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. :)

[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.

[figmo.livejournal.com]

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