We all know that it’s possible to get over-invested in the Internet. People have sacrificed jobs, social lives, marriages, the feeding of pets, all for that next level of Warcraft.
No one does over-investment like the folks on Livejournal, though. With 1,791,627 active journals, Livejournal is one of the largest personal journaling services in the world; it’s young, predominately female clientele are known for being somewhat, well, reactive.
Over the past week, Livejournal (LJ to those in the know) has been running a user-representative election. This new representative would serve on the LJ advisory board and, in theory, improve their somewhat-shaky customer service record.
The entire election has become a frenzy of high drama, with accusations of ballot-stuffing, accusations of smear campaigns, actual smear campaigns, frightening macros, seizure-inducing icons, flaming, trolling, etc, etc.
Nothing, however, compares to the most recent development: candidate cambler has announced hir decision to withdraw from the race after sie claims to have received an email from LJ saying that… well:
“I received an email from a representative of LiveJournal informing me that a credible threat had been made against a candidate and a further email clarifying that law enforcement is involved.” (emphasis mine)
No word yet on who the threat was made against, or what it entailed. Now THAT’S getting over-invested in the Internet. Ah, Livejournal.
Another candidate, randomposting, has confirmed the “credible threat,” and withdrawn from the race.
Um… if you knew Cambler… you’d get used to this kind of hysteria. He should not be in power so I’m glad he bailed.
I don’t know him, no – however, two other candidates (randomposting and vichan) have said that they received the same notification. So, not hysteria, at least not in this case; just some whacko making threats.