I miss GEnie. And sff.net. And Livejournal (old school)

[pbray]

Thinking about community and especially the community of writing friends that I've engaged with over the years.

When I first started writing, GEnie was a popular place to hang out and network with other writers. Many of us then moved over to sff.net for discussion boards, and livejournal for blogging.

Then livejournal was bought by Russians, and sff.net shutdown, and let's not even mention the artist formerly known as Twitter. Facebook worked (kind of) for a time, but even with a ruthlessly curated friendslist the algorithms make it impossible for me to see posts that I'm actually interested in.

As the enshittification continues, and my friends scatter to different platforms, I'm wondering what's next. Is the future a mimeographed newsletter sent via snail mail to the friends I haven't seen in person in the past year? Or the telephone tree-like game we engage in at cons starting each bar conversation off with "Has anyone heard from X recently? How about Y--they deleted their social media accounts, does anyone know how they're doing? By the way, I heard from Z they just move to place and are loving it."

Sigh.

Comments

[la_marquise]

This is a very good question. My original on-line community was alt.asian-movies, which led to life-long friendships, and a lot of fascinating discussions. And I enjoyed LJ a lot, though I often didn't have a lot to say.
It would be lovely if we could restart at least some community here: it's not perfect, but nothing is, and it doesn't have the ads.

[pbray]

Agreed, it's the best alternative. I really enjoyed LJ and miss the friends I lost when they scattered.

[fredbassett]

Hope you don't mind me dropping by. I've been on the same threads on Farcebook with la_maquise, mevennen and fjm. It would be nice to know more people here.

I'm still active on LJ with my original fandom, but really only for that. Farcebook seems just to be a constant sea of adverts now and seeing what your friends post there is almost impossible. I do use Discord a lot for fan stuff, but everyone is spread across so many platforms now it's too easy to lose track of people.

[pbray]

*waves Hi* Yeah Discord is on my radar but honestly I'm overwhelmed and have realized I can't be on all the spaces my friends are.

Sigh.

Going to try to be better about staying on top of Dreamwidth and Bluesky and seeing where that takes me.

[fredbassett]

Yep, it's impossible to keep up with everyone, everywhere.