it’s not that livejournal was all that great, it’s just that LJ was the only network that clearly worked backward from actual social patterns field-tested in, like, the molten social hell of middle school, and designed software around that

It was an incredible source of drama and it was where I met my wife. Excellent site, excellent warning flag for how Russia was planning to operate in the 21st century.

I miss it too.

I'm going to steal "the molten social hell of middle school" when writing my next research protocol, if I mayI'm going to steal "the molten social hell of middle school" when writing my next research protocol, if I may

Was merely the least fucked up

It taught me about disturbing fandom individuals before tumblr or 4chan or the farms could

I'm laughing because it's true

Livejournal had robust user control over every aspect - posts, comments, followers, mutuals, reading pages, icons, searches, tags, type of editor - with rather coherent menus & chronologicial order. And the biz plan of everything that followed has been "break & remove all of that".

Wow, spot-on!

say more? i do not remember what it was like to use livejournal really

My most common use of LJ was when somebody posted elsewhere (Usenet, email, or (gasp)IRL) that they'd posted more details about whatever in their LJ, and over on LJ, there were threaded replies to posts. But I wasn't a heavy user, and my account was mostly for seeing/commenting on friends' accounts.