Elsewhere on the internet: LJ reveals some news to its users about a redesign of the LJ homepage. Changes involve a feature showcase, links to the latest LJ news posts, and a brand new section smack in the middle of the page:

"Oh No They Didn't" shows popular entries from ohnotheydidnt.

22 pages of comments follow, half of which appear to be people complaining about the new change and ONTD in general, and the other half comprised of ONTD members buckling down for some earnest, dedicated trolling.
( Read more... )

Wank found via wank_report.

lavendergaia, a.k.a. Kelly, doesn’t like the snowflake cookie V-gifts she’s been sent over on lj and expresses her displeasure on her journal:

Please do not read if you are easily offended


People, these are getting ridiculous. In the past two days, I have gotten almost 30 snowflake cookie gifts. You know how many of those were personalized or written in a way that I could tell that they were for me? About 5, probably less. I know that everyone is saying that they're free and it's the thought that counts, but I don't see any thoughtfulness in sending a free gift with a generic message that you've copied and pasted to every other person on your flist. My bank does that, but they at least take the time to put my name on it.

If I don't mean anything to you other than a name on a list who you occasionally talk to, that's fine. I am okay with that. But getting a copy/paste message on a free gift that takes a minute to send just shows that I am not important. There's really no need for you to take the small amount of time and send it. And for those of you who commented yesterday that you did do it because you cared, I appreciate that, but the fact that you have to say it means that your gift didn't and isn't that the point of gifts? To show how much you care?

Frankly, the majority of these snowflakes just say that you like having someone on your flist, but not enough to take the time to personally wish me a happy holidays or to do anything special. Maybe I'm alone in this, but I'd much rather get a nice comment or PM speaking to me as a person then the same gift you give to everyone else. That's not caring; that's obligation.

So thank you to everyone who acknowledged that I exist. And a large, genuine thank you who took the time to use the gifts to show that they care.


Her friends then start apologizing about sending her snowflake cookies. Eventually, people show up who don’t hold the same opinion.

bookshop was linked by a “few people who were pretty much speechless with disbelief” and thinks this to be “completely classless.”

ladyvyola translates Kelly’s post as “A big "fuck you" to anyone who took a moment to do something thoughtful for me.” Down-thread, Kelly says its been two weeks since the post was made and everyone is already over it, forgetting that the internet never really gets over anything.

jane_doe_ tells Kelly "you are a bad person and whoever raised you did a really bad job. Sorry."

So why are these snowflakes so damn special? bridget_x_alena explains to an anon:

Not really, because when people are buying gifts, they're picking something that they know a) the person will like, b) the person wants, or c) will mean something to the giftee. Key word here being 'buying'. As in, 'spending money on' because that person clearly means enough to have something bought for them. If I were to get the same free present for all of my friends, the ones that I only talk to once in a while are going to be like, "huh?" and the ones I talk to all the time are going to wonder why more thought wasn't put into it.

If anything, the fact that they were free made them less special because it was like most people were just saying, "HERE, I don't care about you enough to spend .99 on other vgifts during the rest of the year so here's this thing!"

Oh, and way to not have the balls to own up to your opinion.

ETA: lavendergaia has discovered she has been wanked. She's also shown up on sf_drama and sf_anon

Despite seeming so happy about being wanked in the above link to her journal, Kelly added this ETA to her original post:

2 Weeks Later ETA: Hello to everyone who is going to troll this and people here from Fandom Wanks. Hi! If you're going to comment, please at least make it fun. Thanks in advance! (Look, see, I can be thankful!)

ETA2: Okay, I'm bored with this now. And I plan to take another muscle relaxer and sleep for at least 12 hours and don't want to come up with an inbox full of trolls. Leaving the post open so people can mock or do whatever they want, but posting is disabled for now. I might reopen it again later if I get bored.

Nothing is better than a "I am so happy, but not really" flounce. Comments are locked. I hope everyone here has known better than troll the wank. Instead of snowflakes, she has recieved 12 cakes for Grinchmas from mice who respected her wishes and left personalized messages.

ladyvyola has popped over here in the report to say hello.

ETA 2: And now there's a community.

It all starts with what people are already calling LJ Genderfail: the newest beta version of LJ added a mandatory "gender" field to the sign-up process and eliminated the "unspecified" option (LJ quickly responded that the mandatoryness and binaryness of the new question were an accidental bug, and that the code was not going to go live. Of course, not everyone believes them about the "unintentional" part).

Well-known SGA BNF, former lj staffmember and co-founder of Dreamwidth Synecdochic made a call-to-action post that included the line,

It's been a while since I've been furious with anything LJ has done; having DW has done a lot to calm down my knee-jerk "AUUUGH NO" whenever Moscow does something stupid again.

A few people, some Russian and some not, are offended by this, and object. Synecdochic apologizes and edits the post after a request for clarification, but that is not enough to stop Ivorygates from making her side look bad.

Furiosity (who identifies as Russian) had objected to dismissing an entire culture because you're mad at some of its representatives, and Ivorygates takes the opportunity to school her. In her own cultural history. Because, you know, Russians don't understand freedom: it's not in their culture! America's special history of free speech can't be truly respected by them! (At this point Synecdochic freezes the thread.)

But Ivorygates isn't done! Bell had commented to Synecdochic that saying "Moscow" made a decision wasn't the same as saying "San Francisco" did because "Moscow, in US rhetoric, is that creepy place with commies and weird politics and gangsters". Ivorygates PMs her about this claim,

Are you actually -- are you actually seriously -- suggesting that identifying as a Russian national -- online, where you are safe from physical attack and can maintain anonymity -- presents you with duress identical to the harassment and persecution that transsexual and genderqueer individuals experience not only on-line, but in every facet of their lives?

Furiosity also posts to ask people to apologize instead of getting defensive when informed that they have offended "someone's race/culture/language/sexual orientation/gender identity/whatever". In her post meddie_flow comes to Synecdochic's defense with the ever popular Bingo square of "She didn't mean anything by it" with a side-order of "don't turn everything into a lynch-mob". Being offended by russophobia is also likened to being offended by the color red, and I'm honestly not sure if the irony there was intentional or not...

Well, if you're looking for some real crazy, look no further than digimon!.

Overlord_Mordax wants to know why people like Ken. Or as one user puts it, why people like her. Mom jokes are taken seriously. Anonymous gets involved.

Mordax BAWS on her own journal.


***brought to my attention by a lovely mouse on wank_report

From the website that pissed off all their fandom user base twice, Livejournal has decided to go for the gold and piss off their entire user base this time around. I present to you...

The Profile Massacre of 08!

In other words, Livejournal changes the profile design without warning and announces it later. Naturally, Livejournal users are very unhappy. There's more unhappiness to be found over at the news post. (Which hilariously includes a reminder that permanent accounts are going on sale.)

But that's not all! More hilarity ensues when the LJ Design Team posts again and clearly ignores the complaining.

Oh, Livejournal. What WON'T you do?

Dearest, beloved, Fandom Wank.

I know you were looking forward to great excitement today. Some of you said words to me that indicated you anticipated fiery 'judgement' upon those who remained fresh and dewey white, those you call n00bs.

Anyway, you got today instead.

Stop anticipating things, we'll just break your hearts.

Sincerely,

Sepia P. Magpie, Esq.



PS: Use this post to reflect on how you could be better people. Or just fuck around in the comments.

Results for the LJ Advisory Board elections are in. Members react, predictably, with grace, maturity, and no ad-hominem remarks whatsoever.

SEE! The Brad/Jameth RPS that was written in honor of the occasion!

SEE! separated offer her Thoughts on Yaoi over and over and over and over again!

SEE! The epic butthurt!

ETA: Some of the icons/macros in the post are NSFW.

As seen on clairvoyantwank...


LiveJournal is holding elections for a users' representative on the LJ Advisory Board. Among the candidates are jameth and legomymalfoy. There are other candidates, bugt these two have the most attention. Depending on who you talk to, jameth is a witty, widely read LJ celebrity/troll who kicks people when they're down, and legomymalfoy is a fannish member in good standing of LJ Abuse/Establishment Pig who left her fellow fen out to dry during Strikethrough.

This being LJ-related, there's wank. Sweet Mother of God, is there wank.

It starts with a post from jameth about possible ballot-stuffing and rolls downhill from there. Accusations of jameth's newest campaign icon triggering seizures in epileptics (sorry, no links - the one I saw on metafandom has been locked down). Supporters of both candidates being called trolls (too many threads to link) and accusations of smear campaigns on both sides. The "sleeping giant" of fandom being awakened. Like the dragon!

By Monday, legomymalfoy was in the lead. But that's not enough bookshop, aka Aja. Because jameth is still a menace to LJ! So she encourages people to spam fannish LJ communities to get out the vote.

Not everyone agrees. Comments are deleted. jameth shows up, and Aja freezes the thread.

And what's a fandom popularity conest debate without Godwin's?

ETA: Someone blew their Humanity roll.

Yeah, right. So, how did the LJ Content Strike go? People want to discuss it in the comments to beckyzoole's first post after the strike. First order of business is, of course, calculating post stats to look for a possible dip. golden_purple18 takes it upon herself to provide the calculations, and they're, let's say, less than thorough:

Before the strike I looked at the "number of posts in the last 24 hours" on the front of LJ, the number was 195.2 thousand, after, 167.9 ! That's 27,300! That's AMAZING! That means that 27,300 posts that WOULD have gone up (its Easter weekend, posting is high) DID NOT!

That means 13% of the posts didn't happen That was part of what I sent Becky. Yeah, it worked, and the effect was huge. I also mentioned that the amount of posts held back was probably more, because of the many people posting more on purpose.

Hope this helped!

And also quite wide-eyed.

People point this out with various levels of bitchery, and also that Friday was a holiday in two different religions. It soon becomes apparent that golden_purple18 is making a particular interpretation of LJ usage:

Exactly. Lots of people are doing stuff, which means that people are posting. More activity means more things to say. Boring everyday life is not a common subject. Holidays boost posting!

And even:

More activity in real life = more activity in lj

The discussion soon degenerates into derision and trolling on one side, and bannination, comment deletion (for "NSFW language", no less!) and chest-puffing:

I'm sorry that the Content Strike made you feel so threatened that you are lashing out irrationally.

I'm really impressed by how many people are counter-protesting so strongly. We must be very powerful, or they wouldn't want us to stop what we're doing so badly.

on the other. And what do you know, we can also has Godwin's! (Fascists are close enough, right?)

At this point, golden_purple18 asks for, and some people offer, proper statistics analysis, comparing yesterday's posting to other years' posting on Good Friday. It seems that less posting on Good Friday is a trend, and golden_purple18 admits to her mistakes, even though she still considers that there are "too many variables" to fully admit defeat.

This is just the first thread of comments, and the rest go on and on full of ad-hoc attacks, posturing (strike? Counter-strike!), and hurt feelings so don't forget to check them because I'm sure there's lots of gems to be found.

And also, thanks to an anonymouse on wank_report, more quality drama between the participants at sf_drama.

Some of the links are taken from j_crew_guy's post at 6a_cornfield.

The Livejournal Staff make a news post to celebrate the hundredth day since they were bought by the Russian company SUP. It mentions their previous policy update and plans to create an Advisory Board.

Then redbird notices that the FAQs have been updated.

Copypasta from FAQ #38:

Basic Account is an option available to accounts which were created before March 12, 2008. No account created after this date can be turned into a Basic Account. Basic Accounts will not have any advertising displayed on their accounts, but will have fewer benefits and features.

jasonshellen, the VP of Product Development for LJ pops up in the third page of comments.

Brad Fitzpatrick, creator of Livejournal and member of the current Advisory Board, is not happy about the change.

There's more information at no_lj_ads.

EDIT: Esther Dyson, another member of LJ's Advisory Board, says that she wasn't consulted either.

SON OF EDIT: Danah Boyd's response to this, thanks to uniquewonders.

DAUGHTER OF EDIT: news finally responds.

MOTHER_IN_LAW OF EDIT: And thanks to pfeffermuse- sf_drama has a translation of the Russian News post, which included the information.

WERELEOPARD NIECE OF EDIT: The head of the blogging service at SUP speaks (thanks to j_crew_guy for the link). Bahleeted. Link to source article (in English) here.

Re: the disappearing lj interests -there's a discussion over at fandom_lounge.

Well, if no one else is going to do this.

Unless you, dear reader, have been dead during the last few weeks, you know that LJ suspended some users for dubious Harry Potter porn. Everyone goes batshit, etc. This rookie is not about to report on the entirety of that, but just this little gem.

bad_wolf_bitch decided that, as a consumer, she should report LJ's poor handling of Suspensiongate to the California State Attorney General (among others, she claims), and gets a formal response that they are taking up the case. She shares her good news.

The general reaction is split between "Yay! We might get some money back!" and "Ohmyfuckinggod. The fuzz is going to be all over my Ron/Squid porn. Lockdown! Abort! Abort!"

The panicky porn-fiends, as is expected, express their anger directly to bad_wolf_bitch. She states to "bring it on me" and that she is willing to "take the heat." Classic rookie move! Clever people want to see the letter, but she has no scanner. :(

Other reactions include that this is the end of Fandom as we know it, theories that the Cali Attorney General will ride this one to vote victory, and that it's really all just those damn kids and their sue-you entitlement.

I doubt this will be over quickly. Best comment so far: "Oh well, nothing lasts forever, and in internet time, 5 years is pretty close to forever." C'est la vie, c'est la vie.

ETA: And in another classic move, bad_wolf_bitch has baleeted her journal. I put up an alt link to someone asking her to show the letter not on her journal, because if she is underage (lol) it's the Right Thing to Do, and also because I hates me a dead link.

ETA2: And 6a_cornfield has more lulz on the same wank

Six Apart may or may not have reported elaboration and ponderosa121 to the NCMEC.

Via fandom_flies, here.

As people are saying in fandom_flies, I kind of hope they get bitched out for wasting the NCMEC's time.

Also, hi, this is my first post on f_w!

Edit: I thought it was pretty funny that 6A seems to want the NCMEC to go look for fictional children at elaboration and pond's houses. I see some people don't find this as hilarious as I do; oh well.

Also, fixed link.

Edit again: afairytalestory calls tamburlaine a complete moron for saying s/he doesn't think LiveJournal should break the law, and that fans are "deluded" for not thinking someone should be reported for child abuse because they drew something. Wank ensues.

Fanartists ponderosa121 and elaboration have been permanently suspended from LiveJournal. As far as I can tell, there's no word from elaboration yet, but ponderosa121 received this email from the LJ Abuse team. Update: elaboration received an identically-worded notice.

The innocence_jihad post, with links and suggestions to protest in the comments over at lj_biz and lj_news. And fandom takes up the invitation to troll/spam/comment. With glee.

Fandom_tossed on greatestjournal keeps track of the most recent batch of TOSsing.

Metafandom collects fandom's reactions. Fandom is justifiably upset.

The wank's all coming from LJ/6A this time around, folks. Update: This statement is no longer true, if it ever was true in the first place. It doesn't change the fact that the 6A team has a lot of 'splainin to do, though.

(I'm sorry that this report's lacking in teh_funny, but LJ's most recent dickishness deserves documentation. Hey, that alliterates.)

ETA: elke_tanzer has even more references and links, for those who are curious. And synecdochic explains the current legal situation and its possible impact on the latest batch of strikethroughs.

ETA II: Ladies and gentlefen, we have Godwin's in action. (Thanks, barankhy and passerby.) And the LJ Abuse team "clarifies" matters.

ETA III: Ponderosa responds to her suspension. Elaboration does the same.

So, Robin Hobb posted a rant on her website, decrying the eeeeeeebil of LJ. To wit:

( LJ wants to suck your blood! )
In short, Robin Hobb is a delicate flower who thinks that the Internet is instantly addictive to everyone and ruins lives.

...Okay!

(Sorry for the lame topic title.)
This has been going on for a while, and I was hoping someone else would comment about it. Oh well.

Over at the Dilbert LJ Feed (dilber3), people start asking why the Calvin and Hobbes feed was closed. People mention bandwidth reasons, copyright reasons, and the like. mikohki suggests someone blurted out at LJAbuse, because there was a (*gasp*) troll posting "explicit material" in the feed.

No way.

And the same troll (schwarzer_tod) is attacking the Dilbert feed as well. Oh, the humanity.

( It's flashback time! )

Aww, look, alliteration!

A post is made in West Wing Fans this morning listing rumours about some of the cast members (and by "cast members", apparently terminator generally means "people who did a 2-ep guest spot"). 

Hey, did you know that Rob Lowe was caught on tape with an underage girl, Aaron Sorkin has a drug problem, as does Matthew Perry, John Goodman, Christian Slater, and Jimmy Smits?!?? Also, Lily Tomlin likes girls.

Most of them are negative (although technically a lot of them are also mostly true, even though they're exaggerated), no source is cited, no explanation is given for the post, and I don't know about the rest of the people in that com, but I have no idea who the poster is.

People express dismay in the comments, defend Rob Lowe from the INJUSTICE of these unsubstantiated rumours, request a source for all this, and generally wonder wtf is going on.  A search of the OP's user info and reading some of his back entries reveals that he apparently only started watching the show when he realized Alan Alda was on it.  In a bizarre twist of events, comments start mysteriously disappearing.

Another post is made asking if the com has a mod.  We're mostly a self-modding community, since A)no one knows who or where the mod is, and B)it's the West Wing.  We only fight when the Josh/Donna shippers and the Josh/Amy shippers get going.

And then, the plot twist!  The OP is the mod!  Horrors, how did this happen?!  Apparently the old mod hasn't posted in her journal since 2001, so your friend and mine, terminator, took over her account and modding duties.  Yes, there has been a coup d'etat in the West Wing fandom.</span>

I didn't expect it to grow quite as quickly as it did, but now that we've apparently been taken over by a foul-mouthed moron, things should be more interesting.

edit: Sorry, didn't mean to kill everyone's friends page for the whole of the afternoon. No excuse other than being html's bitch. Hopefully it's fixed now.

(this also happens to be my first post, but I've enjoyed the wanks here for a while)

There are rumors that six apart is going to buy livejournal.

This apparantly has some live journal users worried enough to start questioning this on the livejournal status boards.

The board owners delete the initial posts.

soleta asks why she can't ask questions.

njyoder calls someone a 'Commie troll'. 2am_waffles points out that the issue is actually capitalism, and they're a lot more in favor of freedom of speech than any stinkin' communists.

njyoder then starts questioning why others on the thread are thanking Brad for actually 'doing his job' to keep LJ working.

terestai criticises the general 'culture of being expected to be waited on hand and foot . . .

And it deteriorates from there - only 45 responses at this point, but a lot more than I've ever seen on an LJ status post before

Friending ettiquette on LJ has always confused me. Personally, I friend who I feel like friending and only ask first if I want an excuse to start a conversation with the person I'm friending. I can't see anything they don't let me see; such is the magic of friendslock and filters. No one's complained yet, so evidently my "friending policy" hasn't yet caused any major or irreparable rips in the fabric of space-time, damn the luck.

Along comes dave_the_great and his spate of randomly friending people without permission. Outrage ensues.

On the one hand, Dave's obviously doing this to get a rise out of people. On the other hand ... people are actually rising. Am I the only one who thinks it's sad that it takes so little to get the whining started? It's not even a challenge anymore.

Aja starts an extremely amusing thread: Ship your favorite LJers!

Some people take offense. Anonymously, of course.

As if it weren't bad enough that you treat your (ex)friends like your own personal fic pairings, Aja, you're now encouraging perfect strangers to do it too. You'll never bloody learn, will you?

The anonymice are promptly shipped.