a question of LJ etiquette

[cellio]

I wonder what the correct behavior is in this situation.

Recently I was having lunch with some people (including a coworker), and I made an off-hand comment about LJ. (This was in the context of wondering what future archaeologists will conclude about us based on email, usenet, etc.) My coworker said something like, "oh, LJ... could be bad". I parsed this as "my coworker is on LJ".

This conclusion turns out to be correct. Given that, and the fact that this is someone whose journal I would find interesting (in a friendly way, not a snoopy way), do I: (a) add the coworker to my friends list, blatantly alerting said coworker to my presence and possibly causing this person to feel self-conscious; (b) read the journal explicitly when I feel like it but don't add to my friends list, possibly causing my coworker to feel stalked if this fact comes to light, or (c) forget about the whole thing?

Comments

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

I'm not quite sure that a) is wholly blatant, and I think it might be appropriate to be more blatant.

I tend to be extremely forthright, so I would probably send a private message to the coworker saying "What's your LJ userid? I'd like to add you to my friends list." (I might do that even if I already knew their userid, actually. :)

[estherchaya.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was going to suggest saying something like, "Hey I'm on LJ too. My username is cellio, what's yours?" Then I would just say "I'd like to add you to my friends list, but I won't do so if it would make you uncomfortable."

That's why LJ can be set up with different security levels. If there's something she doesn't want you to read, she can block you from reading it. I don't see that it would be any sort of faux pas to be direct about it.

What Ralph said...

[prejlog.livejournal.com]

For example, I didn't realize until today that you'd added me to your friends list. Of course, I ma not teh most organized of wombats (nor have I been doing enough LJ the past couple of weeks...)

Re: What Ralph said...

[cellio]

I hope I didn't offend -- and that if it's a problem you'll let me know. You posted in my journal (else I probably wouldn't have bumped into you), so I was curious about who you were and found your journal interesting.

Re: What Ralph said...

[prejlog.livejournal.com]

No, not offended at all. Pleasantly surprised, actually. But as a case in point, it wa s not until I went to my info page for some reason (don't recall now whhy) that I noticed that I had 2 people listed as friends. Don't know how long a lag there was...

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

I should preface this by saying that I have scary, non-cool coworkers and nice but would-not-grok-a-lot-of-my-life coworkers.

That said.

I think I would be really weirded to be friended by a coworker, even one I liked. I would always have to worry about what I said about my job in my journal, worry that it would show up in my job, get back to my boss, etc. Even people who like one get angry and do things they can't undo, or just let things slip.

I would advise you to ask this coworker, but not to friend them till then. After all, suppose he wrote something cranky about you in his journal? Would you really want to read it?

[rani23.livejournal.com]

If I suddenly discovered my coworkers were reading my LJ, I would promptly start hiding some things that I said -- specifically the "Moaning about Work" posts. :)

If you're friends with this person, definately say "heya, what's your LJ name?" and see what they say.

[cellio]

Thanks for the advice. I will ask this person his ID (which I already know) and whether he minds if I read his journal, and if he does I won't.

From the replies I've recieved so far it looks like I have a different model of posting than some people. I take the approach that I don't know who might be reading my journal (wave to the person who replied who does not list me as a friend :-) ), so I shouldn't publicly post anything that I would be upset to find my mother, my manager, my husband, my rabbi, etc reading. They're probably not reading my journal, but I don't know that. When I want to talk about something more sensitive, I use the protection levels provided by LJ. I gather that this level of caution isn't the norm.

Now granted, I've made posting mistakes in the past (back in the early 80s I never would have imagined a Usenet archive 20 years later), and there are some old posts of mine that would embarrass me if they ever resurfaced. I think I'm being much more careful about that now, but it could still be the case that in 10 years I'll be ambarrassed by things I've publicly posted in my LJ. Won't know until we get there. So maybe I should expect people to ask my permission before reading my journal, but it's not the approach I've taken thus far.

So I guess the lesson is: assume the world is reading my journal, but speak up before adding people as friends in case they're not as cautious as I am.

[indigodove.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I only post something as "public" if I wouldn't mind my mother, etc. reading it. I use the privacy features for stuff I don't want to share with everyone. :-)

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

I certainly think it's wise to assume that the world might read.

On the other hand, I tend to think of my own journal and friends page as a sort of conversation with my LJ friends. So it's appropriate that establishing that conversational connection should be a mutually-recognized thing.

The flip side: somebody whose writing I respect, but who does not know me, posted his journal URL on a discussion group. I added him to my friends page without contacting him. I keep wondering if I should send him a note saying, "by the way, this is who I am and why I'm reading your journal."

[cellio]

I tend to assume that if someone advertises his journal, he means for random people to read it. I've certainly added a couple people as friends (without asking them) because they did that. These also tend to be people who are friends of lots of people; if someone did that and I noticed that he was only a friend of 5 other people or something, I'd probably introduce myself.

The sociology of the net continues to fascinate me. Every time I think I understand the common ground rules, some new innovation comes along and challenges them.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Isn't one of the dangers and the freedoms the fact that there are so few ground rules and people are always challenging and editing and revising them?

As for my journal....people have read it and deduced whom I am, but I haven't really advertised it precisely because I don't want to write it for my parents (they are, still, evangelical Christians after all). I write it here in part so I can share it with a far-flung group of people, in part as an intro for myself to various members of the world, but not the *whole* world, which, after all includes my homophobic aunts and the Attorney General.

LJ/Identity

[goljerp]

It's interesting... for one thing, although on the face of it "Goljerp" isn't really an identifier, it's been my nickname long enough that a google search would very quickly turn up my real name. (Of course, saying that, I had to check... yep, there it is, on Google's result page, no less. Not that I'm encouraging (or discouraging) you from doing that.)

I shouldn't publicly post anything that I would be upset to find my mother, my manager, my husband, my rabbi, etc reading.

I try to follow this model myself, although I guess that I do better on some areas than others. I think I've done a few "work stress" posts which I might not have made public if I knew, for example, that a cow orker or manager was reading in real time. In archives I'm not so worried because there aren't that many of them. :-) I've also taken up Tiger Lilly's custom of renaming people in my journal. I haven't yet (or have I?) started distributing misinformation about people, so, e.g. Reb Al probably would know who he was and therefore be able to deduce a lot of the other people I talk about even if I hadn't told him that I call his girlfriend "Radcliffe".

Re: LJ/Identity

[cellio]

It's interesting... for one thing, although on the face of it "Goljerp" isn't really an identifier, it's been my nickname long enough that a google search would very quickly turn up my real name.

Interestingly (perhaps), I wasn't motivated to actually try that exercise until you brought it up. I figure a user id is just a handle to someone I quite probably don't have any other name for, so knowing a "real" name doesn't improve anything. I just want to know the correct pronoun and how the person prefers to be addressed.

Re: LJ/Identity

[goljerp]

Interestingly (perhaps), I wasn't motivated to actually try that exercise until you brought it up.

D'oh! :-)

I just want to know the correct pronoun and how the person prefers to be addressed

Hm. Correct pronoun: Dr. ;-)
Oh, ok, "He/His/Him". But didn't you already know that?
prefers to be addressed: Goljerp. Well, I don't mind my real name, but since Goljerp is what I've used on-line for the last 10 years (!) I must not mind it :-)

pronouns

[cellio]

In your case, yes, I already knew. That's not true of everyone, though. :-)

Re: pronouns

[prejlog.livejournal.com]

Some of use like our privacy. :-)

Re: pronouns

[cellio]

That's fine, so long as "some of us" don't mind that I don't use PC pronouns (e.g. "hir") or ungrammatical constructs ("they"). :-)

[figmo.livejournal.com]

This, IMHO, is a no-brainer: Put the person on your friends list.