Today… many people who use LiveJournal who felt strongly about policy and practices, decided to voice their discontent ironically by not voicing. That is to say, forming a ‘strike’ to walk out on their journals and neither post nor comment.
Actions like this annoy the hell out of me. But I will not state how I feel about the situation. Now, I’m talking about the choice of action… or in this case inaction.
I will explain. Many times I have seen, “Wear Denim today to protest mutilating kittens.”
My problem with this becomes two-fold.
One…. What if all I ever wear is denim. Does this basically mean if I support mutilating kittens and don’t have a wardrobe that doesn’t have denim in it somewhere; I have to go buy new clothes?
And B.. or two… What if I didn’t get the memo? What if I show up in my Gap Tan slacks… because it was Laundry day and I utterly forgot or worse didn’t get the memo? Oh for the love of pete… I can guarantee you… I’ll get plenty a hairy eyeball because I obviously would rather make a statement about how kittens should be mutilated.
Personally, while I do have good runs of postings over a month… I also have dry periods. I have days where I’m too busy to post. I have days I’m too busy to post and I still post 2-7 times.
So… for most of last night and most of today I didn’t post. Do I support the Strike? Was I away from a computer? (I realize friends and coworkers may assume the latter is impossible; but I assure you it is in fact possible)
You want to make a statement. Change the format of your LJ to BLACK or maybe even Safety Flag Orange. Put bold text in your post that says, “I don’t support X, and changed my journal today because of it.”
Personally, popping LJ today, all it looks like is ‘a light day’… Very little to indicate the strike.
Now, if I have 60% of my friends list with posts that have a big bold line of protest at the end of the posts… maybe with specific links to words, translations, etc… Maybe I’d take notice and help.
So… did I strike today? You really don’t know. The issue is… Words make change… simple actions that can be lost in the shuffle of everyday life are useless for anything greater than a little ego stroking.
And honestly… stroking oneself doesn’t really accomplish anything for anyone but you.
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I saw a lot of neener neener look I’m posting posts today. Plus a lot of “what the hell good does it do?” posts.
This type of activism (slacktivism?) never does any good. “Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
strue.
well put –
I dint post (as with most days) because I was busy and having a life…
I now am tired and not having much to say, except this…
thanks 🙂
It was a Friday, which on my FL tends to be lighter, and was Good Friday to boot. So yeah, really no way to tell how many were protesting, how many were afk, how many were… whatever.
I didn’t really “get it”, in any case.
I guess I don’t pay attention… what are they protesting…?
Personally, I haven’t noticed any changes to my LJ or my Friends page, which is all I use LJ for in the first place…
The protest is over the recent decision to stop allowing the creation of new basic accounts: http://news.livejournal.com/106909.html. People with basic accounts won’t have to give them up, but any new users who don’t want to be paid members will have to put up with ads. For me personally, I don’t care, I have Firefox with adblock, I never notice them anyway. I think it also has to do with the way it was announced initially as a side note in another entry instead of a big announcement, but I think they got that message and we’ll have to wait for another big change to see if they do something different.
Hey!
My blog is black but it has nothing to do with making a statement. Sheesh. It’s just because black screen with little white letters is a lot easier on my eyes than anything else.
I have to say I agree with you, I find this whole thing petty and a little asinine. No matter what we all think, this is someones business and if you don’t like the way someone does business than you don’t use their services, period.
I’m tired of these people who go on and on about how LJ did this & LJ did that and how they are going to leave amd use another journal and then keep up with their long posts, in which they don’t use cuts because they are selfish or too lazy to learn how to use them.
Anyway so much for my little rant, I have better things to get upset about then this.