Ok, seriously. What were they thinking?

[brooksmoses]

So I happened to load the main www.livejournal.com page just now, and they have an animated-GIF ad for the new "LJ Talk" service.

I think this is why real companies hire advertising departments.

Because, see, the tagline for the service really ought to be aimed at the target audience, not those of us who would be more likely to mock them.



And, really: "pants"?

Comments

[kiya]

Clearly, they are of the opinion that instant messaging is pants, which I am not inclined to disagree with them about.

(Pardon, was discussing that bit of British slang with whispercricket the other day ...)

[surelars.livejournal.com]

*headdesk*

Really. Concept, graphics, animation, tag-line - all done by a not-too-bright teenager.

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

well, i can't rightly say that i think highly of this little injoke being on the main page, but i remain glad that LJ isn't a "real company" in the sense that you mean. i suspect i would likely no longer be here if it were, and everytime they make a move in that general direction, i start to worry.

i much rather they do this sort of thing than that they worry at every step whether they're possibly hurting their "image". i really like a lot of the people who run LJ, i think they're good people, they have their hearts in the right spot, and even though some of their silliness isn't my kind of silliness, i take them any day over your average suit.

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

you know, that snap judgment annoys me.

it's something of an injoke. now, one can be judgmental of whether it belongs on the front page (i'd never put it there myself), but you're awfully quick to judge the people behind it in ways i consider unjustified. in my experience, most people who are involved in running LJ, and that includes the teenagers, are of rather above-average intelligence. their sense of humour might not jive with yours (it doesn't jive with mine all that much either), but that doesn't make them automatically young and stupid.

you sound like my parents. *wry grin*.

[surelars.livejournal.com]

I get that. And you're right, that was judgmental and unjustified. I do, after all, not know a single person working at LJ.

What I should have said is that seeing a gif like that brings up these things in me - no matter if has any bearing on reality or not. My reaction is to not want to have anything to do with the whole thing. Basically, animated gifs annoy me a whole lot. Add to that the notion that since I IM, I must be into drama, and you have a major annoyance and an insult. That certainly rubs me the wrong way.

However, those are my issues. Pissing on the LJ that is not a mature way of dealing with that. Thanks for calling me on it.

AS for your parents, well, maybe you should introduce us? ;-)

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

see, this is one of the many reasons why i like you. :)

totally with you on finding animated gifs annoying (except for the rare funny one -- i especially HATE moving userpics). and i know that the LJ folks are totally steeped in their own culture (which does include vast swaths of drama and angst, even if it's not always emitted by teenagers), and that they don't really take their more mature demographic much into account, because really, that's not what they get to hear from every day -- and that it can be annoying to be tossed into the same black pot with the idiots if one is part of that more mature demographic.

as to my parents, uh, no. i haven't seen them since i ran away at 17. :) but i still listen to music that they'd find obscene, *snicker*.

[redbird]

"Real" companies and their advertising departments inflict a lot more animated images on me than LJ does.

Also, if IM produces instant drama for someone, they either like that (why wait until tomorrow for the drama you're going to have anyway?) or consider it an inevitable price for something they do like (the way I think of certain post-gym muscle soreness). It's not the medium: if I were going to have drama with my mother or my girlfriend, the telephone would be as capable of transmitting same as IM is. (Yes, I use IM to talk to my mother, who is old enough that she collects retirement income from both the UK and US systems.)

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

I actually really liked the "pants" part. :) I think it's partly because I regularly IM with mtffm, who often opens conversations with "Pants!" or "Pants?". This made it feel like a bit of a joke. Plus, the "Instant Drama," part seemed like a funny wink at livejournal that's in-line with what almost all the livejournal community says about the service. Animated GIF or not, it worked for me.

[necturus.livejournal.com]

Instant drama?! (shudders)

[oldsma.livejournal.com]

For some reason, the mascot always types about pants. I assume this refers to something from before I signed up for LJ. It's kind of silly, but I suppose that's the point.

The drama thing is only too true, but I don't think it is exactly a selling point for the service.

And the animation is just annoying.

MAO

On the pants

[suzanne.livejournal.com]

From what I understand Frank, the goat, has a favorite food - pants. There have been numerous jokes made about this in various LJ communities, specifically frank's lj where the primary icon says "Pants, it's whats for dinner". I've pretty much been ignoring the whole IM thing due to my personal dislike of the concept. So it didn't really register with me.

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

I think I could as the "mature demographic" (turning 31 in less than a month!) and I thought the graphic was funny. I'm well aware of the tendency for LJ, IM and other forms of online communication to cause drama in ways that realspace communication never did. It may be more common among teenagers, but I've seen LJdrama occurr among friends of mine in their 40s too (though the flavor of it was probably different). I've definitely fallen prey to it myself. Being aware of this tendency - and being able to laugh at myself about it - helps me limit it.

Not that I've actually tried LJs IM service... but that has more to do with time and already having 3 other IM services :)

[surelars.livejournal.com]

Heh. Yeah - I, too have worked in companies with an internal culture all it's own, complete with lingo and values and assumptions about the world out there. Which is lovely. But sometimes it pays off to remind yourself that the (rst of the) world out there is different and so your internal lingo and jokes may not make a lot of sense, and may even mean something you did not at all intend.

I'm not sure I really count as mature (except if you look at my birth certificate) - I'm just not at all part of LJ's background or internal culture, so I don't "get it" at all. And so all I get is what their communication means in my little world.