Friends only

Example friends-only banner

A rather funny way to conduct one's only friendness

A LiveJournal entry that is friends only has the security set to allow only people on one's friends list to view the content within. A lock symbol () appears on these entries — thus the expression friends lock (or flock).

An entire journal can be set friends only, making it appear empty to a casual passerby or search engine. Most friends only journals have one or more public entries stating that they are friends only, and some have the phrase "comment to be added" in the hopes of attracting new LJ friends. Once in, there's usually not much worth actually reading. It's usually just an emo diatribe of shit that just ends up making them look like a lol-cow.

Even public entries can be partially locked, making them read-only to the public. The user sets comment security to only let their friends comment, which effectively kills arguments with outside users.

Often someone will go friends only after being the victim of LJ Drama in an attempt to save face. Usually this only indicates they couldn't take the heat and attention suddenly directed to their journal and are hiding from bystanders and onlookers.

Frienditto used to make the idea of "Friends only" completely useless as it has the capability to archive friendsonly entries and the respective comments anonymously.

Comparison of access modes

Entry access mode	Corresponding mode in UNIX OS	Friends may	Registered LJ users may	Guests may
Public	666	Read entry and append comments	Read entry and append comments	Read entry
Public read-only	664	Read entry and append comments	Read entry	Read entry
Friends only	600	Read entry and append comments	N/A	N/A

Google Blogsearch

Google has recently created a tool to get around "Friends Only" called Blogsearch. Just type in the username you wish to penetrate, and theres a chance it's cached the private entries. Google uses advanced website programming to "ask the blog site for its entries", at which point the blog site "gives Google its entries", and "records those entries in its index". Upon the public's realization that the public can search for public posts that were displayed publicly, the public freaked the fuck out. References were made to "Frienditto times a billion", and thousands of journals were converted to Friends Only. Once again, mankind has realized that when you type something, people will eventually read it.

Friends-locking in practice

• "I had to friends lock my whole journal because somebody told my work about it!"
• "I tried to go to the wanky post you linked, but the OP went and flocked it... you didn't screencap, did you?"
• xxxteaserxxx (see also attention whore)

Lulz Enhancer

When hurtful or embarrassing information about someone is discovered, it's usually pretty hilarious. The hilarity triples if the info was in a friends only post, since the poster is undeniably PWNED by their own friends, indicating that they have no actual friends. This usually leads to unbearable disgrace, as in the case of Queenofthanite.

Friends only is part of a series on LiveJournal Visit the LiveJournal Portal for complete coverage.