(no subject)

[redbird]

This may say everything about how I use LiveJournal: I was genuinely surprised to read, in a friend's journal, that there are very few people on his friends list who he has never met.

A lot of the people on my list, I've known for years offline. But some of you, I met first in other online venues, or through people I met there. Others, I know only through the net, through your words and sometimes images.

Comments

[bayarts.livejournal.com]

That's interesting. I wonder about the levels at which other LJ users know or don't know their friends? I have a mix on my journal. Some I've known for years, others I've only met through LJ.

[jerrykaufman.livejournal.com]

Why, that could be me, since I made a remark about that this morning.

I've Friended a couple of people I didn't know, and when they didn't seem interested back, I've unlinked them.

I find I'm not really interested in the thoughts and experiences of strangers, as a general rule. (There are always exceptions.) I already seem to have enough to do in keeping up through LJ, other blogs, communities like trufen.net and fanzines, with people I know.

Some of the people I have as Friends are only acquaintances in the flesh, and I hope by reading their journals that I get to know them better.

[jenett]

I'm all over the place. (Following are rough counts: I've got 110 journals on my friends list, but a couple of those are multiple journals for the same person. Plus, I'm not being too perfectionistic about my counting.)

14 or 15 of the people on my list are people I know extensively from offline places (mostly college, but not entirely.)

Another 20+ (including you!) are people I've met at least once in person (usually more) for some sort of extended conversation.

12 are people I know via Abuse work, and therefore worked with closely. (Though I think the only one I've met in person is rahaeli)

A bunch of the rest (probably better than half the remaining) are people I've had significant ongoing interactions with in various online forums outside of LJ, but haven't met in person. (Or yet, anyway)

[redbird]

Yes, that was you. I didn't specify because I was using it as a quick jumping-off point, and not quoting you.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

From the point of view of being a reader, I joined LJ more to keep in touch with friends than to read good writing by strangers. For the latter I read online magazines and some other blogs. But I have come across some interesting pieces on LJ by people I don't know, and after sampling more on their blogs I've "befriended" them in a couple cases.

[ckd]

My friends list is a mix of a reading list based solely on "interesting LJ poster" and a people-I-know-from-outside-LJ list. (Though I read the LJs of the people-I-know, too.)

Most of the people-I-know are from one of a few categories, though there are plenty of folks who are in more than one.

1. USENET/mailing list folks who moved to blogs/LJ; many of them I've never met in person.

2. People I know through fandom and the associated social circles, with lots of overlap with group 1 (particularly RASFFers). Many of these I have met at least once, often at Boskone or Noreascon.

3. System administrators and the like are mostly folks I know in person from USENIX conferences over the years.

4. Other personal connections: people from my college days, including many old IRC hands; various MIT folks; etc.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

I have friends who started LJs specifically to keep in touch with old friends who'd moved away (high school and college buddies, for instance), and who only rarely add anyone they don't already know face-to-face.

But these are usually people who don't do a lot of interacting on line, anyway; LJ is an exception for them.

Me, I came over here to keep in touch with people I'd known for years on line, but who'd vanished from our old Usenet haunts. I'd only met a small handful of them. But since then, my friends list has grown mostly via friend-of-friend interactions, and now the majority are people I'd never met, virtually or otherwise, before LJ.

I'm actually slow to add face-to-face acquaintances who turn up in LJ, and there are a few I won't add under any circumstances. I'm not sure why, but I feel more comfortable opening my veins to "strangers" than to some of folks I encounter in my daily life. Must ponder why that is ...

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

With very, very few exceptions, everyone on my LJ friends list is someone I've met face to face. Some are acquaintances, but most are actually people I could call up and have dinner with.

The few exceptions are usually people I thought I was going to be meeting very soon and linked before meeting. Somehow plans changed and it hasn't yet happened.

This pretty much follows the way I use all other online media: as an enabler for my face to face social life.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

I am so, so glad that I can now shift you over from category A, "interact with online, want to meet in person", to category B, "have met (and want to meet again!)".

I hope you're starting to recover today?

[trinker.livejournal.com]

I used to be that way. I was very, very open about what was going on, but didn't really interact much offline.

And then it all changed. Now...now I don't think I say as much, because I would reveal things that I don't know are really mine to reveal (what does that say about my level of respect for the XSO???).

But I get that. Sometimes there's an "EEEK! this person will know about me, because I have let this information out into the great digital sea, and they'll FIND IT, and I will not be able to control..." Which is silly, because I let it out in the first place. Anyway.