The Ink-Pot and the Palette

I still like it here best.

Dunbar's Number says that our brains evolved to manage a maximum of about 150 social connections.

Apparently Dunbar's number isn't just a maximum, though: it may also be a kind of optimum; we feel a need for 100 to 200 social connections. Since most of us don't live in extended families, tribes or small villages anymore, we fill our Dunbar vacancies with virtual social connections.

At least a couple dozen golden social connections of mine for the last nine years have been right here on Dreamwidth and LiveJournal, and you know what? I'd like to try to keep it that way.

Getting email notifications about comments on LJ and DW is still really sweet. I like the kinds of personal conversations that can happen in comments here, that I've never found anywhere else. It's not all fandom all the time, but it's fandom-adjacent, the conversations of enthusiasts and believers and people who make stuff and care about meaning and love a good shared squee.

So, I'm challenging myself to post, read, and comment daily during June. Maybe even read and comment outside my list/circle. I might crosspost from other services. I might do the kind of abbreviated drive-by that's become the province of Twitter. I might post about knitting, or cats, or my bike, or work. Or Dylan O'Brien, what the hell.

Yeah, thirty posts in thirty days, APAD, PEDFAM--it's nothing new. But I'm just so hungry, you know? I'm tired of the fragmentation. Google+ and Facebook and Twitter do very little for my Dunbar quotient.

I still like it here best.

Is anyone else trying to re-figure out how to have an online life? Is anyone else feeling that Google+ is cool but how many more social networks do I need? Does anyone else wonder if there's still a place for a journaling site like Dreamwidth and LiveJournal in their life?

I'm finding G+ very homey--more succinct than here, not quite as flighty as Twitter. Less conversational than here, but more interactive than Tumblr. It feels like a comfortable stream of connection.

Of course, it's new. Not many people are on it yet. Everyone's behaving like early guests at a nice party, so it's also much less contentious than here tends to be sometimes. (I have invites, by the way, if anyone wants one.)

Journaling/blogging has been a mostly wonderful experience for me for the past six years or so, but I feel it slipping away as a concept. I hate to let it go, but fighting the flow seems futile. Does anyone else feel that way?

elf, in a post entitled 6 Weeks of Dreamwidth, has begun a process of shifting operations entirely to Dreamwidth, based on the DW Beta One Year Anniversary challenge called Six Weeks For Dreamwidth.

The challenge is for fan artists to make content over the next six weeks that will be available exclusively on Dreamwidth. Since I'm in the very midst of posting my epic novel on AO3 (and have no other content), I can't really participate in it, but I like elf's alternate plan, to wit:

• Begin treating my DW Circle as my primary journal reading, and my LJ flist as secondary
• Remove from my LJ flist everyone who also posts on DW (if you're one of these, would you let me know please?
• Quit LJ comms that are replicated on DW, and be sure to join and post to them on DW.

I'm not mad at LJ, but I really like being part of DW. The features, the sense of new community, and the principles are more to my taste, and I want to do all I can to support them and help create content here.

I'll continue to crosspost to LJ while as I figure this all out. I'm paid up through September.

Meanwhile, if you have both a DW and a LiveJournal account, why not consider posting by preference on DW, with a crosspost to LJ? It's easy to do.

Do you have an account on Dreamwidth? Can I friend you over there?

The latest news from DW (in a nutshell, trolls from hate groups are threatening actions to shut them down based on accusations of hosting child porn...*sigh*) is discouraging, but I love the calm, rational way they're handling it. It is in marked contrast to LJ's hysterical kneejerk commercial forelock tugging a couple of years ago under the same stresses, and it reminds again me that I'd really like to get more of a community going there.

So, if you're on DW and wouldn't mind my adding you to my reading/connection page, would you let me know in a comment?

I'm DarkEmeralds there, if you'd like to add me to your reading list.

I am way overdue for a change to the old LJ layout, and I finally have time to start geeking around with it. If you view LJs in their own styles, mine must be looking a little nekkid at the moment, because I'm still casting about for a header image of my own, and a color scheme. You know, general New Year's spiffing-up.

(I'm using this base stylesheet.)

I keep thinking I should be expending these efforts over on Dreamwidth, but my community just keeps on not being over there. Sigh...so it's LJ with all LJ's little faults, at least for now.

Hope everyone's enjoying a pleasant post-holiday Sunday. Mine could only be improved on by a slightly warmer house. Brr!