Live(photo)Journal

January 16, 2012 5:39 PM

[NSFW] Here's a feed of the 50 most recent public images posted to LiveJournal.
posted by troll (78 comments total)

If I ever find out what a slave bracelet is, I'll know where to find it.
posted by DU at 5:43 PM on January 16 [1 favorite]

Russians and fangirls.
posted by pts at 5:47 PM on January 16 [3 favorites]

I remember it being more interesting 8 years ago.
posted by doublesix at 5:48 PM on January 16 [8 favorites]

Pretty interesting. Kitsch, beauty, weird, and all manner of randomness .....
posted by caddis at 5:49 PM on January 16

Yeah, I was gonna say, this is really, really old. I didn't know people were even still using LiveJournal.
posted by crunchland at 5:50 PM on January 16 [2 favorites]

I remember it being more interesting 8 years ago.

Hmm, looks like that link is defunct.

Not a double!
posted by troll at 5:52 PM on January 16

I didn't know people were even still using LiveJournal.

First off, pretty much all of Russia apparently uses LiveJournal. Also, I'm still using LiveJournal! Marginally, since I'm crossposting to Dreamwidth and keep most of my social stuff there, but I am still using LJ.

But yeah, basically it's just Russians and fangirls left on LJ, and a lot of the fangirls are moving or have moved to Dreamwidth or Tumblr.
posted by yasaman at 5:53 PM on January 16 [6 favorites]

You know LiveJournal turned into a Russian porn site so gradually I didn't even notice.
posted by yellowbinder at 5:57 PM on January 16 [31 favorites]

Man, do I ever miss Livejournal. That place was so much fun in the mid-oughties.
I did see a few Harry Potter gifs and some lolcats on my 50 most recent images...I guess some things never change. Stay Gold, Harry/Snape shippers.
posted by Elly Vortex at 6:01 PM on January 16 [2 favorites]

You know LiveJournal turned into a Russian porn site so gradually I didn't even notice.


Just like TLC.
posted by Fizz at 6:01 PM on January 16 [6 favorites]

My college had a nice friendly community page on Livejournal. It's completely dead now, though.
posted by steamynachos at 6:02 PM on January 16

I can't make myself leave my LiveJournal behind, even though I don't post there any more. Most of the people on my f-list just visit ONTD! and even then not so much these days.
posted by Revie1 at 6:05 PM on January 16 [2 favorites]

"Yeah, I was gonna say, this is really, really old. I didn't know people were even still using LiveJournal."

I started working for them about a month ago. I can assure you that, indeed, there's lots of people still using LJ… especially the LJ Communities feature. In Russia, they are consistently the second most visited site on the net. They're so huge there that the term they use for blogging, "xhexhe," comes from the Russian name for LiveJournal.

Yasaman… send me a link to your Dreamwidth! I just started using it, and I think it's great.
posted by vertigo25 at 6:06 PM on January 16 [2 favorites]

Seriously though, Livejournal was indeed awesome 10 years or so ago. I started one just after going away to university Fall 2001. Everyone I knew back home had one so it was a great way to keep in touch. We were young, and angsty, and privacy on the internet wasn't much of a concern back then, so most of our angst was open for the whole world to see.

I gradually trailed off. In early 2007 I had a shitty job on a reality tv show and bitched about it on LJ. I left it openly accessible for 15 minutes or so before locking it down. Didn't matter, had already been cached by Google and sent to the producers' google alerts. My LJ got me fired. Oops. Lesson learned and I quit it all together.

After a LTR breakup last year I went back to have some place to vent. A few friends were still hanging on, but the place was mostly a ghost town. All my friends pages were just a publicly accessible museum of adolescent angst. I paid for a month of full ownership so I could mass-friendslock all my old posts, vented whatever feelings I needed to vent for a few weeks, then put the chairs up on the tables and shut out the lights on my way out.
posted by yellowbinder at 6:09 PM on January 16

Doh. N/M Yasa. I see it on your profile :)
posted by vertigo25 at 6:10 PM on January 16

(Also the Vintage Photos community is still phenomenal, although very irritating to browse if you don't have it in a friends list or RSS feed)
posted by yellowbinder at 6:11 PM on January 16

LiveJournal was the one thing that got me writing and kept me writing, which is objectively a valueless state of affairs but subjectively is one of the best things I ever did. Man, some of that stuff, I just dread to even think about it these days. But some of it was okay, and I downloaded all my pages back in 2006 or whenever and sometimes dip into them even today. There are a few snippets that still work, a few kernels of stories and scenarios that I can still build on. It was great fun. Three cheers for LiveJourn-[THIS JOURNAL HAS BEEN DELETED]
posted by tumid dahlia at 6:14 PM on January 16 [2 favorites]

Здравствуйте!
posted by gwint at 6:14 PM on January 16

Cannot unsee
posted by BungaDunga at 6:15 PM on January 16 [10 favorites]

LJ is one of the best resources for unusual (particularly Eastern European and particularly Russian) illustration work that I know of. It has been a continual delight for YEARS for me.
posted by peacay at 6:15 PM on January 16 [1 favorite]

@peacay Thanks for reminding me - one of my favorites is Igor Oleynikov - so much talent. (oh and *waves* to group. Long-time lurker here.)
posted by Revie1 at 6:32 PM on January 16 [3 favorites]

*sigh* i miss livejournal. started it when i was 17, met my husband on it, he proposed to me on it, and i've met tons of friends from it and continued posting quite a lot until the past few years. but yeah, ghost town. i used to write so much in detail, now i barely get a few sentences in a status update. sad.
posted by kpht at 6:41 PM on January 16

Back in the day, when I lived with a bunch of hippies, we used to run a screensaver on the TV which showed the livejournal recent entries feed (using xscreensaver's CRT emulation thing). We had to get rid of it because people were finding it way too depressing.
posted by jaymzjulian at 6:50 PM on January 16

The "Wizard of Id" comics translated(?) into Russian ... are they just straight translations? Some kind of pop cultural critique? Subversions of American culture?
posted by device55 at 6:59 PM on January 16

Best Use of Live Journal
posted by workerunit at 7:02 PM on January 16 [5 favorites]

Oh yeah... NSFW.
posted by workerunit at 7:03 PM on January 16

Huh. For whatever reason, when I looked at it a minute or so ago, it was mostly aftermarket car stereo components.
posted by nonreflectiveobject at 7:04 PM on January 16

I still use LJ. Its still a good place for me to post short fiction and other silliness. Tmblr seems to be more about meme reposting. I suppose I could write on FB or Twitter, but those don't seem to be the right platforms for it. And I haven't checked out Dreamwidth because I'm afraid I won't have an excuse not to switch to it once I do.

Oh, yeah, so, on the link, I had a picture of a gif of a dude flashing his dong, a picture of a Russian cam model spread eagled and then an ultrasound of a baby one after the other. Great accidental storytelling.
posted by Joey Michaels at 7:21 PM on January 16 [1 favorite]

That reminds me — I need an Old Hickory 3.5 inch pairing knife with a hardwood handle.
posted by slogger at 7:22 PM on January 16

Oh, and this great image.
posted by Joey Michaels at 7:23 PM on January 16 [2 favorites]

LiveJournal is also a great place to read walkthroughs of erotic video games such as My Girlfriend Is The President.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 7:29 PM on January 16

I didn't see anything NSFW.

I did, however, see a kitten.
posted by beryllium at 7:34 PM on January 16

I too still use livejournal. It's become a way for me to ocassionally keep a journal that my friends (and internet friends/enemies) can read when they remember to check livejournal. I still check it daily.

It's busier than google plus.
posted by drezdn at 7:46 PM on January 16 [1 favorite]

I am continually amazed that there are so many people in the world.
posted by slogger at 7:48 PM on January 16 [3 favorites]

Awesome
posted by drezdn at 7:49 PM on January 16

More awesome
posted by slogger at 7:51 PM on January 16 [1 favorite]

My 50: political ad, don't know, timeshare ad, dvd ad (seems legit), hubcaps, penny arcade, wizard of id in russian, boobs, boobs, russian comic, assassins creed, russian something, politicos, a school, j-pop band, boobs, airport tarmac, sirius/xm thingy, sack of potatoes, kuwait, swing set, russian comic, equation, ass, timeshare ad, white russian (drink), baptism, boobs, freaky mustache dude, timeshare ad, search results (seems legit), boobs, mtv something, a joint, bodybuilder, ballhawks, timeshare ad, zuckerberg, russian comic, timeshare ad, radio face, nyc, too small to tell, wwe, radio station, boobs, gps, boobs.

I've learned that LJ will get me a timeshare in russia (seems legit). And boobs.
posted by Mister Fabulous at 7:51 PM on January 16 [1 favorite]

My coding problems are over.
posted by maxwelton at 7:52 PM on January 16 [6 favorites]

Ah, the strange allure of utter randomness.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 8:12 PM on January 16 [2 favorites]

I've never been more disappointed that I cannot read Russian.
posted by _paegan_ at 8:14 PM on January 16 [4 favorites]

Shockingly cock free
posted by nathancaswell at 8:18 PM on January 16

I met my husband through LJ. We both bought permanent accounts a couple of years before <lj user="brad"> sold it to 6 Apart. I haven't visited LJ in months, and it's a little sad to think that I'll probably never use it regularly again.
posted by subbes at 8:20 PM on January 16

what?
posted by delmoi at 8:27 PM on January 16

I too still use livejournal. It's become a way for me to ocassionally keep a journal that my friends (and internet friends/enemies) can read when they remember to check livejournal. I still check it daily.

It's busier than google plus.

Depends on how many people you have in your circles.
posted by delmoi at 8:29 PM on January 16

LiveJournal is also a great place to read walkthroughs of erotic video games such as My Girlfriend Is The President.

Elves with laser guns. What a horrible thought.
Also, you know who else have pointy ears?

Hitler?
posted by scalefree at 8:33 PM on January 16

Eye exams for aging eagles (funny).
Many sub-woofers, boxes (subwoofer enclosures) and Russian language funnies. And a "canadian" online pharmacy ad, selling "Spemen" pills... whatever that is.

Awesome, and bizarre (reminded of that famous 9/11 image fake of the man standing on a building with a plane behind).
posted by infinite intimation at 8:37 PM on January 16

O HAI. That is my website. Back when I had a blog running at fuzzysquid.com, I was constantly amazed (jealous) at how much more traffic that one page got, versus anything else I had ever written/made.

The blog has been gone for a while, but I keep that page up out of... some kind of duty I guess.

It continues to be popular for reasons I don't quite understand—I thought most people would have moved onto twitpic/yfrog/whatever-versions of this sort of thing already.
posted by danny the boy at 8:44 PM on January 16 [3 favorites]

This is from Best Use of Live Journal (Official). That's just some fucked up shit right there is what that is.
posted by scalefree at 8:52 PM on January 16 [1 favorite]

LJ is still my default blogging program (moved there from Diaryland about ten years ago.) I don't have any coding skills so setting up my own Wordpress site or whatever seems like too big an effort for me. I'm marginally involved in fandom in that I write the occasional fic and create the occasional icon, but mostly it's a straight-up journal for me - personal life, media reviews, the occasional photo, that sort of thing. I read a lot of authors and artists besides just plain interesting folk, and at this point in time, my list of journals that I read is pretty lengthy, so it hardly seems like a ghost town. So far I haven't been driven completely to Dreamwidth, although I have a backup journal there ready as an escape hatch, just in case.

Facebook is for my curated life - the one I show to my mom and my coworkers. I'm probably too old to be on LJ at this point, but what the heck.
posted by PussKillian at 9:35 PM on January 16 [1 favorite]

Jeebus christmas, no kidding about the NSFwhatever warning. This is the most disgusting abuse of HDR I have ever seen.
posted by FatherDagon at 10:03 PM on January 16 [1 favorite]

Naked chicks aren't very good photographers.
posted by ryanrs at 10:30 PM on January 16

Thanks Revie1 : you prompted me to write to that guy to see if he'll let me do a blog post on his work. See! LJ is good!!
posted by peacay at 10:38 PM on January 16

This is from Best Use of Live Journal (Official). That's just some fucked up shit right there is what that is.

What. The. FUCK.
posted by Malice at 11:02 PM on January 16

You all are acting like you've never tried to smuggle hummingbirds in your underwear before. Shameful.
posted by twooster at 11:46 PM on January 16 [1 favorite]

I guess I'm another minority, I'm still on livejournal and have been since around 2000. Mostly for fandom and for aramatheydidnt (the Japanese oh no they didn't).
posted by Ms. Moonlight at 4:05 AM on January 17

7:26 AM, nothing sketchy whatever. Well, one (1) very chaste pair of boobies in the middle distance in a greyscale fashion shot. Maybe they all come out at night, but then apparently they all go back in again (and lie back down in the coffins and close the lids.)


> I'm probably too old to be on LJ at this point, but what the heck.

The drama! Won't anyone think of the drama?
posted by jfuller at 4:33 AM on January 17

I still have an LJ account, but haven't used it in a few years. There were a large group of folks from the IRC room I was a member of who used it regularly, but as I drifted from that I drifted from LJ as well.

It's kind of depressing when you see sites that were once popular turn into something like this.
posted by DuchessProzac at 4:40 AM on January 17

I'm still on LJ, and I read it daily. There's some great soccer communities on there.
posted by spinifex23 at 5:46 AM on January 17

This was adorable.
posted by arcticseal at 6:18 AM on January 17

Oh, sweet! The Toothpaste for Dinner feed has been an ad for Drew's book for ages so this will be a nice little replacement drug. I love this stuff.

I still post to my LJ from time to time, when I feel like putting down a block of text. Usually short fiction or costuming stuff. I was pretty heavily into a few comms for a while there but it's pretty quiet. There's a small resurgence happening, and it peaks every now and then almost always when Facebook releases some irritating feature and my immediate circle of friends remembers that there is in fact, other options. It's nice. Peaceful, with the odd bit of content. I can deal.
posted by Jilder at 6:34 AM on January 17

Well, let's see who I read on LJ - multiple times a day, and not including the feeds I have set up through Google Reader:
160 friends, of which 87 are mutual (we show up on each other's friendslists)
nine feeds, including things like dinosaur comics and xkcd and scalzi's Whatever
30 communities, which range from fanfic exchanges to crockpot recipes to fashion to vintage advertising
So I'm not super-active, but I do see new posts when I go a couple of times a day
Most people who have made the move to Dreamwidth still crosspost to LJ, so it doesn't seem like I've lost anybody completely to it. I suppose one day LJ may genuinely clear out, and I'll relocate, but right now it still seems to move right along.
posted by PussKillian at 6:46 AM on January 17

I'm still on livejournal as well, although less active. I post to dreamwidth now, but I crosspost to lj, so I still hit the people who are still lj-only. More and more people are going to dreamwidth over time as lj changes to accommodate the Russians. Which brings me to my observation about the photo feed: yeah, a lot more stuff in Russian than previous versions.
posted by immlass at 7:11 AM on January 17

Metafilter: Shockingly cock free
posted by CaseyB at 7:14 AM on January 17

The continual rise and fall of blogging sites and/or social networks is I keep my own personal site active and use it as the primary depository of Things I Put on the Internet: So when AOL/LiveJournal/Friendster/MySpace/Facebook/Google+ stops being the place people are, all my stuff is still somewhere.
posted by jscalzi at 7:49 AM on January 17 [2 favorites]

Metafilter is actually full of cocks
posted by nathancaswell at 7:52 AM on January 17

Metafilter is actually full of cocks.

Oh my God...
posted by The Bellman at 8:06 AM on January 17

Well, the things you see...such as Hitler toast.

http://beaver-kun.livejournal.com/462954.html
posted by ntrifle at 8:52 AM on January 17

Shockingly cock free
posted by nathancaswell at 11:18 PM on January 16 [+] [!]

Just like TLC.

Couldn't resist.
posted by Fizz at 9:41 AM on January 17

This is amazing.
posted by hnnrs at 9:49 AM on January 17 [3 favorites]

What I came across was an odd sort of piercing I didn't know existed.
posted by Anything at 12:51 PM on January 17

This is amazing.

That goat has been into that band since their first ep.
posted by drezdn at 1:15 PM on January 17 [1 favorite]

My mothering communities are huge and popular on there. In fact, I wouldn't have survived my kid's babyhoods without LJ and the friends there. We're all still very close, even tho our kids are in double digits now. And most of us post to LJ at least once a week.
posted by piearray at 1:27 PM on January 17

This is amazing.

Shub-Niggurath and his 1,000 young.
posted by scalefree at 1:38 PM on January 17

Oh yeah I remember that gig it was like the worst show Rage Against The Machine ever did.
posted by tumid dahlia at 2:22 PM on January 17

The part where the goat crowd surfed was pretty cool though.
posted by arcticseal at 2:56 PM on January 17

Wait, you mean metafilter is still around? What a blast from the past that is!
posted by happyroach at 7:34 PM on January 17

This is amazing.

That goat has been into that band since their first ep.
posted by drezdn at 1:15 PM on January 17 [1 favorite +] [!]

Bah, I was a fan of that band way back when I was still a kid!

Stop grazing my lawn!
posted by Hello, I'm David McGahan at 3:46 AM on January 18 [1 favorite]

I'm still on LiveJournal. It's the only site for journalling, as far as I can tell. Twitter? Basically IRC for people who don't IRC. Ephemeral at best. Facebook? Well, they have timeline now, but it still doesn't seem archival. It's way harder to access old posts and reread your archives. At least they've lifted the 420 character limit.

LiveJournal is still where I go when I want to post long, thought out entries about things I want to record. For myself, even. Antisocial media? Maybe.

(And yes, I occasionally remember to do backups.)
posted by Eideteker at 5:04 AM on January 18