Green Room - Week 18 - Day 4
Sep. 23rd, 2013 02:50 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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therealljidolEveryone on Livejournal is good. It’s doesn’t matter if you joined back when you had to get an invite from someone to sign up or signed up on a whim last week to post your stuff on that fandom community your friend was telling you about.
You are good people.
If you come over from Dreamwidth – well, chances are you used to be on Livejournal and are over there for legitimate personal reasons. So you are still pretty good.
A blogger using Open Access – you’re decent. But really, shouldn’t you have a Livejournal?
Are you coming in from Facebook or Twitter??? Why? You can’t be up to any good, why would someone from those sites actually come over to see anything on Livejournal, unless it was for nefarious purposes?
I’ll admit, I’ve had moments like that (above). Most people have. I think it comes from the inferiority complex LJ (as a culture and community) has developed toward other social media. Or perhaps the walls that people put up in their own life, keeping their LJ apart from all other social media. Walls that the rest of the world seems determined to eliminate regardless of what people think about it.
It’s been a blip in the past. But as time goes on, the presence is getting larger. Of the top 5, only ONE contestant didn’t end up benefiting from voters coming in from facebook. (and yes, they are still in the competition)
Other sites are still a blip. (There were 2 votes that came from Twitter and 1 Open Access vote as opposed to the 35 from facebook for our largest influx of any week in the history of Idol)
There are some ways to look at this – Oh, no, this is the end! Let’s hand the winner icon to the one person who didn’t use those/have people use them on their behalf! Or, these are people coming to Livejournal who might never have known about the site before, or who used to be here and are being seduced back! They are coming to support good writing – and isn’t that awesome! We should welcome these people with open arms.
If we are going to the latter though, there is a rule. It’s not a request. It’s a rule. It’s always been a rule, and it always will be a rule. Why? Because it makes sense. If you aren’t following this, you need to be…
Tell People to Read.
If you are just encouraging people to vote blindly, you aren’t doing anyone any favors. I’d like to assume that people know that they should be reading what they are actually voting for, and based on the names I’m seeing, I’m sure that they are. But there is always the chance of that not happening… after all, Idol has the prettiest clicky boxes on the Internet. Nowhere else really compares to how compelling they are, and how fun it is to watch them for hours on end. Let’s face it – isn’t “meta” just clicky box porn?
There is some great writing happening here in Idol – and being able to reach people out there in the Great Social Media Beyond and bringing them back to the fold, and exposing them to what our writers are offering, that’s amazing stuff! Thank you to anyone who is doing it. But make sure to include a line or three about checking out the entries. Not just the one, but all of them – especially since there are three people left, that’s really not going to be difficult! Lead them to the water, and we get our next generation of Idol writers for Season 9! People who experience what is going on here *want* to be a part of it. People who just see it as a clicky box… many of them don’t.
As I said, based on *who* is coming to vote, I don’t think the “not reading” is a real problem. But there is a perception problem involved and that has a habit of festering. So, let’s be proactive about that – OK?
We have three contestants, who are adding their entries as we speak: http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/696365.html Let’s make these last few moments together awesome!!!
You are good people.
If you come over from Dreamwidth – well, chances are you used to be on Livejournal and are over there for legitimate personal reasons. So you are still pretty good.
A blogger using Open Access – you’re decent. But really, shouldn’t you have a Livejournal?
Are you coming in from Facebook or Twitter??? Why? You can’t be up to any good, why would someone from those sites actually come over to see anything on Livejournal, unless it was for nefarious purposes?
I’ll admit, I’ve had moments like that (above). Most people have. I think it comes from the inferiority complex LJ (as a culture and community) has developed toward other social media. Or perhaps the walls that people put up in their own life, keeping their LJ apart from all other social media. Walls that the rest of the world seems determined to eliminate regardless of what people think about it.
It’s been a blip in the past. But as time goes on, the presence is getting larger. Of the top 5, only ONE contestant didn’t end up benefiting from voters coming in from facebook. (and yes, they are still in the competition)
Other sites are still a blip. (There were 2 votes that came from Twitter and 1 Open Access vote as opposed to the 35 from facebook for our largest influx of any week in the history of Idol)
There are some ways to look at this – Oh, no, this is the end! Let’s hand the winner icon to the one person who didn’t use those/have people use them on their behalf! Or, these are people coming to Livejournal who might never have known about the site before, or who used to be here and are being seduced back! They are coming to support good writing – and isn’t that awesome! We should welcome these people with open arms.
If we are going to the latter though, there is a rule. It’s not a request. It’s a rule. It’s always been a rule, and it always will be a rule. Why? Because it makes sense. If you aren’t following this, you need to be…
Tell People to Read.
If you are just encouraging people to vote blindly, you aren’t doing anyone any favors. I’d like to assume that people know that they should be reading what they are actually voting for, and based on the names I’m seeing, I’m sure that they are. But there is always the chance of that not happening… after all, Idol has the prettiest clicky boxes on the Internet. Nowhere else really compares to how compelling they are, and how fun it is to watch them for hours on end. Let’s face it – isn’t “meta” just clicky box porn?
There is some great writing happening here in Idol – and being able to reach people out there in the Great Social Media Beyond and bringing them back to the fold, and exposing them to what our writers are offering, that’s amazing stuff! Thank you to anyone who is doing it. But make sure to include a line or three about checking out the entries. Not just the one, but all of them – especially since there are three people left, that’s really not going to be difficult! Lead them to the water, and we get our next generation of Idol writers for Season 9! People who experience what is going on here *want* to be a part of it. People who just see it as a clicky box… many of them don’t.
As I said, based on *who* is coming to vote, I don’t think the “not reading” is a real problem. But there is a perception problem involved and that has a habit of festering. So, let’s be proactive about that – OK?
We have three contestants, who are adding their entries as we speak: http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/696365.html Let’s make these last few moments together awesome!!!
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2013-09-23 03:04 pm (UTC)Walls can be very difficult to destroy. I'm not of the generation where "let's share everything" is a no-brainer, and I know there are people here who share that sentiment. I talk about stuff both in Idol entries and in my own LJ that I would never, ever discuss publicly. That's always been my #1 reason for being here. And yes, it makes the whole social media thing difficult because I'd have to reveal my username to those who don't know it...and I could very well be discussing those people in an Idol post, y'know?
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Date: 2013-09-23 03:40 pm (UTC)Will the idea that we can be anonymous online vanish altogether?
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Date: 2013-09-23 04:05 pm (UTC)I'm, age-wise, I think closer to the "share everything" generation, but dear gawd I HOPE this doesn't happen! I like my walls, thank-you-very-much.
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Date: 2013-09-23 04:50 pm (UTC)I sincerely hope so because not everything I say is for public consumption unless I deem it so.
Will the idea that we can be anonymous online vanish altogether?
If that ultimately is the case, I'd have to seriously reconsider being online at all unless I constructed an entire persona. The trouble with personas, though, is that they can be difficult to maintain.
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Date: 2013-09-23 04:15 pm (UTC)Of course, separating your "official" self and "private" self already takes some doing today. I have enough problems just playing LJ Idol as an Alt of my regular account. We're entering "interesting times."
Not that I know anything about this sort of thing.
1 danah boyd has a solid blog on this topic, if you don't mind a lot of tech talk.
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Date: 2013-09-23 04:56 pm (UTC)My college-age/bit beyond nieces/nephews/extended family have stopped using Facebook and Instagram because of this. A couple of them are still on Tumblr, but even they've been questioning privacy concerns there. However, they're all into Vine right now because it's the shiny new thing. I suspect they'll quit using that once the privacy questions pops up there too.
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Date: 2013-09-23 05:21 pm (UTC)My LJ life is completely separate from my public life. The fanfic is one reason, but the other is... my LJ is much more personal. I talk about things going through my mind, things I find funny (that do NOT necessarily match the political leanings of most of my tiny Facebook friendslist).
I just can't "like" Facebook. I originally joined to keep tabs on my kids, but some 3 years later, I still only go over there about 3-5 times a YEAR. I hate the format (the word-limit), I hate the triviality of much of what other people post. One of the most thoughtful people I've ever met at LJ (who spends all of her time at Facebook now) has gone from insightful blogging to things like "Cheese sandwich for lunch! Awesome!" Only two of my eligible 3 sibs have Facebook accounts, and they post about as often as I do. :O
So, Facebook is off-limits to me as a strategy entirely. That can be pretty limiting in the voting (I don't know how I made it to the Top Ten in Season 8, given how many of the late-gamers had Facebook links to their entries and the polls!)
That said, the one thing I can hope is that people coming over from Facebook for voting will 1) read all the entries, and 2) take a look around and realize that this is a MUCH more awesome social media than most, and possibly join up themselves!
(stop looking at me like that, you already knew I was a dinosaur)
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Date: 2013-09-23 05:36 pm (UTC)In the week you were eliminated, there were 4 votes cast from facebook. 0 from twitter and 0 from any Open Access blog.
Two of the facebook votes went to the same two people.
With one each going to two different people. (So 2 contestants gained 2 votes from facebook, and 2 others gained a vote apiece)
You could pretty much take any previous Idol vote and it would look similar. Which is what makes this last one stand out.
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Date: 2013-09-23 05:38 pm (UTC)I post fairly irregularly on FB for the same reason :) Oh, I might throw something up there about The Kidz or ask a general question, but my communication style is much more attuned to LJ. I don't particularly care about espousing my political/sociological beliefs or reposting memes unless I find them extraordinarily interesting. I've never been big on idle (as opposed to Idol) chatter.
I think one of the biggest issues in garnering votes from either FB or Twitter or what-have-you is that you cannot be 100% that people are actually reading. It'd be nice if they did, but I bet a lot of them just tick the clicky box because they're your friends. It's the nature of the clicky box beast :shrug:
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Date: 2013-09-23 10:43 pm (UTC)I... kind of have opinions on the subject.
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Date: 2013-09-23 03:07 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2013-09-23 03:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-23 04:03 pm (UTC)I'm excited for this season to finally end so that season 9 can (eventually, in a few months) start and I can finally officially reach my 100 Weeks mark (if you include Ex A and B, I've got 124 weeks at this point, but alas THEY DON'T COUNT).
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Date: 2013-09-23 04:07 pm (UTC)Well, dang; what have I been doing all this time? It sure felt real!
Oh, man: does this mean that, if I were to enter Season 9 (hypothetically speaking), I'd enter with 0 weeks to my name?
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Date: 2013-09-23 05:31 pm (UTC)I've always kept LJ separate from the rest of my world (mostly my work world), so it was a weird thing, and I truly hate campaigning for myself, and I honestly don't know if I'll do it again. I made a filter, but I still had weird feelings about it, and, whatever.
As for the "tell them to read" thing, I've always felt like people should read if they're going to vote. In fact, I've always felt that people should read ALL THE ENTRIES if they're going to vote, but see that aforementioned, "the game that is" thing.
When you're reading your LJ friends list and a post goes up fifteen minutes before a poll deadline on a week where there are seventy-some-odd entries, and the message is, "My friend is in this competition, please go vote for her." It's pretty clear there's no expectation that folks are going to read. And that's not new, and I've never seen those folks get chastised for it.
Hell, I've even seen posts that literally say, "Please go vote for me, you don't even have to read anything, just click the box." And I've seen people in comments say, "I have three accounts, so that's three votes from me!" But it's an imperfect system. You can't police everyone, etc.
I encourage people to read. Once I've done that, if I'm reminding people to vote, I don't always say something about reading because I've already encouraged them to read.
But, honestly, there have been Green Room conversations in which people who are competing at the time say things like, "If I don't have time to read, I just vote for..."
So, unless there's a pop quiz covering content required to vote (this would be the literacy test to accompany the poll tax suggested a few days ago), there's really no way to know who is reading and who isn't.
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Date: 2013-09-23 05:48 pm (UTC)Exactly.
And then it ultimately begs the question, who are we writing for, then, besides ourselves and each other? (I'm excluding people whose horizons have gone beyond LJ and Idol in this, btw -- this concerns only those of us remaining).
ETA:
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Date: 2013-09-23 06:14 pm (UTC)When it's 300 contestants, I think it's fair to say that not everyone will read everything. Which is why Rec Lists are so handy, it's someone else who can say "I enjoyed this stuff!"
When it's 4 or 5? Sure, most people will know they should read, but it's still good to remind them to do so. Especially coming up into the Top 3... we're figuring out who should win this thing. I'm sure all of you *want* people to read what you put out there and decide which one they want to support. (I almost put "is better" but that opens up whole volumes of subjectivity and taste. Maybe "they like better") If posting this in the Green Room reminds people of their responsibility when it comes to getting people out to the polls, then great! If it doesn't, well it's been said and now no one can say that it wasn't.
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Date: 2013-09-23 05:46 pm (UTC)It freaked me out at the beginning when I would comment and people would thank me for reading their entries. Why thank me for what I should be doing? It made me think "Well, I know you're not reading mine, huh?" Because if they were reading everything themselves, they wouldn't have projected and assumed that I wasn't reading everything.
Also it still hurts that one of my favorite stories that I've ever written was during a week when there were no eliminations, and I think maybe like five people read it. It's beautiful, and I did wonderful things with the words and the rhythm and the imagery, but no one read it.
It's like why even bother. Also the vote counts aren't even real, because if people aren't reading everything then their votes don't matter and are not a measure of quality.
I think in the end I'm more suited to just sharing things freely, like my Sims stories, and votes and competition and numbers and dealing with humans just aren't for me.
The more that I read and learn about other humans, in my years of attempting to understand things like Simsecret and gossip and hate and drama and the emotionally abusive ex-best friend and how he turned so many people in the Sims community against me, and how they were willing to believe his lies and reject me without ever getting to know me and make fun of my writing without ever giving it a real chance....
It's like I've realized that I am really writing entirely for me, and I cannot depend on other people for anything, and votes and comments and all that - it's completely meaningless. Because most humans are really extremely weird, and their brains work in these alien ways that I can't understand, no matter how hard I try. It's like they refuse to believe in reality, and they make up this entire fake world that serves their ego, and they just live in their own little ego world and they don't even see you or your work for who you actually are or what your work actually is.
But, you know, it took eight years but I eventually found the good people in the Sims community, and I grew boundaries and I have a zero tolerance policy now - if you read Simsecret, if you show any support for hate/drama blogs at all, if you ever judge anyone, if you ever say anything negative about anyone else - I don't care who you are, what you post, or what our previous relationship was. You're gone. You're outside my moral circle.
I guess the secret to Idol is learning how to apply those boundaries here. But the whole voting thing makes it harder to do that. I've written my heart out and cried myself sick when I was only in the lower middle of the poll, because I thought that meant that I sucked at the thing that I love most in the world.
But that was before I learned all this stuff about how the perceptions of other humans work, and how completely and entirely arbitrary the perception of the human species is.
I'm off to take a walk and then work on the update of my Sims story.
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Date: 2013-09-23 05:58 pm (UTC)Many people love your stories and comment on them. You enjoy being part of a supportive community. Do you really believe that it's 'projecting' to say Thank You when someone is kind enough to compliment your work, or gracious enough to give useful feedback?
My mother 'should' feed me. But I still say thank you when she sets down the plate.
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Date: 2013-09-23 06:27 pm (UTC)I read all the entries every week, and on the weeks I can't, I don't vote. But I also sometimes reply to comments on my entry (or put at the bottom of the entry itself) "Thanks for reading," because not everyone does read everything, and not everyone who reads is doing it because they're planning to vote. It's just a nice thing to say. I think you're reading extra meaning into it.
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Date: 2013-09-23 08:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-23 08:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2013-09-23 10:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2013-09-23 10:28 pm (UTC)For what it's worth, whenever I share the poll or link to an entry, I entreat people to read as much as they can. It's a writing contest, and I honestly think people will come over here and find something enjoyable to read.
But I also realize that when the polls go up, they're basically open to the entire internet. Almost anything could happen with those clicky buttons - they are very shiny, after all - for almost any reason, or none. Maybe a bunch of script kiddies gets it in their head to give thousands of votes to people randomly (thank goodness this has never happened, as far as I know). Maybe people pimp a lot. Maybe it's a slow week in LJ land. Maybe anything. I don't use the poll as the basis for my self-worth, or as a metric for whether or not my writing is good.
Sure, I like to see the numbers go up, and I'm amazed and delighted to have made it into the top three in this particular instantiation of the game, but I know that at the end of the day Idol is both what we put into it, and what we we get out of it. I hope that I'm helping to make it a better place, because I sure do have gotten a lot out of competing, making friends, writing, and reading. And of course, clicking on those buttons for the things I like.