crochet drama
Anyone else follow any livejournal craft communities? I used to read the crochet one on and off, looking for the occasional good pattern and interesting work. The sociology of it was what really kept me coming back, though. LJ is known for drama, and the crochet community was just chock full of it. Besides the standard copyright battles, much of the drama revolved around different views of the purposes of online communities. The conflicts generally arose between the people who think of posting their projects online as one big Mom’s Fridge (praise me! love me!) and those who put more value on criticism and skill. This split was kind of on a low simmer after the formation of 2 splinter groups, polite_crochet and crochet_snark (which in turn spawned crochet snark snark). Everything blew up again though about a month ago in a protracted flame war involving (and I am not kidding) chocheted tampon dolls and dildo cozies, a sort of solidarity movement to protest the resulting new “obscenity” rules, what may or may not have been child pornography, and even the police being called. Finally, the moderator took her ball and went home (although the archives have recently reappeared). This led to a period of turmoil where the thousands of members of the community all had to find new crochet communities. The fragmentation of the community has been fascinating. In the immediate aftermath, probably a dozen new communities were started, and several ailing ones were promoted. Of those, maybe half a dozen haven’t been getting many posts lately so I would consider them dormant. I still can’t tell who will ultimately “win” and be the new general crochet community, but here’s a list (probably incomplete) of the contenders:
crochet tampons by ohh-rissa
February 2nd, 2006 at 3:35 am
that is HILARIOUS! i would give a hand-knit (i mean crochet) scarf…2 decoupaged buckets and an embroidered tea cloth to have been on 3-way when they called the police. As a member of the law-enforment-crime-fighting community, how the hell would you react to a “crochet disturbance”?
February 2nd, 2006 at 6:02 am
too funny!!
February 2nd, 2006 at 8:48 am
oh my goodness! these are great!
February 2nd, 2006 at 1:44 pm
Those are too funny!! They would be even cooler if you could store your real ones inside, then you could have a little laugh when you had to use them. :)
February 3rd, 2006 at 12:48 am
Aimee Roo, what an idea!
February 3rd, 2006 at 1:10 am
Sadly, something similar almost happened on another LJ community (20sknitters…there was an obnoxious troll post). Sense prevailed luckily and everyone decided to be nice. What is it about Live Journal and the flaming?
February 3rd, 2006 at 3:12 am
I used to read the LJ crocheting communities, but found them to be full of mean people. I once asked for help finding flower patterns to crochet and felt for my bridal bouquet and the responses I got were awful! I found it hard to believe that pattern sharing was taboo in a crocheting community – but it was. I ended up apologizing for asking.
February 3rd, 2006 at 11:41 am
Where Have I been??? How could I have missed this drama??? I guess some us will never learn how to play nice. I have friend who knitted a uterus to abuse when was having terrible cramps. Whipping one of these babies around by the tail could be very therapeutic.
February 3rd, 2006 at 8:27 pm
… this somehow ties with with a book I’m reading at the moment: Collapse, by J. Diamond. It’s fascinating, the way communities change as they grow and develop.
January 11th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
This is so bizarre! I am on crochet_crochet and it is very rare to see any trouble. People ask for patterns for things and get lots of helpful responses. Everyone’s quite anxious to keep within the comm rules eg no sales posts etc. Probably from previous incidents! Obviously I’ve missed the drama, which is no bad thing…
January 19th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Hi Claire
seems you have stumbled upon the archives and this post is two years old. I hope there is no drama still. good luck with your crochet.