LJ on Izvestia...

[alexpgp]

Maria Treshchanskaya, writing for Izvestia.ru, has written a piece about online journaling for the "Internet" section of the site. Her article prominently mentions LJ.

The author talks a lot about how journalers can manipulate their readers. She cites the example of one Kaycee Nicole, who published a journal on CollegeClub.com, where she spoke of her fight with leukemia; a fight she eventually lost. (It turns out though, that there was no such person... it was a hoax.)

Treshchanskaya's reaction to attempts to punish the perpetrator of the hoax, one Debbie Swenson, belies no sympathy for those duped. "People wanted a show where someone died, and they got one," writes Treshchanskaya, "and entertainment must be paid for."

She focuses a while on LJ participant pugacheva, who appears to be an impostor of the famous Russian popular singer Alla Pugacheva. So well does this LJer create a virtual personality for the singer that a couple of newsies even made inquiries about doing interviews. "But with whom?" muses Treshchanskaya.

The LJ 'friends' feature comes under the author's gaze, too. "People hang out on the Net, posting pointers to friends," writes Treshchanskaya. " You can click on each friend and then see their list of friends, and so on... Thus, in a couple of steps, your horizons expand geometrically."

She notes how at some point, you stop, because you reach a balance where you have made all the acquaintances you want to make and anyway, you don't want to add people to your friends list ad infinitum. Treshchanskaya professes that publishing her piece is a criminal act against LJ, because now hundreds of people will fling themselves at LJ, thus disrupting the balance of friendships here.

I guess Brad and company will just have to cope. <grin>

Cheers...

Comments

[laurelo.livejournal.com]

The New York Times did a fascinating piece on the Kaycee Swenson fraud in the May 31st issue that describes how the perp, 40 year old Debbie Swenson, who posed as Kaycee's mother got involved in the journal and fraud. Also, just as interesting is how the many readers suspected deception and tracked Swenson down.

In the Times article Swenson is quoted as saying "A lot of people have problems, I know I helped a lot of people in a lot of different ways."