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 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.