The other side of the mountain

[muckefuck]

Late last year, when the members of the cliquish peer group who lured me to LiveJournal/were lured at the same time I was weren't posting enough to keep me entertained, I started doing some browsing. There was this guy vianegativa who had posted a comment in a friend's journal and I followed it to his profile. When I saw his picture, I exclaimed:

"Holy Shit, it's Matt the Ewok!"

Like me, Matt's involved with the incestuous Chicago bear community. I don't run into him much now that I'm no longer such a major tramp, but we still occasionally run into one another. Out of curiosity, I started following links from his Friend's list and quickly recognised grunter, drubear, and someone else from my Bear Naked days whose username (and real name!) I've since forgotten.

I had uncovered a bearish corner of LiveJournal--and the cultural differences were striking. Few people in my original friend group (or the nest of alumni I uncovered in another serendipitous bout of browsing) use pictures of themselves as LJ icons. Mine comes from a Chinese scroll my boyfriend gave me, bunj's from a famous mannerist painting, and rollick's from a variety of wicked cool art she apparently owns.

The bears, however, nearly all have faithful photos of themselves; some reveal a great deal of themselves. Almost all their usernames contain "bear" (or it's equivalent in other languages, like ursus) or "cub", whereas many of the alumni et al. use variatons of nicknames we've had for years. Almost immediately, I began to stumble across flamewars; I can only remember one uncivil argument in any of my Friends' journals, and that was obstensibly about politics rather than personalities.

So I pulled back. I've been keeping a very low profile here so I can feel free to talk about work and personal problems without having to worry too much about who was listening. A faithful reader could figure out where I work, for instance, but a casual one probably wouldn't find enough clues. Already, because of the presence of several close friends, there's a fair bit I don't feel I can talk freely about. (We're not exactly without our personality conflicts, after all, but, if anything, we're more nonfrontational about them now than we were in college.) If I were to be "outed" to the bears, my kvetching about issues with my boyfriend could become grist for the rumour mill. Who wants that?

But now, I'm starting to waiver. Every time I peruse Friends' Friends lists, I see people I'd love to reconnect with. (sfkuma, who knew you were here?) Even more than belonging to the same listserv or newsgroup, LiveJournal gives one a sense of keeping in touch with someone with the absolute minimum of effort. It's tempting, so very tempting...

Comments

[mollpeartree.livejournal.com]

You could always start a secret lj unconnected with this one to keep in touch with this other set of folks. Granted, that might be just as confusing as having "friends groups" (which I didn't even know you could do until I read this). I've got extry codes if you need one.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Actually, I've toyed with the idea of starting a new journal that's totally anonymous and "outing" muckefuck. But that also strikes me as a lot of trouble, keeping two journals and having to decided what goes in each. I mean, I might as well just make Private entries--which I have done a couple of times already.