Blogarithms

Portland's fervent weblogging subculture gathers for a face-to-face meetup.

On the sidewalk outside Rocco's Pizza, they shuffle about uneasily, darting quick glances at each other, too timid to speak. Many of them know the most intimate and banal details about one another--which medications they're on, their favorite sexual positions and brands of toothpaste--but they've never met in person; they don't even know each other's first names. Finally, one speaks up.

"Excuse me," she murmurs. "Are you here for LJ?"

"Yes!" another replies, and the group heaves a collective sigh of relief as they flock inside to swap awkward silence for slightly less awkward conversation.

These are the denizens of LiveJournal.com, a swiftly expanding electronic cosmos where members broadcast every iota of news about their personal lives, sometimes with obsessive frequency.

LiveJournal is the brainchild of Brad Fitzpatrick, 23, an Aloha High School graduate who created the guts of the website in 1999 at the University of Washington as a means of spreading his own personal weblog--a sort of freeform cyber-diary. Since then, the idea has taken off like a supersonic nerd rocket; there are now almost 1.2 million LiveJournals worldwide--including more than 12,000 in Oregon--with 1,000 fresh "blogs" sprouting up daily.

LiveJournal is now a full-time gig for Fitzpatrick and his small staff, but his creation isn't without formidable competition; other popular blogging destinations include DiaryLand and the Google-owned Blogspot. Spanning several decades in age and various levels of geekiness, LiveJournal devotees belong to a growing fold of webloggers that has exploded from zero to 3 million members over the last four years.

Weblogs are as easy to use as they are widespread. LiveJournal offers its bloggers an easily navigable sea of web communities, ranging from Teen Vampires to Ferret Lovers. Inspired journalers provide the voyeuristic verbiage, and an update is just a click away. Each hour, 10,000 new journal entries appear on the site.

Presumably to help some of their customers get out of the house, Fitzpatrick started International LiveJournal Meetup day last year. On Tuesday evening, thousands of LiveJournalers around the world emerged from their caves to mingle in the twilight.

"I update my journal four or five times a day at least," says Trenton, a.k.a. AngelicOdin, a genial, spiky-haired Sherwood resident who manages a GNC Nutrition Center when away from the computer. Trenton, 19, also uses LiveJournal to disseminate the fantasy stories he writes.

"I'm on my computer at least 10 hours a day," agrees Ashley Thomas, 20, a PCC student and Subway employee who goes by ShatteredSmiles online. "I'm a wannabe geek."

Attractive and flirtatious in person, Thomas doesn't seem like the type of girl who would pass nights glued to the computer screen.

"Don't I look like I'm about to do porn?" she asks the other LJers as she flaunts her new candy-apple-red miniskirt, flipping her pink pigtailed hair.

On her LiveJournal, Thomas is even more candid, cataloging details about herself that most people wouldn't tell even their therapists.

"the little girl in the back of my heart is screaming," she wrote earlier that day. "she is clawing the walls and crying and screaming. and i can't make her stop."

"I have no sense of privacy," Thomas says, explaining why she willingly posts her secrets for anyone with an Internet connection to read. "There are things nobody wanted to know about me on there. My boyfriend begs me not to put stuff up about him."

Though some seem to stray toward LiveJournal to satisfy their exhibitionist tendencies, many others use blogs as a way to keep their friends updated about every facet of their lives when there just isn't time to talk in person.

"A friend of mine has a separate journal just for her sex life," Thomas adds.

While introspective, intimate LiveJournals are common, so are those that report on quotidian elements of life.

"I needed to do laundry about 3 days ago, but I've been improvising and wearing shirts that I don't wear much anymore to stretch it," reports Linnea Jean, or Algeh, in her LiveJournal. "Yesterday, I wore my Thundercats shirt, which I almost never do anymore."

Despite the staggering hours some LiveJournalers spend communing with their CPUs, the site can actually be an effective way of connecting with people away from the glow of a computer monitor. In-the-flesh meetings like tonight's help break the paradoxical isolation of most online correspondence and reinforce the idea that no matter how much you cling to your PC, there's no substitute for actual human conversation.

For Thomas, the blogging community has become her core social group. In one recent LiveJournal entry, Thomas tells of the fun she had meeting up with LJers one afternoon, even though they had communicated only online before meeting--what many would consider the pinnacle of geekdom.

"i didnt know any of these people," she writes. "we are all such dorks. but who cares?"

WWeek 2015

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