I had another little revelation last night -- although I suppose 4am
equates more to early this morning. I was rereading a story by an
author I knew a few years back; she started out in the Herc-Xena fandom
as an A/J writer, but she was one of the first of that group to make
the switch over to the BtVS fandom as an S/X writer. Anyway, I was
rereading one of her S/X stories and noticing, as I had about a month
ago, that she hadn't updated her site since very early this year.
Okay,
no problem. I just did what most people do these days when they're
wondering what's going on in an author's life to keep them from
writing: I headed over to her LJ to find out what was up.
She hadn't updated that since mid-September.
When
I saw that I was suddenly worried. What could've happened? How badly
was RL messing with her life? So I started writing her an email to see
if she was okay.
Then, in the middle of it, I stopped. Epiphany time.
Some
of you may already see what the problem/issue was. I don't actually
know this person. Maybe I did once for a short time but I haven't
actually spoken to her in years and I doubted she'd even remember who I
was since she hasn't been in my fandom for so long. The thing is, I've
read her LJ a number of times before and it gave me the sense that I
did
know her and therefore could presume to write her and ask something
personal such as what's going on with her in RL.
LJ
has really changed things, fandom wise and just in general. When it was
just mailing lists it was like writing letters back and forth, not
actually talking to people (unless you used IM or ICQ or something like
that). People would disappear on the lists for long periods of time or
sometimes just completely and you might wonder where they went, might
ask around on the lists for anyone who did know, but unless you'd
actually talked to that person outside of the list, you didn't have a
personal concern about what was going on. At least I didn't.
Along comes LJ.
LJ is...
so
different from the lists. You never laid out your life for people to
read about there because for the most part it was OT and there were
rules about that; pretty much everything was fandom-focused and
related. LJ though, there are no limits. There is no "OT" because LJs
are personal and we can write whatever we damn well please. We lay out
our trials, tribulations and traumas for all the world to see and even
if we confine it to a friends' list, many of us still have massive
friends lists so how private is that? You're baring yourself, sometimes
your entire soul for relative strangers and maybe it's done behind a
pseudonym, but really, how hard would it be to find out who someone is
in RL? Not very.
When you read someone's LJ for long enough you
start to know who they are, what makes them tick, what pushes their
buttons, all about their family, just...all about them. It starts to
give you the false impression that you really
do know them,
even though they probably don't have the first clue who you are. So
when someone doesn't post to their LJ for a long period of time,
suddenly it's like one of your close friends has dropped off the face
of the Earth. And you worry.
I lucked out this time. The author
I was worried about wrote back and while no, she didn't remember me,
she was nice enough not to call me a freak and actually tell me what
was going on, although I'd had no right to ask. I'm glad she's all
right and it was just RL and writer's block (seems to be going around)
that were giving her a bad time, but I think next time I'm worried
about someone on LJ I'll just leave a comment in their journal. Much
less weird on my part.