The Silence of the Adults

[andrewducker]

A few of the posts made in response to yesterday's post indicated that the
writer didn't feel comfortable posting about their life because either it
wasn't interesting, or because the only things they had to say were
negative, and writing negative things made them feel like teenagers.

There is clearly something pervasive in society which makes people feel
either that adults do not have problems, or that adults do not talk about
their problems.

Needless to say, I do not agree with either of these opinions.

Everyone has problems, that's just the way the world is. Adults frequently
cannot turn to parents in the same way that children did, and so if
anything it's _more_ important to turn to other adults, talk about your
problems, and get feedback from other adults, either with useful
suggestions, or simple acknowledgement that your problem is a common one,
and you are not alone in having it.

In addition, it seems that if people don't talk about the negative stuff
that's going on then they get out of the habit of writing at all, and I
don't get to see cool posts about the interesting/fun things they've been
up to.*

Which leads nicely into the other point - the idea that your life is not
interesting. Fundamentally, it's probably not, in a global sense. The
chances of you being someone whose biography I would read if I'd never met
you is pretty slim**. But if we have any connection (friends in meatspace,
met you at a con a few times, enjoyed chatting online) then what you're up
to _is_ of interest to me. I loathe the attitude I've seen from
anti-Facebook/Twitter people of "Why do people think that their every
movement is of interest to posterity?". Because posterity can go &$&^
( itself, people's lives are of interest to their _friends_.

So if you have negative stuff in your life then feel free to share it,
anyone that's not interested can unfriend you (or move you off their
default view). And if you have nice, normal, stuff in your life then feel
free to share it, and uninterested people can hit page down. And if you
have awesomely cute kittens that you can photograph then feel free to share
them, and frankly that's what the internet was designed for.

*Yes, it's all about me.
**Not least because I don't tend to read biographies.

Comments

[redbird]

I think there are levels of this. If someone kept posting "I had corn flakes for breakfast" (every morning, because they had corn flakes every morning) I'd get irritated, especially if that sort of thing was all they posted. But I do post about food sometimes, mostly things that are new to me (though maybe not to the reader), and I enjoy oursin's posts about food here, and those of a foodie friend over on LiveJournal.

Another reason not to post negative things is that some people would rather not think too much about them; if I post in detail about some kinds of things that make me unhappy, writing the post is likely to make me unhappy again, and reading it later may also do so. It's not always worth the price.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Couldn't agree more.

/ succinct.

Life isn't *anecdotal*

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

Most of life is interesting, but not anecdotal. As you get older, the stuff that is anecdotal often involves other people, and thus has privacy issues. That doesn't leave much to blog about!

Re: Life isn't *anecdotal*

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

Oh goodness, how about your hobbies and creative pastimes? What you think about the world - or even what you think about raindrops, or some TV show, or what's going on in the music/art/sports scene in your town? There are lots and lots to thigns to talk about without ever getting into personal stuff about others.

Re: Life isn't *anecdotal*

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

"Played with swords last night. Worked on the syllabus. Walked back with two mates and discussed gaming and history."

Feels like something for Facebook

Re: Life isn't *anecdotal*

[andrewducker]

Looks like a perfectly good lj post to me.

Re: Life isn't *anecdotal*

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

Zzzzzz

(And you don't post ones like that either)

Re: Life isn't *anecdotal*

[andrewducker]

If it's Zzzzzz on LJ, how is it not on Facebook?

Re: Life isn't *anecdotal*

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

Facebook is more like bumping into mates in passing:
Hi, ho you doing?
Achey from swords - you?
Kids kept me a awake - you know how it is...
OK, gotta rush.
Me to
(Both) Cheers

Because there's an emphasis on real identities and real friends, you can make the assumption that people enjoy that sort of contact.

LJ casts its net more widely. I have LJ friends I'll never meet.

Re: Life isn't *anecdotal*

[andrewducker]

Aaaah, gotcha.

Yup, I can see a difference there. Except that I seem to have a bunch of LJers also on FB nowadays.

Re: Life isn't *anecdotal*

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

I have been more circumspect. There are only four people on my FB f'list who I have not met in real life, and they're people I've known on LJ for ages and ages.

Re: Life isn't *anecdotal*

[andrewducker]

I suspect I'm just very bad at saying no to people :->

That was one of the things I liked about G+ - I could let anyone add me, but just post "friends-only" if I didn't want the posts to be public. Sadly, it seems to be dying.

Re: Life isn't *anecdotal*

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

No? Really?

At this rate the verb "Google" is going to stop meaning, "To search on the Internet" and start meaning, "To launch a product that everybody knows is going to fail, which does fail."

Re: Life isn't *anecdotal*

[andrewducker]

It's frustrating too, because they have the start of a great product that they're killing because people were "using it wrong".

Re: Life isn't *anecdotal*

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

Googlekazi: (verb) The act of launching a product that's technically very clever, but doomed to failure because somebody else already has that niche, and then ensuring that failure by hectoring the users about the way they use it.

Re: Life isn't *anecdotal*

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

I think the other shoe has dropped. G+ is failing because they were hoping to grab the brass ring of the infinitely monetisable online service where everyone posted under their one true legal name. Because it started strongly, they pressed the point; result, people are leaving in droves, and not only the ones who don't have one true legal name.

Re: Life isn't *anecdotal*

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

They're not killing it, sadly there is nothing to really kill yet.

The "high traffic" bit, for the people I added, was just those people either posting -about- google+, posting about what kind of thing people might post on g+ or crossposting from facebook or whatever other service.

It had a neat friends/following interface, but other than that it was much less functional than facebook other than interfacing with the rest of your google profile.

It was a social network that did less than the obvious competitor. Yes, I really liked the Circles thing, but other than that? It was a less-functional facebook with a different colour scheme.

When it's fully featured, it may well start getting more people, but right now there's little particular reason to be there. If people are going to use it like facebook, or Tumblr, or blogging-service-of-choice that's fine... except all of those are based around having an audience, so there's little point doing it on google plus. If there's no audience, then they need to have g+ contain features that will lure you in without the promise of 352 people to +1 everything you say.

Re: Life isn't *anecdotal*

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

It's frustrating too, because they have the start of a great product that they're killing because people were "using it wrong".

This attitude has worked out well for FB though, which is set up to be not very customisable and to work in certain ways. Heck, your FB page, which for many is the core of their online presence, isn't remotely customisable, unlike LJ where you can tweak things to a ridiculous degree.

Re: Life isn't *anecdotal*

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

so what's stopping you going into more detail? Already I want to know

Which type of swords, is it Aikido, English Martial Arts, Fencing?? What drills/exercises were you doing and why?

Which games, what period of history, what was the discussion, what was interesting about it and do you think anything different or have anything to add after you have had all night to mull it over?

Re: Life isn't *anecdotal*

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

Which is why I didn't blog it.
I did however, blog about the renewed importance of certain old fashioned skills.

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

I remembered mere minutes ago why I stopped blogging. Back when I had my own site, I wrote a few posts about the homeless situation. I made a completely cynical/satirical comment on another blog about population explosion and care of the elderly (from a cold sociological perspective the simple solution is to let old people die), then got flamed constantly for about a month. Attacks became increasingly personal, to the extent that I couldn't handle being online at all and suffered horrid anxiety attacks. Shortly after that I had a nasty fall-out with a recent ex-gf which triggered a total breakdown and got me back on medication. Which, for a nice change, actually worked

:D

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

Yes, the dogpile of death.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I was put off of LJ for a while following some unpleasant encounters for a while. I seem to have recovered now, thankfully.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

wow. Guess my life is too sedate.

[erratio.livejournal.com]

There's also that little voice in my head which says that talking about the negative isn't *useful* and that concentrating on negative things will only make me more predisposed towards feeling bad. I'm aware that that's not what you're talking about, but convincing my brain of this is a lot of work. Much easier to keep it in or only talk about bad stuff to friends who are known to be sympathetic.

(Not that my life is particularly negative at the moment. My excuse is that I finally got internet in my apartment last Friday and still haven't caught up on two weeks worth of online paperwork)

[andrewducker]

I agree that focussing purely on "My life sucks" isn't good. I think that it's useful to do so if it's something people _want_ to talk about, so that they can figure it out (or get some support). If it turns into something that's being done for attention, or it becomes compulsive, then this is obviously a problem.

And yes, only stuff you're comfortable sharing, of course.

Oh - and I got an email yesterday saying you'd defriended me. But now you don't seem to have done. LJ burp?

[erratio.livejournal.com]

My finger slipped while browsing, I wasn't even sure exactly what I'd done until I noticed your entries had fallen off my feed. I was kind of hoping you wouldn't notice ;)

[andrewducker]

I has leet toolz :->

(Strangely I didn't get an email when you refriended me. Possibly because you did it so soon after unfriending me. Or something.)

[yalovetz]

The main reason I write less on LJ now than I used to is because I figured out that writing is draining and doesn't give me any pleasure. I feel like I should update more because I do want to keep my friends up to date on my life, indeed, that's the entire purpose of me having an LJ. But updating often feels like too much work and there are other things I'd rather be doing with my time that are energising and pleasurable.

[andrewducker]

That's absolutely fine by me. You shouldn't be doing stuff that drains you, even if I do enjoy reading the results.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

+1.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

I was going to write a comment but will post again instead.

[andrewducker]

I shall look forward to it!

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

You've missed something out.

An adult can lose their job for having problems or discussing certain kinds of things and posting them online.


In addition, it seems that if people don't talk about the negative stuff that's going on then they get out of the habit of writing at all, and I don't get to see cool posts about the interesting/fun things they've been up to.*

You seem to have very different facebook friends to me.

[andrewducker]

An adult can lose their job for having problems or discussing certain kinds of things and posting them online.

Very true. And I do understand that some people might not trust the security of online sites to keep their posts secret.

[owlfish]

Dear Internet Person,

Thank you for your posts on posting this week! I have had a whole swathe of interesting updates from rarely-posting friends in the last 24 hours, all of whom blame/credit you for having done so. And I have benefitted by finding out what they've been up to.

[andrewducker]

A pleasure! I'm somewhat in shock by how much it caught on.