The meme is simply to post in your journal who made you get a LiveJournal. Post that person's identity, and if this meme spreads, you'll eventually be able to click through on multiple people and trace your LiveJournal ancestry back to the dusty origins.
I got my LJ because I wanted an online diary, but I didn't want to do all the meticulous work that Justin did. I noticed that
womanonfire was using LiveJournal, and I viewed her -- and still do -- as my favorite web designer ever. She was my idea of a good recommendation. So, if you can trace your LJ origin to me, you are distantly "related" to both Justin Hall and to Auriea Harvey -- you have an excellent pedigree! (If you are, btw, please leave a comment. I would like to know who my children/grandchildren/greatgrandchildre
Chances are good that many of you are distantly related to me and don't even know it, as many of you found LJ -- directly or indirectly -- through its communities. I thought up the idea for them around October of 2000. You might notice that there is also a tendency for people with certain interests to use LJ. It's not entirely a coincidence, as I promoted the site more towards certain people than others. This is especially true when it comes to those who are GLBT, polyamorous, pagan, artists (esp. comic artists), writers, musicians, and open source developers. My thought was that some of these groups would be more likely to help the site grow, while others would be more accepting and inclusive. Encouraging a non-judgemental vibe was very important to me, because so much of the appeal of LJ was what happened when people really opened up about their lives. Reality TV for the internet, perhaps...
I also heavily promoted communities like
polyamory and bisexual, which at first were closed and invite-only, back when LJ had only about 40 people who listed polyamory or bisexuality as an interest. Communities were very small at first and needed a bit of help to take off, so I contacted their admins, urging them to make their communities public, then I promoted them to every appropriate maillist and website I could find. I also recruited others to help me do this, to get specific communities listed in search engines, etc. In that sense, for many I'm not so much a LJ great-grandfather as much as a metagrandfather, really.
