drscott | Brunch

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Had a pleasant Sunday brunch with the ECR gang, or at least the part of it that used to do Sunday brunch with Andy and Randy. Mark and Johns son Kyle was cute, but since I was sitting next to him, I didn't get to hear much of the adult conversation from the other end of the table. I can only imagine the strain of having a small child -- Mark is so extremely attentive to him, which is unlike my upbringing, where, by that age, I was expected to keep quiet and make few demands in public. But if care and attention has any effect, he's going to be one smart kid when he grows up.

Someone mentioned they read Paul's blog. Which reminds me to mention how little of mine is readable if you're not an LJ "friend." I tend to write mixed entries with an occasional factoid or opinion I don't want let loose on the whole Googleverse, so I keep about half my posts "friends only."

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From:

dr-scott.livejournal.com

The median user of LJ is a 17-yo girl. The terminology was selected to be as obvious as possible for the naive user. For the older subgroup we have going here, "friend" is misleading; "people whose entries I want to read" is all it means. There are definitely real-world friends whose entries would not be worth reading, but there are many, many people who write interesting stuff and yet are not close enough to me to label as friends. "Friend" implies a degree of mutual obligation and regard based on experience.

But OTOH this kind of medium amplifies the number of people you can keep in touch with. I would never have time to follow this many people's lives this closely without it, and I have real-world friends now I would never have met without this community.

I used to me a very private person, worried that somehow being open and talking about my feelings would be used against me. Since I grew up in a mildly homophobic, stick-out-and-get-hammered-down environment, that was probably a survival skill. But now I feel more inclined to let everyone see the real me -- and by their reaction I will know who my real friends are.