The effect of LJ...

[wiseheart]

... on our social life. Or the virtual one, anyway.

So, does LJ bring us closer to each other or does it alienate us even more? The answer is, in my opinion, yes and no, to both questions.

It's true that LJ has perhaps the best layout for organizing entries by topic and to find the ones we're intrested in. It's also a good forum to tell about the daily events of our life a great number of people simultaneously. Quite a time-saver, and time is a precious thing to us all. So, in this, LJ does, indeed, bring us closer to each other. We are up to date to the events of each other's life, we can - especially if we are members of the same LJ community - discuss topics more easily, than, say, on a Yahoo mailing list. The interactive factor is stronger.

But... I've just recently realized that practically everything that lands in my mailbox is an LJ-comment. Aside from organizing holiday plans with altariel1 and earonn or making photomanip agreements with the most generous archet, I haven't got a single private message for ages. Nor have I written many of those, to tell the truth. Some, but not many.

So, what's happening? Private contacts are practically nonexistent. And while there's the opportunity of friend-locked entries, one still can't be as open and as honest as in a private e-mail. There's always the danger that someone will misunderstand something, feel insulted and turn their backs on you, without the chance to clear the whole thing. It has happened to me, repeatedly.

It is almost as if we can't bring up the extra energy that the nurturing of personal contacts demands. Granted, we are all battered by Real Life (the bitch!) and happy when we find a way to deal with our contacts easier. But sometimes I have the impression that LJ makes it too easy for us. And while going for the easy solution, something deeper, more personal gets inevitably lost.

Sorry for the depressing content. But it seems to me that I've lost contact to too many friends I used to correspond with in the recent years. And not because of the lack of trying from my side. Perhaps I'm just looking for a scapegoat.

All that said, I'm still happy to be on LJ. It does make many things easier. I just don't know whether we should depend on it to this extent. Perhaps I'm wrong and seeing ghosts. But the corner of the Internet where I've been active since I got access for the first time seven or so years ago seems to be a lot less impersonal lately.

Comments

[lhun-dweller.livejournal.com]

Having lingered outside the LJ community longer than most, I agree with you on both counts. When folks shifted OT comments off the Yahoo group and into LJ, I suddenly lost my sense of the pulse of folks' lives. Joining LJ and getting the "friend" process down helped restore some of that and brought me to new folks, as well. However, there has been precipitous drop in the number of private communications and thus the more personal exchanges about interests only that person and I share or issues I wouldn't put on LJ. (Yes, I know: I don't put much on LJ to begin with. I warned you all that I suck at diaries [grin].)

And boy, it takes time to go through LJ! I've realized I've been spending too much time on it at work: I would log in in the morning expecting to have a quick glance at my friends' entries, and then there would be one I felt compelled to respond to immediately. Suddenly, it's an hour later... and I'm staying at work an hour later to make up for it, which on public transit here means getting home more than an hour later. Which means I don't write e-mail or other stuff in the evening. I'm working on changing that.

How do other folks manage this LJ/private communication split?