random LJ image of the moment.

April 12, 2004 5:13 PM

Recent images posted to Live Journal (probably NSFW at any given moment) sounds like an uninteresting feed from a community: it's just a constant stream of images uploaded to LJ. But the truth is that it's fascinating to watch, to see the whole community summarized into a dozen images of the moment. [more inside]
posted by mathowie (62 comments total)

I can't stop reloading this page today, it's an amazing little LJ zeitgeist in action.

At any one time you'll see about half the photos are people taking photos of themselves. Teens playing with cameras, community and new technology are constantly toying with their self-image. You'll see many, many photos of people's new haircut or dye job, their latest tattoo or piercing, or they might just be showing off how they look. Then, you'll find a healthy dose of celebrity images, as they follow their favorite band or movie star. And every list seems to have an image associated with a goofball online test. "I'm smurfette! take the the what smurf are you? quiz here".

Anyway, it's a fast moving stream, reload every thirty seconds or so for an entirely new collection of off the wall images.
posted by mathowie at 5:15 PM on April 12, 2004

You might also like this which does the same thing with images.google.com. It's random rather than most recent, but still feels kind of weirdly voyeuristic.
posted by willnot at 5:19 PM on April 12, 2004

i love this--thanks...it's so interesting to see what other people find interesting.
posted by amberglow at 5:23 PM on April 12, 2004

::Attempts again to high-five Matt, misses his hand and accidentally slaps somebody with a weird tattoo... skulks off::
posted by wendell at 5:23 PM on April 12, 2004

The Truman Show called - they want their "plot" back.
posted by meehawl at 5:42 PM on April 12, 2004

Aw, dude! Furries on the first try. I am scarred for life.
posted by Joey Michaels at 5:43 PM on April 12, 2004

Cool, except I can't find any NSFW no matter how many times I reload ;-(
posted by dg at 5:47 PM on April 12, 2004

Jamie Zawinski's WebCollage is currently running off the last-updated feed as well.

My favorite implementation is in Flash.
posted by mote at 6:14 PM on April 12, 2004

so...if somebody posts some illegal images, and this picks them up...who's liable?

i don't like it. just because something is put on a "public" journal...well, security through obscurity, and all. not to mention things like copyright, etc.
posted by taumeson at 6:18 PM on April 12, 2004

This is pretty funny, but the number of quizzes, emoticons, and webcam autophotography of teenage girls is kind of irritating, as I have to scroll through them to get to the occasional funny stuff.

Joey - a friend of mine playing with it linked to a picture of the thundercats girls stripping for mum-ra's birthday, which was pretty funny. So hey, props to furries for that.
posted by kavasa at 6:36 PM on April 12, 2004

NSF90's: The mullet family.
posted by Feisty at 6:40 PM on April 12, 2004

This is very good. I can't quite believe how many images it can come up with - and this is only people who post that sort of stuff to their journals. I like that I got some terrible Friends quiz twice in two reloads. My LJ friends are all Shakespeares compared to the stuff I see here.
posted by livii at 6:43 PM on April 12, 2004

i don't like it. just because something is put on a "public" journal...well, security through obscurity, and all. not to mention things like copyright, etc.

Jeez, are you a lawyer? Seriously, your first response was whether or not it was legal?

The page linked is just a collection of images found on a community, like Google images, but totally random. They're not displaying ads or trying to make money off the original rights holders, it's just a totally random snapshot view of a subculture (LJ journalers).

When did it become against the law to look at our culture?
posted by mathowie at 7:22 PM on April 12, 2004

WTF???! I keep refreshing and refreshing and can't find anythin NSFW.

So lame.

/true, but kidding about caring
posted by Grod at 7:24 PM on April 12, 2004

Unbelievable -- I expected mostly lameness with maybe the occasional gem, but on my first look no less than five images made me laugh out loud. What a pity the Wayback Machine can't archive this page every 15 seconds.

And in answer to taumeson's question, it seems intuitively obvious (IANAL) that responsiblity for copyright infringement rests with the person who hosts the image; i.e. puts it on a web server. All this page does is wrap an IMG tag around the URL; your browser does the fetching and the original host does the serving -- this page never even "touches" the image.
posted by George_Spiggott at 7:32 PM on April 12, 2004

I like it.
posted by The God Complex at 7:34 PM on April 12, 2004

I've been watching this site all day, I was on my way to post it here when I saw Matt's post. I seriously can't look away.

This is what I've learned from my time: Livejournal consists entirely of goths, unicorns, surveys, furries, and breasts.
posted by Jairus at 7:46 PM on April 12, 2004

Nifty! This is addictive. People are a such mystery.
posted by lobakgo at 7:55 PM on April 12, 2004

Some people take large photos of themselves. Very large.
posted by The God Complex at 7:58 PM on April 12, 2004

And unflatteringly close-up. Very close.
posted by lobakgo at 8:01 PM on April 12, 2004

posted by alms at 8:02 PM on April 12, 2004

and what's with all the ear pics? some fetish thing?
posted by amberglow at 8:03 PM on April 12, 2004

I liked that one, too, alms, but I'm a softy, despite my thin facade of in-your-face politikal malarky.
posted by The God Complex at 8:07 PM on April 12, 2004

Well, I found yer nsfw right here, boys.

Cool link, Matt. Thanks.
posted by crunchland at 8:21 PM on April 12, 2004

Jeesh crunchland I was just about to link to that, anyway here's the page
posted by bobo123 at 8:25 PM on April 12, 2004

Yeah. Some of these pictures are very very very large. Did these people not get any software with their digital cameras or something?

As for people saying they saw nothing that wasn't work safe, the FIRST time I went to the page there was a pic of a girl who I _hope_ was older than she looked, what appeared to be a scan from a playboy or similar magazine, and a cartoon of a naked George Bush, which I really did not need to see.
posted by bargle at 8:27 PM on April 12, 2004

When I saw it, bobo, I wondered if y2karl actually did get his own blog.
posted by crunchland at 8:30 PM on April 12, 2004

I've clicked this thing about 20 times, and each and every time there was at least one chubby little goth chick. This can't be a coincidence.
posted by dgaicun at 8:36 PM on April 12, 2004

So. Many. Androgynous. Emokids.
posted by rafter at 8:37 PM on April 12, 2004

digital voyerism.
posted by crunchland at 8:46 PM on April 12, 2004

http://www.hunt101.com/img/135151-big.jpg
posted by bargle at 8:50 PM on April 12, 2004

this is neat. oh, and scary. my eyes, my eyes...! jeez. well i guess i'm getting all the nsfw stuff. interesting tribal ritual, yep. holy mother of pearl.

wow. yes, there are way too many people who don't know how to, or are too lazy to, resize a photo before they post it.
posted by t r a c y at 9:15 PM on April 12, 2004

Okay, I am obsessed with this now. So many kittens!!!

And.... other kittens.

Help you forget the naked guy linked above:
NOT SAFE FOR WORK


awwwwww! kitty! (safe for work)
posted by bargle at 9:18 PM on April 12, 2004

No photos will load from any livejournal sites for me anymore, so either we kansased the entire livejournal web experience or live journal kentuckys me.
posted by The God Complex at 9:26 PM on April 12, 2004

i cant stop reloading. and as a lj user (no goths, or unicorns for me thanks) i cant help but be terrified that what i post can be taken out of context. but i love being terrified. and i love that which is out of context. OH DADA!
posted by c at 9:33 PM on April 12, 2004

I spent all weekend there. I finally got fed up with only getting 40 pics at a time and whipped up some xsl to get me all 250 from the feed at once.

Another skill to add to the resume.

alms, thanks for the kittens. I missed those amidst the thong pics and "I am a" quizzes.

If you look at the lj stats page, there were 275296 pages updated in the last 24 hours.

That's a lot of chubby little goth chicks.
posted by sciatica at 9:53 PM on April 12, 2004

I can't wait for them to make an RSS feed of this.
posted by timyang at 10:11 PM on April 12, 2004

OMG, tubBoy! Everyone else gets kittens and chubby goth girls and I get tubBoy :( I'll be over here, trying to cleanse my mind's eye.
posted by zarah at 10:32 PM on April 12, 2004

I got 3-way lesbian sex. And an assortment of miserable teenagers. Soooooo glad I just missed the tubBoy.
posted by i_cola at 11:12 PM on April 12, 2004

mathowie : When did it become against the law to look at our culture?

That's on next week's agenda, I believe!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:28 PM on April 12, 2004

Great, I got Goatse on my first visit. Why does the internet hate me?
posted by chill at 12:23 AM on April 13, 2004

neener, neener, chill - I got one really funny please think of the children graphic (plus, a kelet!) on my first try. I'm sure this is an actual warning label - but for what, I wonder? "WARNING: Do not place infants under two years of age in this Tupperware container"?
posted by taz at 4:00 AM on April 13, 2004

But once they're two - seal that infant freshness away!
posted by Tenuki at 4:54 AM on April 13, 2004

no fair, my first peek and I got an entirely not safe for work blond pornstar type collection. and a vacuumcleaner?

and one cartoon where the gag was "For that you want the village blacksmith, I'm the village wordsmith."

*reload* oooh, kittens!
posted by dabitch at 5:08 AM on April 13, 2004

taumeson - for your consideration.
posted by Blue Stone at 8:59 AM on April 13, 2004

I skipped this the first time through because of the NSFW warning, but for those others who might also be hesitating, go ahead and jump! You're really only gambling with the first one. Then you can scroll carefully and have a pretty good idea of what's coming up over the horizon before getting it to a real NSFW display.

Great stuff, and yes, addictive. I refreshed it about a dozen times before coming in and reading the thread. I was gonna comment how I never knew there were so many "what kind of ______ are you?" quizzes, but now I certainly will not do so.
posted by soyjoy at 9:15 AM on April 13, 2004

I think this just points to the sheer volume of stuff that's posted on the internet in any given moment... what's that saying about a million monkeys at a million typewriters?
posted by crunchland at 9:18 AM on April 13, 2004

Matt:
posted by soyjoy at 9:30 AM on April 13, 2004

I got this. Which is really really great.
posted by rafter at 10:29 AM on April 13, 2004

hey, i'm not trying to ruin anybody's fun.

i just think about copyright protections (and i'm pretty sure this can be considered republication) and i wonder if this is considered as some form of computer trespassing / unauthorized activity.

i also feel for the guy who mentioned that his images could be taken out of context...and i agree that that is something i'd be worried about too.

no, i'm not a lawyer, i was thinking about being one, though. i spawned instead.
posted by taumeson at 10:33 AM on April 13, 2004

Rafter — I thought so to (self link). Spent a good few minutes poring over that one when it popped up.

I'm gonna be late for work if I don't stop refreshing this thing…
posted by djwudi at 11:52 AM on April 13, 2004

Bandwidth limits exceeded. Buh-bye...
posted by Windopaene at 3:19 PM on April 13, 2004

Actually, it was getting hit so hard it killed his chip.

FLAWLESS VICTORY.
posted by kavasa at 5:28 PM on April 13, 2004

dammit!

/hitting F5 like a lab rat
posted by keswick at 5:40 PM on April 13, 2004

I like the LJ Times, which pulls both quotes from random LJ pages and random AP pictures and puts them into a newspaper-like page.
posted by Vidiot at 7:29 PM on April 13, 2004

In case you need your fix and the original site is still hosed, I put up my xsl thing on my site. It works in IE6 on XP with ActiveX and javascript enabled. It reads the full .bml feed and formats it with the lj.xsl. You can download both the .html and .xsl file and run it locally if you want.

See 250 of the latest LJ images.

xsl file
posted by sciatica at 8:44 PM on April 13, 2004

Another re-hash of this at my site - Top 100, more collage-like.
posted by kokogiak at 9:38 PM on April 13, 2004

The medium is the message.
posted by stbalbach at 11:04 PM on April 13, 2004

The medium is the message. The audience is the content.
--Marshall McLuhan
posted by stbalbach at 11:08 PM on April 13, 2004

I put it online at my site
posted by sebas at 10:32 AM on April 14, 2004

As did I. (The original has been taken down.)
posted by bwerdmuller at 5:09 AM on April 16, 2004

An application that leechs images without remorse.

Gee, thanks!
posted by yupislyr at 10:53 PM on April 23, 2004