Where have all the postings gone... long time passing...

[laurion]

So, forgive me if this is a dumb question, but where did everyone go?

A forced change to livejournal (friend's page no longer accepts custom styles) has pushed me to go to each of the friends that I follow and resubscribe to their individual pages.

And I keep seeing a wasteland.  So many last updates that say things like '2010', '2009', '2007'.  Where did everyone go? I see posts from the same dozen people on a regular basis, but there used to be a lot more people out there.

So where did everyone go?

I know about Twitter.  I'm there, but the posts are short and stream by. Don't get me started about Facebook.  The drek drowns out the good stuff all too often. And too much is stuffed onto one page.  Tumblr? Pinterest? Pretty, but mostly empty from what I've seen.

Where do people go to actually.... write? Journal to their social network? Connect?

And I know, for the longest time I've written on my own wordpress blog and crossposted to LJ (and now... FB too.  Not that I go there myself).  So I'm one of those people who is 'not there' in some sense. [EDIT: Hah!  Something since my last posting on 2/21 has broken crossposting!  What the F! Yay!]

I accept that my social life isn't what it was. But looking at the data while redoing the LJ connections... man, it really isn't what it used to be. And a lot of it used to be keeping connected to people on LJ in a way that I just don't feel connected on other network sites.  And these days I'm not feeling connected to many people at all.  So here I send out a post into what seems to be an ever fading arena, knowing that the dozens of people who haven't updated in five years aren't going to see it, just as I don't see anything from them.

Part of me wonders when a social network connection is so underutilized that it should be pruned entirely.  I've readded these dead connections.  IT doesn't cost me much at all.  No posts means nothing shows up in my feeds. No words require me to triage their value and exert neurons to process them. And if someone does come back, the connection is still there.  But perhaps there is an unseen, unknown weight and drag from these old connections.

I feel like I've missed some secret.  That all these connections have been moved somewhere else, and I'm the one who wasn't told about it, or doesn't know how to get to them.  Is there some way to make Facebook functional? Or have people given up on the concept of social networks entirely? Did people move to some site that died or never thrived (xanga, myspace, Google+) and then never have the heart to try again? I know, again, I'm asking this of the wrong audience, because the only audience that will see it is almost definitionally the wrong one.  Am I echolocating across a featureless plain? Only getting back what I already know to be there?

Comments

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

I have a theory. (It does not involve lagomorphs.) It does, however, involve phones.

Every time I post a poll, I discover 50 people still read my LJ. About 10 of these post on a regular basis, with another 10 posting infrequently. The other 30 are pure lurker, because contributing via a phone sucks.

"Like" has also spoiled us all. It is both easy to do, and gives a little Pringles-like burst of social connection on both sides. Sadly like Pringles it seems like nutrition, and you probably could live on it, but it leaves out all the higher levels of Maslow's hierarchy.

That being said, 100 people used to vote in my polls; so we have 50% losses in readership (sample size = 1). I wonder where those folks "went", or if they went anywhere; or maybe they just play Flappy Candy Clan Smash instead of playing at the game of social.

Theory #4: kids, and growing up. Our cohort has other high demands on our time, ones that take us away from our computers.

Anyway, I seem incapable of *not* posting, so please continue to read and comment. ;) It's better with an audience.

[laurion]

There is definitely some of that 'high demands' thing going on. And the stimulus-response of the quick and easy posting to FB and Twitter, where you can get the 'same' inputs and outputs to the psyche in 140 characters or less.

People used to post to LJ that way. But there weren't other options except AIM status messages then. And people weren't using their mobile devices as their primary electronic communicator at the time. Social networking was the province of desktop computers and LJ's voice-to-post (!). But combined with the higher demands on time, we spend less of it on a desktop/laptop, and more of it on the new easy access mobiles...

The answer for me is to build ways of doing the old stuff on new devices, but that's not for everyone.

So yes, I'l keep reading, and commenting, and posting, and commenting. It is better with an audience.

[lisefrac.livejournal.com]

I think your theories are right on. Lots of people still read, but very few comment. And that's precisely because most internet usage these days is mobile, and clicking "like" buttons is easier than composing a thoughtful reply. Even for me, a heavy LJ user, I don't even try to reply to to things on my phone. (The iOS app is just as terrible as the Android app is said to be, I can confirm).

But as you say, I am still here, and seemingly incapable of not posting. Most of my thoughts are longer than a few hundred characters. I always was an overachiever.