/cgl/ - Cosplay & EGL

>>10381735
Wider variety of content

>>10381735
No like system back then, so people engaged/commented more

A lack of alternatives. Either you were on LJ or you were a lonelita.

Less people. Lolita used to be more obscure and such you had to research more about it. Now every Jack and Jane can join a community no matter how bad they are (or even lolita-at-heart). So I say overall quality used to be better.

You weren't completely anonymous, but you didn't have to interact with a basically public profile under your real name
Personally that really holds me back from participating in online communities more

>>10381779
Same. Being in a group named lolita community for all of your family and worse coworkers to see seems irresponsible in the least. You can have a account just for that but not all are willing to go out of their way for it.

Everything others mentioned, but also more of a focus on text over pictures. Even in the comments people generally wrote their thoughts out over several sentences rather than just commenting emojis and conversations flowed from there more naturally. On IG and FB getting a real conversation going is like pulling teeth.

>>10381779
>>10381787
I never even had a ‘normal’ FB account and made one with a fake name just for lolita but my entire extended family found me anyway. Hard to stay anon when my siblings use their real names and tag me, geotags posts about meeting up near my house, congratulate me on my birthday etc. I’ve had to make extensive use of privacy settings and friend filters just to make sure my family doesn’t dox me on a weekly basis.

I wonder why won’t people re-boot the lj comm? Making an empty lj profile seems like the same effort as making fake fb account to post on CoF.

>>10381735
Different generation

>>10381791

cgl's not that great at generating original content, most of our threads are reposting stuff from internets. As for the ones that are great at creating content, if they're doing it for free then they're certainly doing it for attention/interaction from others, so they'll go to wherever gives them a lot of feedback, which is also not cgl's strong suit.

It's a catch-22, in order to draw the crowd back to egl you need to have a crowd already at egl that is active, that way there's folks posting and giving feedback all the time.

>>10381787
Most lolita communities are private so they don’t show up under your account and they don’t show who is in it when searched. your coworkers would literally have to be in the comm to see it. It’s actually more secure than LJ from that perspective

>>10381791
because lj sucks.

Its sad to see how many people here never actually used lj, and so never experienced how annoying it was.

First off, Fb started being used mainly for comms because it was way easier to organize events on fb. Then as groups became used more and more, the weirs specialized groups egl had stopped being needed. Egl sales comm is an example of a format that never was good on lj but no one wanted to make their own website after the first attempt went poof, so it took years before LM.

Also Fb has bigger recognition and so it is easier to tell someone to use fb (most people have an account) and look up a group than to get them to make lj accounts and join 50 groups. Besides egl, you would have your own local comm, the wank comms, sales, daily lolita, the brand specific stuff, then when egl got angry about more general posts they would be told to make new groups which led to lgbt groups or, sewing groups. It can be a lot and now there is more of a focus on attention not just from our peers which is why ig is popular.

Plus making posts is the worst, the system is archaic and has a lot of rules in terms of formatting and uploading pictures. Back when lj was used you would spend hours making a post and doing the formatting, and then you had to upload pics to another website (which now want you to pay to continue to do so) because lj couldnt handle storing a ton of pics. This is going to be why it will never become a thing again, it really isnt worth it.


Really the transition from lj to fb for event planning was the best idea. The community aspect stayed on lj until tumblr got big, and then it was pretty good for the picture sharing and posting aspect lolitas wanted. But as that died there was no other option besides fb and ig.

>>10381819
This. What we really need is a better, modern microblogging platform like mastodon. Not an out of date platform from the days when you had to hard code your images from photobucket

>>10381779
this. also, threaded conversations.

>>10381814
That's true in theory, but in practice it gets a little trickier. The comms themselves are private, but if you go to meets (at least in my experience), you will be tagged in photos, and it's such a pain in the ass to ensure that your photos aren't visible to people you don't want to see them. I know it's possible, but I hate that I have to be constantly vigilant for people tagging me like that.

>>10381779
Same, there's a lot of normies that think it's a fetish or mistake it for ddlg and I've seen people get fired for dumber shit

>>10381735
It has colorful characters like Tifferet and notorious scalpers. Endless cringe and laughter.

>>10381747
LJ allows likes now, we could revive the communities.

>>10381779
Same. I'm not doing any facebook communities since I can't be arsed to make another account and I'm not going to post to communities where mods don't even keep sissies and other degenerates out.

>>10382305
You can remove your tags from photos, or better yet just don’t be in them if you are worried about it.

Thing is some people still post on lj comm, which means revival is not possible. If people had the motivation to get back they'd already done.

>>10381791
because the russians bought LJ in 2007, and it became hacker/spam central for a while. Unless that's changed, I don't see it ever becoming popular again

>>10382539
it was popular well past 07. it stopped being popular with the rise of social media making it so much easier to get attention. that's why forums are dying in general. people don't want to discuss, they want praise and instant gratification. they want to be fed information that they can fall back onto without having to interact with anyone.

>>10381735
>No anachronistic timeline
Posts showed up in order. Old discussions weren't bumped to the top based on activity.

>No likes
If you wanted to engage with a post you had to comment. This also means you couldn't passive-aggresively just "like" comments when a disagrement was going on, you had to chime in and speak up.

>Most girls on livejournal ONLY used livejournal for lolita
Even if the main reason you got a facebook was to interact with lolita communities, most of your facebook experience isn't centered around lolita. You see non-lolita related ads and news all the time, plus if you're facebook friends with fellow lolitas chances are they don't only post about lolita related things. On LJ you could log in and only see lolita related posts. On facebook, you log in and see rufflechat discussion sandwiched between an add for a bejeweled knockoff game and a faacebook status of a local lolita complaining about her pet cats bowel problems

>There was more to discuss
Back then, there was more to talk about. It hadn't gotten repetitive yet. AP used to post preview photos of the newest phtoshoots on their yaplog. It was a big deal when someone got their hands on the latest GLB or KERA and posted scans. We got excited whenever a celebritiy was caught wearing lolita Everything was shiny, and new and warranted discussion. Now on Rufflechat it's all the same thing. "What brands do you like" "Why aren't lolitas all lovelies" "What do you think of replicas" "Is milanoo bad?"

>>10382566
This plus >>10381794
I think are the main answers

>>10382305
just change your facebook settings to approve tags? do you even internet?

The whole approach you had different. It wasnt and still is to this day not mobile friendly. Which basically means that you spent a lot more time on it actually reading and engaging instead of just spamming like and writing one sentence replies.

>>10381819
>Really the transition from lj to fb for event planning was the best idea.

and yet the worst idea for actual communication and/or discussion in a coherant way.

something was definitely lost that was worthy of preserving in the face of FB meteoric rise and short attention span engagement for the sole purpose of extending that online time, and shortening that refresh check.

>>10382546
It really died about 2012 or so when the Russian government forced LJ servers to be loc'd in Russia and applied Russian censorship laws.

Fucking Russians.

>>10381822
Mother of god, no to mastodon. I abandoned it because it’s 97% trans women “transbians” who love being perverted and have no boundaries. There is even an instance called girlcock. Take that for what you will. You would get so many people trying to weasel their way into the comm you would be overwhelmed and would rather an hero.

>>10382327
Why not move to dreamwidth instead? LJ is pretty much unusable nowadays.

>>10392094
Agreed.

Does anyone use dreamwidth?

What a dream would it be if there was a lolita focused platform with emphasis on discussion that could only be accessible trough invitation. Imagine there could be a place to post your coords with a common tag system for coordinates where it would be easy to search for that dress that’s hard to coord, a specific brand or that theme you are in love with, a different part for selling that was made for it, also chats or forum like areas for sewing, general discussion or whatever. And people who invited creeps or toxic members could be hold accountable.

>>10393405
You mean a forum? Yeah, I miss that format too.

>>10382305
my comm has a private group for photos specifically so that no one has to deal with that kind of bullshit. Keeps assholes from posting us on /cgl/ too unless they want to be outed super fast.

>>10393417
nayrt but I get the impression that anon was talking about a site with a portion of it being forums, but also an instagram style or microblogging part for posting coords and searching through tags, and also something akin to lm? It might be easier for this sort of thing to have lacemarket integration where you can link your accounts instead of making a new auction site from scratch and convincing people to sell there.

>>10392742
Because Dreamwidth is the same format as LJ. I used to have both.
You still have to upload photos somewhere else and no one is patient enough for that shit anymore because they're all used to just uploading to FB and IG from their phones with ease.

>>10392094
>There is even an instance called girlcock. Take that for what you will.
are you new to the internet? Those people are in every community but in some they just can't be as loud about it.

>>10393405
>>10393426
If I still had money I would try to do this but COVID really fucked my shit up.

>>10393417
i would love a non-4chan lolita forum. the good old days interacting with people with faceless icons and you might know a few things about them like what country they live in and what some of their hobbies are, but you don't go to their profile and see their mom sharing boomer memes with their daughter or whatever

>>10393452
i really feel this on an emotional level. it also made it more fun to pop over to daily egl and see their coords for the first time

>>10393452
I have a vague memory of a lolita forum existing before, but it was before my time. I wonder what happened to it.

>>10393551
Blue period? It just died down after lj got more popular.

>>10393554
Nah, it had "lolita" in the name of the url.

>>10382566
>On facebook, you log in and see rufflechat discussion sandwiched between an add for a bejeweled knockoff game and a faacebook status of a local lolita complaining about her pet cats bowel problems
Oh god this. My FB is entirely for lolita and I only have lolitas on it but I’ve had to unfollow the vast majority of them because every time I logged in, my feed was a mess of political articles, people passive aggressively fighting with their family in public, munchies being munchies, people trying to win free shampoo and one middle aged woman who takes a new “what kind of faerie/witch/mermaid are you” quiz at least every fucking week. The most active posters are almost always people I met at a meetup once and then never saw again. Sorry but I honestly don’t care that someone who co-hosted a meet five years ago and seemingly hasn’t worn lolita since has her fibromyalgia acting up.

>>10393551
>>10393559
I remember this too. I think it was something pretty generic like lolitafashion.org? There were at least two lolita forums when I was starting out in the mid 00’s, one specific to my country and an English-language one.

>>10393432
Of course not. And I have no problem with transgender people. My concern is that joining the fediverse (Mastodon) will overwhelm the Lolita community with an obscene amount of sissies and other unsavory people (for the fashion). If you have been in Mastodon then you know for sure what I am discussing.

>>10381822
misskey.gothloli.club/
There's this but it's pretty dead, only like two super active users.
>>10393626
If you start your own fediverse instance you can block other communities from interacting with yours on a server level, other people get assmad about that but I think for a lolita community its needed. Plus you can always use the public timeline instead of focusing on the entire fediverse timeline.
It's not like you're forced to interact or see sissy posts...plus those instances would more likely to block yours first before you can block theres for some retarded reason anyway.

>>10393559
>>10393617
This?

>>10393942
>PLEASE NOTE: Wearing black shoes with a Shiro Lolita outfit looks terrible and is best to be avoided.

>>10393944
>Cosplay Lolita, or 'Costume Lolita,' is not a subset of Lolita fashion, but it is still important to know the difference between Cosplay Lolita and the actual fashion.

>examples are all from the GLB or Gosu Rori, made by actual brands

>>10393948
This entire guide is so outdated and narrow minded and shows how much lolita has changed in 12 years

https://web.archive.org/web/20080718233544/http://lolitafashion.org/cosplay_lolita.php

>Any kind of shine to the fabric of the dress is a tell-tale sign that the dress is Cosplay Lolita.
>Cosplay Lolita is normally “drowning” in lace. A proper Lolita outfit must have balance between the amount of lace and open space.
>Make sure you look elegant in your dress. Modesty is incredibly important. If the neckline is too low, wear a blouse underneath. If the skirt is too short, make another or wear bloomers.
>Sneakers and stiletto platform mary-janes are considered Cosplay Lolita.

>>10381779
Isn't it weird that online harassment has gone up as we've been encouraged to attach our real names and faces to everything? I've found that Lolita Fashion has always been just enough of a weirdo magnet that I have ALWAYS felt uncomfortable about tying it to my real life self. Every. Single. Time. I reassociate my real name with Lolita I regret it within weeks or days as something really messed up happens. As long as I put a sticker over my coord pics and use a screen name -- nothing bad happens... Second I show my face / use my real name then all these hovering simps and neck beards show up to ask me weird questions. Worst is when I've posted to face book; then I get all these really creepy comments.

But when it was LJ, when anonymous and screen names were the norm and no service wanted a name; those were the safest days. No one bugged me, no one bothered me.

>>10393958
you have rose colored glasses. read old gtfoegl posts circle 2006-2007. people were posted there just for being ugly or annoying, and users would go through your public (or friends only) journal entries for drama.

atleast cgl drama is on a completely different website from facebook/instagram/tumblr/livejournal. gtfoegl was just a couple clicks away from egl and daily lolita. and sure maybe it was "anonymous" but atleast cgl is completely anonymous. back then you could see exactly which users would act nice to your face then post you to gtfoegl.

>>10393626
I believe you, I just think it's impossible to escape that on the internet. Unless you just block those people but then you're not gonna get as many people joining because everyone will hear about how uninclusive the group is.

Also Mastodon layout sucks ass, I tried to use it and gave up. I can see why most people don't use it. Doesn't seem like a friendly easy to use platform - and I used to use LJ.

>>10393978
>atleast cgl drama is on a completely different website from facebook/instagram/tumblr/livejournal. gtfoegl was just a couple clicks away from egl and daily lolita.
The internet doesn't work that way. Look at how often anons just tell other anons to go check out the farm since it's a way to get around the rules here.

>>10393955
The most offensive thing to me is the examples they used for gothic lolita.

>>10394016
yeah what the fuck.
I hope a new guide includes oldschool.

>>10394016
Holy shit, most of those are just old school sweet in black x white. Not a single mention of any of the themes typically associated with gothic, either.

>>10394001
if youre on cgl, youre already interested in drama so it doesnt matter if someone tells you to check out the farm. but back on livejournal it was just different. people who were awful to me on gtfoegl were nice to me on egl, like nothing ever happened. it was nasty and two faced. atleast the anonymity of the farm and cgl helps that.

>>10394031
because back in 2009 that WAS what gothic was considered. the lolita-handbook on livejournal wasn't any better

>Probably the most used lolita term. The traditional blackxwhite scheme is very recognizable, but not all gothic lolita is black and white. This style incorporates the darker colors and themes (like cross motifs and veils) from Western goth into the more adorable lolita style to produce a very unique style that takes a lot of practice to perfect. So it's darker than sweet lolita, but much sweeter than Western goth. Most lolitas start off with this style because it much easier to find gothic items locally and it's very easy to coordinate. But be aware that Gothic Lolita is nt a substyle of Goth fashion, though it incorporates some of its elements.

I would say it wasn't until recently that people began to separate actual gothic from just sweet in black.

>>10394057
It was a wierd choice to go on about mana show no moitie at all.

>>10394057
>if youre on cgl, youre already interested in drama so it doesnt matter if someone tells you to check out the farm
>talking about how people acted two faced in egl comms that were both on LJ
so I was mostly responding to this comment:

>gtfoegl was just a couple clicks away from egl and daily lolita

You seem to have a skewed sense of how the internet works. Anything is a click away as long as the person wants to keep going down the rabbit hole.
Sites don't somehow enclose people in their internet browsing.

>>10393942
Yes, that's it! Anybody know what happened to it?

>>10394118
youre obviously taking my words way too literally. its not kosher to talk about cgl on facebook, but on livejournal people had no problem talking about and linking gtfogl on egl no problem.

if someone is shittalking you, which are you more likely to find, if theyre posting you on the same website, or anonymously on a different website?

>>10394057
>because back in 2009 that WAS what gothic was considered

No it wasnt. By then the stuff like iron gate has been released, but Moitie released Holy Queen that year and some florals, Aatp did a ton of their pirate stuff but it was their big year with Vampire Requiem. It would make more sense for it to be dated to these kind of styles, not what was out of fashion by then.

By 2009 people didnt wear maxipads

>>10394124
>too literally
was "a couple clicks away" supposed to be a metaphor? The fuck are you on about?

And I've seen people come here because someone was talking about their outfit on CoF or something.
Like I said, the limits are endless depending on how far someone wants to go down the rabbit hole.
This is even more true now because so many people had so much time on their hands to just be online all the time, so of course people are going to find their way to shitty sites like 4chan and elsewhere because they're still popular enough to be talked about.
I've even seen people talk about cgl in the FB lolita communities.

Like seriously, what the fuck are you talking about?

>>10394124
nta but it has nothing to do with the platform, the types of people in the community shifted. if we were still on lj we'd see the same shift. hell, we even saw it back then too. remember how wf white knighted maikodolly so hard and started turning on gtfoegl as a concept? even though she still would call tons of people out on tumblr for dumb shit like appropriation. the same shift in tone would have happened and even if we were still on lj, gtfoegl would have been treated like /cgl/ is.

>>10394159
Yup, I agree with this completely.

>>10394150
Oh my god, you guys are just purposefully misunderstanding me now.


cgl and the farm are anonymous, right? we have no idea who each other are. there’s no usernames, icons, any kind of profile and user system on these sites.

Live journal was different. You didn’t use your real name, obviously, but your username/icon still sort of became your internet “identity”. if you posted frequently enough people would begin to recognize your account by your userpic. people would post photos of themselves to daily_lolita on these accounts and post personal information to their live journals sometimes. the websites primary function was a journal. >>10393958 Is arguing that it’s worse now because we use our real names, but people were just as creepy abc invasive and shitty back then. and people posting on GetOffEGL were a lot bolder to do all that shit talking in a semi public community using the same accounts they would use to post to egl/daily lolita/etc.

Many people today who fashion themselves kind and wholesome started off as bitches on gtfoegl. like albinwonderland.

>>10394168
it's not even that people were bolder, it's because the community was different. to your own point even, everyone still talked shit on gtfoegl and ran to daily to post their coords. when gtfoegl stopped being accepted, they stopped going. facebook being used as the main platform has nothing to do with it.

>>10394168
>Oh my god, you guys are just purposefully misunderstanding me now.
Maybe you could make better sense.
You're now talking about shit that I wasn't talking about in the first place.

>>10394179
I’m saying that the community hasn’t gotten worse, it’s changed and in some aspects things were shitty back then too.

>>10394187
it definitely did get worse.

>>10394199
are you new? you don’t remember when cgl was just doxxing and drama threads 24/7?

>>10394225
People still get doxxed on here. I take frequent breaks from cgl because of it.

>>10394225
bitch i was talking about old drama. the issue isn't the drama and salt, it's the influx of SJWs too.

>>10393637
Has anyone tried to create a lolita fediverse instance? it may be worth a try if its never been done before.

>>10394233
yea but how do you define SJW?
Is it someone who has really extreme beliefs or are you one of the many anons that likes to slap that label on people who don't agree with your point of view?

>>10394274
why does that matter? the inclusion of politics in the fashion is annoying. it would be the same if it was tradthots.

>>10394283
>the inclusion of politics in the fashion is annoying
I agree but it's hard to avoid that when so many bitches just want to ree about fattys and LGBTQ shit.
Both sides are guilty as far as I'm concerned.

>>10394283
the fashion has its roots in gender politics........

>>10394298
They're probably just another noob who doesn't know about Mana

>>10394298
honestly makes me laugh that people can't make the connection between fashion and politics. whether they like it or not, alternative fashions are deeply intertwined with social politics, they are today and they will continue to be as long as alt fashion exists.

Why don't people just go back to using livejournal if they miss it so much?

>>10394179
Yes it does, people felt compelled to be lovelys 24/7 cuz they have their grandma on fb or whatever. Made shit boring and caused an influx of sissy's and creeps.

>>10394298
>>10394306
>>10394378
Natyr I don't get the importance aside form the general idea that cross dressing is okay and clothing designers cross dress. I'm quite certain its not legal to wear women's clothes as a man or the reverse, so how is this political?

>>10394389
do you really not know why lolita started in the first place?

>>10394389
I'm not any of the anons you replied to and I don't even really care about this argument but if your idea of what is and isn't political begins and ends with legality, you have the reasoning level of a child.

>>10394390
I think it was something about not wanting to look overly sexual and to go against traditional gender roles. everyone says something different so I would like to know
>>10394392
Politics is usually about polices or stuff relating to government as long as if your government isn't trying to pull some rules on how people dress is it really a politics thing?

>>10394379
I want to but it’s boring when nobody else is using it

>>10394432
Lets start a cgl group to kickstart it, post it on fb as well

>>10394440
It's too much of a pain in the ass to use though so you might get some but most people won't go for it cause there is no ease of use.

>>10394380
the fuck? There's all kinds of drama that happened on FB.

>>10394395
Yes and someone ALREADY mentioned what social politics to you and you're acting like that's not a real thing.

>>10394447
I'm not Americian and have not heard the term social politics used and nobody here has actually explained it. I'm just going to assume it's just a worse word for sociology

>>10394440
I'm willing to give it a try. lolita facebook can't be to hard to be better than

>>10394461
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_sociology

I know school's out but maybe you can bring yourself to read a wikipedia article

>>10394461
I wonder where you live where that's not a thing.

>>10394440
I wouldn’t blast it on facebook because the fb community (at least cof) is what I want to avoid by going back to livejournal

>>10394237
I've only seen the gothloli.club one, its probably a good idea to start there to see if it picks up and then maybe down the line some madwoman starts another one.

>>10393405
When I was just a beginner in the fashion, we used to have a whole forum for the entire country (small country so it was easier to have one big community). There were a lot of public sections for discussion and a private section for personal pictures. You could get the access to that part only after a certain amount of time and only after an “okay” from the admin. There each member had a personal topic for outfits. I really miss those days.

>>10394395
it started specifically as a form of feminism to rally against mens' expectations of what women should be like. that's gender politics

What ever happened to lacebook?

>>10395079
so? if it matters in the present day fashion then that means lolita is a subculture. you can wear lolita because of how it looks you know? plenty of styles exist removed from their roots. like boho clothes for instance.

>>10395133
>you can wear lolita because of how it looks you know?
...that's why we wear it in the first place.

>>10395309
no shit, but not all of us wear it for any deeper reason.

>>10395325
Yeah, you can usually tell who lolita is just a phase for and those who truly love it.

>>10395339
lol

>>10395339
You sound like a lolita at heart

What was the name of LJ community that would post every Saturday lolita memes and rants?

Is Pillowfort a decent LJ alternative? I've been using it and it seems decent

>>10393405
That existed at once point, almost exactly as described. It was invite-only, required activity to maintain your account (needed activity at least monthly I think in order to stay in good standing) and had tags by style/brand etc. I forget what it was called by now, but it died because it didn't get enough activity and wasn't really advertised anywhere so there weren't any new people coming in.

>>10397489
>>10397534

remember, as soon as you have invite only, you have a gatekeeper by default, and all the problems and drama that can bring.

>>10397607
vetting is better than invite only. have people submit a pic of a coord doing a certain hand signal or something. and no men at all ever, please.

>>10397702

>define men

>>10397728
anyone with a penis

>>10397736
You wanna be in charge of checking for that?

>>10397728
>>10397702
>>10397736

aaaand >>10397607 point made.

>>10397740
I think there's a difference between a general no male rule and then checking and approving each and every single user for whatever vague bullshit an admin desires. At least one is clearly defined.

>>10397737
kek i think if you make it very clear that men are not welcome and will not be tolerated, they won't even try. the problem with fb groups is that they let anyone in

>>10397424
Behind the Bows?

>>10397745

while that is a problem, too... no, that wasn't what i meant.

but the first order problem is deciding that men have no place in the L of cgl, does that include designers? Or just being a fan and male is a problem for >>10397747 >>10397736 >>10397702 . You leave that up to a gatekeeper to decide where such lines lay.

Then the extended definition of what a man is...take an example from whatever spillover from /lgbt/ there is regarding >>10397728
>>10397736 where will that particular gatekeeper's line lay?

>no cismale
>no self reporting male, trans female ok
>terf, no bio male
>terf, with post-op ok
>terf, no post-op
>astroturf ok, plus grass
>no turf or clay

I just think most people have a really childish idea in their head about how things really go when setting up exclusionary social settings, especially when it comes to enforcement...