For those of you not familiar with the concept (you fortunate souls you) a live journal, in its internet context that is, is basically a place where anyone who wants to (well, either a fee or a pass from a friend is required, but you get the idea) can post whatever you like in a web-blog format.

Before I get to the actual meat of the piece (which is the actual rant), I'll serve up some potatoes or some other side dish. Remember back in 1997-1998 when the internet was building up steam in the public's consciousness? Before then, most of what you had on the internet were sites with actual information. The earliest itenerations of the internet were extremely slow and you could look at pictures of dinosaurs that some guy in Ukrane posted. People then began to use it to post more and more information (remember that word), such as articles about other countries, written by people from those countries. This was exciting news! This was basically what the internet was all about: people from all over the world sharing information on a global level.

Then we had to go and screw it up.

When the public first began to awaken to the internet, "My Home Pages" (MHPs) begain to show up. The MHPs were usually websites hosted on a public server. These pages had colorful, swirly backgrounds and horrible frame code. Lousy animated GIFs were common, and a reader was guaranteed to see a counted at the bottom which shewn exactly how many people had visited the site since its inception.

This number was generally one digit.

The MHPs began to spread like wildfire all through the internet. Places such as Geocities and Angelfire carried thousands of web pages. These web pages contained mostly the following: physical information about the host (i.e. blonde hair, schitzophrenic, etc), what their favorite movies/books/music/shows were, and perhaps even links to some of their friends' web pages of the same nature.

That's all. And there were hundreds of these, and basically all they served to do was clutter up the place, and probably helped along the great "dot com bust" that made everyone involved in the internet realize they need to slow down a bit. And they did. For a while, people were somewhat concentrated on putting actual information out there on the internet.

Then LiveJournals came along.

As I said earlier, LiveJournals are places where just about anyone can come along and give their thoughts on, well, anything. Some might say that the ability to share our views and opinions with the world is the most wonderful part of the internet. Well, it might be good in theory, but that theory just flat-out ignores the nature of people. The nature of people is that we are selfish and niave. This is not a good combination. The fact is that the majority of people feel as though they are the most important piece of the universe. The critical piece of the puzzle, the bottommost support beam. If they weren't there everything would just fall apart.

You see, LiveJournal (and other services like it), in theory, is a great idea. It gives people a free space to share their thoughts an opinions on any given topic. The problem is that the things that people write in these journals are the most banal and self-indulgant topics imaginable. Aside from a select few (there's always the exception. To every rule. For example, the idea is in place that all men are rude and obnoxious and have no sensitivity whatsoever. This is not true: there are homosexuals who aren't like that) everyone uses their LiveJournal to post about their own trivial bullshit (send hatemail to maninabox@sluggy.net).

If you read these things, most of them are about what the people did that day or what sorts of horrible emotional traumas are besmirching them this week. I'm really ****ing sorry, but no one wants to hear about what you ate for breakfast this morning. The only people who do are stalkers (although eating breakfast can be an interesting story if executed correctly: see Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson).

And nothing is worse than reading the journal of a pubescent female. If you thought hearing about pointless drama was bad, try reading some of these things. Not only do the people involved over-exaggerate every little detail within the piece, but they also tend to use vague metaphoric termanology to describe every event. And gods help you if you come across one who has recently broken up with a boyfriend.

I recall one point in my life wherein a friend of mine (Matt, actually) told me about what a sewage treatment plant is like, because he went on a field trip to one. Apparently there is a point in the process where the shit and the water are so highly pressurized that, if a person were to fall in, they wouldn't even be able to swim to the top, and would pretty much be guaranteed to die in a pool of water and feces.

Well, that's sort of what reading Livejournals is like. If you accidentally get caught up in the "community" and lure of females associated, you're basically going to end up drowning in shit.

And with that appetizing little analogy, I shall leave you now. Take care of yourself.

-Louie out.