So why do you people read me, anyway?

[wispfox]

I was wondering, while driving home, what it is about my journal that makes you people want to read it.

And, for those of you who know me in person, if that is why, or if there are other reasons.

So - share! Tell me what brings you to read my journal, if you are so inclined. My curiosity wants to know!

Comments

[aussie-nyc.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I added you because we kept commenting on the same posts by other people. I keep reading because the mix of topics is fascinating to me: enough in common for me to get a foothold, but enough that's totally out of my experience to be fun to learn. Plus the silliness.

Same reasons apply to IM.

Re:

[majes.livejournal.com]

Yeah, what he said. I had also met you in RL and it inspired me to look more into who you were. We share several interests, and your thoughts seem to align nicely with mine.

[sambc.livejournal.com]

honestly - you seem like an intersting person.

Stuff happens in your life, and you make observations, that interest me.

I found you via friendsfriends, if that matters. Just seems an interesting read...

[australian-joe.livejournal.com]

Interest in what you choose to say.

Datapoints and access to the workings of your mind.

An opportunity to find things out I wouldn't otherwise have known.

Funny things.


(More or less why I read anyone's journal, I suppose, although NRE-type feelings modify some defaults there.)

[wcg.livejournal.com]

I started reading your journal after seeing you at AP10. (I'd have done so after AP9, but I didn't learn you had a journal until AP10.) Since then I've found that your posting style is every bit as quirky and interesting as your conversational style, so I keep hanging around.

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

*blinks* We _met_ at APC9?

Hmm... shows you how good my memory is. :)

[ladytabitha.livejournal.com]

I know you in person!

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

Damn. Really?

[volta]

Who are you, again?

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

A figment of someone's imagination. I just am not sure whose!

[sandhawke.livejournal.com]

pick one:

• to have some idea what's going on in your life, so if you show up in my kitchen, I wont say something totally insensitive
  
• it's a cheap and easy way to get to know you better
  
• because you keep finding better and better pictures of yourself....
  

Re:

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

La! But I _like_ showing up in your kitchen, and I have trouble believing you'd say something totally insensitive even without the peek into my brain that LJ gives you.

And I'm not _finding_ them, they are being taken. And are finally starting to convince me that I might actually be photogenic. :)

[ayalanya.livejournal.com]

because i like the way you think and enjoy reading/knowing the different things you think about, because you write interesting stuff, because i know you, because i understand a lot of what you say (which isn't always the case with friends/people i date)...stuff like that. you're fun to read, and even when it's about something negative going on, your writing is as enjoyable for me as a good book^.^

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

your writing is as enjoyable for me as a good book

Huh. Again with the people telling me I write well.

At this rate, I might actually manage to believe it. :)

*hug*

[kightp.livejournal.com]

I like to read what you have to say and the way you say it.

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

That is possibly the most concince, yet pleasing, way you could have answered that question.

I often forget that it's possible that other people would like the way I write. Possibly because I never really thought I _could_ write until I finally stopped trying to do it by hand. Writing by hand just takes way too much CPU cycles, taking away from my ability to get things across.

*pleased*

[beowabbit]

1. I know you in person.
   
2. I like to keep up with what’s going on in your life, so I’m on the right page the next time I see you.
   
3. I enjoy your writing style.
   
4. I enjoy the way you think.
   
5. You have both fascinating and unusual similarities to me, and fascinating and unusual differences from me.
   

[keyne.livejournal.com]

Entertaining links. :-)

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

Weee! I like that I'm not the only person who likes the links I post. :)

[rosefox]

Because I friend anyone who friends me back and read my friends list unfiltered. More data is always better!

Re:

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

Yeah. This continues to both impress the hell out of me and completely baffle me. How do you have _time_?!

[verylisa.livejournal.com]

I got a very high match with you on OK Cupid, so I thought I'd read your journal for a while to get a better handle on who you are.

*waves timidly*

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

*waves* *wonders which OK Cupid person you are*

I'll probably not add you, since I'm simply overloaded with people to read right now. But I do try to post things publicly with some vague semalance of regularity, and not _just_ silly quizes. :)

[metaphorge.livejournal.com]

I've just started reading ("hi!"), and from what I've seen thus far you're well worth getting to know better... plus other people I know think highly of you....

Re:

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

Hi! Also, I think I added you first. ;)

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

Well, I haven't started reading it yet, so this post is a little opportune. You came up on jodawi's okcupid list, and the name rang a bell for whatever reason. I was trying the userids as journals for him so he could figure out who these people were, and I clicked them to see if they worked. I recognized your user icon from APC10! Weird. Anyway, um, hi. :) Please if you review my journal at all to see who the heck it was who added you, excuse my recent melodrama.

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

Hi! I have no idea who jodawi is, even though I know who you are (very vaguely).

*shrug* Welcome!

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

because i had met you in person and this was a good way of getting to know you better. when i first started reading your journal, we were friendly aquaintences. now i consider you to be a friend of mine. and i think that knowing you through LJ has helped that.

in general i read LJ so that i can be my secret hermit and still indulge in my sociability. :) it's is a perfect expression of contradiction for myself. :)

n.

Re:

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

Wee! I consider you a friend, too, and we haven't really spent much time together. Of course, I don't think I did until *after* we spent some time together, but LJ is certainly a good way to get to know people. Well, assuming they post much. :)

Secret hermit! Hey, I'm pretty hermitish myself, sometimes.

Re: why read you?

[wolfieboy.livejournal.com]

Well, we first started talking about necks in sunyata__'s journal. Then we started talking about energy work and then we started talking about all sorts of other things.
I find you an interesting person and I like your writing. I'm hoping to meet you at some point so that I can list the knowing you in person part too.
I'd even say that you've become a friend even though it's been a relatively brief time and we've never interacted in person.
I'm quite glad to have you in my life to the degree that LJ lets us do so.

Re: why read you?

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

*nods* I agree on the friends belief, even though it's still true that the lack of in-person interaction makes that _much_ weaker a connection than it might otherwise be.

Which is part of why I want to meet you. :)

[echospiralheart.livejournal.com]

I met you at the energy shares and then working group at homeport. You have good energy, and I am comfortable with you. When I first came to live journal, you graciously accepted me into your list of friends. Come to learn, you weren't quite sure who I was in the beginning under the name of echospiralheart. You were one of the first journals that I read. Your write what is in your heart. You share anger. You share joy. I like people who aren't afraid to share. It makes me want to share. Your journal has helped me get to know you. My heart reaches out to you in the things that you share. You share but don't expect anything in return. You are just you. I remember one of your posts where people don't seem as real if you haven't met them in person, but for me, seeing the written word ... people sharing this way ... I get to know them. You are someone I think of as friend.

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

weren't quite sure who I was in the beginning

True. And even had your username been something like your offline name, I still probably wouldn't have remembered. I initially added you because you were part of work group, and I wanted people there to be able to read what I wrote relating to it. :)

You share but don't expect anything in return

Well, yeah. This isn't the medium to be using for that. Information needs to be shared more... directly, if one specifically wants feedback. No?

people don't seem as real if you haven't met them in person

Yes. But that doesn't mean I don't find reading about people's lives via LJ useful - I do, whether or not I've met them. It's just that if I've met and made a connection to them, I'm more likely to _want_ to read what they have to say. I know that I tend to say way, way more in writing than in spoken form, and I know I'm not the only one. I also know that I'm not the only person for whom LJ posts feel less... pushy than email. People can reply, or not - with email, people tend to feel a need to reply. Unless you state you don't need one, but still.

*shrug* Lack of a certain degree of reality doesn't mean people aren't interesting. It just means my memory files the things they say strangely, and that it'll take much much longer for me to form a sense of them. And my connection to them is much weaker.

I have no idea why, but having people tell me, in whatever words they use, that I am simply me, makes me happy. I wish I knew why that was!

[galaxygirl78.livejournal.com]

Well, I am fairly new to LJ (since just b4 Christmas) and you are a friend of a good friend of mine intenselaura.
Though you are a stranger, I find you silly, insightful, and you post some fun stuff. I find sometimes, we think alike...
Not really sure what the point to LJ is if you don't venture out and read others! Sort of a voyeurous thing for me I s'pose...

Re:

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

Voyeuristic is good... especially considering I'm such an exhibitionist. :)

Glad you enjoy!

[ccprince.livejournal.com]

1) There's something about reading someone who is so open -- which I think you might deny being, but you're more so than I
2) Silliness and linkiness
3) Gotta second the comment about the lovely userpics. Meant to comment before, but didn't manage to.

Besides, you've got me thinking about fractals and graphics and music again. I'd share my master's thesis with you ("Genetic Algorithms Applied to Music Composition") but it's some of the crappiest music ever written.

Re:

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

1) Naw... I don't deny being open.

2) Oh, good - some people actually like my linkage. Sometimes I wonder if I do too much of it (not, of course, that I'll stop!).

3) *grins* userpics... mmm...

Fractals! WEEEEE!

And... so? It might be crappiest for you, but that doesn't mean it isn't interesting!

Why read?

[linus52.livejournal.com]

I read your journal because I like what you say.
I found your journal through reading something you wrote in ashliana's journal. We seem to have some things in common, (bab5, sluggy, geekiness)
and I like your outlook on life.
So I added you to my friends list.

I've said "HI" a few times, but I guess I am not sure if I am a pest or just tolerated.

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

I've said "HI" a few times, but I guess I am not sure if I am a pest or just tolerated.

My replying to people via LJ is... sporatic.

Also, I have not been able to get any sense of you, so am unlikely to friend you back. I simply don't have time to read people I already read, let alone more. :)

[ex-helygen254.livejournal.com]

We're the same person and I like to know what I'm up to. :)

Seriously, I like you and am enjoying getting to know you better. Since I'm horrible at keeping up with online conversations (not that I'm great using any other method), this seems the best way to do it.

Re:

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

We're the same person and I like to know what I'm up to. :)

I wonder if anyone is going to think you're me at APC11? :)

Also, agreed with this being a good, relatively low effort, way of getting to know someone. I'm finding the same, although I really do read entirely too many people right now, and need to cut down a bit.

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

I haven't been keeping up with LJ enough, recently, but one of the things I like most about your journal is that... that I don't know you. And yet, despite not really knowing you, I have access to so much of your internal processes in your journal! I find it really enlightening and interesting. I feel privileged to be able to read it.

I feel like I should ask the same question in *my* journal, since I pretty much *never* talk about my own internal processes. What on earth do people get out of filling out silly polls about jumping in front of trains? :)

Re:

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

Well, despite neither of us knowing the other, I would be pleased to do something about that at some point, should life and timing and such permit.

Also - you don't think your polls show something about the inner workings of your brain? Especially in the comments about it? :)

You also post fabulous pictures, and are hysterically funny and nifty. So, there! :P

why

[cindy-lu.livejournal.com]

Because we have met in person quite a number of times, but never gotten a chance to know each other that well, and I would like to remedy that somehow

Also because people I respect think you are pretty awesome

Re: why

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

And we are even working on the non-LJ version of remedying the not getting to know each other very well! :)

[starphire.livejournal.com]

Because I was impressed by the effectiveness of your socializing-among-unfamiliar-faces techniquez at our housewarming last year, and since then you've clearly established yourself as a thoughtful, intelligent, open-minded person associating with any number of thoughtful, intelligent & open-minded friends & acquaintances here and IRL.

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

socializing-among-unfamiliar-faces techniquez

See, I still can't figure out why that's unusual. I mean, it's not something I can do all the time, but if that's my intent (which it was, since I did not expect to know anyone), how _else_ would one meet people?

*shrugs* Still. Good to have you reading!