest volume every week for a new episode. (oh Mae, honey, the signs were all there) I didn’t have anyone else to talk about the show with and losing that community stunk. Honestly I think I’ve been wary of internet friends ever since even though now I’m a grown ass lady. (Okay who wants to chat about the girls next door now)

  39. I’ve just returned home from a lesbian wedding a straight friend dragged me to to meet women.
    It was really nice and smallish, but what kind of killed me, was, that the ex was there.
    One of the bride’s exes organized half the thing and they were together for fourteen years and my friend told me, how it tore her friend, the bride, apart when they split up.
    How it took her forever to get over her until she met her current spouse.
    And that’s the woman who organized the party and didn’t know whether it would be a good idea to go to the ceremony, but she went, and it was really beautiful.
    Everyone was very nice and welcomed me right into the fold and it was just really crazy, looking at strangers in a mere moment in their lives and having an entire window opened up.
    I don’t know how people remain close with their exes.
    For me, there’s always a promise that’s been broken, and its betrayal does not warrant further emotional entanglement and vulnerability.

  40. I saved some of my old Livejournal entries in a text file before deleting them years ago but my closest high school friends (plus their cool older sisters) were on there so most of what I wrote was so coded and encrypted under one-time-use pseudonyms that I have no clue what I was talking about in most of it any more (except for the entry wondering whether my boss was harassing me at my summer job in 2002, which my partner had me read aloud to them a few months ago and with 15 years of hindsight turns out BIG SURPRISE, he was). Livejournal was where I got my high-school era philosophy on my sexuality from someone on my friends list who was like, “I’m okay with boys, but if I find a girl who complements me perfectly, I’m going to be with her,” and I was all, yes, totally!, but then she got an actual girlfriend and I didn’t for another decade. (Also, that girl did not complement me perfectly.)

    I’m still friends with two people I met through Livejournal!

    It has been pouring rain for two days with more anticipated and everything has been stressful and someone from the music scene I used to be involved with died suddenly and everything feels really grey.

  41. My proper comment will come later. I need a place to vent & this is prob the only place.

    If your family member is nb, their gender presentation likely has nothing to do w you & saying it’s ‘too much’ for you will make them feel like shit & guilty.

    Mind you I do get to look like paddy & he’s sexier anyway… But that’s not the point…

      • The irony is, I’ve read loads about how in Celtic (and other cultures but I’ll mention my own ancestors to avoid appropriating) culture, long hair = strength. If ppl would read my unkempt long hair as ‘strong warrior’ I would probably keep it as I can’t be bothered with the hassle.
        Like in the bible w Samson.

  42. Current mood: in bed wishing I was still asleep
    Current music: the burble of my aquarium filter

    I never had livejournal or anything but I had some forums I was religiously attached too. I never knew how to convert that chatting off forum though. To this day I’ve never had an ‘internet friend’, feel like I’m missing a key geek youth moment.

    I’m having a weird week of feelings. I felt like I was getting on top of stuff with my ex because I’m getting okay at going on dates and going dancing and hooking up, but then I kinda realised I don’t feel attraction during any of that. Just that like it’s nice someone likes me?
    Now I’m getting a crush on a new friend and I feel so weird because I have no idea what I want to do and it’s making me question how my sexuality works because it’s like I laser focus and noone else seems hot and that is not what I envisioned for my life and relationships ?

  43. ohh, this resonated with me. I had a livejournal. So much angst! But I also had a series of geocities websites too… and I am proud of 13-year old me taking screenshots to catalog my CSS skills. I worked so hard on this website layout. Look at those iframes! and changing link colors! and coldplay lyrics! endless rambling about vegetarianism! Bringing you the best of 2003:

    • Please say you’re still veggie, I have so much respect for that lifestyle esp in the young.

      • I am! I became vegetarian at age 8 or 9 , was vegan from 16-21 and am still vegging along at 27! Definitely see it as a for life type of thing…

    • OMG I remember Internet Explorer for OS X(now called MacOS). I liked how it looked, but it wasn’t as good as Netscape, which at some point had AIM built it.

      • Yes! Note that I had an orange skin on it; I remember there were so many you can choose from. Also, probably in 2003 was the last time internet explorer for mac updated itself, ha. I think it was the best at testing websites for general visibility / compliance at that time?

  44. Dear LiveJournal,

    I was just rejected by a girl I went out with twice/she asked me on a third date & then changed her mind

    Current mood: undateable

    Current music: Dancing On My Own

  45. Geocities -> Kiwibox -> Diaryland -> Livejournal/Deadjournal -> Friendster -> Myspace (some of these concurrently). Also a lot of time on Journalfen’s various wank blogs.

    Anyone else part of the whole early 2000s subdomains thing? Webrings, iFrames, “vectors”, fanlistings, table layouts, change your layout every five seconds, Dreamhost was the best and .com was passe?

    Also from (I think) DeadJournal when I was about 17, about what fascinates me:
    “The dynamic “force” in female-female relationships (I’m not gay, but the connection between two girls fascinate me endlessly)”

    TIARA. PLEASE.

  46. Current mood: quixotic
    Current music: the Chrono Trigger soundtrack

    Oh god, Livejournal. The time I was most active there was definitely spent in the Beatles slash communities and on my own journal complaining about I wished I lived in the sixties. I was…a joy to be around, I’m sure, lol.

    Though in a weird way, I kinda miss that. Tumblr is set up in such a way that it doesn’t do stream-of-conscious diary writing really, it being more suited to image posts and gif sets. Not that there’s a problem with that, it just tends to have (or maybe just the people I end up following), if there is a text post with a read more cut, it’s report something bad or sad or somebody hiding their feelings in the tags of an unrelated post. To be fair, I never got to know a lot of my Tumblr friends outside of Tumblr but it can be hard to gauge if they’re going through something or just even if they had a good day that day.

    Though I really don’t have anything to prove, I miss the feel of just reporting about my day, even it’s just to vent and then have my friends there to make me feel better. Facebook is…a monster where it’s hard to find JUST the people you know and not ads and promoted pages. Still I remember having a PAID Livejournal account and it being a big deal having a 100 icons to choose from. SMH @ myself.

    Anywho, it’s been a weirdly productive week. It turns out that I only had to come into work on Monday and since school’s out, my manager won’t call me in until August so I’m basically out for the summer. Well, technically “looking for work” but seriously. The last month was such a slog, I need SOME time off to recover and get my bearings. It’s nice to not spend my time not in a blind panic or just too bone-tired to do much of anything. It’s already the first week of May and I already crossed off more off my monthly to-do list than I did at any point last April.

    Oh yeah, I made a music thing, finally! Basically, my free-trial for Ableton ran out (and I couldn’t seem to trick it into giving me another 30 day free trial but with a different email ~_~) so I was looking for DAWs that I could use in Chrome without downloading anything and just made a quick thing in Soundtrap, just seeing what I could do with the premade loops. It’s my first finished shot at something so I’m expecting to get better at it the more I ticker with it. Not for nothing, the interface isn’t all that direction from Ableton so what little I did learn with it, I can use for Soundtrap.

    https://soundcloud.com/lk_dstny/a-q-u-a-vitae

  47. Current Mood: My tummy is happy so I am happy
    Current Music: Your Name soundtrack (I like to relax at work)

    I’m stealing my supervisor’s desk today… and I think this statue of Applejack is glaring at me :0 She’s my favorite ^__^

    Live Journal I vaguely remember, but I never used it. I think at that time I was too busy playing StarCraft and had gotten bored of social media stuff. I did rock MySpace though! Would-be-admirers were greeted by either Niel Young’s “Old Man” or “Come” by Namie Amuro (I was REAL into the Inuyasha fanfic scene. Sango + Kagome forever)

    My earliest social computer time was probably Ultima Online. I mistakenly idolized my friends Dad who “owned” a blacksmith shop and spent the better portion of his marriage tending imaginary tills. Then it was MSN comic chat. I think that’s when I first was exposed to the adult world. Sex education was all explained in simple, fascinating panels — all beautifully done in Comics Sans and all it’s glory (you know you love it!). It was also the first chance I had to explore my gender identity in a public space. I didn’t know what I was doing at the time, but choosing a female character gave me that freedom I wasn’t getting elsewhere. There were a few 3D chats that sprang up later, but MSN will always be home.

    I didn’t pickup the social/virtual world thing again until my Junior/Senior years of high school when MYST URU was released. This one girl I “met” would enjoy the next two years having deep conversation in this virtual garden, the surrounding waterfalls emptying seemingly into the abyss. I wish we would have stayed in touch. I miss her.

    In other news, it was hat day at work! I felt super cute all day (ง ◕ั⌑◕ั)ว ⁾

    Oh ya… I somehow managed to work past the most terrifying moment of my life and go swimming at the YMCA. First time in anything but swim trunks. It actually wasn’t that bad! I think I was more shy than scared… *:ﾟ*｡⋆ฺ(*´◡`)

    View post on imgur.com

  48. Current mood: Been awake since 3am thanks to loud ass neighbors – so.fucking.exhausted. Like, why are my neighbors such inconsiderate assholes?

    Current music: Natalia Lafourcade – Antes De Huir

    Damn, Livejournal. Is this where I admit that I still have mine? I don’t post on it anymore, I just use it to follow some communities. I remember the pain in the ass it was to make every.single.damn.entry private. Has this changed? Perhaps I should look into it. Have I mentioned I’m tired?

    In awesome news, I read that Sleater-Kinney will be performing at this years Music Tastes Good Festival – which is in Long Beach, CA – where I live. YAY.

  49. I think I may have tried something like LiveJournal once? All I remember is we had a shared family laptop and mayeb it was middle school and I was in the “when girls like girls” section of whatever advice thing it was and my heart jumped up my throat and out into the real world to pummel me because I forgot to exit and clear the history before giving it to my mom.

    I just submitted my application for the Jack Jones Literary Retreat which I have talked myself out of at least fifteen times since knowing it was coming back and like I’m glad I did it cause progress and all that shit, but also whenever I finish something like this I’m ready to cuss everyone out so I’m trying to like not do that by watching Netflix and doing gay shit on the computer (hence one reason I’m here).

    I was published in this anthology and got my contributor copy Wednesday and brought it in to show my therapist on Thursday, and then my art therapist took the book and sHOWED EVERYONE IN THE OFFICE and copied my work for everyone to read when they had the time (they asked first so it’s cool) and just !!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have no idea what to do with good love & shit so I immediately thanked everyone and got myself a Lyft to get the fuck outta there so I could gayly emotion in the peace of my own room. And then I showed my mom, which I was really wary of, but she just goes, “This is what you’re supposed to be doing.” and quoted something I wrote to me and said, “I’m gonna say that all the time.” AND JUST I like immediately had to go to bed cause honestly my all insides did a sigh of relief and thanks and I was like it don’t get better than this.

    SO. Good things happened and I am thankful: my friends were beyond understanding and lovely when I had to cancel plans cause I’m me! my family is okay! I wrote a lot and turned in submissions and worked! I did a 13 hour shift Sunday and didn’t pummel anyone! I’M STILL GAY HOW MIRACLE!!!

    Bad things have happened and like I guess it’ll be good for me later or w/e but it doesn’t feel that way now but at least it feels like I’m not super alone in it, at least it’s not high school, you know? Like, we’re addressing my shit w self-harm and alcohol and it was tough cause I had to go a week without doing either and I was ready to obliterate everyone, but I made it, and I decided not to go to a Cinco de Mayo thing because why specifically put myself in shit I know I cannot get out of, and I miss my grandma a lot, and I’m not as good at hiding as I used to be which scares me, but maybe it can be okay.

    ALSO ALSO at work last weekend a little black girl had a book signing for a book she published aND I GOT HER AUTOGRAPH SHE IS EIGHT AND MY HERO and cute girls have talked to me and I have been coherent back and honestly I’m living my best life.

    Current mood: Really gay & mostly content cause I watched Foxfire for the first time & also BFFs which warmed my heart so I’m ready to do all the gay shenanigans.

    Current music: I just heard the dun dun sound from Law and Order from someone in the house.

    I hope you all have a lovely weekend!

  50. I had everything I think. I miss them cos they were anonymous & actually I got less trolls even on my girl ones (my gender fluctuates and I hadn’t heard of nb so I had girl anon ones and boy anon ones). Was anyone else on live wire?
    Hm football still dominating my life lol. We demolished our rivals in an away game which was great. But then turned out their fans responded by acting like idiots: running onto pitch to try & intimidate ppl, doing monkey gestures at one of our black players and throwing things at the pitch.
    By the way, guy who got the monkey gestures? Fast becoming my hero. Even before that.
    Was my dads birthday on Sunday :) I’ve gone back to buying him cards & presents so I got him card & a book by Nick Hornby. I don’t see him cos I can’t cope w him picking arguments every time we go to the shops/cafes. I text him all the time but one to one is only way it works.
    Read a great book that spoke a lot about things I’m interested in. Colonialism & immigration for eg. And reminded me what religion should be about. It pisses me off that what should be about helping those treated the worst in society (eg the poor) has been turned by some into an excuse to be anti lgbt (ie another group that could be applied to). I hope if Jesus is real they/she comes back female & lesbian next time (that would make Jesus gay, female & nb cos he was a guy the first time).
    My art is getting better, I stopped giving the figures full eyes & details like that. That minimalism actually seems to make for a better picture. I don’t really get that.
    I realised this week that every week since Dump happened to America, I’ve written a queer poem :)
    I voted. Can’t remember which party but it started with l. Members of my family annoyed me by not voting because it’s not the ‘real’ election… I hope this isn’t my granddads first stab at the internalised ageist comment he made about how old ppl shouldn’t vote. If there’s one person over 70 who should vote, it’s him.
    Mood status: warm and cosy
    Listening to: my dog barking at 2AM. :<

  51. One time on Neopets I got a message from a Portuguese speaker and she was SO nice that I didn’t have the heart to tell her I don’t speak Portuguese so I relied on online translators for months of correspondence

  52. I am SO HERE for this open thread!

    I went all in on MySpace. Remember those “trains” you could join to get more friends? Also I totally did that scene kid thing where I put my MySpace ID on my photos, even though it’s not like anyone would have ever pretended to be me…?!

    I also had Bebo, which I could talk about forever because, like, MySpace was always the “cooler” one, but Bebo was the one that all your friends actually used and where all the real drama happened.

    OH, and does anyone remember Vampire Freaks? My friend and I got accounts on there, but all I remember about it was it was creepy AF.

    I, of course, also had a private LiveJournal, where I wrote angsty trains of thought for years. I’ve since deleted them all because knowing they existed, even secretly, online was too much to think about, haha.

    Other than that, I totally had After Ellen and Autostraddle accounts in my baby queer stage that I would repeatedly delete because I was scared real life people would find them. Sad.

    Current Mood: I need to study and clean, which has been my current mood for the past ~4 years.
    Current Music: Nothing, but I was listening to Cherry Glazerr a minute ago.

  53. I remember geocites and livejournal but was never a part of them.
    My first exposure with fanfiction was on I don’t know what site but all I was looking for was stories about a D&D character but found sad awkward sorta smut with kid fic and batfamily smut that put me off fanfic til I was 23. It wasn’ just poor writing it was nasty and misogynistic it ways that would still make me feel ill.

    I was a part of Gaiaonline before it became all about the real life cash. Did do some RPing that I found frustrating because everyone was always trying to godmode, which was borrrrrrrring.

    Fandom ships.
    Hm.
    My straight person watched Wynonna Earp with me and immediately shipped Waverly and Officer Haught. Was absolutely delighted by the shipname WayHaught.
    Also with trembly lip demanded to know if Officer Haught was going to live after the snu-snu.

  54. Oh man.

    Current mood: that sort of spacey feeling where I can’t decide if I’m bored, tired, or the allergies are just slowly killing me
    Current music: this bad lip reading Yoda that sounds like my dog when he’s anxious in the car is currently stuck in my head: https://vine.co/v/im0VXLMgQAQ/card?api=1

    Livejournal was too mainstream, so I had Blurty. I also was heavily into MySpace and carefully cultivated my page with just the right backgrounds and colors and THE PERFECT SONG to annoyingly autoplay for everyone (changed depending on what feelings I needed to subtly portray). I wrote a lot of silly rambles in the form of AIM away messages, before I moved to MSN messenger where I changed my name to Very Meangingful lyrics.

    As an incredibly cool kid before social media, I also had a series of Palm Pilots and a fold-out keyboard that plugged into them and I would write many thoughts into that with the green backlight on late into the night. I was a nerdy kid, okay?

    In other news, today I went to my therapy group and for the first time didn’t find it particularly fulfilling so I’m debating if I’ll keep going. I felt like I learned a lot for a while but now I just need to work on applying things to my life and don’t need to keep on going to hear the same things over and over. Bummed because I was excited about finally getting therapy but I think this one’s just not it for me in the long run.

    I should perhaps get a Palm Pilot and start writing to that again as if it’s a therapist. (Did Palm Pilots just die when smartphones became a thing? I remember thinking I didn’t need a smartphone because my Palm Pilot had all those features except the phone part, which my clunky Nokia obviously had covered.)

  55. I never had livejournal or myspace because I was sheltered and also Not Cool but my middle school friend group did have a (?geocities?) proud board where we were generally dorks and also sometimes role played LOTR. My other friend claimed Eowyn first so I ended up as Galadriel, which entailed me learning some of her extremely lengthy monologues which I may remember to this day

    In other news graduation approaches and oh my god why is there so much changing?!? I do not enjoy change.

  56. Just remembered what my very first computerised version of reaching out to the world was.
    Remember those laptops in pc world that were open so the public could play on them? I opened up a word doc and wrote something like ‘hello my name is …Liam and I like reading and I’m eight. I think it would be great if we could talk to each other on the computer. Who are you and what do you like?’
    I was so very lucky that was answered by a nine year old girl (I know it wasn’t a ‘catfish’ cos I saw her) that answered and not a weirdo. But mum took me out of the store as i was looking at it so I never got to reply to her :(
    Anyone else do this lol?

  58. Hi all,

    Sorry I’m a little late (Saturday).

    This week was a little rough for me, I flew home from California back to the east coast to continue working at my job for the next few months. This (thank god) will be the last leg of my long distance relationship! It’ll be about a year since we’ve been living together.

    I flew back Friday night, got in around midnight, spent all day Saturday in a groggy mess, and then woke up early on Sunday to drive 5 hours to New York to go to a funeral for an undergraduate who worked in my lab. I went with my boss and a graduate student from the lab who was his mentor.

    It was a really nice drive there, but the funeral was just the saddest thing I could’ve imagined. The undergraduate died from literally a complete accident, doing something that many of us do/have done, but just some cosmic event in the universe put his foot a few inches in the wrong place, which ultimately led to his death. It was really hard to comprehend because there was really no one or nothing to blame for the death or the accident, it was just something that happened.

    So, I’m living with my partner’s dad, which is great because #rentfree, but we are just two very very different people with very very different life styles and it’s going to take a lot of self control and deep breathing to make it through these next few months.

    Good news this week was I went to the first class of a six-week bike-mechanic class! It was really fun and I’m excited that this exists! I’m going dancing tonight with a friend and then tomorrow, I’m waking up hella early to work at a booth for my friend who is a reiki practitioner at an alternative health fair. There will be psychic healing and crystal skull rearrangements….

    Love and light.

  59. Im just going to use this Open thread to declare my love for Melissa Mclelland’s face. Ugh, so depressing………..But i am sending it out into the Universe through this forum, cos ill burst if i keep it in.

  60. I am SO SAD I no longer remember my livejournal password—I’ve tried so hard to get back into it and the email account it’s connected with but no luck. Livejournal mostly reminds me of me and my high school best friend aka The Girl Who Made Me Queer having each others’ passwords & writing really angsty private entries to each other trying to define our feelings, and how my dad got a computer program that hooked the keyboard and hacked into all of my private accounts & found out I was queer & told me I had to stop seeing her & then made me go to a conservative Christian college after he found out I still was! GOOD TIMES FROM 2005-2007

    • Writing down your feelings for anyone is a bad move when you’re in highschool. I had the whole best friend angsty is it love/friendship with someone, and she wrote it down in her diary, which her spy mom(with obvious boundary issues) read, and it was hell… For her… Of course her mom never looked at me the same way again!

  61. Current Mood: Surprisingly good despite experiencing the literal worst date I’ve ever been on last night. The sun is shining, friends!

    Current Song: I’ve had the Hamilton soundtrack on repeat for the last few weeks. My current favorite song is We Know.

    I used MySpace and Live Journal back in the day. I loved the customizableness (sp?) of MySpace. I wish I still had access to it, for posterity.

    My user name was Greenearthgirl4, which I came up with while I was in my environmental hippy phase. It’s actually still my email address which is slightly embarrassing because I think it looks immature now that I’m a grown-up person,lol. Although I’m still strongly in favor of a green earth. One of these days I’ll get around to changing it but it is such a hassle.

  62. I also used the Internet back in the dial up days a lot to look up sexy fan fiction to print (once the printer wasn’t working so I left it only to have some pages of really bad slash fiction print out after my mom fixed the printer). This was when I was 15 or so.

  63. current mood: how is it already week six? how do i already have midterms? how am i almost halfway done with college?
    current music: joan baez

    my 16-year-old internet self is not that far in the past (i’m barely 20) so i still find her genuinely embarrassing and not funny embarrassing. my old tumblr url was a reference to keats’ “hymn to apollo” and that’s pretty much the only thing i’m willing to share about my old tumblr. yikes.
    i never wrote fanfic during my fandom days (although i consumed a fair amount) but i DID just write lesbian fanfiction as part of an english assignment to “take a passage from one of the readings and rewrite it with one or more character’s gender and/or sexuality changed (and then analyze what the changes do to the dynamics of the story).” it’s now jane eyre and mrs. rochester, a gruff butch with a tender heart. this gay assignment is worth 20 percent of my grade. i love my major.

      • English! the class is women’s writing 1800-1900 and the professor is a very prominent queer/feminist theorist so needless to say the class is AMAZING

    • my brain filled in the gaps of “a passage…” with “to india,” and i feel like that novel would have probably worked out so much better for poor dr. aziz if the character had just been a lesbian. a lot less nonsense probably would have happened. (or, arguably, more? lesbians do have a known proclivity toward falling for unavailable straight(?) women…)

  64. Oh! Yes! I was there for livejournal, 1999-2004 maybe. And gurl.com and geocities. And I lurked a lot on the chainsaw records message board which turned into strap-on.org later on. I met my first lover on livejournal, when I was in high school! They lived an hour’s drive from me and I used to borrow my dad’s car for the weekend and go see them. We made each other so many mix cds. I listened to Bright Eyes a lot. I still think sometimes about the young women I was lj friends with and wonder what they’re up to now. I think Fetlife is a lot like Livejournal, but with a specific (and adult) focus.

  65. DeviantArt! I really loved Myspace and I miss it. I also had a VampireFreaks profile because I thought I was so goth.

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