ithildin | As Old As The Internet

Was talking to both

mischief5 about this over the last week: the Twitter hate out there. It reminds me so much of the battles on the fandom email lists I belonged to about the evils of LJ and how it was ruining fandom. And that debate is still going in some quarters; there are many people who still avoid LJ like the plague. And before that it was the arguments over the evils of free email lists, when services like Egroups and Onelist appeared. Why? Because if just any old person could start a fandom list, it splintered the fandom. There should just be one or two lists for a fandom on the internet, was the argument. Oh, and there was the IRC v. AIM/YM debates as well. I still prefer IRC, and would use it in a hearbeat if there was still anyone left around to use it with. But my fandom friends pretty much all migrated to chatroom services. Like my move to LJ to follow the fandom migrations, I finally gave up on IRC and moved to the chatroom services. Truth be told, I still prefer email too, but I realize time marches on. I use Twitter, and find it to be a lot of fun, but I refuse to be on Facebook! So there [stomps foot] But LJ is pretty much my main fandom digs these days.

Where will be be ten years from now? Wish I knew, because then I'd be rich! But twelve years ago, I couldn't have conceived that my email based online life would be supplanted by something like LJ. And yet, it has been. Maybe shunts in the brain is going to be the next 'big thing'! How about virtual fanfic? You write a story, upload it to some service and it creates a holographic version that the 'reader' views through VR goggles. Truth is, I don't know. But one thing I do know for sure -- we'll be arguing over it!

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Well, I love LJ so I sure hope it will remain active for a good long while.

I'm sure it will, but there's always something new on the horizon [g]

I hate all technology, especially the internet. I refuse to use it.

You try 'texting' by pressing the letters on the green bean label on your string-can phones! USELESS.

I miss the old string-can phone days [sighs]

The old days! I just upgraded to two of those frozen juice containers!

I hear they're all the rage, iCans or something....

I can't get into Twitter, although I'm trying. I can't keep up with everyone's posts and when you reply to someone's Twitter, you then have to scroll all the way back to their post to continue reading all of the stuff everyone else has posted. >.<

I love Facebook, though, and have really gotten into it. Of course, I'm not going to leave LJ... actually I should update soon. LOL

There is a solution to that, it's called TweetDeck. All the replies to your twitter posts show up in a handy dandy column all of their own. Check it out - http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta/

I've been told Tweetdeck is a real resource hog and probably should avoid it with my old computer. But hear it's a great app.

I finally found that the way to deal with Twitter is to only pay attention to what's showing on Twitterfox when I'm online. I gave up on trying to 'keep up'.

I love LJ for what it is. My thing about Facebook is that it just isn't interactive and I get nothing out of it.

I have no reason to not try Twitter except my time is already splintered enough as it is. I just can't see dividing off into another media just to do the same thing I'm already doing here. We'll just have to wait to see what the future brings.

Should be interesting whatever it is!

Oh I so agree! Especially the arguing bit :)

I like the idea of the VR goggles, but not the brain shunts. What if the brain shunts pass on all my unfinished fic ideas? It'd be worse than all those WIPs staring at me! *giggles*

LOL! Or the WIPs end up being finished by some AI program.

Cool post, Ith. I've never text messaged anyone yet, so I'm not up on the twittering, but would like to see someone doing it. I read boing boing everyday in hopes of keeping up with the times. I remember when my husband's Grandmother was loosing her sight and we tried to get her to listen to recorded books and radio shows, but she just found it too complicated. I don't wanta go there. I wanta keep up the best I can. Otherwise, we get isolated. Do not go quietly...

I can't say I never text, but it's very rare. Usually only when I'm traveling and have no internet access. I know most people use Twitter from their cell phones, but I just use it on my PC. And my Twitter feed is much less fandom oriented. Lots of people from my blogging days and such.

Absolutely agree. If we don't keep up, we do get isolated.

How about virtual fanfic? You write a story, upload it to some service and it creates a holographic version that the 'reader' views through VR goggles.

Oh. OH! *squeals and jumps up and down* We could see Methos fic live!

I try to avoid all the inter-fandom arguments. It takes away from reading good fanfic!

LOL! Yeah, it would be something, huh?

And I meant to add that I am on Facebook. All the Marillion fans are, so I've been forced to join!

I deleted my Facebook account. Some very strange people were finding me there.

I hear it can be strange over there.

There's Twitter hate? Huh.

It runs the gamut between Twitter aggravation to hate [g]

I don't hate Twitter, I just don't have the time to keep up with that, LJ and Facebook - and I have found a lot of old friends on FB, which is itself very funky. Love IRC though, I think it's demise is why I hardly ever chat/IM/etc any more now.

Though I do get tempted..

I predict that someday in the future the internet will only run properly on sunny days, because we'll be reliant on solar panels. Um, doh.. UK'll be stuffed then..

In this case, it's like when people were mad on the email lists that people were posting on LJ instead of email, and now it's the same annoyance ppl are posting to Twitter and not LJ. It's just so eerily similar [g] Everything old is new again!

Yay! Another IRC fan :)

I tried Twitter but I didn't see the appeal. So after months of paying attention to it I dropped it. Besides everyone I talked to there was here, so it felt redundant!

I got a kick out of the girls defending the Yahoo groups. I find Yahoo Groups completely annoying because I can't tell what people are responding to sometimes and the threads get all mixed up.

I'm an old fan but new to fandom and you know I am a LJ cheerleader. I hope that Lj evolves with the time to me it is the perfect balance of social and fandom.

You should patten that virtual download idea because you know someone will make it

Part of the problem on email lists these days is top posting IMHO [g] Well, you know how I reply to your emails. That's how it used to be on lists in the old days so everything was in the proper order, like a conversation.

There's lists I'm on these days that they include everything over and over, so a single email has pages and pages of text. No one knows how to trim their posts anymore. Drives me CRAZY! LOL Yes, I'm an old fogy.

See i'm one of those people - I like to have the whole thread in the email so i can track the conversation. Plus i actually don't know how to trim an email

Just like you'd delete stuff from a Word doc.

I've actually stopped participating on some lists due to the sheer overload of untrimmed email replies. And if you're on digest, it's a nightmare. On personal emails it's bearable [g], but on lists getting hundreds of emails a day, it just is unworkable.

LOL I thought you were referring to some fancy way of compacting the email.
I think it's becasue in my profession the emails represent a paper trail so i never remove stuff - so habit to just hit reply and send it all

LOL! Nope, not fancy.

I had to actually write a tutorial for my House list to show people how to trim/snip replies. On a busy email list, say even 50-100 posts a day, if people hit reply to all over and over, the people on digest will get a digest that is a monster and they can't find the new info, only all the same posts repeating over and over.

And trimming served a dual purpose back in the day. Most of us had a bandwidth limit, so every unnecessary word added to that. Go over you limit and you either had your email shut off, or you were charged a penalty.

I really dislike AIM, IRC, any kind of real-time chat. Not as much as phone conversations, mind you. But I like being able to respond to things in my own time. I find Yahoo Groups very clunky in comparison to LJ, and haven't tried anything else yet.

Man, I WISH I could download fic, nd even more, VIDS, from my brain to yours. The vids in my head are really good! And do not require 80 hours of work to create!

I agree! What's in my head, the snappy dialogue, the smooth transitions, never make it to the page. Brain to brain is the way to go!

I don't think those things should be restricted, because you miss out on a lot of people who can't afford to pay for memberships to lists or sites or whatever groups. If you feel like you need to be exclusive there are plenty of places and ways to do so without attacking those who enjoy free sites.