It's rare that I want to write something other than a diary blog but today I'll talk a little bit about my opinions on a platform from comm days past: Livejournal. I think a lot of my readers were around at such a time in the comm, but I do have readers also who are new to the subculture and didn't see this type of comm space thriving. I'm writing today towards those readers, especially since I have readers who are also interested in Digital Minimalism and leaving modern SNS. I want to write something with the thought of: "There is a different way!".
With full transparency, I'm a passive observer in both directions. Having joined the comm in around 2017 after several years of being gyaru on my own (I was very young!), while I read posts on LiveJournal I never posted or interacted there myself. So, it was before me, really. When I joined the comm the "hot place to be" was Amino. Maybe one day I'll talk about Amino?
LiveJournal is a blog community website, you can manage your own blog on your profile and join communities where you can leave posts for others with similar interests to see and interact with. Although nowadays lacking in maintenance and important security updates, it was once THE place to be for nerds and hobbyists, and especially for J-Fashion enthusiasts, including gyaru.
What makes it superior in my mind to modern SNS?:
- It was a dedicated space for Gyaru ONLY. Moderated by active community members, if any posts or comments were unwanted, they would be disposed of, members would be removed, house kept, and the space remained insular. Because the focus of the space was NOT to have the highest number of members or posts or interactions possible, moderation was strict and membership was often relatively small.
- It had a barrier of entry, ensuring high quality. As opposed to modern social media on which users are incentivized to post as often as possible at the expense of quality, often feeling compelled to post even when they have nothing to say or show, thus leaving a mass amount of low quality uninteresting garbage to scroll through, posting in LiveJournal communities required more work. Intentionally navigating to a desktop website, following the steps to gain membership in the community, composing a post in rich text or HTML, following the many post rules and conventions specific to the community, hosting photos on a third party site, etc. Also, at the time most people still used a point and shoot camera or 3G phone which needed to be wired into the computer to offload photos. There were many barriers to making a post where a person could stop and think "Is this good enough for me to post? WHY am I posting this?". This meant there were never spans of days where the only content posted were "my first attempt at eyeliner" and "can I be gyaru if I'm 15". And even if such a post somehow made it through...
- Community self-moderation was also high. If your look didn't make the cut, you would hear it! Most of the time, this would be in the form of nice and helpful constructive criticism in the comments, allowing you to actually know what you were missing the mark on and how to improve for your next post. These comments, too, would be moderated by other community members so if bad advice was given, they would be corrected. This helped ensure the standard of quality for the community as a whole was high, and this is a large part of why you can look back on photos and videos of meets from this time period and notice that pretty much everyone looks GREAT.
- Because the focus of the community was not to gain the highest clout possible, and posts were sorted by NEW rather than HOT or TOP, there was no incentive to post the most dramatic, over the top, flashy, unrealistic looks. There was no incentive for "gyaru cosplay" that we see all over modern SNS. You would stand to gain nothing by trying to farm attention. The reward for posting to the community WAS posting to the community. This meant that what was posted was more grounded and real than what we see today, a collection of people's ACTUAL daily outfits and makeup. If they did dress up more than they normally would, it was for a special occasion. If they were posing with props in a photoshoot, it was with a photographer for special photos. This inherently makes the content more interesting because it's something you can meaningfully take inspiration from and replicate for yourself!
Here are some examples of the type of posts made on Livejournal gyaru communities:
(Personal details censored so as not to tap the glass and to respect their privacy, but the posts are public!)
I think even just from small snippets of two posts you can tell how much higher quality the content was than what we get now... fully coordinated looks, styled with intent, that they actually wore outside. Highlighting points and details, discussing the products used in their makeup. Putting effort into making sure the photos are good quality and the whole look is visible. And NEVER text-only posts from faceless accounts arguing about gyaru without ever actually doing it. Everyone posts their looks and THAT'S IT.
Now is the philosophical rant part...
I think a lot of the comm is feeling atrophied by the current state of things. after the dissolution of the last centralized space, a lot of weird things happened over on TikTok and now there's a weird kind of new alien "gyaru" that is totally different from gyaru, and those type of people are kind of very loudly dominating the new central spaces that are trying to form, pushing out "real gyaru" and making everyone feel really abrasive. I think this is all a symptom of a lack of proper moderation honestly.
If the spaces where gyaru collected online were moderated by actively participating members of the subculture, who were both adequately knowledgable and strict, and ACTUALLY moderated the spaces, the types of content and advices currently on offer would simply not exist. I understand the very nice surface level idea of "including everyone", but the way to do that is not to just bust down all the walls around 'gyaru' and let everything fly, because then what we get is... nothing. There are things that make gyaru, there are distinct aspects of the look and lifestyle. Everyone is welcome in gyaru... IF they BE gyaru. If you aren't in a spot where you can or want to be gyaru... then leave and come back later when you are. If you haven't built your makeup and styling skills or built your wardrobe to the point where you have anything "gyaru" to show yet, leave and come back later when you do. If you don't have any looks to post, leave and come back when you do!! You are welcome into the comm spaces at that time. It never hurts anything to just be a passive observer and silently enjoy posts while you're still learning and growing your wardrobe. (Like I mentioned at the top of this blog, that is exactly what I did when I was new).
There are plenty of other spaces on the internet to make friends and interact with others that don't require you to do specific things that you don't want to do or can't do order to participate. Why on earth does it make sense to allow irrelevant and low quality content in gyaru spaces when that would be disallowed in every other space? Imagine constantly posting fake plants or bags of soil or arguing incessantly about agriculture drama in a houseplant community and when people ask you to post about houseplants, you say "I can't keep houseplants alive" or "I don't care about houseplants" or "what is a houseplant?" and get mad at THEM for 'gatekeeping' you.
At the end of the day, you have to be gyaru to be gyaru, and as a person who has been immersed in that lifestyle for a very long time and who completely lives and styles themselves that way, I don't personally find the modern comm's offerings to be engaging. I have already seen these questions answered, these arguments played out, these discussions had, these hot takes offered. I see nothing new ever posted to attract someone who has been in the subculture for more than a few months. I think this is why y'all are not seeing any (non-self-proclaimed) vets (who actually post their face and have receipts for their vetness) interacting anymore. Why would we?
With all that being said, did you know that there's a NEW LiveJournal style gyaru comm space?! Maybe you know that since the beginning of the decade there's been a trend in web developers to replicate old style SNS as new sites with better maintenance, one such a project is DreamWidth which aims to replicate the experience of LiveJournal. Now on DreamWidth there is
daily_gyaru!
I have been posting there also since it was created a few months ago, and I love it!
I have it linked on my sidebar, you can click through and visit that way.
daily_gyaru is moderated in the way I described above, with the intent of returning to the standards of quality and type of content that used to be standard in gyaru comm spaces. Personally, I find the potential content much more interesting than what's on offer on other platforms right now, and I want to see more activity there, so please go check it out and consider posting!
Ok that's all for this post. I guess it's kind of become my thing to rant about social media and about how it's bad and about digital minimalism from a gyaru perspective LOL. Well, it's my blog, I'll rant about whatever I want. Thankyopu for reading through this, though. I hope no feelings are hurt but if they are, I hope maybe you can take my perspectives as constructive rather than destructive. After all, I'm only some random person on the internet and my opinions really have no impact on you. You are also free to disagree with them, of course.
I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments about this as well. Do you miss LiveJournal? Do you think the comm content was better back then or now? Do you prefer the modern 'free for all' style moderation? Are you going to try posting on the new community?
Thinking back, I'm not even sure what I did today tbh...
Thinking back, I'm not even sure what I did today tbh...
No matter what, I always seem to end up with moldy water bottles. I'm giving up and going back to glasses for now.
No matter what, I always seem to end up with moldy water bottles. I'm giving up and going back to glasses for now.
