*whimper*

[asimplechord]

Ages and ages ago, we signed up for a bike ride at the Mosquito Festival, a local thing in the town MrIris works in. It is the 21st of July. The ride starts at 7:30am and will likely go until noon or later.

Friends are having a house-warming party (same town as the bike ride, about 45 minutes' drive from our house) at 5pm. MrIris wants to drive down in the morning and stay there all day, shower at friends' house before the party.

*cries*

He obviously does not understand the importance of the date.

Comments

[asimplechord.livejournal.com]

Not really, no. They know that I'm active in fandom, but they think it's kinda weird that I should be so absorbed by a kids' book. And they don't really get my interest in fandom as a topic for social and anthropological study, either.

When I tried to expand on fandom as more than Star Trek conventions or teenager-written fiction about a magical world by pointing out the social differences between users of Facebook vs. MySpace vs. LiveJournal, and what it says about the lack of social equality, I got blank looks.

(And my, what a run-on sentence that is!)

[angela-snape.livejournal.com]

When I tried to expand on fandom as more than Star Trek conventions or teenager-written fiction about a magical world by pointing out the social differences between users of Facebook vs. MySpace vs. LiveJournal, and what it says about the lack of social equality, I got blank looks.

That actually sounds quite interesting to me...

[asimplechord.livejournal.com]

I came to this essay (http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ClassDivisions.html) via Henry Jenkins' blog (http://www.henryjenkins.org/) (I totally heart him and his work; he's part of the MIT Comparative Media project and long-time fanboy), and there are links there back to Boyd's blog and to other studies. Fascinating stuff.

[angela-snape.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the links! and I love your Barbapapa icon!

[asimplechord.livejournal.com]

You can take it if you want it. Barbapapa books were my favorites as a kid. :)

I think Boyd has a really valid point about the way Americans think about "class" and our discomfort in discussing it. The essay I linked you to doesn't really address LJ in comparison to MS/FB, but it really got me thinking about the similarities and differences. I have "met" people from all sorts of socio-economic classes via LJ and fandom, and what "class" they are in is irrelevant. Is that because LJ was established long before MS/FB? It is because the primary hook for me and my f-list was fandom, not an institutionally-driven network for socializing, and thus we are diverse? Or are we not as diverse as I thought? After all, having an LJ account requires internet access, which implies certain monetary/living conditions.

Food for thought, yeah?

[angela-snape.livejournal.com]

Yeah, definitely food for thought.

If I look at the groups on FB that students from my school are in - a lot are the more academically oriented (we offer the International Baccalaureate and have lots of kids going to top universities both here and in the US).

But ... if I look at "older" people on FB, like my former classmates, a lot of them aren't the ones who, like myself, went to university, and instead got married young, now have teenagers in high school (where I have a three-year-old & teach high school), and have formed FB groups like "Smoking Buddies" ...

It's definitely interesting to see where LJ enters the mix - I joined LJ before FB, but I'm still a relative newbie to both - I only joined LJ in March 06 - though I have had an online presence for many years, and have been part of things like iVillage and Themestream (which actually paid authors per click on their stories ... it didn't last too long.)