Abandon Ship! Abandon Ship!

An interesting quote from Wikipedia, sourced from this interview (in Russian).

"Anton Nossik, an advisor to SUP, has not reacted favourably to criticism by site users. In an interview given in March 2008, he accused LiveJournal users of "trying to scare and blackmail us, threatening to destroy our business," and stated that a large class of users have as their only purpose bringing harm to LiveJournal and its founders; "their goal is to criticize, destablilize and ruin our reputation." In the interview, he predicted that his likely reaction to such pressure would be to retaliate against the users rather than bowing to their pressure."

Okay, so, wait a minute here. Bringing harm to LJ and its founders? For the record, dude, SUP are not the fucking founders. I 'speck Brad, because I remember what LJ was like when Brad was still running the show. His vision was solid, and he never faltered. The only fail we had back in those days was server overload... which while it may have been annoying, it was a testament to how awesome the service was. It was so hot, everybody wanted to be a part of it.

And we, the users, helped build this place as much as Brad did. We, the users, ran the support forums. We created visual content such as mood themes and journal layouts. We built the communities and connections. We emptied our pockets for paid and permanent accounts, because we wanted LJ to continue to grow and thrive. Brad founded it. We fortified it.

Now, I realize this is just one man speaking, here. And dear Anton, wherever you are, you can lick my sweaty asscrack and like it. If his attutide is representative of the general body of owners that are Our Russian Overlords, though, they have no idea who we are, or what LJ is. If anyone has the right to criticize, it's us. And if anyone is ruining LJ's reputation, it's them.

And yet, this dude is likely to retaliate against us? The people who made LJ what it is (or was, and as it should have remained)?

Fucking bastard.



Still, I don't want to stay pissed off. I don't want to dwell on what LJ has become. Even now, especially now, I want to remember what it was. I want to remember when LJ was about being a part of something. I may have missed early adopter status by a few months, but in my heart, I still feel like one. That place has been my most stable internet-home for just three months shy of a decade. I watched it grow, and I grew with it. And I love it. For what it used to be, I still love it.

On that note, here's an old gem which some of you old fogies might remember. Or, if you came on board later on in the game, here's how LJ should be remembered... in musical form: http://news.livejournal.com/50307.html


(x-post'd to my journal)