My first introduction to the world of online writing was through LiveJournal in February, 2002.  Even with all the other social media outlets which have come (Dreamwidth, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) and gone (MySpace, Vox), I still have maintained my LiveJournal account.  I still use it for talking to a small group of online friends about subjects too personal to discuss on Facebook, let alone here.  (Not to mention that Facebook has that insanely annoying 420 character limit.  Twitter I keep mainly for communicating in emergencies. LinkedIn... I'm not sure quite why I have a LinkedIn account anymore.  God knows that I do not use it the way it is supposed to be used.) When my children were smaller, LiveJournal saved my sanity, allowing me to communicate with people more than three feet tall.  It gave me a forum for writing and communicating in which I was Pat, not so-and-so's mother, or, worse yet, The Rocket Scientist's wife.* I have met friends -- some of them very close -- through LiveJournal.

As it turns out, LJ has assumed a much greater role in the world than I thought.  Far from simply being a place to bitch to your friends about your boyfriend not calling you, reading Criminal Minds slash, cooing over baby and kitten pictures or participating in random online polls, the service has international political importance.

LiveJournal has become a major platform for political dissidents in Russia. Unlike other media, it is totally uncontrolled, which allows for a complete diversity of opinions.  It is an outlet for free expression in a country where the concept is tenuous (even in the post-Soviet era). It allows Russians of all political stripes to communicate and organize.  And, for the third time since March, last week LJ was been hit with a major DDOS (distributed denial of service) attack.   This time the attacks spread out to the carriers Qwest and Verizon, as well.  There are strong indications that these are, if not government-sponsored, being driven by pro-government forces. 

I find all this fascinating. I should not be surprised at the use of LJ as a political tool: blogs and other social media have been used as such by political elements in every country. (It would have been a lot harder for the Tea Party movement in this country to have burgeoned quite as it has without the Internet providing batshit crazies concerned citizens a place to meet.)  A service such as LiveJournal is a repressive government's worst nightmare:  an easily accessible, totally open venue for political debate.  It is a way for people to foster community and exchange information that would otherwise be repressed.

Of course many people outside Russia have been seriously annoyed by these attacks.  If LJ is your primary way to keep in touch with your friends, it can be frustrating.  (On the small filter of people I talk to, a good 2/3 of them live more than 200 miles away from me.  In most cases I met those people through the Internet, and in some cases I have yet to meet them in person.)  It makes it easier to know, somehow, that all of this is about democracy and free speech, not some idiot 4-Chan/Anonymous power play.

I hope that it doesn't bring LiveJournal down in the end; that would be a shame.  But I have no doubt that the dissenters will find a way; the Internet has made political repression much more complicated. Even if LiveJournal were to fall (and at least one Russian commentator believes that these attacks are rehearsals for "cyber-war," to bring LJ down in case of emergency, to shut off dissent without having to disable the entire Internet), people are starting to find other sites and other ways to get their message out. The Internet will win in the end.

It makes this blogger feel all warm and glowy inside.


*I love them, but it does get tiresome when most of the people you talk to want to either discuss your kids or your husband. True story: when you go on Jeopardy!, you fill out a questionnaire about your life experiences.  The last question is "Why do you want to be on Jeopardy!?"  My answer was, flippantly, that it would be nice to have people at cocktail parties talk to me about what I was doing rather than what my husband the Rocket Scientist was involved in.  When you go on the show, they pick one item about you for Alex Trebek to chat with you about.  Out of all the fascinating stories I told about myself, guess what they chose?  Yep, how much I was in my husband's shadow and how this was a chance for my own place in the sun.  I just can't escape this.