LiveJournal Endures
Over the past couple of weeks I have reverted my “username” on all of the big social internet platforms to my real name. I had experimented with a pseudonym for some time, and while the anonymity was an escape of sorts, it always felt false, shallow, and ultimately empty.
I have nothing to hide.
You could argue there are all sorts of benefits that come with “being yourself”. For instance, a random publisher could discover the huge swathes of inconsequential garbage I have published over the years, and offer a huge book advanceallowing me to give up work as a software and web developer immediately, and plough far more effort into the publication of even more inconsequential garbage. Of course none of this really depends on writing under your real namePetite Anglaise and Belle du Jour could both testify to thatbut at least it means I cannot be outed in the same manner they were.
The final stone to turn in the great renaming scheme was LiveJournal. It cost money to rename, and I had to wait for the username I had once held in the past to become available. That happened this evening. I am finally “jonbeckett” at LiveJournalmatching my “identity” atTwitter,Tumblr,Facebook,Medium,Ghost, and everywhere else.
LiveJournal is an interesting anachronism in terms of the “modern” web. It was supposed to have been wound down following the release of it's progeny “Vox” about a decade ago, but against all expectation it outlived it. It continues to persist, and if anything has grown over the last 12 monthsperhaps because it offers a feature very few of the modern web publishing platforms doprivacy.
In the LiveJournal universe, not only can you publish under a pseudonym, you can also restrict posts such that only those you call a friend can see them. A walled garden within a walled garden.
The sole reason I persist with LiveJournal is because I have made friends there (I guess there was also the fact that and one of them gifted me a “pro” account for the next 12 months). It is perhaps telling that I walked away from WordPress and Bloggerboth of which provide a very similar service. Neither of them promote community in the same way LiveJournal does, because neither of them offer privacy. WordPress is polluted with marketers and self publicists, and Blogger is almost a forgotten step-child in the Google panoply.