GEnie and LiveJournal
Aug. 28th, 2004 02:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
msagaraI've mentioned elsewhere on my user info page that I'm an old GEnie user. I'd now like to explain what that experience meant to me, because it has some bearing on my activities on LJ now.
When I joined GEnie, usenet was thriving with flamewars that made nuclear seem pretty tame in comparison. Compuserve was spelled Compu$erve, and the on-line for pay services were very, very expensive; you got free internet access -- and there was no www -- if you were a university student or professor, or somehow related to someone who was, because they were the backbone of the internet. Everything was done by phone, and everything was done by really slow modems (1200 bps was state of the art).
So everything was done in text.
GEnie was a very primitive bbs. There were no threaded discussions; there were topics. You logged in and you "read all new" and all of the topics you marked could then be read at your leisure. But you had to read all the posts in order to then add a comment at the end. This was frustrating at the start, and much-loved at the end, because it was like a conversation -- you replied, after reading 70 messages, to the things that were important, rather than to every point, and if the conversation did wander, it sort of wandered by group fiat.
GEnie was a shock to me after usenet because it was so polite. People didn't nitpick your typos and spelling, and there was a lot less aggressive territoriality. This was instantly more comfortable to me; I did post some in some of the usenet groups, but I could literally spend hours on each post, combing it for errors over and over again before it went up, to make it as bullet-proof as possible. On GEnie, I assumed that it was simply conversation, without teeth or fangs, and I posted more.
The reason I joined GEnie in the first place was because there were so many authors there. And editors. And an agent or two. I had sold my first novel, but I had no publication credits, and while I understood how the bookstore worked, I really didn't understand publishing all that well. SFWA members got a free-flag, so they could chat in chat rooms without racking up the hourly dollars that would have been prohibitive, and it's from those chats that I learned most of what I knew when my book finally hit shelves.
There were a number of authors whose posts were incredibly helpful to me. Raymond E. Feist wrote pages and pages about various aspects of distribution, but he wasn't the only one. For discussions about writing itself, Alis Rasmussen's group was a literary salon, and there was fun and frivolity in Teresa Edgerton's topic (and if anyone knows where she is, email me; I've totally lost track of her and would love to touch base). The writing community, at least to a newbie, was helpful and friendly, and if much of the time was spent discussing things like feminism, politics, house-buying, an equal amount of time was writing and publishing.
Okay, thank you for bearing with me. I'm getting to the LJ relevant part about now.
LJ in interface is nothing like GEnie, and it's hard to have an ongoing conversation because of the way the comments work -- but it's not impossible; bits and pieces of journals are picked up and discussed by other LJ users, spawning different and equally interesting discussions. In feel, in many ways, this is as similar to GEnie in tone as anything I've seen since. The Journals function in a similar way to GEnie's author topics, because the topic owner usually set the tone.
More, though, it's the people here that remind me of that first experience. Some of them are also old GEnie users, but not all of them; there's an openness and a willingness to talk or ask questions that I really like, and it's that ambience, more than familiar faces, that makes this remind me so much of GEnie. My own topic on GEnie was sadly neglected, because I often felt I had very little to say; I loved to add to other discussions, though, and I had originally intended to do just that with the LJ account, and no more.
But the spouse thought that it might be useful to other people if I rambled a bit about the bookstore in the context of writing and publishing. I'm always happy to think out loud. It's getting me to stop that's the problem <wry g>. I try to keep in mind what I knew then, and how it differs from what I know now, and how I learned things by trial and error. I confess that I still don't think my daily life is all that interesting, so I don't post about that.
But while I start comments, I'm happy -- truly happy -- to see other people post their own experiences and thoughts and questions; I feel less like the journal is "mine" in the authorial sense of the word, and more like it's a living room, or a house, in which people are sitting around and chatting. If you're chatting to each other, it doesn't really bother me, because even then, it's often informative. If you don't post, or don't post often, that's fine too -- some people are naturally more reticent at largish gatherings.
I don't mind if I don't know you; I don't mind if you post without somehow pointing out that I don't know you. There's been no flaming, and I have no sense of cliques or groups with specific slants in anything I've read either here or on my reading list. I know that it's sometimes intimidating to enter a room in which one feels like everyone knows everyone else -- except you <g>. If you've got questions, people who can answer them will probably be happy to, if they have the time, and many of these rambles come directly -- or indirectly -- from questions that other LJ users have asked, either in one of my comment threads or on other journals.
So. Umm. Thank you.
Just wanted to say that.
When I joined GEnie, usenet was thriving with flamewars that made nuclear seem pretty tame in comparison. Compuserve was spelled Compu$erve, and the on-line for pay services were very, very expensive; you got free internet access -- and there was no www -- if you were a university student or professor, or somehow related to someone who was, because they were the backbone of the internet. Everything was done by phone, and everything was done by really slow modems (1200 bps was state of the art).
So everything was done in text.
GEnie was a very primitive bbs. There were no threaded discussions; there were topics. You logged in and you "read all new" and all of the topics you marked could then be read at your leisure. But you had to read all the posts in order to then add a comment at the end. This was frustrating at the start, and much-loved at the end, because it was like a conversation -- you replied, after reading 70 messages, to the things that were important, rather than to every point, and if the conversation did wander, it sort of wandered by group fiat.
GEnie was a shock to me after usenet because it was so polite. People didn't nitpick your typos and spelling, and there was a lot less aggressive territoriality. This was instantly more comfortable to me; I did post some in some of the usenet groups, but I could literally spend hours on each post, combing it for errors over and over again before it went up, to make it as bullet-proof as possible. On GEnie, I assumed that it was simply conversation, without teeth or fangs, and I posted more.
The reason I joined GEnie in the first place was because there were so many authors there. And editors. And an agent or two. I had sold my first novel, but I had no publication credits, and while I understood how the bookstore worked, I really didn't understand publishing all that well. SFWA members got a free-flag, so they could chat in chat rooms without racking up the hourly dollars that would have been prohibitive, and it's from those chats that I learned most of what I knew when my book finally hit shelves.
There were a number of authors whose posts were incredibly helpful to me. Raymond E. Feist wrote pages and pages about various aspects of distribution, but he wasn't the only one. For discussions about writing itself, Alis Rasmussen's group was a literary salon, and there was fun and frivolity in Teresa Edgerton's topic (and if anyone knows where she is, email me; I've totally lost track of her and would love to touch base). The writing community, at least to a newbie, was helpful and friendly, and if much of the time was spent discussing things like feminism, politics, house-buying, an equal amount of time was writing and publishing.
Okay, thank you for bearing with me. I'm getting to the LJ relevant part about now.
LJ in interface is nothing like GEnie, and it's hard to have an ongoing conversation because of the way the comments work -- but it's not impossible; bits and pieces of journals are picked up and discussed by other LJ users, spawning different and equally interesting discussions. In feel, in many ways, this is as similar to GEnie in tone as anything I've seen since. The Journals function in a similar way to GEnie's author topics, because the topic owner usually set the tone.
More, though, it's the people here that remind me of that first experience. Some of them are also old GEnie users, but not all of them; there's an openness and a willingness to talk or ask questions that I really like, and it's that ambience, more than familiar faces, that makes this remind me so much of GEnie. My own topic on GEnie was sadly neglected, because I often felt I had very little to say; I loved to add to other discussions, though, and I had originally intended to do just that with the LJ account, and no more.
But the spouse thought that it might be useful to other people if I rambled a bit about the bookstore in the context of writing and publishing. I'm always happy to think out loud. It's getting me to stop that's the problem <wry g>. I try to keep in mind what I knew then, and how it differs from what I know now, and how I learned things by trial and error. I confess that I still don't think my daily life is all that interesting, so I don't post about that.
But while I start comments, I'm happy -- truly happy -- to see other people post their own experiences and thoughts and questions; I feel less like the journal is "mine" in the authorial sense of the word, and more like it's a living room, or a house, in which people are sitting around and chatting. If you're chatting to each other, it doesn't really bother me, because even then, it's often informative. If you don't post, or don't post often, that's fine too -- some people are naturally more reticent at largish gatherings.
I don't mind if I don't know you; I don't mind if you post without somehow pointing out that I don't know you. There's been no flaming, and I have no sense of cliques or groups with specific slants in anything I've read either here or on my reading list. I know that it's sometimes intimidating to enter a room in which one feels like everyone knows everyone else -- except you <g>. If you've got questions, people who can answer them will probably be happy to, if they have the time, and many of these rambles come directly -- or indirectly -- from questions that other LJ users have asked, either in one of my comment threads or on other journals.
So. Umm. Thank you.
Just wanted to say that.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-08-27 11:28 pm (UTC)The Internet and I grew up together, so I didn't see what he was talking about, at that time. To me, the 'net was a vast resource. I guess it's sort of like my attitude toward my kids: I grew up in a small town, safe enough to roam the streets at age 12. I had woods to play in. A yard big enough to play football in, and a basketball hoop over the garage door. My kids (and I) live in Seattle, in an apartment. I worry that they don't have a yard, and can't go to the park by themselves. But they're happy, and have the benefits of city living (I never went on a field trip to a museum or aquarium, my kids do that all the time). So I guess I'm mourning a loss they never had.
Anyway, I like LiveJournal because in its own way it brings back that sense of community I felt on BBS's. When I read an intelligent comment, I pull up their user info, and see who they know. It tells me a little about them. Then I read their journals a bit. People's journals are attached to their user names, so everyone feels some accountability for what they say.
Thank you for opening your living room to me. I don't say much (usually), but I read you every time you post.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-28 08:42 pm (UTC)Thank you for opening your living room to me. I don't say much (usually), but I read you every time you post.
I have a habit of lurking, and I post when I either know the person or feel I have something of relevance (well, a teeny bit <wry g> in my case) to add -- but in many cases that's not often; often someone else has said it (I have a knee jerk reaction against 'me too' posts). I'm quieter on-line than off, though <g>.