Public Service Announcement
Despite the Internet’s efforts to make you feel otherwise, every thought you have during the day, every next step you make in the course of your hour, everything you eat, is just not that damn interesting, people.
Now, the majority of you confine this kind of thing to Twitter, which is great because it’s a choice whether to follow you in such a way or not. But now the heinousness of Twitter to LJ (and, apparently, WordPress) is upon us. There is still hope, though. If all your daily tweets go in one post, that’s fine. But I ask, on behalf of people like me who really do not give a flying fuck what cool thing you just saw out your window or that you found your favorite pasta sauce at Whole Foods: Put that shit behind a cut.
Don’t make me ask again.
For those using Firefox to read LJ, I recommend the “LJ Twitterless” Greasemonkey script.
YES. YES. A THOUSAND TIMES YES. There are occasional tweets from my friends that I find interesting or relevant (& thus I’d probably not use the Greasemonkey script), but… I do not need to know every time someone has a cup of coffee during the day. Augh. I don’t understand the impulse that makes people microblog such mundane things, either… I guess that’s why I don’t use Twitter.
I couldn’t agree more. I have no idea why people think that everything they do and think about will be interesting to others. It gets really annoying after a while.
If you don’t have anything to say, then just don’t say anything.
But… but… I’m just having a cup of tea. You mean you *aren’t interested*??? Don’t you love me any more?
OTOH, there are people who validate their lives on a daily basis by writing the minutae out. They use the internet as sort of a daily “I did this” list. You always have the choice NOT to read it. Many blogs I visit on a weekly basis, I end up just skipping over some of the posts because while I am not interested in their daily “Twitter”, it’s important to them.
And the other problem I see is that many peeps use their online blogs as simply online journals.
Where does the responsibility to post only meritorious stuff begin or end?
Everyone is perfectly free to post only important things or only minutiae or a combination of both to their hearts content. I am just advocating for keeping those things to area where they’re appreciated most. Like, when you blog about your day or week or whatnot, I like to read that. Not just because I want to keep up with you, but because you do it in sizable chunks that often contain a inkling of story.
I would be less happy if, 20 times a day, you posted 1 line about how now you’re making dinner, now you’ve just finished peeing, now Ripley is practicing piano, now you’re watching TV, and on and on.
This is why i ask folks to just put it behind a cut. Cuz then, I don’t have to see it if I don’t want or care, but it’s still up there for those who do care, and I don’t have to scroll through every post by to get to actual content. There are people I’ve seriously considered dropping because of stuff like this. But they may not care, and that’s cool, too :)
At the same time, this exact sentiment made me cut my livejournalling in half, and consequently killed it altogether.
I hate Twitter.