I decided to take a one-week vacation from LJ just for the hell of it. Not reading it, not making comments. Why? Not because I have any illusion that my absence will influence LJ in any way. Some people are planning a one day boycott, which to my mind is a rather ineffective solution. People have complained about LJ a lot, and LJ has corrected some of the inadvertent errors they’ve made, but very rarely rescinded policy decisions. In any event, in the future, it is clear, there will be more of the same. People should just ask themselves whether they can deal with more of that or not.

What it comes down to, is that most of the things that really annoy people about LJ are not about the most vital things. If LJ fucks up in certain areas, people will not have to organize a boycott or denounce LJ with cat macros or whatever: people will just leave immediately because the terms are no longer acceptable to them. The fact that people are complaining while not leaving shows that they have simply not gotten uncomfortable enough. LJ knows this full well. In fact, it would make much more sense if the people complaining stopped protesting to LJ (because LJ doesn’t listen) and started to lobby their friends to at least read them on other sites. If one’s friends leave LJ, it doesn’t matter what LJ does, because you’re not there anymore, in other words. Also, it is more effective to lobby one’s friends because there is much more of a chance that one will persuade them, really.

My reason is more personal; I want to just be without LJ a week, and see what it’s like. I doubt my absence will be really noted by the people on my flist, because it’s not exactly unusual for someone to go a week without posting if they’re busy.