I started writing on OD in 2004 when I was in my second year at university, majoring in English philology (an old-fashioned term for studying language and culture and everything to do with it). Then around 2006-7 when it became time to choose a topic for my master's thesis, somehow I hit upon the idea of studying OD. I think for a long time I'd been fascinated by the way OD felt like such a tight community. It was a really rich and rewarding social experience, yet people still looked at me strangely when I told them I kept a diary online and talked to lots other people who kept their diaries online. Why would you do that - why would you share your private thoughts and feelings online, where anybody can see them? The idea was still WEIRD in 2006.
It's no longer weird in 2014, now is it? ;)
That's how I got started, though. I began researching how a community can be built by writing diaries. It turned into an ethnography. I wanted to differentiate the work from my personal life on the site, so I started a diary under this same name on OD and talked to people and wrote about my ideas. Eventually the thesis was finished and I graduated with my master's in 2008. And although the journey had been arduous, having got to the end I realised that I want more.
I tried to stay away from university, you know, trying to find a real job and all that, but it was no good. Nothing was as fascinating and insanely challenging as research. So in 2010 I signed up as a PhD student. And spent about three years being very confused, working part-time or full-time outside the university, not really getting ahead with the research at all. With hindsight I can say that that's the nature of the beast, though some have an easier time than others for a number of reasons.
Anyway, I'm here now, and I know what I'm doing, and I love what I'm doing. My master's thesis on OD became a part of my PhD - the starting point, in fact - and I've written an article summarising the results. It's not been published yet, but it will be! I'll certainly share the news here when there are any :)
I thought that would be the end of my research work on OD. I'd moved along to other case studies, other sites, but then the site began to struggle. I'd moved my personal diary mainly to Prosebox sometime in the autumn of 2013 when the technical problems became too much. I thought at that point that it might be interesting to try to chronicle this move from OD to PB, since it seemed a lot of people were doing it. But I was busy with other things and kind of forgot about it.
But then the news came this week that OD will be shut down. It still came as a shock, even though it was so expected. I guess I still thought that eventually the DM would get his act together somehow. So I went on OD like everyone else and I saw the thousands of farewell entries being posted, and it seemed that the vast majority of people said they were moving to Prosebox or had already moved.
And I thought, wow. This is like a massive migration of a community from one place to another. Surely I have to pay attention? Not only that, but OD is actually shutting down. Disappearing forever. It seems wrong to not acknowledge that somehow, seeing as I am already publishing an article about when OD was vibrant and busy. Should I not try to also document the end - especially since it's not really an end?
I'm still trying to figure it all out. But I wanted to write this introduction to maybe get some feedback. What would be a good way to record what's going on right now? It's not as if I can go and ask the permission of every single person who's written a farewell entry, to store that entry and look at it later. And doing that without permission just doesn't feel right, because these are still personal diaries and I respect that immensely. I wouldn't want anyone taking anything in my diary without my consent.
It's not that I need to record a lot of entries from OD in order to write about it. It just feels so sad that all those messages will disappear. But maybe I need to get over it same as the rest of us. Everyone is still here - it's just a new place.
Loading comments...