The LJ Times

August 24, 2003 2:58 PM

Take an online newspaper template, add some AP photos, and populate it with random LiveJournal entires and the end result is the LJ Times. Its like the real-life Onion, except I'm not sure if I should be amused or scared. Currently the Analysis section reads: I have a zit so big on my forehead that it is throbbing. Its updated every half-hour.
posted by skallas (12 comments total)

This just in: your 15 minutes of fame have been extended to a full half-hour!
posted by tommasz at 3:11 PM on August 24, 2003

It is nothing like The Onion.
posted by paddbear at 6:52 PM on August 24, 2003

Found humor in the same artery as DuChamp.
posted by Joey Michaels at 7:08 PM on August 24, 2003

I'd stick with scared, myself.
posted by Veritron at 9:07 PM on August 24, 2003

it's clever, and in many ways, it's as near as many people with livejournals will ever come to front page journalism. as a recently abandoned blogger, i often wondered why people choose to update in such a way as - "i'm so tired and bored, my life is dull"

i guess it's just another step on the road to ultimate narrowcasting.
posted by triv at 2:27 AM on August 25, 2003

I like this: thanks, skallas. Right now, in the weather section, it says, simply: 'drugs are great!'
posted by misteraitch at 4:43 AM on August 25, 2003

i often wondered why people choose to update in such a way as - "i'm so tired and bored, my life is dull"

A useful thing to realize about lj as opposed to, say, mf, is that the goal of participation is different. (For brevity's sake, I am going to make a very broad generalization here.)

MF, like K5, /., etc, is primarily about communication. You're telling people about a link you've found, a news story that's broken, your researched opinion on some subject. Secondarily, it's about socializing (in-jokes, comments directed at specific users). For the most part, the content is the important thing, and social contact is a bonus.

LJ, on the other hand, is primarily about socializing, and only secondarily about communication. You get people posting about 'nothing' for the same reason people talk about the weather. It's a form of social contact. In this case the contact is more important than the content.

At a Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus level of analysis, MF is a more male mode of interaction and LJ is a more female mode. If you go in expecting one mode, the other mode will seem pointless.
posted by Karmakaze at 7:05 AM on August 25, 2003

There was an exhibit at the Austin Modern Art Museum this summer (not the real name - it's on Congress and 8th, I think.) Anyway, someone had rigged CNN to have the "no-sound" feed at the bottom read from LiveJournal. It was timed so that every new story generated a new Live-Journal entry, and so that it appeared that Christiane Amanpour was reporting on getting a haircut or meeting a girl or what have you. I found it to be quite a compelling articulation of the tension between "objective journalism" and blogging or journaling online.
posted by pomegranate at 9:26 AM on August 25, 2003

[this is good]

pomegranate: wow, I must have missed that exhibit completely! drat.
posted by cobra libre at 9:30 AM on August 25, 2003

At a Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus level of analysis, MF is a more male mode of interaction and LJ is a more female mode.

This is either why I never read the Mars/ Venus book or kind of deeply offensive, or both.
posted by kaibutsu at 5:16 PM on August 25, 2003

Eh. I found that the description of different modes of communication in those books were interesting, I just didn't agree with the gender assignments that went with them. According to MafMWafV, I'm pretty distinctively male - something nobody who's met me would ever think.
posted by Karmakaze at 5:38 AM on August 26, 2003

By the way, the author's earlier version used the Washington Post's site as a template and is even funnier.
posted by Vidiot at 9:40 PM on August 29, 2003