on xposting and long-form

[jazzfish]

21 days for Dreamwidth, #3
Do you crosspost? Why or why not?

I crosspost to Livejournal, because I like having readers and that's where most of my community is. Herd inertia is a strong force.

When I began posting primarily at DW I chose to leave LJ comments enabled because according to an informal poll of my readership I'd lose commenters if I disabled comments on the LJ side. And I'm far too attached to the feedback and interaction I get from comments to do something that would get in its way.

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This is part of why I've not really taken to Twitter, or Facebook. Not only are they not set up for long-form blogging of the kind I strongly prefer (both reading and writing), they're not set up for in-depth conversations. Twitter's better about those than FB is, but Twitter still doesn't lend itself to thoughtful measured responses.

The golden age of LJ had its share of pure surface frippery ("8:00 I lost my hairbrush" "8:05 Oh, there it is"). It also had more people writing longer bits because that's what the available platform supported. I miss that. "Longer" doesn't have to mean thousand-word screeds, it can be a paragraph or two. Something that's got a bit more reflection to it than just a nominally-witty phrase or "so i was at this thing tonight."

Also, you kids should get off my lawn.

Comments

[skreidle.livejournal.com]

I'd comment at DW if you only allowed comments there, but if I didn't already have a DW account, I'd be less inclined to. (Also, I've never cross-posted to DW--all the people over there that I know are already reading LJ.)

You really think Twitter is more suited to in-depth conversations than FB? I think wholly the opposite. I see Twitter as almost wholly superficial, where conversations proceed like post-it notes on a huge public bulletin board--setting aside DMs which, like FB Messages, function much like email.

[pictsy.livejournal.com]

I value LJ mostly as an external memory drive. I learned to stop writing about thoughts, feelings, etc., because of all the arguing.

[voltbang.livejournal.com]

Hmm, if I can echo DW to LJ seamlessly, maybe when I move to a new stealth self, I will do so there. LJ's user base has shrunk, but it's still bigger than DW. If there's a good way to use both, that would be best, as my goal in using LJ is actual human interaction and stuff.

Twitter seems to encourage interaction, but mindless interaction. FB somehow manages to discourage interaction, despite everyone and their brother making use of it. Often, frequent use of it.

[jsciv.livejournal.com]

I'm still not sure how I feel about the DW/LJ division. Only two of you have moved, so I don't think I'm inclined at this point to follow, and I still have a decently active LJ community that I follow and in which I participate.

I comment here because that's where I "am", so I'm grateful that you choose to continue posting here, as I really do want to stay in touch with you two and I enjoy the interaction.

I think I've found a happy use for Twitter and FB in my board game pic uploads, as it is a good use for the brief medium (especially since I can augment with a picture from the phone), and does provide a bit of a "what I'm doing" that's context-free enough not to me mis-taken on FB (a peeve of mine is that FB is so context-free). It's not what everyone else uses them for, but it works for me. Even so, I would miss the ability to come back later and give a fuller context to the events of my life.