LiveJournal originated as a personal journaling application developed by Brad Fitzpatrick, who used it to maintain an online diary.

Recognizing the wider appeal of such a platform, Fitzpatrick transformed it into a public website facilitating both personal blogging and social networking .

This hybrid approach offered users peer interaction alongside private expression.

Distinctive social features included the use of friends lists that controlled post visibility, allowing users to restrict access to their journal entries to a select network rather than general public view.

Additionally, LiveJournal popularized the use of "communities," collective blogs where multiple users could contribute posts centered on shared themes or interests.

The platform also incorporated a "friends feed," aggregating content from a user's friends and communities, enabling a continuous stream of personalized updates.

These features combined to foster an intimate, interactive community atmosphere that differentiated LiveJournal from more one-dimensional blogging sites .

LiveJournal reached its apex in the early 2000s, boasting more than 2.5 million active accounts, predominantly drawn from the English-speaking world .

This user base appreciated the platform’s diary-style blogging with strong social networking elements, which cultivated a close-knit environment where users could engage in prolonged exchanges and develop meaningful online relationships.

Particularly, specialized communities flourished around fandoms, personal narrative blogging, and early online activism.

For example, fanfiction communities used LiveJournal’s friends-only posts and communities to share and critique their works within trusted groups, encouraging creative collaboration.

The platform became a crucial space for creative collaboration, discussion, and mutual support, appealing to users who sought alternatives to more public, less personal social media.

At this stage, LiveJournal’s unique blend of user privacy controls and collective community journals made it a pioneer in combining personal online expression with social interaction .

LiveJournal underwent significant ownership transitions that shaped its trajectory.

In 2005, the platform was sold to Six Apart, a blogging company, which provided LiveJournal with enhanced exposure and resources but also ushered in a period where corporate management changes created unease among users .

Some users expressed frustration that the platform’s original user-centric nature was being overshadowed by business priorities, impacting community trust.

Two years later, in 2007, LiveJournal was acquired by SUP Media, a Russian internet company .

This acquisition marked a strategic pivot toward the Russian and international markets, focusing more on these growing user bases.

Under SUP Media, LiveJournal experienced shifts in feature development and policy enforcement aimed at aligning the platform with new market realities and regulatory frameworks.

Notably, this transition coincided with a geographic and demographic transformation of the user population, increasingly centered on Russian-speaking communities.

The changes in ownership had tangible effects on user perceptions and community confidence, as users monitored how evolving policies and corporate goals influenced their experience .

One of the most significant controversies in LiveJournal’s decline was the "Strikethrough" incident, a targeted purge of adult content and stricter post moderation policies introduced in the mid-to-late 2000s .

While LiveJournal initially embraced a liberal culture that allowed wide-ranging personal expression—including frank discussions and adult-themed content—these policy shifts represented an effort to comply with evolving legal standards and attempts to regulate content more stringently.

The enforcement of new adult content restrictions was met with backlash from core user groups who valued the freedom and openness LiveJournal offered.

Many viewed the crackdown as a betrayal of the platform’s foundational ethos, emphasizing personal expression and community autonomy.

This produced a wave of user migration, with some fandom and creative communities moving to Tumblr and other platforms perceived as more permissive.

For instance, users described the incident on forums and social media as an abrupt stifling of the creative freedoms they had previously enjoyed.

These actions not only affected user engagement but tarnished LiveJournal’s reputation as a safe haven for niche communities .

The late 2000s and early 2010s witnessed the rise of competing platforms such as Tumblr and Twitter, which featured novel formats appealing to LiveJournal’s core communities .

Tumblr’s emphasis on multimedia sharing, ease of reblogging, and informal microblogging attracted younger users, particularly fandom communities invested in visual culture, fanfiction, and memes.

Its less restrictive content policies and dynamic interface fostered an energetic creative environment that outpaced LiveJournal’s older, text-heavy style.

Similarly, Twitter’s real-time microblogging and broad social networking capabilities pulled users desiring immediate updates and wider audience reach.

These platforms offered faster content consumption, simpler interfaces, and mobile support, all of which contributed to draining LiveJournal’s English-speaking user base.

Many creative, fan-driven, and activist subcultures migrated to these more versatile and popular sites, accelerating LiveJournal’s decline in Western markets.

Following the ownership changes and policy controversies, LiveJournal’s demographic composition shifted markedly.

The platform gained sustained popularity in Russian-speaking countries like Russia and Kazakhstan, largely due to SUP Media’s focus and the relative lack of comparable local alternatives .

This regionally concentrated user base emerged amid distinct regulatory pressures including censorship and content control efforts.

For example, Kazakhstan enacted bans on LiveJournal at times, citing the propagation of illegal content, which led the platform’s administrators to actively remove offending posts to restore access .

In one judicial case, removal of such content was necessary to comply with domestic legal requirements and reopen the site to users—highlighting the complex interface between platform operations and regional law.

Legal challenges in Russia similarly influenced content policies and user experience.

Together, these pressures contributed to LiveJournal becoming more closely associated with the Russian-speaking internet community, resulting in reduced influence and cultural relevance in English-speaking countries.

Despite its decline in prominence, LiveJournal’s influence on online culture is significant.

The platform played a fundamental role in nurturing early internet fandoms, enabling fanfiction writers, artists, and enthusiasts to connect and collaborate long before social media mainstreamed these communities .

For instance, LiveJournal was home to Transformers fan communities that pioneered online fanfiction circles, using friends-only posts to share confidential works and build collective identities.

It also served as a vital space for online activism, including early campaigns on LGBTQ+ issues, where activists documented personal stories and organized support through private and public posts.

LiveJournal’s design fostered in-depth social interaction, privacy controls, and community organization, elements later adopted by broader social media platforms.

Its early integration of community blogs and friends-based interaction set standards for user engagement beyond simple content publishing.

The migration of users and communities to newer platforms reflected both technological shifts and changing cultural norms, but the social environment LiveJournal cultivated remains an important chapter in the history of online communication and participatory culture.

LiveJournal’s rise was propelled by Brad Fitzpatrick’s vision of combining journaling with social networking, with features like friends-only posts and communities creating a unique user experience.

Ownership transitions in 2005 and 2007 brought strategic realignments that influenced user trust and platform direction .

Policy controversies, especially around content moderation and adult material, alienated core users and contributed to migration.

The rise of more versatile competitors like Tumblr and Twitter appealed to LiveJournal’s creative and fandom communities, accelerating its decline in English-speaking markets.

Meanwhile, legal challenges and censorship in Russia and Kazakhstan reshaped its user demographics and geographic focus, solidifying its status as a mainly Russian-speaking platform.

Despite these changes, LiveJournal’s legacy as a pioneering social blogging space endures.

LiveJournal originated as a personal journaling application developed by Brad Fitzpatrick, who used it to maintain an online diary.

Title:

Content: LiveJournal is back in Kazakhstan
519
Anna VLADIMIROVA
Access to the "Live Journal" was restored after the administration of the LiveJournal blog platform executed the decisions of the judicial authorities of Kazakhstan on the removal of illegal materials posted on the resource.
Representatives of LiveJournal reported on the removal from the blogging platform of materials containing signs of propaganda of terrorism and religious extremism, public calls to commit acts of terrorism and the manufacture of explosive devices.
Earlier, the Saryarka court of Astana issued a decision to close access to the “Live Journal ” from August 20, 2011 due to the distribution of these materials.
As a result, the Committee of Communications, Informatization and Information of the Ministry of Investment and Development of the Republic of Kazakhstan decided to resume access to the resource on the territory of Kazakhstan from November 11 this year.
LiveJournal also plans to open a representative office in Kazakhstan and develop the Kazakhstan segment of the blogging platform.
For reference: “Live Journal ” is a blogging platform for keeping online diaries (blogs).
Provides the ability to publish your own and comment on other people ’ s records, conduct collective blogs (“communities ”), add other users to friends and follow their records in the“ friends feed ”.
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Recognizing the wider appeal of such a platform, Fitzpatrick transformed it into a public website facilitating both personal blogging and social networking .

This hybrid approach offered users peer interaction alongside private expression.

Title:

Content: Digital Marketing 101 | The Little Red Book New Phenomenon and Marketing Trends You Must Know
Author: Marketing Department
Published: Updated:
Little Red Book is a lifestyle platform for young people in China in recent years. Its user base is mainly women aged 18-35, and it records and shares life through pictures and short videos.
The development of Little Red Book has also contributed to the rapid growth of its Hong Kong users.
According to internal data from Little Red Book, daily active users in Hong Kong increased by 50% year-on-year, reaching 1.13 million users by April 2023.
Among them, not only the mainlanders living in Hong Kong, many local celebrities, KOLs, and content creators are also gradually joining the Little Red Book.
Naturally, the increase in local content in Hong Kong has also attracted more local Hong Kong people to the platform.
Little Red Book Hong Kong Users Surge Drives New Marketing Phenomenon
The rapid development of Little Red Book in Hong Kong has brought many new phenomena.
In terms of travel, since the switch was re-opened in February, a large number of mainland tourists have come to Hong Kong, especially the younger generation who use Little Red Books to develop ways of playing different from traditional landmarks.
For example, you will check in at the old Yau Ma Tei Police Station, eat McDonald ’ s at McDonald ’ s Road, take photos imitating Li Ka-shing ’ s posture, etc., and check out hidden shops such as exhibitions, buildings, streets, etc., and authentic places such as restaurants, dessert shops, and fashion shops.
In terms of retail, the “Hong Kong Handwriting ” recommendation in the Little Red Book has made many products popular, which is also known as“ pop money ” in the mainland. Sales of snacks, Wellcome snacks, convenience store oolong tea and other products have increased significantly.
The influence of Little Red Book on users quickly drove many Hong Kong users to explore this platform, and found that Little Red Book can provide a lot of fresh, comprehensive and detailed sharing.
Consumers disrupt traditional roles to drive brand marketing and innovation
At present, Little Red Book is continuing to develop at a high speed in Hong Kong, pushing the consumer market into a new trend.
If Hong Kong brands want to make a name for themselves on the Little Red Book, they must first understand the game and the new trends.
When it comes to marketing strategies, the relationship between brands and consumers is changing.
In the past, in the traditional social media, most of the brand to lead, create a consumer scene to introduce products, in order to guide consumers to make consumer decisions.
Now, consumers are becoming trendsetters and creators, and Little Red Book is providing a platform for consumers to formally present and express their real needs.
Network picture
Successful overseas brands such as the British high-end mother and baby product brand jELLYCAT, originally an ordinary plush doll, precisely because the young people attach importance to companionship and healing and other emotional values, so many customers on the Internet took the initiative to share the second creation of spoof dolls on the Little Red Book, so that the brand quickly rose in popularity, creating an entertainment, emotional expression of the consumer scene.
jELLYCAT Little Red Book Post
Then, the brand used these entertainment and emotional scene insights to quickly launch a survey called “jELLYCAT ” on the Little Red Book, adding daily items to jELLYCAT ’ s iconic eyes and smiling faces, and encouraging customers to participate in the product design process, understand consumers ’ emotional needs and co-create products, which greatly improved brand recognition and intimacy.
Little Red Book becomes the new generation of travel book KOL / KOC grass planting effect is remarkable
According to the KPMG report, 60.8% of Chinese consumers conduct online surveys before spending, compared to 20% of U.S. consumers.
This feature of consumption is particularly evident on the Little Red Book platform.
Unlike Instagram, the user-generated content (UGC) nature of Little Red Book is its unique feature.
The KOL and KOC in the Little Red Book have become important factors in influencing consumption decisions.
In fact, compared to KOL, Little Red Book users prefer KOC ’ s real sharing.
Vegetarian notes account for 70% of the platform UGC, mostly Raiders, teaching content as the main, such a fast, simple and straightforward text can allow users to quickly obtain a large amount of relevant information in a short period of time, making Little Red Book a new generation of "search engine".
The data of the "May 1 Travel Trend Report" released by Little Red Book United shows that 82.4% of users will go online to survey the destination eating, drinking and playing strategy before travel, and more than half of the travel destinations of 55% of users in the past year are from Little Red Book "planting grass". 42% of users want to learn more after three exposures of travel products.
For example, before I recently planned my family's European trip, I also entered key words such as summer vacation travel strategy, European travel, parent-child activities and other key words in the Little Red Book for data collection.
Other categories of brands have also been transformed from 0 to 1 by Little Red Book KOL and KOC.
This is why more and more travel retail brands are hoping to increase brand awareness on the Little Red Book and enhance the interest of potential users in the product.
Ocean Park KOC Post Screenshot
In order to meet the May Day Golden Week, Hong Kong Ocean Park will use big data analysis to compare the popularity, interaction and activity level of KOC, assess its influence in the market and audience coverage, select the appropriate KOC for cooperative marketing, convey the happy moments in Ocean Park on the Little Red Book platform, and produce a strategy for Ocean Park card / photo sharing to enhance the interest of users. The volume of books has been greatly increased in a short period of time.
With this highly interactive content, the relationship between brands and consumers moves towards a two-way interaction model.
The Little Red Book has brought new opportunities and injected new vitality into the Hong Kong consumer market.
However, brands also need to evaluate their marketing goals and audiences to judge whether Little Red Book is suitable for their business.
Brands need to be realistic and relevant according to their image and KOC to ensure that the message they express is consistent with the brand ’ s values.
To sum up, the new phenomena and trends of Little Red Book are worthy of in-depth study by Hong Kong brands to discover the right marketing strategies and propositions.
Author: Charlene Ree, Founder and CEO of EternityX
Charlene Ree is the founder and CEO of EternityX, a company that uses a patented artificial intelligence marketing platform to capture digital marketing trends for brands in the fragmented and complex Chinese consumer market, so as to effectively and accurately reach mainland consumers.
Since its establishment in 2018, EternityX has grown rapidly. Now operating in 8 cities around the world, it has curated thousands of marketing projects for more than 500 brand customers, successfully improving the project performance of customers by at least 30% to 100%, and achieving high customer reviews and return rates.
As the founder and CEO of EternityX, Charlene is determined to lead the company as a bridge between the Mainland and the world.
By understanding the real needs of consumers, EternityX helps brands reach their target audience and deliver brand value to consumers to drive business growth. With 20 years of digital advertising experience, Charlene effectively integrates and deploys resources, enhances core competitiveness, and leads the team to promote the steady growth of the company ’ s business.
As the leader of the company, Charlene attaches great importance to teamwork and positive thinking, and works together to create a harmonious and happy working environment.
Entrepreneur Charlene is passionate about the digital marketing industry, using his deep knowledge and planning capabilities to lead the company ’ s continued expansion into digital advertising.
Prior to 2009, Charlene was the co-founder of Httpool Asia, one of the leading cross-media digital advertising providers in Hong Kong. Prior to that, Charlene worked for a number of international digital media advertising companies in Hong Kong and New York, including Yahoo, IPG and SunLion.
Born in Taiwan, Charlene now lives in Hong Kong and is the mother of three children.
This article is a submission, and the article is purely the opinion of the author, and does not represent the position of Hong Kong 01.
This article is reproduced under the license of IAB Hong Kong, the size of the title and the introduction, edited by Hong Kong 01.

Distinctive social features included the use of friends lists that controlled post visibility, allowing users to restrict access to their journal entries to a select network rather than general public view.

Title:

Content: Regulators Seem to Think That Facebook Is the Internet

That’s a problem.

In 1997, SixDegrees.com was the first real attempt at social networking, creating a space where users could upload their information and list their friends. The site peaked at approximately 3.5 million users before it shut down in 1999.

Since then, a series of social networking business models have emerged, each time offering more advanced tools for user interaction. LiveJournal, a site for keeping up with school friends, combined blogging and social networking features inspired by the WELL; Friendster was a social network that allowed for increased interaction and control by users; Myspace had open membership and gave users the freedom to customize their pages. In 2005, it—and its 25 million user base—was sold to News Corp. But within three years, Myspace had been surpassed by Facebook, which launched in 2004 for college students and opened to everyone in 2006.

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As that history shows, in the early days of the internet, disruption was profound and constant: New companies emerged in music, video, e-commerce, publishing, and telephony on an almost yearly basis. The internet appeared to be a space where competition could thrive.

Not anymore.

Today, disruption happens in much smaller ways. The examples are getting fewer because economies of scale have concentrated innovation in the hands of a few players.

More often, disruption comes from regulation—for better or, often, for worse. Current regulation attempts focus on the actions and behavior of some actors—chiefly Facebook—while creating unintended consequences for the internet, particularly fragmentation, or the splintering of the global internet into one that more closely hews territorial borders.

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It’s understandable that both the public and regulators might think that regulating “the internet” means focusing on the biggest players. Much of it has to do with the fact that users are often exposed to various types of illegal behavior and content through some of the most popular services that exist on the internet. Fix misinformation, or extremism, or ideological silos, or security on Facebook, the thinking goes, and you’ve fixed it on the internet as a whole.

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But this is an unhelpful and misguided narrative. First, the internet is not a monolith, so treating it as if it is simply will not work. Second, many of the issues regulators are trying to address are not internet problems; they are societal. Terrorism, child abuse, and mis- and disinformation are not an offspring of the internet; they existed before the internet, and they will continue to exist after it as they are ingrained in human societies. Yet, they are treated as if they are exclusively internet problems. Third, and most importantly, regulators should stop thinking of the internet as Facebook and treating it as such. In the internet regulatory landscape, there is a mixed bag of different issues, and Facebook’s involvement in all of them, direct or indirect, adds to the current complexity. Content moderation, privacy, intermediary liability, competition, encryption—these are all broader issues related to the internet, not just Facebook. Yet, the pattern that has emerged is to treat them as Facebook issues. What this means is that, instead of focusing on trying to address them in ways appropriate for the entire internet ecosystem, they are addressed through the Facebook lens. This has been quite accurately characterized as the “Facebook Derangement Syndrome.”

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The global regulatory agenda is replete with such examples. In the United Kingdom, the Online Safety legislation wants to ban end-to-end encryption because of Facebook’s plan to introduce it as a default setting in its Messenger service. On the other side of the Commonwealth, Australia recently introduced a media bargaining code mainly targeting Facebook. Facebook famously “left” the country before renegotiating a new agreement. Similarly, in what seems to be a coordinated effort, Canada has vowed to work with Australia in an attempt to impose regulatory restrictions on Facebook.

And this trend is not limited to the Commonwealth.

India’s new intermediary guidelines aim at tightening a regulatory grip on Facebook and its partner company WhatsApp while Brazil’s fake news bill, which got approved by the Senate, is focusing on content moderation on Facebook and traceability on WhatsApp. In France, there have been conversations about the introduction of “new rules” for Facebook, while Germany’s Network Enforcement Law—NetzDG—was drafted with the primary focus of taming Facebook. Finally, in the United States, the Trump administration issued an unsuccessful executive order that aimed to regulate Facebook for bias.

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This approach of limiting regulation to Facebook is not entirely unusual. It reflects the principal-agent conundrum that, over the years, has allowed companies like Facebook to  propose policies and deploy tools that can have an impact on the way regulation gets to be enforced. The principal-agent problem is predominantly characterized by conflict of interest and moral hazards. Due to information asymmetries, the agent holds the bargaining power, and this creates a few unknowns: The principal is in no position to know the information the agent holds. Even when she does, she cannot be certain that the agent is acting to her best interest. So, the principal ends up focusing squarely on the agent, disregarding any peripheral issues that might be significant.

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The principal-agent problem may help explain why governments appear ready to introduce regulation targeting Facebook; however, it does not help explain why, in the process of doing so, the main loser is the internet and its users.

Over the past couple of years, Facebook has said, “We support regulation,” and “we want updated internet regulations to set clear guidelines for addressing today’s toughest challenges.” This statement would be significant if it did not come across as self-serving. At this stage, regulation is inescapable and Facebook knows it—as does the rest of big tech. In an effort to adapt to this new reality, companies often take advantage of their dominant position to drive regulatory processes, often at the expense of regulation itself.

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In this context, the question we should be asking is not whether regulation is appropriate, but what are the real implications of regulating in such a manner? There is already an argument that focusing on a few, big players has an impact on the health of innovation and the ability of newcomers to compete. And, then, there is the internet. The internet’s global reach is one of its main strengths. It is a feature, not a bug. Among other things, it allows the maintenance of supply chains all over the world; it allows people to communicate; it lowers costs; and it makes information sharing easier, all the while helping to address societal issues like poverty or climate change.

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To this end, the attempt to regulate based on one—or a handful—of companies can jeopardize this very important goal of the internet. It can create fragmentation, in the sense of not allowing data to flow across borders or networks to interconnect, and this can be very real and have a very big impact. It can impose limits on the way information and data gets to be shared and the way networks may interoperate. These are significant trade-offs, and they must be part of any regulation’s process.

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So where do we go from here?

For sure, the answer cannot be to stop regulating. We must accept, however, that the current approach often generates unintended consequences that only superficially affect those who must be regulated.

In this light, a possible way forward is to experiment with regulation. Experimental regulation is a relatively underused approach, yet it is flexible enough to accommodate dynamic markets, like the internet. Originally associated with the work of John Dewey, this idea is premised on the fact that, in policymaking, the way we approach theories and strategies of justice depends on “the experience of their pursuit; it is these changes that then allow us to consider how best to achieve our objectives.” The advantage of this thinking is that it considers unintended consequences as an opportunity to better define appropriate regulatory frameworks and how to achieve the desired goals.

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Internet regulation does not experiment enough, and when it does, it appears to have the wrong focus. In Australia, for instance, the effort to ensure robust journalism in an age of disinformation in social media platforms led to a “link tax” that undermines the architecture, history, and economics of the internet. This is partly due to the role big tech companies play in the regulatory process. One of the immediate things one can observe with internet regulation is the process some actors deploy: In the beginning, they operate in favor of sustaining existing policies and bureaucracies. The thinking is that longevity brings legitimacy, and as a result, the policy becomes its own cause. Once this strategy is embedded in process, these powerful forces move toward pushing their own regulatory agenda.

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It is for this reason that there is a certain appeal toward flexible regulatory systems that allow different units to experiment with different approaches and make room for assessments that separate the relevant from the nonrelevant and preexisting rules. Although experimentation neither offers a drastic approach nor aims to replace traditional routes of regulation, it can limit the risks of politicization, as politics become more context focused.

One of the first things we need is an internet impact assessment that looks at the different parts of the internet’s infrastructure and the effect that regulation may have. It is no longer just about regulating a few actors. It is about protecting the global infrastructure that we all depend on daily.

The internet has a Facebook problem, but the internet is not Facebook.

This article represents the views of the author and not those of his employer, the Internet Society. Facebook is an organization member of the Internet Society.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.

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Additionally, LiveJournal popularized the use of "communities," collective blogs where multiple users could contribute posts centered on shared themes or interests.

The platform also incorporated a "friends feed," aggregating content from a user's friends and communities, enabling a continuous stream of personalized updates.

These features combined to foster an intimate, interactive community atmosphere that differentiated LiveJournal from more one-dimensional blogging sites .

LiveJournal reached its apex in the early 2000s, boasting more than 2.5 million active accounts, predominantly drawn from the English-speaking world .

Title:

Content: China surging news reported on the 10th, from the evening of August 9, an article "Mo Yan opened the public number!
Article in the circle of friends, the original writer, Nobel Prize winner Mo Yan opened a new public number, the public name is called "Mo Yan".
Next, every Monday night at 10: 00, he will post two pictures on the official name, the headlines are some articles, and the two is an audio.
As of press release, the number of clicks of "Mo Yan Open the Public Number!" has exceeded 100,000 +.
Mo Yan said, “Here will release some of my latest creative information, as well as some of my thoughts, opinions, thoughts on the creation, and also show some fragments of my work.
I very much hope to establish a close interaction with you through this platform.
If you have any ideas, you can exchange them with me. "
The news reports that Mo Yan ’ s daughter smiled and confirmed that the number was indeed Mo Yan ’ s public number.
Guan smiled and said that her father is now writing a long novel in high secret, and she does not live together at present, and she does not bother.
In a "quick question and answer" video, Mo Yan with "large meals" "less sleep" "good physical strength" three words to describe themselves, but also said that he now most want to write a novel, if not a writer, the most want to do is iron.
He revealed that the boldest thing he ever did was to write a letter to the then Education Minister in 1973 expressing his strong desire to go to college, and there were many things he regretted.
Asked what drama he saw this year, Mo Yan even said three times "The Age of Awakening", and said that he only watched the drama, but did not know what "membership" is.
If you want to say a word to a young man, he wants to say, “Learn from you. ”
In the message of this article, some netizens said hello to Mo Yan, Mo Yan also replied a "Hello", and added a smiling face; some netizens asked: "Can you play, want to help Mo Yan as a member", Mo Yan also asked: "What is a reward?", and added a puzzling expression; some netizens on Mo Yan self-described 3 words: "Why I only have a large amount of food", Mo Yan replied: "The food is large, the body is good."
As far as the historical information of the public name is concerned, the public name went online on August 2, and released "Why am I called" Mo Yan "?" and "Mo Yan and you chat: the whole life to be an ordinary person, is it wrong?", which is also an article + a voice article.
Before the "Mo Yan" public name, Mo Yan and Wang Zhen jointly created the public name "Two Bricks Messaging".
"Two Bricks News" introduction: The aim is to integrate traditional culture with contemporary life, with a view to "singing and dancing on the scene, and guiding the outside world."
"The magazine under: life and literary creation dynamics, review of books, promotion of traditional culture, cultural and artistic innovation development and transformation, cultural perspective, bookmakers headlines, etc., to the viewers."
This isn ’ t the first time I ’ ve tried a new medium.
On September 3 last year, Mo Yan opened a trembling tone to share a new book, "Late People."
More than 6 hours after the first video was sent, the account has 108,000 fans and the video has received 113,000 likes.
He participated in the topic jointly initiated by the People's Literature Publishing House and Shuyin # to find people who are late mature. Once the topic was online, the number of views exceeded 31 million on the day, and Mo Yan's TikTok video point praised more than 350,000, and the sales volume exceeded 15,000 copies in 12 hours.
# public # public # public # video # article

This user base appreciated the platform’s diary-style blogging with strong social networking elements, which cultivated a close-knit environment where users could engage in prolonged exchanges and develop meaningful online relationships.

Particularly, specialized communities flourished around fandoms, personal narrative blogging, and early online activism.

For example, fanfiction communities used LiveJournal’s friends-only posts and communities to share and critique their works within trusted groups, encouraging creative collaboration.

The platform became a crucial space for creative collaboration, discussion, and mutual support, appealing to users who sought alternatives to more public, less personal social media.

Title:

Content: Facebook Twitter

BeReal’s popular camera format is so good, TikTok is now using it

SHARE BeReal’s popular camera format is so good, TikTok is now using it

In this day and age, it isn’t uncommon to see social media platforms copying each other. In fact, it has been a topic of conversation since social media’s inception. People are now seeing one of the biggest social media platforms of them all copy a new, up-and-coming app called BeReal, according to The Verge.

TikTok is just starting to launch new camera settings in a different feature the company is releasing and people can’t help but note the similarities between this and BeReal’s platform.

What is BeReal and how did it become a popular social media app?

BeReal gained popularity by prompting its users to snap a picture of whatever it is that they’re doing in that moment when the app prompts them to “be real.” This app uses your phone’s front and rear cameras at the same time to capture photos of not only yourself but your surroundings, too.

How is TikTok, Instagram responding to BeReal’s social media success?

TikTok recently added a brand new feature called “TikTok Now” that asks its users to use their phone’s front and rear cameras at a random time of the day, just like BeReal. The move for TikTok came after Instagram announced its usage of a similar feature called “IG Candid Challenges,” which gives the users the same abilities. Snapchat followed the trend as well, according to The Washington Post.

People have suggested that BeReal’s success has come from allowing users to be a little more authentic, but despite this, many are saying that even the brand new platform has influenced people to stage their posts.

Vice reported that this app is designed to combat feelings of jealousy, fear of missing out (FOMO), depression, anxiety and more, but many have reported that BeReal has still given people the tendency to stage their posts.

Another Washington Post article reported that despite the platform having time constraints and other features to encourage authenticity, some users are giving in to the impulse to share only the best parts of their lives under the new platform, as well.

At this stage, LiveJournal’s unique blend of user privacy controls and collective community journals made it a pioneer in combining personal online expression with social interaction .

LiveJournal underwent significant ownership transitions that shaped its trajectory.

In 2005, the platform was sold to Six Apart, a blogging company, which provided LiveJournal with enhanced exposure and resources but also ushered in a period where corporate management changes created unease among users .

Some users expressed frustration that the platform’s original user-centric nature was being overshadowed by business priorities, impacting community trust.

Two years later, in 2007, LiveJournal was acquired by SUP Media, a Russian internet company .

This acquisition marked a strategic pivot toward the Russian and international markets, focusing more on these growing user bases.

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Content: 06 June 2023, 17: 01
Earn in the social network ЯRUS: what opportunities opened paid feeds in the update on iOS?
Read 360tv in
Fitness marathons, foreign language courses, programming lessons: ribbons * with paid access expand the opportunities for earning content authors.
How to monetize creativity in the latest YRUS update on iOS?
The subscription format is set by the author: a monthly payment or a one-time payment.
Musicians can publish announcements and exclusive rehearsals, artists - unique paintings, and business coaches - courses on personal growth.
“Bloggers and other authors of content can transmit additional valuable information to the community of subscribers in the feed with paid access, and users can receive important knowledge in the subject area and more interactive and personalized interaction with their favorite author, ” shared product manager of the social network YRUS Valery Kolyada.
Press service of the social network ЯRUS
The reward system ЯRUS works in paid ribbons: for every 1000 views of a long video, the author will receive 50 coins, and for vertical stories - 20.
In addition, subscribers send donations.
Starting from 1000 coins, the domestic currency ЯRUS is available for withdrawal in rubles at the rate of one to one.
Today, users of ЯRUS highly appreciated the wide possibilities of the new functionality.
A similar update was previously presented on Android: in the future, improvements will affect the web version of the platform.
Press service of the social network ЯRUS
More than 11 million users of the Russian social network ЯRUS earn from the moment of registration: for activity in a personal profile, the platform charges 5 coins daily.
Popular services are available for the audience: news, events, music, mini-applications, videos and stories.
ЯRUS application is available for download АppStore, Google Play, RuMarket, RuStore and NashStore.
* Ribbons with paid access are an additional source of monetization: these are thematic blogs of the social network ЯRUS, where users publish content with paid access.
Publications here are in various formats: from travel videos to writing stories in text posts.
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Under SUP Media, LiveJournal experienced shifts in feature development and policy enforcement aimed at aligning the platform with new market realities and regulatory frameworks.

Notably, this transition coincided with a geographic and demographic transformation of the user population, increasingly centered on Russian-speaking communities.

The changes in ownership had tangible effects on user perceptions and community confidence, as users monitored how evolving policies and corporate goals influenced their experience .

One of the most significant controversies in LiveJournal’s decline was the "Strikethrough" incident, a targeted purge of adult content and stricter post moderation policies introduced in the mid-to-late 2000s .

While LiveJournal initially embraced a liberal culture that allowed wide-ranging personal expression—including frank discussions and adult-themed content—these policy shifts represented an effort to comply with evolving legal standards and attempts to regulate content more stringently.

The enforcement of new adult content restrictions was met with backlash from core user groups who valued the freedom and openness LiveJournal offered.

What does one user believe LiveJournal to be in Russia?

Many viewed the crackdown as a betrayal of the platform’s foundational ethos, emphasizing personal expression and community autonomy.

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Content: Is it time to liberate freedom?
Yes, there is no typographical error in the question, is it really time to liberate freedom, that instinct that God created in all his creatures, we find that animals and birds struggle not to fall into captivity, and some of them die as if captured like hawks whose hearts burst out of sadness when captured.
As for the freedom of man, we find it has become different, it did not remain its state of purity, and began to pollute it and hide its shine for the first time there in Paradise, when Satan tempted Adam that his freedom is absolute without restriction, and he has the right to eat from the only tree from which he was ordered to stay away. Religious, social and moral, and some believe that it is a total submission to the opinion of tyrants and their rule, because whenever you are a obedient slave, you are free.
Freedom, that pure diamond within us in our time, has become a commodity traded by those with influence, money, and power, who have robbed us of our true diamond, and put in its place perfectly fake diamonds, but in the end they are worthless.
Thus, in the name of false freedom, wars were waged, in the name of freedom, nations were destroyed, immorality was promoted and women were stripped, in the name of freedom, the great powers controlled the destinies of peoples, deprived them of their wealth, and even made them refugees in the country of God for the crumb of bread.
The poor of that captive freedom, and the criminal of their freedom that they have created.
Therefore, we must accelerate the liberation of freedom, and in order to liberate it we must possess its most important tool, the media.
Goebbels Media
The media is not a new medium as some think, poetry was the media in the past, and then we moved to the written media (newspapers), which evolved and became heard (radio) and then the huge shift was television, that magician who stole the minds of humans, and made them a malleable tool in the hands of everyone who owns it, especially the dictators of the world (Goebbels media).
Then the satellite channels flew to the star of the terrestrial and government channels, but what the satellite channels did was the most influential, not only promoting the policies of the rulers like the previous ones, but they were able to change and distort beliefs.
The Arab Spring was the first real user of it (social media) and the age of the Internet, which brought to the world the reality of what is happening on the ground, exposing the politicized media, which gave up its main function, but on the contrary became the barrel of a gun by which the people are executed and their rights are wasted, and it became a weapon in the hands of the prosecutor seeking fame and money.
The technological revolution that liberated the citizen from the fourth government authority, to become the owner of power, and begins the stage (citizen journalist), which has become the strongest and most widespread and credible phenomenon, through simple “videos ” and almost no cost filmed by amateurs camera phone and uploaded on the Internet, become inside the event“ Live ” without falsehood, and transfer the truth from the ground to people with the push of a button.
At a strange speed, the citizen media turned into a media parallel to the traditional media, and even became the most widespread and credible and the strongest, the power it gained from those marginalized in society who had never been heard of before.
These platforms have exploded talents and energies that have lived for years buried and repressed, and the best example of this citizen journalist.
A unique media case
Abdullah al-Sharif is a poet, comedian and content maker, who has his own speech language, which, in turn, encouraged many marginalized young people to make “videos ” documenting events and situations happening on the ground, making that article a means of pressure on the coup government in order to release some detainees.
Abdullah al-Sharif and others, such as Ahmed al-Buhairi, Atwa Kenana (Tamer Jamal), “Go Tube ” and Tarifa al-Ghalaba, have created a unique media case that has millions of followers waiting for them eagerly.
Moataz Matar, who disappeared for a while due to the politicization of opposition channels abroad, especially after the Egyptian-Turkish rapprochement in which the regime lobbied to silence the voices that oppose him, the journalists of these channels had only one wing of freedom in the alternative media space.
Also was re-broadcast channel (Makmelin) from outside Turkey, and re-appeared again after a long absence of forced blocking, media Mohammed Nasser, the owner of charisma and culture that made him many followers and lovers, who follows his style knows that the man is a revolutionary outside the scope of classification, he is a poet and “Scenarist ”, and that allowed him to be close to all ideologies, but will Nasser only appear on the screen Will the Internet attract him and fly around without restrictions?
We may well be on the verge of liberating freedom now that Elon Musk has launched thousands of satellites, leaving the Internet through space uncensored and unconstrained by government or capitalism.
Perhaps soon that space will grow stronger and freer if Twitter is sold to the insane billionaire Rebellion Elon Musk, who dreams of releasing the blue bird from his cage, to become the largest platform for freedom-loving birds.

This produced a wave of user migration, with some fandom and creative communities moving to Tumblr and other platforms perceived as more permissive.

For instance, users described the incident on forums and social media as an abrupt stifling of the creative freedoms they had previously enjoyed.

These actions not only affected user engagement but tarnished LiveJournal’s reputation as a safe haven for niche communities .

The late 2000s and early 2010s witnessed the rise of competing platforms such as Tumblr and Twitter, which featured novel formats appealing to LiveJournal’s core communities .

Tumblr’s emphasis on multimedia sharing, ease of reblogging, and informal microblogging attracted younger users, particularly fandom communities invested in visual culture, fanfiction, and memes.

Its less restrictive content policies and dynamic interface fostered an energetic creative environment that outpaced LiveJournal’s older, text-heavy style.

Similarly, Twitter’s real-time microblogging and broad social networking capabilities pulled users desiring immediate updates and wider audience reach.

Title:

Content: Editorial: What to write when no one reads

0

Breaking news!

Aliens have abducted the president and are demanding that, in order to ensure his safe return, we must turn in all of our worldly possessions and return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. The Brown and White will be closing, effective immediately, and all remaining print issues will be converted into clothing and shelter for the next stages of human life.

Of course, none of that’s true. But does it really matter what we say in this space? Only a few students are likely to read it anyway.

As the Brown and White’s editorial board, we decided to write an editorial about how few people read our editorials. The concept felt almost ironic, in a sense. How can one write an article addressed to those who likely won’t read the article in the first place?

We considered writing this piece in Latin and debated crafting an entire fake story about aliens abducting the president. We even contemplated leaving the editorial space blank to see if anyone would notice.

Eventually we figured we’d devote this space to a discussion on the place that The Brown and White has within Lehigh culture. Or, more accurately, its lack thereof.

As a student-run publication, The Brown and White’s goal is to provide Lehigh students and the greater Bethlehem community with the most localized and pertinent information. Two print editions are distributed each week, along with an active website with many of the same articles from print, in addition to others.

Yet, if you asked the majority of Lehigh students where they get their Lehigh news from, most would probably say they rely on their friends, social media platforms and school-wide email updates.

But why? Why would students be so hesitant to read a newspaper dedicated to providing them with the most relevant news catered toward their own college experience?

We don’t believe this readership issue stems from student laziness, nor is it due to a lack of engaging content on our part (at least we hope not). This lack of readership is instead a result of digitization.

And this concept isn’t just specific to Lehigh students.

With social media platforms rising in popularity, information is becoming increasingly accessible. Gen Z, accustomed to using fast-paced technologies, is far more comfortable swiping through social media platforms than dissecting long form editorial content.

After all, why would you want to pick up a physical paper when your favorite app provides all of the information you could ever want at your fingertips?

In our lifetimes, we have witnessed the rapid evolution of communication technologies, from newspapers to websites and television, and from websites and television to social media apps.

News organizations are struggling to keep up with these constant changes. While digitization offers speed and ease, print news is becoming less practical.

For The Brown and White to be a more prominent aspect of Lehigh’s community and culture, it will have to utilize these newer technologies.

Luckily, we have already started adapting. Our new media team has begun catching us up, creating visually appealing multimedia content to reach student demographics. Through Instagram Stories and podcasts, the team is working to package content in ways beyond just print editorial.

But despite these strides, our Instagram and Twitter following leaves much to be desired.

The Lehigh Lookaway, a satirical Lehigh-related newsletter, has nearly 1,500 more Instagram followers than The Brown and White does.

Even so, the feeling around the newsroom today is one of realistic optimism.

We know there is a strong contingent of alumni, faculty, parents and Bethlehem residents whose consistent readership helps this paper run. As we expand to adopt more of a multimedia presence, we are hopeful that we will continue to grow our audience as our output becomes increasingly digital.

We’d like to give a shout-out to all of these readers who make our positions as student journalists fulfilling.

And to all the Lehigh students who engage with our Instagram page or read the paper on a regular basis, thank you, too. We appreciate your readership, and we hope that more students like you continue to keep this paper going long after we have graduated. Stay tuned for next week’s editorial where we dive into the zombie apocalypse!

These platforms offered faster content consumption, simpler interfaces, and mobile support, all of which contributed to draining LiveJournal’s English-speaking user base.

Many creative, fan-driven, and activist subcultures migrated to these more versatile and popular sites, accelerating LiveJournal’s decline in Western markets.

Following the ownership changes and policy controversies, LiveJournal’s demographic composition shifted markedly.

The platform gained sustained popularity in Russian-speaking countries like Russia and Kazakhstan, largely due to SUP Media’s focus and the relative lack of comparable local alternatives .

This regionally concentrated user base emerged amid distinct regulatory pressures including censorship and content control efforts.

For example, Kazakhstan enacted bans on LiveJournal at times, citing the propagation of illegal content, which led the platform’s administrators to actively remove offending posts to restore access .

In one judicial case, removal of such content was necessary to comply with domestic legal requirements and reopen the site to users—highlighting the complex interface between platform operations and regional law.

Legal challenges in Russia similarly influenced content policies and user experience.

Together, these pressures contributed to LiveJournal becoming more closely associated with the Russian-speaking internet community, resulting in reduced influence and cultural relevance in English-speaking countries.

Despite its decline in prominence, LiveJournal’s influence on online culture is significant.

The platform played a fundamental role in nurturing early internet fandoms, enabling fanfiction writers, artists, and enthusiasts to connect and collaborate long before social media mainstreamed these communities .

Title:

Content: My channel
* Drag categories can be customized sorting
Recover Default OK
Setup
Alert
27 years old, unlicensed drug dealer, repeatedly arrested, this time the judge has not allowed him to be released on bail.
OpenAI Completes Employee Stock Sale with Latest Valuation of $86 Billion
Electronic applause.
A few months ago, I received an electronic gift from my family. It is a paid senior member of a writing platform for a year. It is currently said to be the largest in the United States, and the membership and space for Chinese publishing is yet to be developed.
If you write well, the number of fans plus the "applause" received by the article to a certain extent, you will have the opportunity to open a profit and receive a good reward from the platform.
After a few articles were posted to test the temperature of the water, some people soon received attention, and some people came to "applaud", but from the background record, it was found that the "fans" who paid attention did not actually read the text.
When the good or bad of the text is only determined by the number of views, or whether there is a marked reading record, it is actually unfair.
Clap each other, pay attention to each other, leave messages to each other, and then see if it will attract real fans.
This is probably the "hidden rules" of many writing platforms today, which may not be the original intention of the platform. However, when a bunch of people start to struggle for readers and traffic on the top, and they are consensual and organized to warm up at the same time, they will play some erasing balls and generate some strange atmosphere, and I still respect human wisdom.
Time is limited every day, and it is not enough to spend your spare time writing and enjoying your life, and it is really hard to put up with such administrative tasks as running "dummy contacts."
Perhaps, there is no shortage of authors in the world, the most lacking is that there are readers who are serious about reading and absorbing the text, including myself, whether they can read well the painstaking work written by others.
Although the "applause" of reading other people's articles is only a keystroke, it involves the question of conscience and the truth or falsehood of strength.
It is obviously not fair to judge a person ’ s literary strength simply through such a platform, or even compete with others.
It is not good to live up to the good intentions of the family, since it has become a member of the writing platform, simply post the articles published in the newspaper on the platform, and organize the original text and the published works that may be deleted by the editor one page, and operate as a "portfolio" that is no different from ordinary blogs.
All said "a slap can not be clapped", I thoroughly understood this time, and even in the introduction simply put "do not operate a fan group, so do not pay attention to each other or exchange applause, please understand" and so on.
Sure enough, the number of fans “grew ” to the fifth after the abrupt stop.
Say to the family, they said that spending money does not seem to encourage me, but in exchange for a little joke, I have more embarrassing things for them to broadcast, not a loss.
In the past, when the Internet was not yet developed, writing in traditional newspapers caused readers to resonate and even touched others. It is often difficult to hear the author, but it does exist. The loneliness of writing, usually so, can continue to rely on this realization.
If you ’ re used to relying on “seeing applaud ” to power your writing, then electronic clapping is an invention that makes the author feel more lonely and empty.
The last one.
Rotating Love (7)
The next one.
A filial son of a leisurely world
Extended reading
Super-popular
More >

For instance, LiveJournal was home to Transformers fan communities that pioneered online fanfiction circles, using friends-only posts to share confidential works and build collective identities.

It also served as a vital space for online activism, including early campaigns on LGBTQ+ issues, where activists documented personal stories and organized support through private and public posts.

LiveJournal’s design fostered in-depth social interaction, privacy controls, and community organization, elements later adopted by broader social media platforms.

Its early integration of community blogs and friends-based interaction set standards for user engagement beyond simple content publishing.

The migration of users and communities to newer platforms reflected both technological shifts and changing cultural norms, but the social environment LiveJournal cultivated remains an important chapter in the history of online communication and participatory culture.

LiveJournal’s rise was propelled by Brad Fitzpatrick’s vision of combining journaling with social networking, with features like friends-only posts and communities creating a unique user experience.

Ownership transitions in 2005 and 2007 brought strategic realignments that influenced user trust and platform direction .

Policy controversies, especially around content moderation and adult material, alienated core users and contributed to migration.

The rise of more versatile competitors like Tumblr and Twitter appealed to LiveJournal’s creative and fandom communities, accelerating its decline in English-speaking markets.

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Content: Advertisement

Lispector, Cronista

Alejandro Chacoff, interviewed by Hasan Altaf

Alejandro Chacoff

Alejandro Chacoff

This article is part of a regular series of conversations with the Review’s contributors; read past ones here and sign up for our e-mail newsletter to get them delivered to your inbox each week.

In the Review’s April 6 issue, Alejandro Chacoff reviews a collection of crônicas by the novelist Clarice Lispector, mostly written for the Jornal do Brasil in the 1960s and 1970s. “The Brazilian crônica,” Chacoff writes, “is a maddeningly elusive genre. The difficulty lies not so much in identifying the form’s attachment to the mundane…, but in the specific magic dust that transforms minor observations into prose that’s brimming with pathos.” Lispector—a novelist known for her inventive syntax and occasional forays into a kind of mysticism—was not a traditional cronista, but, Chacoff notes, her nonfiction work has an appealingly “raw sincerity and artlessness…. Lispector uses the ‘I’ without the self-conscious, manipulative care often employed by more autobiographical writers…, and the impression given is one of vulnerability.”

Chacoff is the author of the novel Apátridas (Rootless, 2020) and a member of the staff of revista piauí, one of Brazil’s leading magazines. He writes in English as well as Portuguese, and his reviews and essays have appeared in The New York Timesn+1, and The New Yorker, among other outlets. I recently wrote to him to ask about the fate of the crônica genre, the archipelago of Brazilian literature, and Clarice Lispector’s transition from modernist to mystic.

Hasan Altaf: Lispector’s reputation in English, based on the new translations of her fiction that have appeared over the past decade or so, is that of “sphinx, sorceress, sacred monster,” as Parul Sehgal put it in a review of her novel The Chandelier. You write in your essay that the crônicas present a different view of this writer—her work for Jornal do Brasil, for example, put her on a “first-name basis” with readers, which makes it a little harder to imagine a sacred sphinx. I wondered if you might talk about how Lispector and her work are seen in Brazil, where she didn’t need to be “rediscovered” the way she did for English-speaking readers, and where the crônica is a more familiar form.

Alejandro Chacoff: In Brazil, tellingly, you know you are famous once people address you by your first name or nickname—it’s as if fame must contend with the public’s urge to pull the person back to familiar ground. So there’s a very straightforward sense in which “first-name basis” just means Lispector had more readers once she began writing for a big newspaper. But there is also a way in which the crônica, as a form, invites this sort of intimacy in the public domain. A cronista speaks as if to a friend—colloquially, digressively, mixing anecdotes, and ostensiblynot fearing her own pointlessness. Of course, the trick lies in being so pleasant and insightful that this casualness is read as a quality indissociable from pleasantness and insightfulness. In many ways, the strictures of the form tested and even annoyed Lispector, while also endearing her to the public. Being a cronista might have made her seem more approachable, though back then she didn’t yet have the reputation she has today.

Regarding that reputation: usually, for a writer who achieves the kind of critical acclaim and popularity abroad that Lispector has achieved (and keeps achieving), the reaction in the author’s own country is either to double down on that acclaim or to deflate it. I’ve heard stories about Elena Ferrante not being as wildly appreciated by Italy’s literary establishment as she is around the world, which would be a shame; and at this point I’ve probably met more Latin American writers who are annoyed about than who are grateful for the legacy of the Latin American Boom of the 1960s and 1970s. There’s a healthy aspect to this contrarian reflex—some cerebral and funny Latin American writers who specialize in slow, domestic plots probably wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the Boom and its emphasis on long epics full of action. Sometimes you need a Vargas Llosa in order for a Zambra to come about.

In Lispector’s case, though, there has been a doubling down. There are only a handful of other local novelists as unanimously praised, and none of them have achieved the same kind of readership abroad. I’m not often drawn to assignments about sacred monsters, to use Sehgal’s term, but I was drawn to this assignment because it had never occurred to me to think critically about how Lispector fit into the cronista tradition; in the back of my mind, I just vaguely assumed she was great at it because she is a great writer. As the essay tries to point out, it’s not as simple as that.

The Brazilian crônica seems like an entirely idiosyncratic form—different even from the crónica of Spanish-speaking Latin American countries—but one that has, with a few exceptions that you mention, faded away. Do you have any sense of what contributed to this decline, and when it began? You write about the cronista as a kind of more social flâneur, and I thought of the review you wrote for The New Yorker a few years ago of Antonio Muñoz Molina’s To Walk Alone in the Crowd, which was about, among other things, how it is harder now than it once was to be an entirely idle wanderer.

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It’s difficult to identify an exact turning point for when the decline of the form began. There were still quite a few writers churning out crônicas in the 1980s and well into the 1990s, though certainly not as many who were known primarily for their crônicas, as Rubem Braga and his friends were. I’d speculate that a lot of what the crônica once provided for the reader—the colloquial, epigrammatic style; the aphoristic touch; the charming self-deprecation (sometimes doubling as self-mythologizing or self-promotion)—has scattered and migrated, in more debased forms, into other realms, including social media. There was a time when the crônica was the reprieve from everything else in print; these days, you could argue that we need a reprieve from precisely the elements the crônica was made of. Which is not to say that the crônica isn’t missed, probably because it combined these elements in the right proportion and dished them out with more restraint.

In the New Yorker essay, I was trying to think about the material and social circumstances that complicate wandering as a literary activity—technology in particular, but also changes in the urban and economic landscape that make big cities more socially and visually homogenous, and less welcoming to exploration (not to mention the unease that a solitary wanderer might provoke in the age of mass shootings). The cronista is more of a social figure, so not all the same impediments apply—it’s still pretty easy to sit down and drink with friends at bars, even if your phone distracts you. Having said that, crônicas dofeed on a certain amount of friction—strange incidents, uncomfortable interactions with strangers, conversations with cab drivers (Lispector has a couple of very good pieces on this topic). Such events seem ever less frequent in our drive to make everything more convenient and efficient and—to state it clearly—human-less. The crônica demands a certain capacity for boredom, for being open to fleeting, small scenes of the quotidian. It’s hard to imagine a new generation of idling, boozing cronistas emerging, setting up shop in some corner bar.

You describe the cronistas of Lispector’s time as a close-knit, self-referential group, with whom she was associated even while being apart. When it comes to Brazilian fiction of that era, though, you write about it as an “archipelago…precariously united by a common language and the ruins of a modernist project.” Could you give us a snapshot of Brazilian fiction in the present moment?

The phrase “ruins of a modernist project” may suggest ruefulness, as though I were lamenting a bygone era of artistic and ideological coherence. But my feelings are more ambiguous. Modernism, in Brazil, was so powerful, so all-encompassing in its pledge to reshape the arts and society, that it might have stifled more peculiar literary talents had it triumphed as radically as its first proponents hoped. Writers like Lispector, Guimarães Rosa, or Raduan Nassar (who came a little later) seem to drink at Brazilian modernism’s fountain without feeling the obligation to proselytize its virtues or adhere fully to its principles, like Mário de Andrade and Oswald de Andrade did. Whatever may have been lost in artistic or ideological cohesion was probably gained in aesthetic diversity.

Despite how much time has passed since then, the image of the archipelago still appeals to me to describe Brazilian fiction. Maybe it’s the country’s gargantuan size or its linguistic isolation (which feeds into the sense that it is and isn’t part of Latin American letters writ large). Building the local literary canon of the last twenty or thirty years still seems to be more of an ongoing process in Brazil than it is in the US or England, say, or even neighboring Argentina. One can point to a few central novels of the last couple of decades, like Milton Hatoum’s Dois Irmãos (Two Brothers), or Ana Maria Gonçalves’s Um Defeito de Cor (A Color Flaw), but it’s harder to fit them into a larger story about how Brazilian literature has developed over these last few decades. What’s intriguing is that this makes revisions to what might be thought of as the canon more dynamic. Over the past decade, much like in the US, the demand for greater representation of minorities in Brazilian literature has helped bring attention to Black writers whose novels are so different from one another they form yet another archipelago. I’m thinking of Geovani Martins, writing about life in a Rio favela; Jeferson Tenório, whose protagonist mourns a father murdered by the police while teaching Dostoevsky to unenthusiastic students; Itamar Vieira Jr., using his deep knowledge as a field worker and public servant among quilombolas to weave a fictional story about ancestry and the disrupting forces of capitalism in Bahia state; Eliana Alves Cruz and her multigenerational family saga, which dramatizes the weight of Brazilian slavery. Any snapshot would have to include these voices; and these voices, in turn, have contributed to the reappreciation of authors living, such as Gonçalves, whose novel about the African diaspora in Brazil is being reissued, and dead, like Lima Barreto. My impression is that it is a time when lines are being redrawn, in search of a more complex image of what Brazilian literature stands for.

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Meanwhile, legal challenges and censorship in Russia and Kazakhstan reshaped its user demographics and geographic focus, solidifying its status as a mainly Russian-speaking platform.

Despite these changes, LiveJournal’s legacy as a pioneering social blogging space endures.