The Blogger's Lament

[demiurgent]

It's nice to see the referral logs, so you know when people are talking about your stuff.

Until, that is, you have a referrer log back to a nice, juicy livejournal entry that might have something to say about your writing... and you discover it's a locked entry.

You go a little mad. What could they be saying? What would your post have done that drove them to write about you but lock the post away where no one would ever see it but those they trusted not to rat them out? This isn't even an LJ that's entirely posted protected normally -- they had to make a decision to lock this entry.

It's like having a phantom itch on the side of your face that's been numbed by Novocain. You scratch and scratch and scratch, but all you succeed in doing is leaving welts you can't feel on the side of your face with no sense of relief in sight.

Comments

[angryricecooker.livejournal.com]

Generic referrals from message boards such that you can't find the actual post are frustrating in the same way, I've found.

Sometimes, I just screw with people.

[mckenzee.livejournal.com]

OK, I admit it.

I make locked posts listing tons and tons of links, log out, log in under a different account and click the links, then log back in and delete the posts.

It's nice to see that it is working.

[criticalmess.livejournal.com]

And google's cache isn't being your friend?

[demiurgent.livejournal.com]

Google's cache doesn't help with friendslocked posts, because they don't make it into google in the first place.

[criticalmess.livejournal.com]

I thought they did? Maybe that was then?

[archangelbeth]

If my post was never open, but always friendslocked, Google can't get it because I do not have Google friended.

(Google is my little slave, not my friend.)

Google also won't archive LJ journals which have the "go away, search engines" flag set.

[tacohime.livejournal.com]

They said that you have hairy balls.

[demiurgent.livejournal.com]

Oh whew. That's a relief.

[theferrett.livejournal.com]

Oh, believe me I know this feeling.

Slightly better is the swathe of referrals from LJ friendslists, indicating that someone has talked about you - but who? I don't even have a name. But at least I can't analyze them then.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

At least *some* of the people's Friends pages won't have scrolled it off completely by the time you get there. Hit 'em all and run a quick search.

[illian.livejournal.com]

Well, at least we now all know how to drive you Mad(der)!

[scarfman]

It's probably just someone casually linking to Entitlement and the Modern Fandom from a rant about the Rose-Martha wars in LJ Doctor Who fandom. I do that all the time. Well, I would, if the R-M wars actually intruded on the communities I watch more often; mostly I just see friends complaining about it. But that is your essay I have cause to link to most often.

[demiurgent.livejournal.com]

Actually, it's a link to Banter Latte.

[masonk.livejournal.com]

Man, I wish I had this problem. :)

[archangelbeth]

*pats*

BTW, I liked your SF locked-room murder thriller thingy. I have totally forgotten the password -- if I ever had one -- to log in, though. *sigh*

[harukami]

I KNOW JUST THE FEELING YOU MEAN, o-occasionally when a fic gets comments from people I don't recognize I check ljseek and blogsearches etc to see where it's linked.

However, I've also found that sometimes they just lock it because the entry may be something like

[BITCHING ABOUT WORK]
But I feel a bit better because I was reading [work], which people should totally go read too.


Y-yeah.

[jenfullmoon.livejournal.com]

This kind of thing is why I loathe the whole trackback thing.

I can't help but think, "If it's locked, I probably really don't want to know." But then again, I never wanted to know what people said about me behind my back :P

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

Yyyyyyep.