Today on Maury: internet crusaders and the LJ admins that love them...

(I would like to point out, however, that the current kerfuffle is not a first amendment issue -- LJ is a private service, and as such has the right to randomly change the TOS at will and you can't do a damn thing about it. I hate when people use their "first amendment" rights as a rallying cry, when the first amendment really only means that the government can't abridge your free speech rights. What it is is a retardedness issue, in that the majority of the affected communities aren't doing anything illegal based on current obscenity laws, and in that LJ is merely deleting communities based on listed interests and not the actual content of the journals. *slowclap* Once again, LJ has proved itself to be adept at dealing with nuance -- Breastfeeding icons and the Russian journals, anyone?)

ETA: Ha ha, the exodus of LJ fandom and the rush of posts at fandom_wank have overloaded journalfen. Although I think LJ is being arbitrary and idiotic, I'm still sitting back and enjoying the meta -- you know I love this shit.

From a comment over at fandom_wank

When the Abuse team came for the breastfeeders,
I remained silent;
I was not a breastfeeder.

When they bahleeted the anonymemes,
I remained silent;
I was not an anonymeme.

When they came for the incesters,
I did not speak out;
I was not an incester.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out
and I had LJ all to myself.

(no subject)

Here is a GIANT list of the LJs that have been suspended so far. I have to say, I'm really going to miss reading daddy4litlgirls's thoughts about current affairs. He was always very insightful. ieatcum4mydaddy and ifuckmydaughter were both very knowledgeable about French haute cuisine. And lemonade_facial made the cutest cat macros!

*sigh* You know, I disagree with this whole thing in principle, especially the fact that it all seems very arbitrary -- and I'm PISSED that Six Apart has yet to make anything resembling a statement, and that members of the LJ support team denied just this past weekend that any bannination was about to occur. But, you know, not giving a forum to someone like midadluvs_kids or lttlgrllvr is probably not entirely of the bad. (Although it has been pointed out a number of times on the hijacked news thread that it would probably be better to report these pervs to an actual law enforcement agency than to just shut them down and teach them to hide better.)

love it.

First, a comment that compares Six Apart to Nazis. Then, in the very next post, someone compares LJ to Stalinist Russia AND misspells adequate. THE NEWS THREAD IS POSITIVELY DRIPPING WITH ADEQUATULENCE!

(no subject)

The group that threatened Six Apart's advertisers is apparently linked to a webring of crazy pentacostalist neo-secessionist whatever-the-crap...I don't really know what half of this means, but I think they're pretty much just crazy racists.

But it doesn't matter, because the head of Six Apart claims that this wasn't done out of fear of legal action or advertising boycotts. No! It was meant to better foster a sense of COMMUNITY here on LiveJournal. OF COURSE! Because we all know the best way to endear yourself to a community is to stonewall them and talk to outside press before making anything resembling an explanation on the community itself. Duh!

I may have to start resorting to macros to express the total (and ever-expanding) retardedness of this situation. I could bust out "Oh the Huge Manatee", or maybe just something that involves the heavy use of the word "fail". I haven't decided yet. But I feel like macros are the only appropriate response to such an all-encompassing piece of LJ Drama. It seems only right. I'll think of something.