The LJ drama generator...

[randomness]

...seems to generate very high school drama. I thought that was kind of odd, because even though I'd been told that the stereotypical LJ user was a 17 year old girl, I don't see much of that crowd. I got to wondering if the stereotype was true.

Boy, is it ever.

http://www.livejournal.com/stats.bml shows that over two-thirds of LJ users are female. All those political bloggers wondering where the women are? Yeah, they're here. Over four million of them.

Also, the top of the age curve is in the 17-18 range, so those polibloggers best stay away, 'cause lots of them are underage.

Interesting tidbits:
There are more LJ accounts to people of high school age (15-18, over a million), than there are accounts to anyone over 21 (just over 910,000). There are almost as many middle school accounts (13 and 14, nearly 159,000) as there are accounts to people over 30 (around 160,500). A lot of users are undergrad age (19-22, over 830,000), but definitely not as many as high-schoolers.

All of these numbers are for accounts in general, not active accounts. Since only about 40% of LJ accounts are active in some way, I found myself wishing for some statistics that left out all the dead accounts.

Anyway, it was interesting to find out how close to the truth the stereotype actually was.

Comments

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

It's also easier to make mock of high school drama than of "My mother is dying of cancer" or "I lost my job and don't know how I'm going to pay the rent."

That's a very good point. I started to brainstorm a less high school version and realized it was way too close to what I actually read for comfort.

I was only a little surprised that the gap between me and the next-oldest was 18 years.

:)

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Insert a comma there, between "actually read" and "for comfort". Or just rewrite the sentence; I don't read other people's angst for comfort. :)

[bedfull-o-books.livejournal.com]

Not even in a, "heck, my life isn't that bad after all" sense? Sorry, was that my "outside voice"?

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

I absolutely think that about other people's problems sometimes. I mean, it really gets me to stop whining. Well, usually.

[emilymorgan.livejournal.com]

You're better than I, then! I just start whining about other people's problems. Does a fat lot of good, too.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

:)

Actually, what really works for me for a "heck, my life isn't that bad after all" sense is reading my own journals from a time when I was seriously down. All the schadenfreude, and none of the hurtfulness.

I intended to post about that, and never have.