Extremely long meta-post, yay!

[melannen]

Okay, there's been some discussion threaded through metafandom lately about class in fandom, and the extent to which fandom status is based on class and not merit. This seems to me to be missing the point, because isn't a meritocracy a class system? I've run into literal meritocracies mostly in dystopian novels and high school, and if anything they're the most stifling, stratified class systems ever, because social mobility is *impossible*; one's inherent worth cannot be changed or overcome the way economic or social issues can.

Of course, chances are that the discussion is using the word 'class' in a different and more specific sense than I am, one that probably has to do with money and inheritance and Marxism and Bahba and postmodernism and identity politics and a bunch of other stuff that I don't feel qualified to talk about. So yes, there is a class structure very evident here (and to be fair it's been acknowledged in most of the discussions): people who get virgule and people who don't, but the distinction there is not so much money or time or even merit but *language*, because academic language is intentionally obtuse and doesn't bloody get the concept of 'define your terms' has a vibrant life outside of fandom: I can't pick up the sufficient nuance for a word like 'class' through fandom the same way I have 'slash', even though they're equally vital in meaning.

But that paragraph was not so much relevant to the discussion as my attempt at making an excuse for why I feel like I'm too lower-class to just dive into the discussion. q-: My actual point is one that's also been made repeatedly, but not, I think, in the same way: The defining external factor in fandom class is *not* money, but *time*. This should not be a revelation; fandom is a *hobby*, by definition it's something we do in our free time: no free time, no hobby. Shocking.

The arguments that fandom access is based on money get my goat particularly because I don't *have* money. No, not exactly a BNF here, but I've never felt that *money* was the limitation on my participation. And my internet is paid for by my mother, but that aside I have probably spent far less than $50 on fannishness in the past year. And even that was spent not because I felt I needed it to be fannish, but because I had the money and wanted to give back to the community. In fact, I've always felt that getting involved in internet fandom removed limitations that I'd previously had due to lack of money.

People who talk about spending thousands of dollars a year on 'necessary' fannish expenses are people who have that money to spend. My free income was $3 a week until I went to college, whereupon it increased to $500 a semester in scholarship money. That's *it*, and I was raised to save at least a third of it. And I had no access to cable television. Fannish access was used books (basically whatever SF I could find) and whatever got acceptable reception on network television. [watch this space for a discussion about how fandom is the thinking person's equivalent of flea market culture.]

And then I got into online fandom, and suddenly? I have access to all the reading material I could desire, and it's enough to pick and choose; I can find out what happened in the episodes that I can't catch in reruns and even read transcripts and see screencaps; I can learn the characters and plot-arcs of shows that are only on cable, well enough to talk about them with people who do have cable (and it is possible to write a fic in a fandom where you've seen *no* canon, and get complimented for your in-canon characterization. I've done it.) Oh, and then there's just being able to *talk* with people, having access to a greater community, publish my ideas and fanfic, which is amazing and beautiful, because no *way* am I spending my entire disposable income for the year on a con or a few zines. Online fandom is actually the first place *ever* where I *haven't* felt that a lack of spending money excludes me from pop culture. And from there (if I had the personality and/or the time, anyway) I can make the connections that make money issues even *less* relevant, because for all that economics might have an invisible effect, it's undeniable that we as a community make an *effort* to make it not matter. Even someone who is as generally asocial fandom-wise as I -- all it takes is a casual mention that I don't have access to canon, and I get offers to get it to me free, or for little more than the cost of postage (and I really need to get back to laylah about those HL dvds...) (And to some extent paid-lj is a marker of fandom status, not economically, but because these days I assume that anyone with a free account is too low-status for an lj fairy to donate them time). In other words, if you can afford internet access, you don't *need* to be able to afford anything else.

All any of that requires is an obsolete computer capable of accessing the internet, a crappy dial-up account, and a happy-go-lucky attitude toward spoilers (it would be interesting to try to correlate spoiler-phobia with economic class...) Of course there are some limitations; vidding, for example, generally requires at least broadband and Windows XP; and making high-quality fanart generally requires buying high-quality art supplies. And becoming a supplier of content takes money -- having your own domain or archive, or capping or ripping, or running a lexicon site, for example, requires extra outlay. But you know what? In my corners of fandom, none of that really has any bearing on fandom status: the content-suppliers are either mostly invisible, or better known for their fic or meta than their other activities. And all you need to publish fic or meta is a free lj account. Sure, it would be nice to be able to buy all the DVDs I want, but a) I'm too busy reading fic to watch them anyway, and b) I'd mostly be doing it because I feel guilty about living off the kindness of others. And sure, you might get a head start if you're willing to burn money, but that doesn't automatically correlate to better status long-term.

Or to economic class, for that matter. What originally got me thinking about this are the differences between my sister's fannish experience and mine: she's about as close as you can get to identical socioeconomic background, the only difference being that at the time we were getting into this, she was a poor grad student on a fellowship, and I was a poor undergrad on a scholarship. (Now we're both bums living off our mother, but anyway.) She, however, was much more willing to spend money on fandom; she's one who needs all the dvd box sets and 40 gigs of hard drive space just for clips and her own domain and every episode as soon as it comes out and on videotape. I just mess about on lj a lot. The difference in fannish experience? Well, I think she's higher status than I am; she thinks I'm higher status than she is. The *experience* has been different, because we're different people with different things to offer, but it has nothing to do with money spent or our social background. (And I couldn't define what that is, really-- we're white, American, and probably lower-middle-class by family income and socialization, although with the house there's nearly a million dollars in assets and both my parents had masters' degrees. Also we're liberal geeks, which messes up classifications anyway.)

Not to deny that rl circumstances have an effect on fan status, but it is *not* money, it's free time. And not just free time, but a specific *sort* of free time. *Flex* time: most of the extremely high-status fans are the sort who have access to the internet pretty much constantly, with an hour or two off for commutes or classes or doing the work you're actually being paid for; ljs will be updated any time of day, people are on AIM constantly, e-mail answered conscientously. (It's interesting to ponder how much this has changed with the decline of mailing lists: I would think they would be much more conducive to checking once or twice a day than the current message board format that's popular.) Weekends off aren't going to let you keep up at the level that's necessary for becoming a really high-status fan; neither is checking lj before work every day.

This is another thing I picked up on through discussions with my sister; she commented that my fandom flist has *much* more interesting real lives than hers does. I think that has less to do with our fandom tastes than our friending policy; our flists are equally smart, thoughtful, pleasant and well-written. But I'm far more self-conscious about fandom status than she is, so I'm much more likely to flist people with a similar lj rank-- that is, between 10 and 100 friend-ofs, and similar posting frequency and comment numbers. My sister just flists people whose ljs she likes (which, granted, is a much healthier policy, but my friending issues aren't the point here. Watch this spot.) That means that her flist is skewed to people with high merit and high fandom status/visibility; mine is skewed to people with high merit but comparatively *low* status. The creative, intelligent, articulate people on my flist aren't as high-status as their merit should indicate: and the obvious reason is that they spend their time other ways. (I think at the time we had the discussion, three of the fandom people I read were at archeology field camp, another couple were studying abroad, two were trying to get original novels published, several were occupied with very interesting, non-white-collar jobs, or busy organizing for cons, or politically or socially active, or working on a third or fourth college degree. Not terrifically adventurous, but it all takes time away from fandom.)

That said, there's a few professions/lifestyles that turn up with extremely high frequency among high-status fans; they correlate somewhat but not exactly to socioeconomic class. There's students, mostly university level, and academics; people who work white-collar jobs that let them surf the internet most of the day; people who work at home; and people who don't work. These lifestyles are conducive to not just a lot of free time, but to spending most of that free time in a sedentary fashion, either because you're stuck in the office or dorm or with the kids, because you can't afford to go out, or you're physically unable to have a more active hobby. When I first starting regularly reading a lot of bnf ljs by surfing the flists of communities, I was startled by the proportion of highly popular, highly prolific writers who are homebound to one extent or another-- some of them have essentially made fandom their career, and many of them are not from bourgeois backgrounds. Many of the rest are university students or academics. Few of them are exactly swimming in cash.

Conclusions: Money and socioeconomic background are not nearly as correlated to fandom status as quality of free time. Generalizations are fun. q-:

And then there's the part of the discussion which asks why fic never addresses issues of class. Tosh. Fic constantly addresses issues of class. It probably addresses issues of class as often and as realistically as it addresses gender issues. For heaven's sake, there's a whole *genre* of hookerfic, and if *that* doesn't play around with a character's class status....? Any fandom where social class is important in the canon will have a very strong strain of fanfic which deals with it, frequently in AUs (and I was highly amused by the dS AU that recast all the working-class characters as English professors. Yummy meta-fic.) In fandoms where it doesn't come up very often in character interaction (like Stargate, which deals with class on a galactic scale rather than a national one, and the Jossverse, where everybody's suffering from liberal guilt ... ooh, I just found another reason the SW prequels never sat right with me: everybody acts upper-class, even the slaves), it doesn't come up as much in the fic, frankly because it would often feel out of character. In fandoms where it *is* important-- BG, HL, HP, real SW, dS, PotC, etc-- it comes up a lot. Certainly at *least* as often as queer issues do. Even in XF, where everybody's an FBI agent and class is implied through interaction rather than stated in canon, many of the better fics take into account the class differences in their pairings.

Maybe fewer people discuss class in meta. Partially because (as I have discovered) it's really hard to openly discuss class openly without either using esoteric terminology or risking unintentional offence (my government 100 class spent a whole month discussing what, if anything, 'race' is. Head explodey.) And maybe it came up more often in older fic and fandoms -- SGA, my newest fandom, is annoying me with its tendency to make John's father either a military officer or upper-middle-class, when the simplest interpretation is that he joined ROTC to pay for college, and stayed in so that he could fly -- on the other hand, there's also been lots of SGA fic dealing with the class divisions between the military and the scientists. And yummy AUs that play with class. So. Maybe it's just somewhat invisible, even in fic that deals with class, *because* we take class for granted in a way that we no longer take gender for granted, *because* we don't discuss it endlessy in meta, *because* it's not x-rated -- but it's definitely there in the fic.

That's my meta-rant for the month. Now, on to the important questions, [Poll #544172]

Comments

[kaylarudbek.livejournal.com]

Interesting entry. IIRC, I saw something once about military being a lower-middle-class career (for the officers) which means that even if you have a military parent, you're not upper class. In the military, you may be an officer and a gentleman by an act of Congress, but you're not necessarily upper-class.

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Interesting entry. IIRC, I saw something once about military being a lower-middle-class career (for the officers) which means that even if you have a military parent, you're not upper class. In the military, you may be an officer and a gentleman by an act of Congress, but you're not necessarily upper-class. <i<>Military Brats</i> (can't remember author) and <i>Class</i> by Paul Fussell might be fun reads for you. (and then of course there is the whole Academy-ringknocker v. ROTC mentality to get into as well...)

(Kayla, whose Old Man is retired Army)

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Well, I guess that would depend on how you structure class, and just where you draw your lines. To me, a military officer is at *least* middle-middle-class, having a bachelor's degree and a steady income. But then, I don't recall that I've never known a military officer in real life. All the military people I've known were enlisted: I live less than five miles from Fort Meade, so I went to school with many many Army and Navy brats, but they were mostly the children of specialists, who did white-collar IT and intelligence jobs, or played in the band, or something similar. And I have many uncles and cousins who enlisted/were drafted and used that to pay for college after. For the majority of the military people I know, enlisting was the step up from lower-class to lower-middle-class or better. So becoming an officer has got to be one better, right? (I'm totally not qualified to discuss the US military and class. But one of the things which has annoyed me in Stargate fandom is the assumption that all the officers went to the Academy. Except maybe the black one.)

In the US, class is still so fluid that it's very hard to talk about it concretely. And of course, *everybody* thinks they're middle class, which doesn't help. q-:

[tarimanveri.livejournal.com]

Wow, fabulous meta! And you're so right about the correlation between free time and fandom status - *contemplates the way current 40-hr/week poorly paid job is cutting into the time available for writing angsty post-HBP McGonagall goodness...*

And now I really want to see Dumbledore/Qui-gon, dammit!

[melannen.livejournal.com]

But I enjoy hearing about Canadian cadets, and their obsessive love of gravy! (And no, that was not sarcastic, I really do.) Mind you, post-McGonagall goodness would make me happy too...

Yay Dumbledore/Qui-gon!

I want to see Tom/Anakin. They can whine together about womenfolk who die from sheer narrative necessity not loving them enough OMG, and complain about the tragic Visine shortage. q-:

[melsmarsh.livejournal.com]

Wow... This is a very interesting post about classes and fandoms. I'm more like you, I really don't spend that much on fannish expenses nor am I a BNF. My fandom is obscure and there are very few BNFs, I can think of exactly two. A few other people are trying to drive other fans out of the fandom because they think they are BNFs when they are really canon-breakers who few people like.

Bah... Though this post did give me a new idea for an avatar. "My fandom has no life" with a picture of two vampires on it.

And as for your poll, I don't read HP but my father does so I put down the response that he thinks.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

That is a *brilliant* icon idea. *g*

And the option about Dumbledore being an Animagus is my mother's opinion, so going with parents' ideas is perfectly valid.

Interesting. Yeah, I think *particularly* in very small fandoms, with obscure source texts, the economic issues are less important-- there's less to keep up with, and people are *very* generous with sharing their materials, in my experience.

[melsmarsh.livejournal.com]

That is a *brilliant* icon idea.

Thank you! If I ever get a program that is better than MS Paint, I will do it! :)

[zodiaccat.livejournal.com]

Ticky.

Dumbledore is the Tick! He'll show up at the last moment, saving the day with his battlecry: "SPOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!"

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Well, that's certainly a possibility. q-:

[stellar-dust.livejournal.com]

my fandom flist has *much* more interesting real lives than hers does.

SHH! *covers her flists' ears*

You seem to have forgotten that time IS money. The existence of flex time reflects that you DON'T have to spend that time working to get money to pay for food, shelter, electricity, internet, etc. You have lots of money; it's just Mom's money converted to necessities, which translates to lots of free time for you. Take away everything Mom's buying or has bought for you, force you to work in order to not die, and your copious free time goes away (unless your job requires you to sit in front of a computer and do nothing ..). If you have a lot of free time, you're obviously not worried about lack of money. Obviously there are different levels of "not worried about money" .. but I'd bet that the great majority of people who are extremely involved in online fandom are not those who regularly have to scrape to pay the rent. (Or if they do, they've made the choice to prioritize fandom above food.)

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Going by what I have seen around lj, there is a fair proportion of us who *do* scrape to pay the rent. Or get by on disability. Or are slowly spending down their savings while failing to get a new job. Obviously not me, I am the good-for-nothing class, which is well represented here laso, but I waste my time rather than spending it on fandom anyway. q-:

And one of the more messed-up things about US society these days (and it's interesting to think about this in terms of US-vs. rest of the world, but class is complicated enough as it is) is that, once you've gone beyond starving student level and entered the work force, there tends to be an inverse correlation between money made and free time-- the higher paying a job is, the more likely you're expected to give up your life to it. Otherwise we wouldn't need those scary public service announcements about 'please use up your paid vacation time, for the good of us all!" People online with copious free time are likely to be working part-time retail or in a low-paying no-benefits secretarial or data entry kind of position, or self-employed as a contract worker, or something similar.

Obviously I'm not denying that there is *some* correlation between free time and money -- if I had to do full-time manual labor this summer in order to pay for college, like parts of my flist -- I'd be wasting a lot less time online-- but it's *not* as direct a correlation as a lot of people make it out to be. There are far more people online who have free time because they're scraping by, insufficiently employed, than people (like us) who have a lot of free time because they're living off investment income.

And no, it's not prioritizing fandom above food when you've tried and *can't* get, or keep, a job, or you have a part-time one that you can't afford to keep but can't afford to quit either--

[zodiaccat.livejournal.com]

Slightly off-topic, but the more recent "please use up your paid vacation time, for the good of us all!" commercials were actually commercials for an amusement park.

[minim_calibre]

This fits pretty much with my experience and the experiences I've seen on my flist. My flist contains a lot of students and people with severe physical disabilities that prevent them from working for a living, as well as a fair number of random computer grunts like myself.

Going by what I have seen around lj, there is a fair proportion of us who *do* scrape to pay the rent. Or get by on disability. Or are slowly spending down their savings while failing to get a new job.

I got into fandom first while killing time following a layoff, where I had to still physically be on-site (part of the code clean up crew), with net access, but had nothing to do for most of my three remaining months. I got into the fanfiction aspects of fandom during the following months of unemployment and dwindling prospects. It was cheaper than buying books, and kept me from spending all my time thinking about how the devil I was going to pay my mortgage. I was able to spend about 20 hours a day on fandom. (I don't sleep much, and as I was always at the computer sending off my resume anyway...)

When I got a contract position, I was able to maintain a level of participation close to that while working, because frankly, a lot of computer work in my field involves sitting around the office twiddling your thumbs and waiting for someone to get a file or specs to you.

Right now, my free time is at an all-time low, between working my most recent contract from home and caring for my baby. My fannish participation and status, such as it is, are also at all-time lows.

[melusina]

That's absolutely brilliant - very astute observations!

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

in via metafandom

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

(it would be interesting to try to correlate spoiler-phobia with economic class...)

*craves*

In my corners of fandom, none of that really has any bearing on fandom status: the content-suppliers are either mostly invisible, or better known for their fic or meta than their other activities. And all you need to publish fic or meta is a free lj account.

That's probably broadly true, yeah, but there's 'invisible' influence which I know is how I've been approaching this one lately. A large enough provider of content can impose ideas of content and acceptability, and so on. Doesn't always happen, but I think it's one to consider.

And not just free time, but a specific *sort* of free time. *Flex* time: most of the extremely high-status fans are the sort who have access to the internet pretty much constantly, with an hour or two off for commutes or classes or doing the work you're actually being paid for; ljs will be updated any time of day, people are on AIM constantly, e-mail answered conscientously. (It's interesting to ponder how much this has changed with the decline of mailing lists: I would think they would be much more conducive to checking once or twice a day than the current message board format that's popular.)

Well, like one of the other comments said, time is money, in a way. But overall I think I tend to see "time rich, wealth poor" as something of an equalising effect for some. (And those in low-paid jobs with long hours are in the worst of both worlds.) I think for both time and money half the problem is perception, the idea that you can't be participating on the same level. I mean, I've got tons of free time because I'm living on disability benefits but I can still hit things in fandom where the deciding factor is money and the same goes for those with lots of money and very little time who hit time as a barrier. But then, I suppose prioritising of fandom in financial terms has the related prioritising of time.

And then there's the part of the discussion which asks why fic never addresses issues of class. Tosh. Fic constantly addresses issues of class. It probably addresses issues of class as often and as realistically as it addresses gender issues. For heaven's sake, there's a whole *genre* of hookerfic, and if *that* doesn't play around with a character's class status....?

Heh, here I think we mostly hit differing definitions of 'class'. :) I know that I rarely bump in to hooker fic, and when I do I don't tend to see it as an exploration of social class in general.

Re: in via metafandom

[melannen.livejournal.com]

>>That's probably broadly true, yeah, but there's 'invisible' influence which I know is how I've been approaching this one lately.

You'll note that even after my snark about academic language, I very carefully didn't attempt to define what I meant by 'fandom status'. And the way canon-sharers shape fandom is something I've found interesting, I've theorized before about the way certian older fandoms may have swung toward OTP because certain episodes were shared more freely, and sites like hplexicon and gateworld certainly serve a similar function. But at the same time, I almost view that as a different *level* of fan-ness, almost skirting the edge of being a canon creator. I remember not too long ago, somebody did a poll on which fandom names were most recognized; the only (primarily) content-provider or archivist I recall who even made the list was the founder of ff.net, and even then hardly anyone recognize his name. Especially when anyone can start an LJ comm for free, being a webmaster is becoming less important, I think.

>>Here I think we mostly hit differing definitions of 'class'. :) I know that I rarely bump in to hooker fic

Well, hooker fic is a lot more common in certain fandoms, I do believe. And, well, it's hooker!fic, so one doesn't really look toward it for deep exploration of *anything*, yah? But at the same time, the basic concept is to take a character (usually one who is very invested in his position in society) and then drop him all the way down to the lowest possible place, economically and socially, and watch him cope and then claw his way back up. Usually by way of dirty!hot!sex, of course.

It may just be that my memory is self-selective. Or that I'm using much broader definitions of 'class' and 'addresses issues'. But I still maintain that I've read just as many fics with a realistic and thoughtful exploration of class issues as I have with a realistic and thoughtful exploration of gender issues. (Which is not necessarily saying much...)

Re: in via metafandom

[nostalgia-lj.livejournal.com]

But at the same time, I almost view that as a different *level* of fan-ness, almost skirting the edge of being a canon creator. I remember not too long ago, somebody did a poll on which fandom names were most recognized; the only (primarily) content-provider or archivist I recall who even made the list was the founder of ff.net, and even then hardly anyone recognize his name. Especially when anyone can start an LJ comm for free, being a webmaster is becoming less important, I think.

Well, my own interest in class and fandom's mostly about how it may affect the way we approach fandom, like how important archive policies are in the general run of fandom and so on. Actually, now I think about it, I haven't seen that much discussion of how much fame and impact-on-fandom overlap. Hmm. *ponders pointlessly*

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

Very interesting thoughts, and for the most part quite accurate, I think. Time is far more important than money, in online fandom.

That said, there's a few professions/lifestyles that turn up with extremely high frequency among high-status fans; they correlate somewhat but not exactly to socioeconomic class. There's students, mostly university level, and academics; people who work white-collar jobs that let them surf the internet most of the day; people who work at home; and people who don't work.

Yep. I think that's about it. I'm astonished at the prevalence of academics on my flist. The people with time and internet access tend to be a fairly homogeneous bunch, social-class-wise.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Well, of course there's also the fact that acafen flock together, and that if you're looking for people capable of insightful thoughts about storycrafting and society, academia is a good place to look. But there's still a fair number of people who are just smart folks with a lot of time on their hands and not much else-- we do tend almost universally to have college degrees or be working toward them, but look beyond that and there's a suprising amount of diversity, I think.

Here via metafandom

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

My free income was $3 a week until I went to college

I just had to comment on this because I was in the same boat. I got $2 allowance a week, which I had to earn by tidying and vacuuming my room every Saturday, and picking up the baby toys every evening (my mom ran a daycare in our home). This was the early 90s, but $2 was still about as useless then as it is now. It meant maybe I could buy lunch once a week instead of taking something from home. But it was what my mom could afford.

And other than that, I really agree with your post and don't have much to add.

Re: Here via metafandom

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Yes, $3 a week allowance, and my parents said they wanted us to concentrate on school rather than getting jobs, so allowance was it unless I wanted to resort to special pleading. (Mind you, we went to a lot of rummage sales, so that could still buy a fair amount of used books and clothes and action figures, but in terms of internet access and cons and DVDs, not so much.) I learned how to manage without spending money.

[kattahj.livejournal.com]

If this is true, it means that the longer I remain unemployed, the more of a BNF I will become.

Maybe I should stop praying so hard for an employer to call back...

*grin* Very interesting thoughts, and I think you're mostly right - though money is definitely what has kept me out of vidding, time defines how much ficcing I get done.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Heh, yeah, for vidding you need at least broadband or DVDs (or possibly a video capture card/fancy VCR rig). Although I've found Windows Movie Maker adequate as long as I don't attempt anything actually, you know, artistic. But the politics of vidding BNFdom are far beyond my ken anyway, shiver.

[kattahj.livejournal.com]

I have an old iMac that doesn't play DVDs or do much of anything, really. So I put vidding along with a bunch of other things in a folder called "things I'll do when I can afford it." :-)

Friending

[(Anonymous)]

"But I'm far more self-conscious about fandom status than she is, so I'm much more likely to flist people with a similar lj rank-- that is, between 10 and 100 friend-of"

****I'm intrigued by this point. What would you do if you came across someone's LJ which seemed interesting but whose number of friends failed to live up to your friending policy? {Seaforth, who doesn't have an LJ so probably isn't even worth an answer].

Re: Friending

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Well, it's not nearly so strict as a 'policy', just a neurosis that I've codified. But, well, if I friended everybody with an interesting journal, I'd have a completely unmanageable flist, so there's a bunch of things I consider along with how interesting their journal is, most of them entirely irrational, like, do I think they'd like me, and would it look like I was trying to suck up or stalk them, and is it a full moon, and did the coin toss come up tails, and will I see links to their better posts even if I don't friend? Friendng policy is one of the most fraught things about lj, and I friend new people only rarely anyway, so it's not so much that having the wrong flist count disqualifies you, as that having the right count will give me another reason to act. I did mention it's irrational, right?

Re: Friending

[(Anonymous)]

I'm laughing as I type this, so apologies for any errors. Thanks for bothering to reply to my query. I'd never fully appreciated all the pros and cons of having a live journal. 'Irrational' I can understand (except for a friend of mine who could *never* date a man who squeezed his toothpaste from the middle of the tube rather than the bottom. Never). Thanks again. Seaforth.