In which I claim to be mature.

I think it's finally time to sever my connection to Livejournal once and for all. In spite of my anti-technological-determinism stance, I have to admit that certain media are predisposed to be used in certain ways. Hence:

oral culture ⇒ memorization, traditional societies that don't cover a large geographic area, knowledge is common to all/most

written culture ⇒ societies cover a larger geographic area, higher rate of social change, potential for people to have, record and transmit specific knowledge and information that others may not share

livejournal culture ⇒ internet cliques, political struggles over who should be included in specially screened groups, juvenile behaviour

It's the juvenile behaviour that pisses me off the most. It's the easy facilitation of spreading rumours and talking behind peoples backs, the angst and irritation and conflict that festers until it erupts into the conversations you have in real life.

I have three separate incidents in mind involving three separate groups of people, each within the past three months. I won't bother to describe them here because frankly I think they're personal issues and really have no place on the internet anyways. Not to mention I'm nowhere near neutral in any of the conflicts so I'm not the person to be writing out an objective account of any of it.

I find that I have to step back sometimes and ask myself how old we all are and why we're bickering and wasting our time when it does nothing more than piss other people off.

I seem to remember feeling this way exactly two years ago, when I created the precursor to this blog, and then, in turn, this one after it. What I have yet to do though is sever my ties to it completely.

On the one hand, I want to just delete the whole thing and be rid of it, but on the other, there are some decent posts hiding in there and I don't want to lose them. Peter's favourite post, for example, was originally posted on that old journal in 2004 or 2005, and, if you can believe it, it was a real conversation. Maybe I should dig some more up.