Blogging, Blagging and Buggery.

State of mind: jumbled
Current soundtrack: Black Jack songs on loop (Anyone got Tak Matsumoto's BJ theme? The Miracles of Life one?)

Let me tell you, Intartoobs, this week bordered precariously on Terrible, No-Good and Downrightdisastrous. The New Media projects unexpectedly turned belly-up and group leader took a big blow. Natural 20, critical hit, elemental weakness and all that. D: But trees will prevail! Trees will grow!

Despite having kept odd hours for the past few weeks, and having a good chance of having 25% of my holiday eaten by...well, SOMETHING I'll tell y'all about soon...I spent 20 minutes scrubbing the bejesus out of my stinky hair this morning and another using far too much soap. I am clean, and I am *at this moment* very happy. 24 hours ago I was incredibly annoyed. 48 hours ago I was unconscious.

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It seems I moved out of Livejournal at about the right time. After Strikethrough '07, we now have Blackout(?) '07.

To summarise, two artists got banhammered!!! banned for life over at LJ for one offense. One. The reasons, depending on who you ask, range from the pernicious peddling of pedo porn pics to lack of 'artistic merit'. And, sneaky sneaky, LJ/SixApart did this juust before a fandom convention.

Were this any other fandom, the backlash might not have been so bad, but they picked on Harry Potter.

And lo, the drama flooded the intertubes. The angry responses lay down with the civil ones. Cat macros spammed the news page. Comments reached the (maximum) FIVE THOUUUUUSAND. But it didn't stop there. The bones users are currently picking with LJ include:

• The immense length of time between incident and announcement of 'resolution'. (5 days!)
• Refusal to clarify, in writing, the changes to the TOS (read: refusal to update TOS page)
• Changing the 'strikethrough' of a banned LJ-username to something bolded and linkless. The action is seen not only as confusing, but also as a way of robbing the user of their 'Strikethrough' battlecry. :S
• The perceived double standards in censorship. Nazi communities? Can't do anything. Racist communities? Sorry, not our business. Pro-anorexia? Nope. Gay buttsex pictures? ZOMG BANBANDIEDIEDIE!
• The asshattery/stupidity of two staff members: burr86, for posting in a snarky humor comm but refusing/failing to address the concerns raised in 4000-odd comments at the LJ news community, and coffeechica , for insisting that yes, she knows what anorexia is: simply 'an aspiration to be thin'. Way to go! Where would you like that failcake decorated with failsprinkles and failcherries?

Does the outcry go on? It's hard to say, but I bet you the next news or lj_biz post is going to be maxed out with comments too. I've seen very few banners, or calls for themesongs and suchlike. But this happened THREE MONTHS after Strikethrough in almost identical circumstances. Big-name users/comms deleted on the sly, just before a large event (Memorial Day/HP convention), failing to take into account the size of the LJ community and the outcry that would result. As it is, one of my closest LJ buddies has made the leap to another journal site, although he admits the interface is foreign to him now. If I hadn't jumped to Blogger beforehand, I might just have followed him.

People are angry. People will leave. Communities talk (it's already up on Digg that LJ supports pro-ana). Customers will go to other places. 6A will learn it is not wise to poke the sleeping dragons - particularly as the dragons render fictional erotica and pay them shiny money.

One day, I wish to teach Consumer Behaviour—simply because I want to pick up a textbook, tell the students to turn to the pre-chapter case study on Six Apart and Livejournal, and say 'You see this, guys? THIS WAS REAL. I saw how some of it went down.'