People from other lives

[triskellian]

I've just noticed an LJ belonging to someone who used to go out with a friend of mine from another life, and it occurs to me (not for the first time) that the general goth/roleplaying/alternative people I hung out with in other lives may well be around here somewhere. I've occasionally done location searches on my hometown, but failed to turn up anyone I could recognise, and this person is the first definite familiar face I've seen...

... This rambling doesn't have much in the way of point, beyond a vague feeling of frustration that I can't plug my brain into the LJ servers to search for people I know ;-)

Of course, I could say here 'I was a goth and a roleplayer in Bedfordshire in the nineties - if you were too, get in touch and we can make surprised remarks about what a small world it is'. Oh look! I have said it. Well, that'll do for now, then ;-)

Comments

[waistcoatmark.livejournal.com]

Well if people had less obscure usernames, it would help. Out of my 32 friends only 6 have names that made me at least suspect who they might be (and one of those was only because _all_ his online names are along the lines of "the magician").

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

But that last reason applies to many people. My username's a dead giveaway for anyone who's encountered me online before.

[triskellian]

It's a fair point. I think a lot of us share a resistance to clearly identifying ourselves as our real-life selves on here (I can immediately think of two of our mutual LJFriends who make a particular point of principle to conceal their real names, for example). For most of us there are enough clues around that someone who knows us IRL can work it out, but, yeah, not greatly conducive to getting re-acquainted with long-lost friends. <sigh>

[triskellian]

Mine too; even though I used a different pseud pre-LJ, 'triskell' has been in my email addresses for years, and the symbol is probably familiar to lots of people who've met me, which is one of the reasons I keep it as a default despite rarely using it. It's been part of me for longer than all but one of my LJfriends.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Though the anonymity can be a real problem in some ways, I'm quite glad that LJ has made it unfriendly to locate people when you don't know their username. Although I don't put much personal stuff on my LJ, it is still a diary of sorts, and there are people I'd rather weren't reading it.

I've tried to compromise by making myself reasonably easily identifiable once you've found me (what with the photo and all :), and trusting to statistics to make sure undesirables don't find me. This isn't really ideal, but there you go.

[triskellian]

I basically agree with you (although I have previously succeeded in finding people without knowing their usernames or much about the circles they moved in; it helped that I knew they were on here, though).

I guess I'm just impatient for the day someone I actually know from another life (rather than merely recognise from one meeting) shows up on the outer edges of my LJ circle ;-)