Permanent Account Aristocracy?

[charmian]

After reading the whole Give Me More Friends! Entitlement crise on LJ, it struck me that quite a few people on LJ do seem to believe that permanent account holders are sort of an aristocracy, deserving of special privileges. While paid account members certainly have certain features available to them, for the purposes of suggestions, what counts is the content of the suggestion, not the paid/non-paid status of the suggester; that is probably (IIRC) true for support as well, in that you still receive the same kind of support based on your problem, not based on your paid/non-paid status. Permanent accounts, due to their scarcity, have become a sort of status symbol on LJ, which I think leads to some negative social effects, as well as increased bitterness when LJ does something they don't like. I guess I'm not entirely sympathetic? Because I just think "eh, when you buy a permanent account, you are gambling with that cash. Also, if you have had it for over a certain amount of time, you already got your money's worth."

Oh yeah, if anyone does want an invite code, I have five to give away. I think most of the people I know on LJ who are interested already have one.

Some interesting links (previously posted at my tumblr):
http://mpt.net.nz/archive/2008/08/01/free-software-usability (Why open source often has poor usability)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-5MLPzRjls (Bollywood in the early eighties?)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxDWpgKPPPs (Adorable owl)
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/post/the-future-of-book-manufacturing/

Comments

[azurelunatic]

See: permmembers.

[charmian]

Wow, didn't know they had an entire comm dedicated to them. Interesting... According to a comment there, at $175, when all of the add ons are considered, permanent accounts pay for themselves in around 2-3 years. 0_o

[elena]

I wouldn't say it's a matter of scarcity but rather of disposable income, and I've got a LJ perm account...

It's a nice tradeoff for a "permanent" 15Gb storage of pictures, though.

[charmian]

Well, scarcity because not everyone is on LJ all the time, and it can be missed if you're not around for a week, or just aren't paying very much attention to news. (like a lot of people are)

I've heard the gallery software kinda sucks, though? IDK, there are lots of photo hosting sites out there.

[elena]

Yeah, but I only want it to upload images for my self-hosted Wordpress weblog, so I don't care about the interface. The pretty gallery is in Flickr.

(Top post on the permmembers comm: amusing, in a "take it to the W3C" way. Talk about entitlement)

[charmian]

Ah, I see. I stopped putting up pictures in my self-hosted WP because there was some BW stealing going on.

What in the world was that? Were the mods asleep at the wheel? Does it even have anything to do w/ permanent membership?

[elena]

Answer here: "I only approved this entry for lulz. :x"

[charmian]

Well, can't argue with that, haha.