I’m intrigued by a few developments recently. I’m suddenly having exactly the sort of political discussions I want to be having on my blog but it’s not with my friends, it’s with three anonymous interlocutors. Come, join in the fun: we’re talking about property, theft, anarcho-syndicalism versus Marxism, Palestine vs Israel and a whole lot more.
I’m also intrigued by what’s happening with screening_room. frou_frou and I started it a few years ago and have intermittently used it to post our own film reviews. Its original aim was to be Melbourne-focussed, and as she noted recently, it’s suddenly gained a few new members. She surmised it was people searching on “melbourne international film festival”. We’re one of the few LJ communities that lists that as an interest. I noted that a couple of them are students of mine (I’m getting my students to keep blogs and I showed them screening_room as an example of a community). But I just went through the members whose names I didn’t recognise… among our tiny little 40-person community, we have someone from Oklahoma, someone from Canada, someone from Russia and someone from Ukraine. None of these people have any friends in common with either Nicky nor I that I can see. I’m curious: what did they search on to find us? What was it about our little community that persuaded them to join it?