Tell me your name

[louiselux]

As a way of keeping track of you all...

[Poll #1034231]

I'm not leaving, although I'd kind of like to. I don't know what to do-- I'm feeling very depressed about lj, specially because Abe Hassan (aka burr86 and livejournal employee) thinks now is a good time to publicly mock the fans.

The entry with his comment was eventually deleted by the community mod, but there's a screenshot here, and an article about it here. I was really pissed off about it yesterday, but this morning my expression matches the one in my icon. I am feeling rather blank about the whole thing.

Comments

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

It's not just the comment itself. It's the whole situation. Here's a livejournal employee basically taking the piss out of a lot of upset and angry fans, in public, at a time when those fans are seriously thinking about upping sticks and leaving. He's apparently one of the people who make policy posts on lj news and lj biz, so he's high profile and clearly a key part of the management of lj.

It's incredibly inept management of a volatile situation, and also I think it gives a good idea of his attitude to fans' complaints, ie, dismissive.

So, that's why it pissed me off - I can't speak for everyone else. But his comment hit exactly the wrong note at the wrong time and it pretty much destroyed my trust in the quality of the management here.

[cicerothewriter.livejournal.com]

Well I understand all that, and that's why I'm a bit upset, but I don't understand why his comment upset everyone. It seems to me that "I wanted verification that they were at least 6 years old" (or whatever he said) was a non sequitur in response to the post.

However I certainly think that posting under your official name is bad business, and that LJ should have a clear policy about what is allowed and what is not. This situation has snowballed rather badly.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Oh, I see. I wasn't sure how much you knew.

I'm finding it hard to separate out all the elements of why it was such an insulting thing to say. It obliquely references ponderosa121's banning and also a lot of the posts that have been made regarding that. It's implying that HP fans are paedophiles. It's dismissive when taken in the context of a lot of fans complaints. I actually also think its referencing a fan's specific post about this issue, but sadly I can't remember now which one.

[hfnuala.livejournal.com]

I think it's a reference to the guy defending Sonic and Tails fic and explaining why Tails wasn't really 7 (or whatever it was.) I did find that funny and have made several jokes about it since. But then I'm not a 6A employee.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Oops, that first reply got away from me.

Ah, I think it was another post I was thinking of then, because I didn't see that one. And exactly - I just think he's really dim to think that that comment wouldn't cause rage.

[hfnuala.livejournal.com]

To be honest, there were so many comments on the 'clarification' posts, most reasonable but some really rather mad, that it could have been any of them.

But lj didn't used to be in the business of deciding the worthiness of the content it hosted and I don't like that it appears to now do so. I'm also very uncomfortable with moral panics about teenagers as consumers, subjects and writers of sexual explicit info. The distinction he is mocking is important. Especially because they've happily allowed really horrible racist/sexist haressment for years under the cover of free speech.

*sigh*