the "friends only" poll

[lauralh]

I personally don't get the concept of journals that are completely friends only, although I do often post FO and other restricted types of posts. Anyway, here's a poll about it.

[Poll #113782]

Comments

[lisa.livejournal.com]

i went mostly friends only/special group only after i started working for livejournal. the number of people visiting just got too high for me to feel comfortable writing anything very personal about myself.

also, now when i talk about "work" it has the potential to affect anyone reading my journal, so i restrict it to only the closest friends.

[madam0wl.livejournal.com]

My mom/sis/few friends back home read it, but they aren't LJ users so I can easily block stuff I don't want them to know (or don't care about / would be confused by) by posting "friends only". Typically I don't have anything controversial to say publically anyway... the juicy stuff goes in it my hand journal for my eyes only (until I die or try to publish it as an expose).

I'm a hermit and only have like, 6 "friends", so I'm not usually posting/restricting with them in mind...

From my experience "friends only" people I've befriended and subsequently defriended had way too much junior-high drama going on, just within their LJ group, that I found boring.

[babycola.livejournal.com]

If I post pictures of myself, which happens very rarely, it's friends only.

I don't make many friends-only posts though.. It's usually random crap that I don't think would interest anonymous readers (I generally make surveys f/o) OR it's a very topic-specific thing that only a few people would know about.

[janiev.livejournal.com]

I'm not very shy. my journal used to be open to anyone and everyone. However, I had a security scare of epic proportions, so I had to lock it mostly down.

One day, my ex-boss came into my office with 5 or 6 printed pages of my journal. A couple of friends only entries. Apparently, I had mentioned a client in a protected entry and he managed to find his name through an internet search and bust into my journal. He then printed out pages of private entries and mailed them to my boss.

That was enough to motivate me to go mostly Friends Only.

[katyakoshka.livejournal.com]

I know it seems like my journal is all FO, but it's just that 98% of the time, I'm either posting from work, or posting filtered stuff. If I had better online access at home (as in, available computer and line), then it wouldn't be a problem.

[jimbojones.livejournal.com]

I've only made an FO post once, and basically it was in order to spare someone's feelings over something dating-related that really didn't mean jack shit, but, yanno, "feelings." Not always rational.

I generally just try to avoid having much in my life that I really mind somebody with the inclination to dig for it being able to find, and further try to avoid posting any information about anything that DOESN'T fall under that category ANYWHERE on the internet. See definition of "internet" for reasons why.

[i-and-i.livejournal.com]

my ex-bf is an asshole and reads my shit..

[kamakhai.livejournal.com]

i was firmly anti-friends only posting to begin with, thinking it pretty much defeated the purpose of an online journal. then my girlfriend at the time found it and read a post where i mentioned my doubts about the relationship and bad things ensued (though luckily i hadn't said anything at the time about the girl i'd made out with on a train). so now i cover up this sort of thing.

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

Yeah when I started online journalling (pre-LJ) I was careful only to write nice things about my boyfriend, because he'd read everything I wrote. Every time we had a fight I'd write a really depressing entry about something else, though.

[quackums.livejournal.com]

My journal is mostly friends only. I am so freaked out that my family or people from school could be reading about what I write. I died when I found out my sister was reading my UJournal. Ugh.

[biffious.livejournal.com]

I've never posted a friends-only entry. Never ever. And I've posted some detail shit sometimes. I sometimes wonder what would happen if the wrong person read my journal, but I don't really care. I don't tend to keep too many secrets in real life, so why do it here ? I do take care not to use real names though. Just in case.

[pilarcruz.livejournal.com]

I share a computer with my boyfriend, and on the days I hate him, I don't need him to know about it, because I know he reads my journal.

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

hahah, nice.

[billyfleetwood.livejournal.com]

well not like my journal has anything about my personal life , But if it did I don't care who reads it. I got nothing to hide, everybody knows what a degenerate sleazebag I am anyway.

[krikket.livejournal.com]

I've set up restricted entries because there is someone who reads my journal that I sometimes just don't want to deal with.

And other times something happens that I want to share, but I'm not ready for the information to be public knowledge. (IE: Something the media could stumble across... See the Amicus court brief...)

[monstrosity.livejournal.com]

I found out that a huge colony of kids from my school keep LJ's, and I don't want to get involved with them. I like to keep everyone on nice terms, and I'd not want to straight up tell them, "Leave me and my shit out of it." F/O helps keep my paranoia in check. And who says privacy defeats the purpose of an online journal? Privacy defeats the purpose of a public journal. They aren't synonymous.

everything is related to seinfeld...

[russ.livejournal.com]

worlds would collide!

[mattholland.livejournal.com]

i guess i just like the control of knowing who can read my entries, regardless of how personal they are.