But you still haven't explained to me why it's weird to be curious about your audience.

But you aren't saying "I'm curious about my audience"; you're saying "my audience owes it to me to explain themselves."

you're saying "my audience owes it to me to explain themselves."

You're attaching very hard to the "should," and I take that responsibility upon myself -- it would be really cool if people told me why they friended me.

Are we done now?

I'm still not sure why you're equating people who've friended me and audience still, but I don't have any other words to explain the distinction.

I guess I'm saying that to me, they're the same thing; people who've friended me are people who read me.

I think LJ's filtering option (as well as the use of "friend") makes it feel different from a random blog roll. There are people here I really like, and enjoy reading whom I've never "friended" on lj, because it felt like overstepping.

[link]

Next on the gay agenda....

people who've friended me are people who read me

How can you possibly know that the two sets are identical? I've been told before that I don't read LJs that I patently do read, and I find the attachment to that statement peculiar. My friendslist is most precisely who can read my generically friendslocked posts. However, with filters, it need neither be who I read, nor who can read all my locked posts, and I routinely read LJs that aren't on my list.

It seems a bit shortsighted to lend any weight to their equivalence -- not quite as naive as assuming that your posts on the internet are only going to a known subset, but ... along those lines.

This is really interesting -- there are two paradigms here, and I think people are bumping up against each other and being confused because the etiquette doesn't match.

For me, LJ and Blogger are broadcast media; I put 'em out, anybody can read 'em, and anybody can respond. I have no control of what happens after they go out. Similarly, I read other people's LJs without assuming that creates any sort of bond between us.

If I want control, I use friendslock, and I use exclusive filter lists. The only time I use my generic friendslist is when I mean "I don't want this accessible to Google or to random people, but I don't consider it private." Serious stuff goes on "closefriends", who are the people I actually know.

For ita and Cindy (and many others, I see them on my friendslists), LJ is more like a party: you invite people, people show up and say "Is it okay if I join in?, and it's rude to show up unannounced.

Next on the gay agenda....

And slash writers everywhere rub their hands together and cackle.

The last quote in the HP-is-gay article is priceless:

"I didn't set out to offend. I'm a priest and I'm very careful about not offending people."

As we used to say on the Usenet, he owes me a new monitor.

How did that first day in Charms go? "Flick your wrist"?