Wow. You have got to love internet drama! I should write this stuff down. It would be a best seller.

I would very much like to link to a bunch of things and have a good rant about the whole Six Apart situation, because I have tons of tabs open with things to rant about, but my body and brain are now in post-feast mode. I simply haven’t the brain-power to deal with it right now. But oh, is it interesting to read.

As far as I know it:

Six Apart got reports from this totally weird and slightly disturbing group that fights pedophilia on the internet. I have the feeling some pressure was applied in the form of threatened advertising dollars. Six Apart went into Standard Operating Mode, freaked out, and cast the broadest net and painted with the widest brush possible some 500 or so Livejournals as promoting illegal activities and suspended them without warning … which, incidently, LJ says on its own web site isn’t the way that system is supposed to work. Meanwhile, the LJ natives are really getting restless. I’m pissed off too, and I’d be letting you know it, if I wasn’t stuffed to the gills on rich foods.

Now they are attempting, with undoubtedly the assistance of a small gaggle of lawyers, what to do next and how to deal with a very large and very angry community, many of them paying and long-time customers. The longer they wait, the worse it gets. Blah. Blah. Seen it before. Eventually, they will make a statement, send out an apology, beg forgiveness, and bring out some cool new LJ features to distract everyone … and then go on doing whatever they want to do. I mean, everyone is reading LJ News right now, let’s not waste the eyeballs! Give ‘em a new toy! And a few angry people will leave, there will be quiet rumblings for a while, and then no one will remember. They’ll be too busy playing with the new toy.

Don’t make me say “I told you so” again. I have seen this particular company behave in just that way more than a handful of times and not only at Livejournal. Just trust me.

Anyway … I don’t know how long I have been sitting here trying to put together these words in some form resembling coherence. Maybe Six Apart has talked to someone other then the press or a few select LJ users. I doubt it. I have to go poke my man and see if he needs anything, and then it’s time to take the trash out, provided I can lift my butt out of this chair, of course.