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your space. You're free to write whatever the hell you want in it. But, don't be surprised when people call you on your shitty behavior and poor manners. Because on livejournal, your space gets incorporated into my space. That is, afterall, what its all about.

To destroy this kind of discussion in the name of preventing piracy is exactly the kind of act that ISPs and social networking services like Livejournal protest when, for instance, copyright holders demand that they be shut down because some fraction of their users are using their infrastructure to share pirated content.

"if Scans_Daily were a male dominated community it would have not been suspended like this. Why? Because I don’t think it would have been on a site like Livejournal."

Female fans populate social network sites run by panicky male-dominated corporations who want to make money from selling advertising to women, but don’t really have the brass ovaries to deal with hosting female interaction on the internet. It’s like they expect feathered sugar with a hint of spice and are shocked to discover girls have locker room talk and smoke in the bathroom. Male fan communities seem to be owned and operated by like-minded males

On another topic, only tangentially related to RaceFail '09, is the perception I have that Livejournal, as a blogging platform, continues to be considered some weird incestuous second-class place compared to Wordpress or Blogspot or something. I frequently see derogatory comments out in the blogosphere about LJ bloggers, implying that anyone writing on LJ isn't worth paying attention to. (Yes, Scalzi, this means you, and not just for yesterday's post.)

And I have to ask, why is a freestanding blog more valid somehow than an LJ? Is it somehow the community nature of LJ? The icons? The friends-list function? What is it that makes LJ so much tackier than Blogspot?

... or is it that LJ is perceived as majority female?

then you are So Super Great And Powerful because readers come all the way to look at your blog

I think there's something to this. The perception of Manly Independence, even though it's false because they're still using a blogging platform like Blogspot or Wordpress, it's just a little more detached from the other blogs on Blogspot or Wordpress. So they have to use an RSS reader with their morning coffee, instead of a flist.

. The major lesson seems to be, if you are an individual with authority and legitimacy established through traditional channels, you are free to use a name and face on the internet. Everyone else, too bad.

Most likely, non-famous Japanese individuals unconsciously fear some form of punishment for establishing a public identity through a non-legitimized blog or stating opinions without proper self-legitimacy. Of course, Western blogs also are an affront to the social order, but that is exactly why ambitious individuals embrace blogs — to jump around professional barriers and bottlenecks. In other words, the West’s excitement about blogs is that you can create a name for yourself by stating opinions publicly. In Japan, the excitement appears to be that you can state opinions without having a name attached.

The end result is that anonymity blunts the net’s possibility of changing the current social order. The two-tier system of blogs reinforces the fundamental principles of Japanese social organization. Only individuals at the top of the hierarchy are allowed to embrace a public identity, just as it was before Web 2.0.