(no subject)

[d_aulnoy]

Honest question for those of you on Dreamwidth - is it that much more active than LJ?  Or is this simply a form of social media that's quietly dying off in favor of the brevity of FB and Twitter?  

Comments

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

It's not that things are more active on Dreamwidth, for me at least; it's that it's a better platform for certain kinds of posts. My sense is that there's a lot more happening at LJ, and a lot more people posting here, at any given time, even though LJ itself has lost traffic to the FB/Twitter side of social media.

But for extensive discussions that demand and reward complex arguments, DW is significantly better than LJ. So now, that's where I post anything that I think is likely to be remotely controversial -- if there's going to be any argument over it, the argument is better held in a venue where people can go over 3100 characters in a comment without hitting system limits. And the fact that the capacity is there means that people are used to seeing the long comments, and so the community seems to self-select for those who think that level of engagement is fun, and against those who get the vapors at anything longer than a twitter comment.

(Naturally DW appeals to me; it's the opposite of the twitter model, and outside of its uses for social or political organizing and direct news reporting, I fail to see the appeal of the facebook/twitter model. Is there anything there at all, beyond the purely phatic? Why do people need to be exchanging meaningless chitchat at all times? Do they feel they don't exist unless their tribes are beeping them ever five seconds? -- but anyway. As is so often the case, I digress.)