I have a particular style of journaling; most of my posts are "this happened [in detail] and this is how it made me feel and these are the philosophical/spiritual/relational thoughts it inspired. [in a looooong post]" And that's the sort of journal I prefer to read, also, as it almost invariably inspires me both emotionally and mentally. For years I had several friends who posted primarily in that style -- first Anika, Ash, & Kate; then Hannah, Meliae, & Ava; then Aurilion, J, & Andie. (everyone I friend has some element of this, but they're the ones who did it the most) Now some of those have moved to other journaling sites or have changed posting style or very rarely post or have taken an indefinite hiatus, and I feel rather tenuously connected to LJ. I miss Hannah the most -- a post that takes at least half an hour to read (at least four full-screen-length paragraphs) and an hour to reply to, THAT is my kind of post! I can sink into it, live it. (sharing photos is a big part of that too) Ohhh I miss that SO much. And it makes me really sad because without that I've lost a lot of my passion for LJ. I comment really rarely now even though I read everything and often hit the reply page -- I just feel disconnected from LJ itself. And what's more annoying is that I've stopped replying to comments in MY journal. I want to find some way to revitalize my love for LJ. I think it'll involve finding new people with whom to form that sort of intellectual foursome, which seems to be unlikely amounts of too-perfect. (says the faithless one) I need to at least make an effort -- I have a permanent account f'cryin'outloud, I don't want it to go to waste.

With LJ, I only friend people who post often and in a style I like, because otherwise I'll just end up skimming their posts and I'll feel like I'm lying to them by having them on my flist but not reading them. But I friend most everyone who requests it on facebook, because I don't have the same goal there. With LJ, I want to develop real friendships; with facebook, I just want to keep in contact and get to know people. I'm open to developing friendships via facebook, of course, but I don't feel I'm setting a goal of friendship by adding someone there.

Facebook is so different from all the other social networking sites I've been part of; I'm used to internet communication being pretty exclusively with not-in-person friends. On facebook I mainly connect with people I've known in person; relatives, in-laws, high school friends, friends from so long ago that we disagree on most everything, and (since summer) local friends. It's so weird to me! And I never thought that such a 'superficial' method of communication would have any value to me, but I actually have become quite fond of facebook. I've found that even when people don't share lengthy introspection, I can get a sense of who they are and what's important to them through their status updates, links, and photos. Not as good a sense, of course, but something meaningful nonetheless.

Twitter is another 'silly' method of connection that I've become fond of. There I connect with LJ friends, mainly, and I've loved seeing a new side of them -- all the little things that aren't enough to post about but still interesting enough to share. I have it connected to my facebook status, as it serves pretty much the same purpose but with a different group of people. And it's become kinda an art form to me to make tweets that are exactly 140 characters and neither fluffed nor missing important info.