Boy, this is going to make me unpopular

[kangeiko]

We all know that sometimes memes can be incredibly amusing, and can generate story ideas and can make us think and are fabulous social experiments. Except that sometimes they are just a bunch of scores next to bar graphs and a pretty picture at the top. Now, whilst we may indulge in the latter, people on my flist, at least, tend to do so very rarely. If they do indulge, they are normally considerate of bandwidth and put things behind a cut and have a point to the meme outside of the pretty picture.

I do not read journals populated entirely by bar charts and pictures. Not many people do.

Then, of course, there are the memes that are genuinely interesting. There are the ones that pull together different characters and match them up, or the ones that require you to write snippets of fics, or that want you to post about your favourite song, or fic, or book, or whatever. Those are the social experiment memes, at least in my head, because they work on a wider range of data than what thirty questions can provide for you. Random matching of a selection of a person's listed interests can produce fascinating results. I love them, and have been known to browse my flist's flists in order to read these match-ups.

I have yet to see a complaint about these match-up memes, or about memes that ask you to talk about your favourite song or whatever. If it's interesting enough to involve my entire flist - with whom I have a given overlap of interests of about X% - then it stands to reason that there is an approaching-X% chance that I will read the meme. If I find that X is too small a figure, then my flist gets restructured and pruned, and voila, it's full of things that interest me again.

I rant. I rave. I have real life crises.

I expect that people will have at least a marginal interest in me as a whole entity, and have enough of an overlap with my interests and theirs to carry on reading my journal. If they don't, then they won't keep me on their flist. It seems sensible enough to me.

During the last long while, several memes have been sweeping my flist: the 'Firefly quote' meme, the 'poetry' meme, the 'book' meme, and variations thereof. I have found these fun - I haven't participated myself because of time constraints, but I have enjoyed reading about people's interests in poetry or being amused by a random Firefly quote.

Some people, it seems, are not amused. I write this because I have seen no less than three people (and probably more) on my flist NOT complaining about the new memes (which I wouldn't necessarily agree with, but would be interested in reading), but INFORMING people that they are to stop them immediately. These orders have been phrased in various different ways, but can be summarised thusly: "don't clutter up my flist with stuff I'm not interested in". The most astonishing thing is the replies to these orders: humble apologies from people who have done the memes, and promises from others never to do any such ridiculous things as quote a fandom the ranter doesn't care for.

My God, people. Can you hear yourselves? What if I were to start demanding that my flist purge itself of SGA content immediately, because I'm not into it? What if I were to declare a ban on all things yaoi for the artists, or on mostly all HP pairings for everyone else? I wouldn't get particularly far. I'd anticipate that a fair number of people would defriend me, and they would be completely right.

Reciprocity, then: I am not here for your amusement.

Unless you are one of the few people I actually carry on sustained dialogue with, whether in real life or on-line, and I have known you for a while, I suspect that the primary reason you have my friended is to read the fic, or the reviews, or my occasional comments. If you ever reach a point where you find that our tastes have diverged to a point where only a tiny portion of my posts hold your attention, then, by all means, defriend me. I won't mind. What I DO mind is instructions on what I may or may not post in my own journal that, after all, I have paid for. It's not here to please you, or anyone else on my flist. If I were in fact aiming to do that, I've failed miserably, haven't I? athena25 doesn't read my fic unless she's editing it and only wants my thoughts on life, the universe and would I pick up some bread on my way home. queenspanky has no idea what Babylon 5 is. monanotlisa, bless her, has no idea what I'm talking about whenever I start on a sci-fi push. And several people on my flist are simply into HP and have no idea what all the fuss is about with tv shows, anyway. If I were to start atempting to please this large and disparate group of people by tailoring the content of this journal, I'd end up with mishmash. The point is, there is a significant enough overlap in our tastes to mean that they can ignore the bits that don't interest them, and read the bits that do, and they feel that, on the whole, their flist is pretty interesting.

So.

If your flist is full of stuff you don't want to read, you can either put up with it, or you can start defriending and restructuring your flist. Either way, you're entitled to rant and complain but not to command. I am really surprised and disappointed to find this across my flist, across fandoms and social groups and countries. It's staggering and it's very disappointing.

So, on that happy note, I am going to go and read about Audit & Assurance. I have just realised that my dissertation interviews can be conducted as a gender audit, which obviously makes me happy as 1) this means that the research methodology bit is practically already written, 2) the work will be more robust, and 3) the final thing will have a point for the organisations I'm looking at.

Comments

[monanotlisa.livejournal.com]

Pfft, not 'cause of the show (it's not bad, and I like it, but there are better ones) -- just 'cause I wrote a slashy PWP for it.

Yes, it is ALL ABOUT ME.

::looks cute::

[kangeiko]

*pets you then runs away*

can't make me watch it, nyah nah!!

but, hey, if you were ever to be filled with the desire to write some alias slashiness... *drops hints as large as anvils*

[monanotlisa.livejournal.com]

LOL -- icon love!!

And hmm, I may be convinced to finally write that Sark/Vaughn thingy languishing on my harddrive...

Did I mention I once wrote a hot little Syd/Will blowjob piece for mciac but then forgot the password, and it was on the parents' computer?

::is dork::

[kangeiko]

LOL -- icon love!!

Alias actually needs to be MST3K, it would make me dance.

And hmm, I may be convinced to finally write that Sark/Vaughn thingy languishing on my harddrive...

I think you'd make a lot of people very happy. including me. because I need more mona fic. oh yeah, baby.

Did I mention I once wrote a hot little Syd/Will blowjob piece for mciac but then forgot the password, and it was on the parents' computer?

::is dork::

*boggles* But, hey, they're not ever gonna... I mean, they wouldn't....

*is filled with horror*

[monanotlisa.livejournal.com]

No, no, they probably wouldn't read it on purpose, anyway, but best not to take chances.

And really, the loss! *weep*

[kangeiko]

*strokes you*