Long before location-based social networking sites came into the picture, there was already a site for gay men to find other gay men; and no, I’m not talking about guys4men or dudesnude.com, I’m talking about the blogging site/platform LiveJournal.

Yes, LiveJournal (or LJ, to many of its users) was one site where gay men in the metro could find other gay men of similar interests (or not) for friendships, chat, networking, relationships, sex, and

practically anything and everything! I originally intended to write about this topic very comprehensively, but I don’t think I can be comprehensive enough. So I leave it up to the former LJ users, the walang-kupas-up-to-now-LJ-user-pa-rin, and the still-LJ-users-but-made-their-LJs-private to tell you their own tales.

LJ was a big hit for gay men sometime in the early years of the last decade.  LJ was a buzzword. It was THE Twitter (follow me!), if you may.

“Are you on LJ? what’s your LJ id? Add me up ha!”

Now, it’s “OMG, I used to read your LJ!” or “We were friends on LJ!”. I actually uttered one of these lines recently. And someone actually told me on Grindr that he used to read my LJ.

(Sa mga malinis diyan: Yes, I have a Grindr profile. But like I said in one of my old LJ posts [Thanks to newfound-friend for reminding me about this quote], “Tigang man, disente pa rin”. I don’t use it for hookups, I just like boy-watching. etchos!)

When someone tells me they used to read my LJ, the first thing I feel is embarrassment. I wrote a lot of crap before – most of which I don’t remember now – that I just want the earth to swallow me whole. Ay swallow. The next thing I want to do is ask them why they stopped reading. charot.

Commenting on your LJ friends’entries and your LJ friends’ friends’ entries was a big thing!  I think it was one of the primary networking functions of LJ. Gay networks expanded via comments (To quote my newfound-Grindr-and-former-LJ-user friend [from now on his name will be NGAFLU]: “Added you! Hope you don’t mind (smiley). [Then pray for an add-back]). This was the kalakaran in those days. I think guys4men already existed back then, but LJ was a more decent way to find guys. Kung friendship lang naman talaga hanap mo, why use guys4men diba? Besides, as NGAFLU says, “Kasi mas kita mo yung thought process ng tao” on LJ. Which makes sense.  LJ was more than just guys4men.

This post does not in any way try to compare LJ and Grindr. Hindi sila magka-level. Grindr is like guys4men, LJ is LJ (just like Anna Dizon is Anna Dizon!).

LJ was not your ordinary blogging platform. It was social networking and blogging and commenting and interacting (and intersexing?) combined. Ay teka. Why am I talking about LJ in past tense like it’s no longer there? LJ is still alive and kicking and there are still a lot of good reads and gay men (not necessarily in the same journal) there!

I was reading random posts of gay LJ users in my network and I realized that the gay world – both online and offline – was so small!  I found one entry with so many comments from people who didn’t really personally know each other.  I, for one, have personally built online rapport and friendships with strangers through commenting, not knowing that five or six years later – through a different medium or circumstance, these people would become close friends of mine.

And little did I know that more than five to six to seven years later, someone would actually tell me: “I used to read your LJ” and he told me that on Grindr!

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