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drwexI'm posting this here in part to remind myself to write it more fully later. However, commentary is open and welcome.
Adults repress joy. Children have the freedom to express it, but we try to repress it, in part to protect ourselves from being hurt. We fear the consequences of expressing anger, or sexual feelings. We are afraid that if we let ourselves love freely we'll be opening ourselves up for tremendous hurt. Joy and expressions of love are therefore repressed.
LJ creates/enables/encourages (I'm not sure which, maybe all) a culture of sadness. Observation: when a friend posts about her illness or depression or unhappiness, she receives many encouraging comments. The readers chime in, and participate in the expression, validating the feelings of sadness or depression. Observation: when a friend posts about his happiness, his readers complain and even stop reading his journal. Observation: when a friend posts about her sexual feelings, she is expected to label it "TMI" and put it behind a cut, lest someone be offended.
The social norm is that feelings of sadness or depression are supported; feelings of joy, sexuality, happiness are ignored, trivialized, or even draw negative feedback. I do not think this is unique to LJ; I think there are many Cultures of Sadness in modern life. I just happen to be participating in this one with roughly 120 of my closest friends.
Adults repress joy. Children have the freedom to express it, but we try to repress it, in part to protect ourselves from being hurt. We fear the consequences of expressing anger, or sexual feelings. We are afraid that if we let ourselves love freely we'll be opening ourselves up for tremendous hurt. Joy and expressions of love are therefore repressed.
LJ creates/enables/encourages (I'm not sure which, maybe all) a culture of sadness. Observation: when a friend posts about her illness or depression or unhappiness, she receives many encouraging comments. The readers chime in, and participate in the expression, validating the feelings of sadness or depression. Observation: when a friend posts about his happiness, his readers complain and even stop reading his journal. Observation: when a friend posts about her sexual feelings, she is expected to label it "TMI" and put it behind a cut, lest someone be offended.
The social norm is that feelings of sadness or depression are supported; feelings of joy, sexuality, happiness are ignored, trivialized, or even draw negative feedback. I do not think this is unique to LJ; I think there are many Cultures of Sadness in modern life. I just happen to be participating in this one with roughly 120 of my closest friends.
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no subject
Date: 2005-10-23 02:39 pm (UTC)and isn't the response to sadness usually a cheering one?
I find the best responses are to particularly funny or interesting postings, not emotional ones. (although interesting+emotional is probably the most response-provoking.)
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Date: 2005-10-23 02:50 pm (UTC)1. Casual social interactions of all sorts between moderately-close people who happen to meet. "How's it going?" "Fine." That is, there are a number of face-to-face social contexts in which expressing discontent, depression, stress, or anger are... inappropriate or seen as unwarrantedly drawing attention to oneself.
2. One of the behaviors clinically-depressed people often do is to self-isolate. Posting to LJ in such contexts can be an attempt to keep from falling off the social map. Saying "I'm still here and I'm having a hard time" /in an online context/ can be a way for people to express things to their friends that they may not be able to politely say in public.
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Date: 2005-10-23 02:53 pm (UTC)the sex=TMI thing i think of on a different axis, having to do with our culture's specific fucked-up-ness WRT sex.
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Date: 2005-10-23 02:54 pm (UTC)this does not match my observations.
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Date: 2005-10-23 03:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-23 03:11 pm (UTC)Sex
Date: 2005-10-23 03:32 pm (UTC)1. some people may not be in the mood to read it. I'm at work when I read most often and don't generally need that sort of distraction
2. having something explicit on the screen for the audience without that layer may not be wise if you have people who read over your shoulder
3. or may just not be everyone's kink- so perhaps offend, but sometimes I just don't want to know what gets my friends off. Yay they are, but not what color the midget's leiderhosen was.
Anyway, that's my 2 cents.
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Date: 2005-10-23 03:38 pm (UTC)We have very different friendslists, then.
My $0.02 worth
Date: 2005-10-23 03:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-23 03:49 pm (UTC)- "happy birthday to me"
- a post about implied sexual-TMI ("we broke the bed")
- a micro-rant on the clothing industry
- bemused reflections on being older than one had realized
Off Topic
Date: 2005-10-23 03:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-23 05:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-23 05:23 pm (UTC)Sad posts... it really varies. Over time, I find myself having to "shout" more in a sad post if I want anyone to pay attention.
Posts about social dilemmas often get really interesting discussions going. E.g. one person on my flist (I'm not sure if he is on yours) posted about gay marriage -- not just random thoughts, but how someone being radically opposed to it affects him personally, since he is gay, and some of the ethical issues of friendship or acquaintanceship with people who have very different views than one's own. He made two or three posts and there were about 150 comments.
Putting sexual content under a cut is really just good manners IMHO. Many people do read LJ at work, or when their kids/their mother/other people who wouldn't understand are nearby. Same goes for gory photos, and anything else that could be a "shock."
no subject
Date: 2005-10-23 05:49 pm (UTC)I think you get more encouragement of successes when you're face to face, because people want to say something. In LJ-land, you don't *have* to say something, and it's not awkward. If you're at a party and someone says "I got a new job!" applause reigns. If you're at one and someone says, "I lost my job," sympathy reigns.
Do the same in an LJ post and you'll get a LOT more sympathy than you will praise for success.
I do see that talking about positive things can be seen as boasting. If you have a happy life, and talk about it, there are others (more insecure?) who will compare themselves to you and feel bad about themselves.
I'll note that people often digress into the "my life is worse than yours" argument (ie, "I lost my job", "oh, you're smart, you'll get another one, meanwhile I'm in this temp job and I can't pay rent and I'll never go anywhere") and rarely, if ever, argue about their OWN life being better.
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Date: 2005-10-23 06:10 pm (UTC)I think that LJ encourages processing. For some people, this leads to a spiral into deeper depression. For some, this leads to improvement. That said, I've never had anyone stop reading me because I was happy. I have driven readers away with my relentless whining, at times.
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Date: 2005-10-23 06:30 pm (UTC)Some friends of mine and I would post at least two good things in our journal each day. Some days it was more difficult than others, but it was a reminder that there were a lot of good things around.
Re: Sex
Date: 2005-10-23 07:30 pm (UTC)Reflexively, I share your viewpoint. I am re-examining this reflex, among others.
hmmmm
Date: 2005-10-23 07:38 pm (UTC)Hmm... weird. In my lj, I think the encouraging comments come from the fact that my friends truly care about me and that they are actually encouraging joy. They're showing support during an hour of need and encouraging me to continue being positive and finding joy even during a hard time. Althoug I do see how some people must perpetuate a constant state of drama because they identity so much that they need their friends to constantly be gratifying them.
As far as ceasing to read a cheery journal, I find myself practicing the contrary. I can't seem to constantly read people's journals who never actually bother taking action about changing their negative state. Not that there's anything wrong with writing these things in a journal, and I most certainly don't expect anyone to put it behind a cut. The only stuff I'd enjoy, not demand, to see behind a cut is pages long stuff about how, "today I went to the mall and..." Which, I guess I should practice what I preach but, whatever, people don't have to read my blather. It's there for my benefit and should others choose to participate in it, great.
I don't feel I'm ignoring positive feelings, and sometimes I do comment on them. But a lot of the times when I'm commenting on someone's hard day, it's more of a "this person seems like they need a little support." When they're having a good day, it doesn't seem like they need my support so much.
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Date: 2005-10-23 08:08 pm (UTC)I tend to get a fair amount of replies - indeed usually a larger number - to posts which are silly.
And quite a few to posts which are happy. So I'm not sure I'm seeing the same LJ that you are.
Sure, I get support if I post when I'm unhappy, but that's _also_ what friends do.
And I put my sexual stuff in a specific filter because _I_ want to, because I don't think everyone reading me either wants to see it or is someone I would want to see it. Unlike joy and silliness, being sexual beyond simple things like kissing is generally very private, for me. So I filter it.
I cut things because of length, not because of content, unless I believe the content might be triggering or difficult for someone to read without warning.
Just some datapoints that I'm not sure agree with yours.
Most of the in depths comments I get are in response to me digging into my brain, which can be about happy things as much as about unhappy things, but which is usually about neither one. It's simply digging into how I work.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-23 08:15 pm (UTC)I've never observed 2.
I've observed friends posting about happiness and receiving encouraging/validating comments.
I've observed friends posting about sadness (especially medical but also divorces, family troubles, etc) feeling obliged to label it TMI behind a cut.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-23 10:50 pm (UTC)when a friend posts about his happiness, his readers complain and even stop reading his journal.
Honestly, I don't think I've ever seen this happen. I'm silly and happy a lot in my LJ, and if I lose readers, it's generally because I post too often, not because I'm talking a lot about how much my kid rocks (people seem to really like happy Elayna stories, actually).
when a friend posts about her sexual feelings, she is expected to label it "TMI" and put it behind a cut, lest someone be offended.
Hm.
Hm, I say.
I don't cut/filter all of the sexual content in my LJ. It's obvious to the most casual reader of my public posts that I enjoy sex quite a lot - also that I am kinky and poly and yay sex! *ahem* Yes.
I do filter very explicit things - detailed descriptions and photos - but that's because I have *lots* of people reading me. I don't know most of them all that well. And I'm fine with saying publicly that I had wonderful sex last night, and even what toys I used, but I'm just personally not comfortable with 800+ people seeing a detailed writeup of "and then he...".
(The other reason for the filtration: I have people reading me who see me as a big sister figure.
As for cut-tags and "TMI" - I don't personally consider anything TMI. But I know that some things can be TMI for others. I tend to cut-tag detailed posts if, say, my partner's other partner is on my sexfilter and might not want to read said posts, or their friends or roommates or whatever. I also cut-tag when anything edgy's involved. And I slap a detailed label on the cut-tag - a typical one might say "Tom: caning, knifeplay, breathplay". So if someone is triggery about knives, or someone doesn't want to think about Tom That Way, they don't have to read it. *shrug*
(Want to be on the sexfilter? *laugh*)
But I do post a lot of sexual stuff openly. And I've never felt that cut-tagging, filtering, hiding it was expected of me. It's pretty clear that I'm a very sex-positive person, and if people really really don't want to hear about sexual feelings, they probably won't have friended me in the first place. :)
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Date: 2005-10-23 10:51 pm (UTC)That said, I'm not particularly interested in focusing on the phenomenon in LJ, so much as in the culture within which LJ sits.
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Date: 2005-10-24 12:13 am (UTC)I respectfully disagree, on two counts. First, LJ isn't 2-way. It's close to 1-many, but has the potential for many:many, though there are some social etiquettes around having extended conversations in someone else's LJ. Second, I do not believe it's how we're built. I believe it's a learned and accultured behavior. In particular, it's an _adolescent_ behavior. I believe that if I could fully grow up I would be free and comfortable expressing my joys, too.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-24 12:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-24 12:16 am (UTC)