If you want to protest the censoring of the popular interests list, post LOTS of fanfic and gay porn and stuff about mental illness and faeries to up the odds of that coming up when someone clicks "show me a random post" and gets introduced to what LJ is all about.
Except for the very real fact that this is actually not what LJ is all about. :) And I'm not trying to be contentious here, but the whole piece's arguments, each and every single one, very clearly illustrate the inaccuracy of that last statement - so it seems odd to me to keep stating how small fandom is, then turn around and make it sound like it's the only thing in LJ-landia. No, he was saying "if you want to make the censored interests a bigger deal, make them a bigger presence". The underlined part was in reference to people clicking "random post", not to his list of things. I've reread the sentence and to me it still very clearly reads as saying LJ is all about "fanfic and gay porn and stuff about mental illness and faeries". I wish I could say differently or read it in the way you are, but in saying to post that type of content so that that "show me a random post" brings up these topics or types of post in direct correlation with "to what LJ is all about" pretty much is saying that's what LJ is all about.
Post content X + so that it comes up when random post is selected = LJ is about this. That's the sentence.
Did I say this content was bad? Of course not and I've no doubt you know this. What I am saying is that his sentence structure needs work if "LJ is all about this content" is not what he's trying to imply, because as of this time, the sentence structure itself is and it's very easy to read it as such. And it seems to me that it's a pretty important detail for this particular type of post and argument. :) My reading is "clicking random post is how to learn what LJ is about".
ETA: And in an attempt to not sound like a broken record - it just seems so clear to me that that is the meaning, I'm honestly not sure how you don't see it. I can see why you read it the way you do. I just also see the inherent flaw in the wording of the sentence, and to me it's pretty severe considering the importance of the message the post wishes to express. Just to jump in from a strictly 'reading the language' POV (because, uh, otherwise I don't care?) I'd say it's extremely ambiguous and the first time I read it, I interpreted it the way Wills did. Your reading makes sense too but certainly wasn't the natural one for me. I'll admit to having been confused by the wording the first time I read it; it took me a try or two to parse it to your interpretation. That said, knowing  gao (and his posting habits, which are not usually focused on any of the topics mentioned), I'm entirely certain that yours is the one he meant. Which is why I did reread until I'd parsed it in a way that made sense to me in context. Also, the things that were removed have been put back, and the explanation is plausible (coding error, based on a seperate, different filter they were trying to do that would remove community/user names) http://www.livejournal.com/interests.bml?view=popularFanfiction? There. Bondage, harry potter, sex, slash, it's all pretty much still there. They just want to know who hooked up with who at Jason's party.
Jason had a party? Nobody ever tells me anything. *pouts* |
