iPariah

[greatbear]

I must come across as totally uninteresting or some kind of dick online. If I make myself available on the few chat places/programs I use, no one says a damn thing to me anymore. So, I have taken that as a sign that it's time to abolish the couple remaining profiles I have left and keep LJ for the time being as my sole interaction space. I at least get some response here, and I can deal with the pace of conversation here if any takes place. If this comes across as some kind of flounce post, it's not intentional. I am just to the point of wondering what the hell I did wrong.

It was fun while it lasted.

Comments

[shake-it-up.livejournal.com]

This is still a strong place for connection, I think, with all its problems and a certain amount of transience.

If you participated in the big B411 exodus (I'm there, but there are plenty of reasons to not be there), then you're at a smaller chat site. People just log in to Bearciti and walk away. I don't know why. Today I held a couple of brief conversations there (and I was the one who kept forgetting I was logged in there).

I sent you a message on BMB, you were one of the first people to "like" my profile there, and I have a sentimental feeling about your page there. (Though I know you so much better here, where I've learned more about who you are.)

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

I am not sure about BMB. I shut off my profile there for about a year a couple years back. There were a couple people I knew only through there that I needed to get in touch with, so I reactivated it to contact them, then just let is sit mostly unused. For curiosity's sake I had tried out the video chat. Ignored there except for a couple people I already knew. I have BMB and Bearciti as my remaining two spots. I cant figure out where or even if I can shut off my Bearciti profile. I know how to disable my BMB profile.

I feel my BMB page is a sham anyway, it's been years since I updated the pictures and text, and to be honest, I hardly look like I do in those pictures anymore. ALl the more reason to kill it off.

I left Bear411 about two years prior to the 'exodus', I just got tired of the silly interface, the on and off days, and, well, not getting any meaningful interaction there. Deleting that was easy, just check a box and confirm, and it was done, and irreversible. One of the only things that the site has done right IMO.

The only things I would miss by taking down those profiles is the connections I made with good people, like you.

[pulsecub.livejournal.com]

I can relate wholeheartedly. I'm usually logged into IM for most of the day and hardly anyone even talks to me there. I also don't get much commentary in my LJ; I have this sneaking suspicion that I'm one of the few people among my circle who actually reads their Friends' page...

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

I have a relatively outrageous number of people who have me on their friends list. Many of them have yet to make a single comment, where a good majority have made a few at most. There is a fair number who are regular commenters. Some people filter their friends list view to exclude certain people who are actually on their list, I dont do that. I have moved some of the graphically heavy communities onto a separate filter in order to deal with low bandwidth connections I sometimes use.

[pulsecub.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think I'm probably in the same boat...filtered off. I don't use them personally; the way I feel about it is if I felt someone was important enough to add them to my friends' list, then the least I owe them is a few minutes of my time to actually read what they're posting.

[msclwolf.livejournal.com]

now then....Friends page. When I first came to LJ it confused the hell out of me....stop sniggering! ha ha ha I could not figure it out. So I left it alone. However, another LJ chum uses it too and i kinda missed an important part of their post as just use my 'messages' to read stuff, so perhaps I need to revisit the ole 'Friends' page.

[sfmini.livejournal.com]

Online conversation seems to be lost. Nobody talks to me either. Even here in SF I don't get much out of LJ. You'd think with so many LJ people here I'd connect with someone.... not.

Online just is not the place to meet people.

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

I am totally old skool when it comes to online conversation. In the early-mid 90s when I started, it was something totally new, and the few who used IRC or some of the fledgling chat sites were pretty serious about it. As time wore on and more people came on line, and the sheer number of social sites exploded, it all competes for attention, and there is not the same level of interest any more. I met a great deal of people online, turned them into real life friends and did lots of gathering and social outings. It's all gone now.

[sfmini.livejournal.com]

I met a great deal of people, and still do, I met you and I think you're pretty great. But so much of the social aspect is gone. Coming home from work and chowing down on dinner with friends at the keyboard is lost. I miss it, it kept me from being alone and isolated as I otherwise would be. Now My "social life" is support groups with the Aids Health Project from UCSF and another group from Kaiser Permanente, but that is so clinical.

[furr-a-bruin.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean ... I see friends logged in on BearCiti and wonder why they so rarely say hello. I sit there and wonder if I should pester them - which may be the same thing keeping them from saying hi, I don't know... it's not like a message on there is "intrusive" the way a phone call can be.

[msclwolf.livejournal.com]

I have never been a fan of chat/IM style stuff as it just seems so tricky to find peeps who can actually chat about stuff in general without sinking quickly to an agenda of .....well...more base activities! Mind you, not that I am wholly against that, but when it appears the ONLY thing most are doing ......(yawn) boredom sets in rather quickly. Meanwhile the rise in a more visual styles of comms (see 'social networking' 'Net2' oh, and youtube) may have sucked away those with sights on such base activities, as now they don't even have to pretend to want to string a sentence together!! I find LJ FAR more rewarding, as well as serving the downright nosey aspects of ones personality I can just randomly whitter on about all sorts of nonsense, and sometimes peeps even comment ha ha ha So don't think you have done or did anything wrong!

[whiskerfish.livejournal.com]

I'm torn on this one.
Online chat (gchat) for me recently got so annoying I now only lurk - signed in but invisible.
I'm not saying that I was getting hit up by every online horndog it's just that once engaged I had a hard time breaking it off.

[nyrimmer.livejournal.com]

It's sorta always been that way for me too but I don't let it bother me.I figure my life is boring to most of these online so called friends and I just accept that and go about my business.What I found is that if you just write about your life and what you are doing with it you will connect with one or two guys who turn out to be really good guys and that's enough for me to make it worth while.

[fredneckteddy.livejournal.com]

Well before I have surgery and some time after I move to the new place, I'm going to throw a party and you and Jeff are invited :)

Awww honey!!!

[aadroma.livejournal.com]

I quite enjoyed talking to you online. I was actually wondering why you'd gotten silent on me!

[ciddyguy.livejournal.com]

A very intersting post, having been doing the online thang since oh, 2001 but had email and internetz/webs since the mid 1990's, I used to get lots of hit ups via my yahoo profile and even with my 360 profile, it's not garnered much in the way of responses. True, the yahoo profile page is pretty sparse, always had been but even so, you could get people hitting you up in Yahoo IM, which is my main communication link for anything online. But it's indeed slowed way down. I'm on Bear411, Bearciti, Manhunt, of which I should see if I can delete profile there, seemed OK for a brief moment but now, no hits at all other than adverts from Manhunt mostly. Gearfetish has been interesting although I've not checked recently but I've had some cool conversations there from a few, others just to comment on my profile and I do have friends whom I have in my pal list on the 411 but I'm usually the one chimming in. I chat w/ one guy on the Citi regularly, almost everyday and he's in SF.

World Leather Men seems to be really good and in the past couple of months I still get regular hits, if nothing else, guys checking out my profile, others to chat and it's there that one fellow I hope to meet up in person, we chat at least once a week and have had some serious conversations and both like what we "see" through this means of commication so far.

LJ, if nothing else is a great place to just write and if I can inspire others, fine, but more of a record of my life as it unfolds. However, I get little commenting on the vast majority of my posts, if I get any comments at all but when I do get a comment, it reminds me that people are indeed reading my stuff, just perhaps what I have to say does not require much in the way of a comment but even there, I'd expect something like good for you or hugs or something like that and some of the more weighty posts get the cricket treatment, posts that I think would garner at least a comment, if not more.

Photo posts seem to be falling on deaf ears but there again, if I am seeking evaluations of that work, I should ask at the bottom of my posts. I think people see my photos and go oh, nice and move on without even so much as letting me know. Chris Glass, peppabear all get comments on their photo posts...

I do feel like I'm invisible sometimes but it may well be how I'm communicating that many feel they can't reply to, nor know how to reply or something.

Anyway, it's a changing world and yes, I do see, especially on the citi where people log in and seem to walk away. I'm online with both citi and 411, but really, I'm at the PC off and on during the day usually. If I know I'm going to be gone for a while, I'll log out of both and anything else, or simply put the 'puter into sleep mode and eventually, I'll get logged out of most eventually.

LJ seems to retain more of an interactive aspect than most chat/date sites where it's mostly used to find a hookup or a date or something along those lines.

Anyway, I enjoy reading your posts, even if on occasion they are mundane since a lot of what I write is mundane too. :-)

[fingertrouble.livejournal.com]

Photo posts - having been burned with this, the possibility of upsettimng someone with an innocent comment, and the ego thing, I don't comment on photos anymore, or any creative work unless I know the person IRL and even then.

I'm not alone in this, so maybe people are wary of treading on toes? Sadly I come from an artschool background where group crit was the way to get perspective on your work. You won't get that here, esp. from me. Too dangerous.

[ciddyguy.livejournal.com]

You do have a point in that one can get burned when posting photos. Over on Seattlephoto, some gal simply said when I posted some photos, "you shoul've put it behind a cut", I was a bit taken aback, not terribly and that, whatever. I had, maybe 6 pics in all and while I was not actively soliciting comments per se, she was the only one. If she's simply said why then it would've made sense but since that was all she said, well, it was not cool.

I do agree that unless you know them, most people take the easy road and simply not say anything at all, out of kindness but when asked for criticism, and not say anything or simply give platitudes without saying something constructive along with it, it really doesn't help the person who's trying to say, develop their skills.

[geometrician.livejournal.com]

I've wondered, from time to time, if my generation/peer group/whatever has gotten over their interest in online chatting, or maybe it doesn't have quite the appeal it does to the younger folks. There is definitely a cycle to it. Some of the chat sites don't have that many people signed up for them, then at any given time most of those aren't online, and of those that are, at least some of them are not at their computer. Of those who actually are sitting down at their computer, many of them are talking to some little group they are a part of.

I'd have to admit to being a person whose interest in online chat waxes and wanes. LJ is more my speed.

[fingertrouble.livejournal.com]

I mean I could have chatted to your lovely intelligent self 1-on-1? Damn I missed out there!

I've just turned off Yahoo IM for the same reason, spam and no chat, and probably will do same for Skype. I get the IS ANYONE OUT THERE? a lot with the podcast, and I don't do the bear sites because I'd rather chat than get into the whole attractiveness/shag thing, that would be nice too but I'm. turned on by people's minds first then check out their bodies. Talking sex isa boring, tbh. And some arseholes won't even talk to you because you don't fit their impossible type. I see Gaydar and suchlike as virtual gay bars, they come with the same crap.

Also a big loss in my friend circle is refusing to join the prosaic inanity that is twitter. I joined Facebook but am that close to disabling the pointless spammy crap.

I thought social networks were supposed to bring people together rather than drive them apart?

Oh and I suspect as a high volume public poster (most of the substance is friends only) I'm filtered too. Most people on my FL don't comment.

[kymutt.livejournal.com]

Well, havin' spoken with you a few times, you've never come across as 'totally uninteresting or some kind of dick' to me. I actually enjoyed messagin' back and forth with you. My problem was a lazy spell where I wasn't checkin' messages on the site I normally gnaw on your ear. But I do enjoy sayin' hi to ya when I can.

[danthered.livejournal.com]

I think this is a circular problem: I scarcely ever see you logged in, so I scarcely ever get a chance to chat with you, so you scarcely ever log in. Lather, rinse, repeat.

[toshiomana.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

I must admit I've been pretty non-social myself lately. :/ I left bear411 and, while I do sit on Bearciti fairly often, I just kinda sit there. I think it's my deteriorating self-confidence there, however. Oh and my general depression. :(

Still I have been frequenting gay.com again I find myself mostly in the local (Philly) room instead of the bears room. I'm not sure why. But I haven't seen you on there in, like, forever factorial. :(

*HUGS*