It's a baby meme!

[bohemiancoast]

Or possibly a great big hulking meme by now. One line about each person on my friends list, reordered alphabetically.



Don’t give up on the idea; it’s a good one.
Funny how little I know about you, really, after all these years.
I don’t know you very well and I’d like to get to know you better
I don’t know you terribly well, but I really like what I see.
I don’t think you have a clear idea of what you want out of life yet.
I love you madly. Let’s sneak off together for a dirty weekend.
I should do more to look beyond your physical appearance.
I still don’t get the sense that you’re comfortable in your own skin.
I think you’re a bit hard on yourself – you don’t realise how good you are at making things happen.
I think you hanker after the life of a femme fatale; it must be hard to hang around little people like us.
I was so happy to hear your news; I can’t wait to see you in person and give you a big hug.
I wish you weren’t so far away.
I wish you lived in a slightly better part of town.
I wonder what you’re like when you’re not trying to be on show.
I’m not entirely sure why you’re on my friends list, as I’ve always found you dull and you don’t say anything interesting on LJ either.
I’m really sorry about letting the cat out of the bag. So to speak.
I’m so glad you’ve found your soulmate.
I’ve been worried to distraction about you, which shocked me because we don’t know each other all that well.
It all seems such a long time ago now.
The really scary thought is that you and he might be very well-suited.
We do seem to get on much better since our divorce, don’t we?
We must do lunch sometime; that way we could talk shop without it irritating all our other friends.
We’re nodding acquaintances – we must get beyond the nodding stage sometime.
What on earth do you see in him?
You gave me such a thrill.
You make a super online friend.
You lead such a destructive lifestyle; it’s hard to see a friend living so fast.
You often take advantage of your friends, but you’re so wildly entertaining we forgive you for it.
You ought to do a fanzine sometime, or at least post to LJ.
You should relax more and trust that we’re your friends, we care about you, and you don’t need to choose a mask to wear around us.
You try to be the life of the party but perhaps you’d find it easier to just relax.
You use technology as a personality shield to an extent that I find scary.
You’re a bundle of contradictions and I never know what to make of you.
You’re a dark horse, aren’t you?
You’re a great person to chat to, but sometimes you get stuck on a high horse.
You’re a peach
You’re a really handy person to have about the place.
You’re a sweetheart, but I always wonder what you see in fandom.
You’re a very decent sort.
You’re nice, and interesting, but I find I don’t particularly have anything I want to say to you
You’re the nicest person I’ve ever met and everyone loves you, but I dearly hope you find a soulmate.
You’re the one person on my friends list I don’t know at all, not even a little bit; but thanks for being there.
You’re the sort of very old friend that’s like comfortable old clothes; I find it very easy to be around you and whenever I see you it brings back happy memories.
You’ve had such a hard time recently – I really hope you’re seeing the light at the end of the tunnel now.

Comments

My meme response

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

15/44

(the number of replies up there that I could imagine you saying to me under general circumstances, how many you would *actually* say is not possible to guess)

Re: My meme response

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

That's interesting; I make it 10/44 I might ever say! I wonder to what extent they overlap? And it's a really odd exercise; for example, the thing I wrote with sbisson in mind also suits you quite well, but it hadn't occurred to me at all that this was true when I wrote it.

I was conscious when I was doing this that one of the things I wrote was really quite rude and I was bothered that some of my (proper) friends might read it and think it was about them (I think this is the classic problem with this sort of thing). I did consider just taking the person off my friends list instead. Other lists I've read include several comments that I read and think 'well, if that's how you feel about them, why on earth do you have them on your friends list'?

Re: My meme response

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

I'd certainly wonder about the one person you have on your friends list who doesn't say anything of interest to you and whom you don't find horribly interesting to begin with.

It's not necessarily rude if you want to make sure they never talk to you again (although I think that just dropping them quietly would make far more sense).

So why DO you have them on your friends list?

Re: My meme response

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

When I first joined LJ I used my friends list as a sort of "and everyone else who knows me" list. I quite quickly became very much more selective (there are plenty of people I like perfectly well and get on with who aren't on my friends list for one reason or another, and they are my friends). But I'd already added this person. It's not even that they're particularly dull in the grand scheme of things; this isn't one of those people who seeks you out and is dull at you! But the things they talk about rarely interest *me*.

Re: My meme response

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

It's an interesting meme, this one. I was pretty sure that one comment on ciphergoth's list was about me, and was right when he did the reveal... (gah, too much "Changing Rooms"!). I still disagree with him, even though it was incredibly flattering...

Still, like the_magician I can see 10 or so that you might say to me - though I have my suspicions as to which is the "real" statement...

Re: My meme response

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

Oh my God! I'm not supposed to do a reveal, am I? I am not by any means sure I'm up for that.

Re: My meme response

[green-amber.livejournal.com]

I think this actually is a very interesting meme though it does take guts, for the writer and the reader both. I too found that having written a comment to one person when I mixed them up I first thought it referred to someone else. In fact several - maybe a dozen - were like that. as i didn't keep a copy of my original lists I now don't even know for sure what was written to who - v. postmodern.

And I *think* I know which is to me - I hope - but yes there are (goes back and count), mm, 6, maybe 7, I could easily see as being to me, mostly less flattering than the one I think is... But it's also interesting what these lines say about YOU. You refer an awful lot to people wearing masks, people taking on roles, people using things as a shield. I don't think I mentioned anything like that in/to my (presumably quite overlapping) Friends list. So what does that say about me and you and our perceptions (or lack of), hmm?

Re: My meme response

[sneerpout.livejournal.com]

The only that was blatantly obvious to me was the green_amber one! Hint: there's a very big clue in the form of an aphorism used early on in the sentence.

And no, I have no idea which one I am.

Re: My meme response

[green-amber.livejournal.com]

Funnily enough the only one I was pretty sure of was the one that is sneerpout! (And yes , on mine, I think I agree with you - but as I say, there are others that sound worryingly accurately targetted too..)

Re: My meme response

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

I love you madly. Let’s sneak off together for a dirty weekend.
We do seem to get on much better since our divorce, don’t we?

I know I'm not up on all the latest gossip, but I thought maybe I could identify these two.

Re: My meme response

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

I think you've probably guessed the wrong one for green_amber then.

Re: My meme response

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

We have something like 30 of our friends in common -- though oddly, I realised that I'd missed one person off my list (I also deliberately omitted a number of cardboards. I wonder if one of the things that made the difference was that I did the meme while stone cold sober at 3 in the afternoon while becoming nervous about the forthcoming Senior Management Entertain the Troops Christmas Panto (in which I played Cinderella, barred from the Christmas party until she (a) finished the submission and (b) met the Jobcentre Plus dress code), and you did the meme while on the wrong side of a bottle or two of red wine? I think I might do it again when drunk & see if my answers are different.

Re: My meme response

[green-amber.livejournal.com]

Well, actually I did the meme on the woring side of a couple glasses red wine and/or port. I don't think I'd have dared leave it open to view if I'd been REAlly BLOTTO... But yes at the time I did it it never occurred to me that antone could feel remotely paranoid about my list, which was clearly wrong..

In other news, have you noticed how much Hans Matheson resembles Aragorn??

[serendipoz.livejournal.com]

Certainly interesting in terms of gossip and sliding, ...

[green-amber.livejournal.com]

Sliding??

Re:

[serendipoz.livejournal.com]

Sliding from one lj to another and wondering while wandering, ...

[numbat.livejournal.com]

A mildly alarming list this. I assume I'm on it since I appear to be on your friends list. I also assume I'm not the subject of any of the less fulsome comments because I'm sure that if you felt that way about me I'd know. Even having made that rather hard to defend assumption it's too difficult to guess whether I belong to a neutral or positive comment. Hard to know how most people react to me when I live half the world away. There's none of that face to face contact which helps give the game away. I'll just have to hope it wasn't one of the more complimentary ones or I'll feel obliged to squirm.