Now, I know I had some money here yesterday...

[gwyn]

I'm always, like, a day late and a dollar short. Whenever there are kerfuffles or Big Doings in fandom, I'm walking about ten paces behind, going, "What? Huh? What?" and begging people to explain stuff to me. Trends are usually something I find out about approximately five minutes after they've passed. I hadn't even heard of hate memes until a few weeks ago, and when I did, I checked out a few of the links and thought they were kind of an interesting reaction to the way fandom is going these days. To me, they seem like they'd be more appropriately called venting comms, but then I guess half the cowardly fun of ranting about a BNF you can't stand would be gone if you were just venting rather than hating.

People seem to misunderstand what I'm saying when I say they're sociofannishly interesting to me. Maybe it's because I haven't been attacked in one, since I'm nobody, but I do find some of the ones where people vent about other fans or the fandom in general kind of morbidly interesting (the ones where people are just screaming about the series or insulting the actors they don't like? Yawn.), though also, yes, childish at a level I don't think I've seen since I was in the fourth grade. It gets old really fast.

I thought, though, that by not participating in much these days I'd be immune, but somehow one of these odd, spiteful little communities has friended me (something about crime shows, which completely flummoxed me until I remembered that I'd written one tiny Numb3rs story and have it listed as one of my interests). I actually went to see what it was, because I really don't pay attention to much (late, remember? Short of money?), and they have the rather in your face statement that if you're too stupid to do something called ban set, then you deserve to be friended by them. So, apparently they will friend you for reasons I'm not sure I understand (why on earth would a community based on anonymous hating friend... well, anyone, let alone someone who doesn't really participate?), but you're also stupid if you let them because you don't have enough time on your hands to learn arcane commands for LJ. Or something. It's hard for me to tell because... I'm stupid, according to their very helpful diagnostic skills.

So, maybe one of my actual real friends list people can help this obviously very stupid person out -- what is ban set and how do I get the fourth-graders off my friend-of list? (And truly, I beg your sincere pardon for being so busy with things like, oh, death of loved ones, taking care of a house and a more than 40-hour a week job and teaching and doing grades and trying to produce those hateable fannish products like stories and vids, because obviously it makes me stupid that I haven't learned these things about LJ and really, you should probably defriend me because who wants someone stupid on the flist?) Last week was work hell, and this week is shaping up even worse (I should so not be posting right now, but... my brain is dead already), and time isn't my friend right now in terms of doing research.

****

On a brighter, happier note, I wish sincere birthday felicitations to movies_michelle and destina. The world is a better place with you both in it, if you ask me.

Comments

[liviapenn.livejournal.com]

Just passing by on friendsfriends...

You go here:

http://www.livejournal.com/admin/console/

and type in "ban_set nameofhatecommunity"

except without the quotes.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

Go here: http://www.livejournal.com/admin/console/

Type ban_set username

This will take the name of your foflist (you're still on their flist; you can't control that!)

And they friend you so people know they exist!!!

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Very cool, thank you so much! I will definitely keep this in my memories so I won't have to ask again. I honestly hadn't even known about the console, and when I have time will poke around some more and see what's there.

Mmmm, Batman.

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Well, at least not looking at it (not that I actually bother to look at my info page much, I really need to get better at that, and I'm so far behind on managing friends and whatever) will make me feel better and less like I'm participating.

Good point about knowing they exist -- but I mean, how sad is it that I wrote like one little story and they feel they have to friend me to add to their list? It's not like I'm part of the community at large!

[batwrangler.livejournal.com]

Cribbing from delurker. To help limit the number of trolls friending you:

[begin block quote]
1: pre-emeptively.
Go to the Admin Console and type in "set latest_optout yes" (without the quote marks). This will keep your latest posts from appearing on the recent posts page, and so the script will never pick you up. Quite possibly a good idea anyway.

2: ban_set username.
Go to the Admin Console and type in "ban_set username" (without the quote marks), with the username of the journal you wish to ban replacing 'username'. This bans them from commenting in your journal (although they can still post anonymously) and also removes you from their friends list.
[end blcok quote]

[cereta.livejournal.com]

Just an addendum to the comments: ban_set will keep them from commenting in your journal, but there's pretty much nothing you can do about them having you friended. LJ culture kind of goes 'round on that one, but the general consensus is that everyone gets to control their friends list, which means no one really get to control their friends-of. Fortunately, people generally know better than to assume that because one of these idjits has you friended, that you're actually affiliated with them in any way ;).

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

there are so many, many things wrong with these communities :-) yes, they're a fascinating phenomenon but so are roaches :D

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

At the risk of, you know, showing off my stupidity even further, could you explain more about the pre-emptive thing? Would none of my recent posts show for only that comm, or would that happen to pretty much everyone? I'm not sure I know what the script actually is (I'm not the most well-versed person when it comes to understanding a lot of the coding stuff on backend things... in this case, yeah, I definitely am stupid).

[batwrangler.livejournal.com]

My understanding is that in the usual course of things, everyone's most recent public posts show up on LJ's recent posts page (http://www.livejournal.com/stats/latest.bml), and that some people are using posts appearing on that page to identify active livejournals to bother. The pre-emptive step simply tells LJ not to essential cross-post your public posts to the recent posts page. This saves you some possibly-unwanted exposure.

[movies-michelle.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the birthday wishes. Unfortunately, I dropped the piece of cake I bought earlier, but I'm trying not to let that effect the rest of my birthday.

I'm also glad to see people explaining the ban_set thing and the console. I didn't know about them, either!

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Thank you! That is something I doubt I'd ever have even heard about, so I'm grateful for the information. I've never really cared about other people "finding" me, whether it's trolling or looking for friends, so if my posts didn't show there it would not be a problem.

[keiko-kirin.livejournal.com]

I'm also glad to see people explaining the ban_set thing and the console. I didn't know about them, either!

Ditto from me! So, (a) you're not the only one a day late and a dollar short, and (b) I'm really glad you posted and asked, because this is a whole area of sociofandom I never knew existed.

Honey --I usually hit a fandom

[cattraine.livejournal.com]

long after the series it was based on is cancelled, and everyone is sick to death of it. You are ahead of me.

As, for tech--HUH?

[mystic-savage.livejournal.com]

If you're 10 steps behind, I'm 15, because I get most of my fan stuff from you, and we haven't been in very good touch lately (my bad). On my own, I seem drawn to very lame things, like Windfall, which looked good in a juicy OC kind of way, but the writing sucks.