ten

Thanks to one vigilant friend, yesterday I finally managed to catch the moment and take a screenshot of the milestone number:

I’m not going to play coy and say, "I don’t care how many friends I have." Of course it matters. And for me it has very practical value. The more readers there are, the more fighters there are on the anti-corruption front. Some smart alecks think the legal campaigns we organize are pointless. Like, "he hasn’t put anyone behind bars yet." If not today, then tomorrow. In a year. In five. At least we’re trying. In any case, I know for a fact what enormous headaches our flash mobs cause for the "targets" of our efforts. So I’m convinced this work is useful. It’s different for everyone, but for me, reaching the "thousands" took work. Not exactly backbreaking work. Not the mines, of course, but still painstaking work. I try to read all top-level comments and reply to them. If it’s a post calling on people to do something, I reply to everyone who did it. A lot of people make fun of that: you go into the comments and type "thanks," "yep," and "great, thanks" six hundred times—get yourself a bot. I’m not getting a bot. It seems right to me to answer someone who spent their time on you. To be honest, once I got past about 8,000 friends, I almost stopped reading side threads where people are discussing things among themselves. It’s impossible. Same with comments on old posts. I step away from the computer for two hours. I come back: 450 unread emails in my inbox, in the "LiveJournal" folder. There’s only one thing you can do: sigh and click "mark all messages in this folder as read." After that, I go to the latest post and read the top-level comments. In that sense, I can’t even imagine how tema or drugoi manage to read their comments. That’s why I always say: don’t try to reach me through a comment or a private message on LiveJournal. I might simply not see the comment, and I’ll read a private message two weeks later. Email only. Though email isn’t exactly fast either :) Only just now did I sort through and reply to the messages from people who want to work on the "Daimler case." I haven’t even looked at the emails from Good Monsters yet—I just flagged them. I’ll reply over the weekend. And another thing: somewhere after 7,000, I started being afraid of getting hacked. Before that, I really couldn’t care less; I didn’t understand why people made such a fuss about it. So what if you got hacked? Start a new LiveJournal. It’s not like there were revelations there that humanity desperately needed. Now, of course, the thought nags at me: I was a ten-thousander. If I get hacked, I’ll have to start over. Sure, about three thousand people would probably add me back right away. But being a three-thousander is kind of a letdown. No prestige, and you drop in the rankings. And then there’s self-censorship. Back in the day, a post like "damn, I rubbed my foot raw today" was perfectly normal. Now you stop and think first: there are so many people on the other side of the screen, and I’m talking to them about my sore foot. It feels awkward somehow. Consumer self-censorship. Everyone is always on the lookout for "paid posts." So a post like "The shop 'At Ashot’s' sells excellent buns" is only acceptable if you have 300 friends. If you have 7,000, all hell breaks loose: We thought he was one of us. Turns out he sold out to Ashot. He could at least promote a more serious business than a bakery. Aren’t you ashamed, Mr. Navalny?! Ask Ashot to write letters to the prosecutor’s office now! The opposite is problematic too: "The shop 'At Ashot’s' sells terrible buns." The reactions would be like this: If the shop were called "At Ivan’s," you wouldn’t have written that. Fascist filth. How much did the shop "At Tofik’s" across the street pay you? I see, Navalny has moved on to black PR with a nationalist undertone. So you think it over and think it over: to hell with Ashot and his buns. I’m not writing anything. All right, I’ll stop there, because this has turned into whining about the hard life of a blogger rather than an anniversary post. Still, being a "thousander" is nice. Kisses to everyone.