In these times of Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr, we tend to assume that everyone has abandoned LiveJournal — the community-oriented blogging platform that peaked about a decade ago, pre-dating even Friendster and MySpace by several years. Strangely, it was Facebook and The Social Network, which includes scenes of Mark Zuckerberg trashing an ex-girlfriend on his LJ, that got us thinking about the site again.
Acquired by blogging giant Six Apart in 2005, it was sold less than three years later to a Russian corporation, where the company now focuses its efforts. (Even the country’s president, Dmitry Medvedev, has his own LJ.) But that doesn’t mean it’s lost all U.S. relevance yet. In fact, some notable cultural figures continue to maintain their LJ presence. Check out who’s still there — a list that includes ’90s alternative stars, cult writers, and current emo sensations — after the jump.
Along with creating music together for more than fifteen years with The Bad Seeds, Grinderman, and The Dirty Three, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis have collaborated on soundtracks for films like The Proposition and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. On January 12, 2010 the pair will release their soundtrack to The Road, John Hillcoat’s post-apocalyptic family drama based on Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. It opens in theaters tomorrow.
Friday afternoon just got a whole lot more interesting online. Comics giant Warren Ellis is giving his fans their yearly chance to send him their self-portraits which he’ll post to his website for the next 24 hours. We’ll let him explain why: “I dunno. Kind of a tradition now, since the days of the WEF and Die Puny Humans. I have this idea in my head that the internet, like Soylent Green, is made out of people, and it doesn’t hurt to see the people you’re with when you come here.”
It’s a perfect storm of strange, and some excellent desktop people watching. After the jump, we show you some of our favorites.
