I found this part of your explanation a bit confusing:
I don't like that friends-lists cannot be hidden, and that it's potentially hurtful to someone if I don't list them as "friend". I don't like worrying over whether to lock my posts, and wanting to create a different custom group for every locked post I do make. If there's private info I want to share, I'll share it individually.
Nothing about LJ obliges you to try to lock posts to various friends groups. You can just as easily make all-public posts to LJ as all-public posts to your own blog (which is what you appear to be saying you'll do).
I don't like that friends-lists cannot be hidden, and that it's potentially hurtful to someone if I don't list them as "friend".
I'm not sure how moving your journal off LJ and "cutting down feeling obligated to read my 'friends' page" is going to solve this problem at all, if the psychodrama is about people wanting to be on your friends list for the sake of you reading them. (If the psychodrama is them wanting to be on your list because of locked posts, then you just tell them "I don't have any locked posts".)
I'm only down on this because, invariably, I don't bother reading people's off-LJ journals. Not that bookmarking and reading a journal separately is that hard; but 20 of them is that hard, and I'm already reading around 95 in LJ.
An experiment: come back in two or four weeks and tell us how you've been going about reading the LJ journals that you did want to read--are you reading them via your friends page after all, or are you reading them one at a time, manually, with bookmarks? (The latter being what you're asking us to do.)
no subject
Nothing about LJ obliges you to try to lock posts to various friends groups. You can just as easily make all-public posts to LJ as all-public posts to your own blog (which is what you appear to be saying you'll do).
I'm not sure how moving your journal off LJ and "cutting down feeling obligated to read my 'friends' page" is going to solve this problem at all, if the psychodrama is about people wanting to be on your friends list for the sake of you reading them. (If the psychodrama is them wanting to be on your list because of locked posts, then you just tell them "I don't have any locked posts".)
I'm only down on this because, invariably, I don't bother reading people's off-LJ journals. Not that bookmarking and reading a journal separately is that hard; but 20 of them is that hard, and I'm already reading around 95 in LJ.
An experiment: come back in two or four weeks and tell us how you've been going about reading the LJ journals that you did want to read--are you reading them via your friends page after all, or are you reading them one at a time, manually, with bookmarks? (The latter being what you're asking us to do.)