Comments on LJ events you're already bored with

[resonant]

1. Love memes (like the one going on at queenofthorns right now) are much easier these days now that LJ introduced its little thumbtack icon! You can track the entire discussion (to see if anyone you know comments asking for love), or you can track your anonymous comment (so you can see if the person replies to it). It's very cool.

2. Some of the discussion on helenish's Take Clothes Off As Directed seems to be implying that it's a brand-new (and unfair) thing to comment on/criticize a piece of literature by writing another piece of literature in response to it.

But this sort of conversation between two literary works is at least as old as when Christopher Marlowe wrote The Passionate Shepherd to His Love ("Come live with me and be my love/And we will all the pleasures prove") and Sir Walter Raleigh replied with The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd ("If all the world and love were young/And truth on every shepherd's tongue ...").

Comments

[september1967.livejournal.com]

I've been in fandom since about 1998 and have been many things within several fandoms. LJ is a different beast, but the strangest beast of all have been fans who feel they are the police of it all. Lurking has been the best thing for me because I get to see some of the oddest comments coming from the most unusual sources.

[carolyn-claire.livejournal.com]

I have issues with the 'fannish police' (or the 'kindergarten teachers' of fandom, as I've been known to call them) too, but from the other side--being told "that's not done" or "that's not nice", so I understand the frustration. And I agree that fandom has become a very changeable beast since moving to LJ. I feel like a creaky oldtimer for holding on to some of the views that I do, but there are a number of them I'm going to stand by, regardless of what the youngsters think and do. But you'll usually find me wading (loudly) into the middle of it all, anyway. *g*