17th March, 2008
LJ Does Not Want Your Thoughts on Yaoi
Monday, 9:32 am in The Soapbox
(Argh, I get so twitchy when people link to me from locked posts; it’s a disorder, I know. But hi anyway to all you people trickling in from 
tealizard’s journal.)
Some of you (by which I mean “none of you”, hence I’m pointing it out) may have noticed that today I went through and changed my interests list on LiveJournal to the following:
basic accounts, bisexuality, bondage, boys, depression, faeries, fanfiction, girls, guys, hardcore, making fun of lj, making fun of sup, no_lj_ads, pain, porn, removing advertising, sex, thoughts on yaoi, yaoi, интернет, кино, книги, компьютеры, кошки, литература, любовь, море, музыка, психология, путешествия
Who cares, y’all’re saying, right?
Right, well. I kinda do. See, turns out that SUP’s decided its user base isn’t presenting an attractive enough image to the outside world, and has gone through and censored its “popular interests” list. Super-fun happy details are here, but in a nutshell it’s gone through and removed anything that has to do with sexuality (especially homosexuality), anything Russian-language and fanfiction. For some reason.
And normally I’m one of those people who believes in the Living Room Theory of the Internet; that is, a website is like someone’s living room, and they have the right to do whatever they want with it. If they want to censor their own living room, that’s their prerogative, y’know? But…
But there’s something that shits me off more than I believe in the Living Room Theory and that’s this puritan notion that sexuality – especially ‘non-standard’ sexuality – is some massive boogeyman that needs to be hidden from view for the children! And while I’m at it, the removal of the Russian language stuff bothers me too; there’s something deeply… racist? Cold War-esque? About it all. Which is kinda ironic ‘cause, yanno, the reason SUP (a Russian company) bought LJ in the first place was because of its massive Russian user base. And now they’re gonna pretend like it doesn’t exist? Why, exactly? To pander to some backwards anti-non-English-speaking sentiment? Because I can’t think of any other reason right now…
So, hence the changed interests. Because a little civil e-disobedience never hurt anyone…
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Comments
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Lawl! An awesome interests list, you got! OMG, LJ has drama?
I had no idea. Heh, that’s so weird… -
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LOL @ the fact that “faeries” is censored.
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Yeah, BL there, Disney.
The filters seem to have been lifted as of today, though. Go go the ability of the LJ user base to storm in their teacup! \
/ -
Talking of storms in a teacup - will you be taking part in the content “blackout” on Friday?
I decided to boycott it in advance by going forwards in time in my uber Tardis-esque time machine complete with flashing blue LEDs and its own “no place like 127.0.0.1” doormat, and posting an entry on Friday. (Also known as manually editing the date, but that doesn’t sound as brilliantly exciting as the BS I just made up.)
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Negator. It seems awfully counter-productive to keep fighting a battle that’s already been won (the filters were reversed the day after they came online).
I know this is kinda about the Basic accounts thing, too, but… it just doesn’t make any sense to me, I dunno. Displeasure has already been expressed, and the bandwagon has long-since left the barn, IMO.
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Crazy fuckin’ Russians.
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I’ll have you know my dad is Russian!
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Is he crazy?
My sister in law is Russian too, coincidentally.
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I dunno about crazy, but I’ve been told he’s hard to keep up with.