1. FRIENDS ONLY BITCH. Your journal must be friends only. If your journal is public then anybody who so desires can stop by and read it whenever they want without you knowing. By making your journal friends only, not only are you denying all the LJ losers access to your journal, you get to enjoy doing it. They have to comment and ask you if you think they're cool enough to be granted access to your posts. If you think they're cool enough you can respond in a way that proves just how cool you are by saying something like "I'm adding you back just cause I'm feeling generous today." If you deny them access you can do it in a way that proves just how cool they're not by saying something like "I wouldn't add you if we were the last two journals left on the server and the spawning of comments to my posts depended on you." or "I'd rather drink anti-freeze than read your pathetic waste of code. kill yourself. kthnxbye." Simple and mean = you pwning hardxcore. Bonus points to you if your journal is not only friends only but custom filtered on the regular. Even more points if you have a handful of public entries to keep everyone who's locked out wanting more.
   
   
2. MY ICON'S COOLER THAN YOURS You must, I repeat, MUST have the coolest icons ever. They have to be witty or retro or just have the coolest and most envied effects ever. When people look at your icons they have to feel a jealous rage grow from the pits of their stomachs. If you don't get compliments on your icons at least a few times a week then you are not pwning your user pictures.
   
   
3. WHAT IN THE HTML? If your journal is an LJ default layout or a sloppily modified one you suck at LJ. People need to feel just as jealous over your layout as they do over your icons. Bonus points if you make the layouts yourself and could help others have snazzier journals but don't.
   
   
4. MY ENTRY SAYS SO MUCH without saying anything. Pointless entries are key to pwning LJ. One to four sentence entries are what you should be aiming for. You should do this regularly. No entry should ever, under any circumstance, exceed ten sentences because you are far too cool to update about anything relevant. To top things off you have a HUGE life outside of LJ and if you don't you must make everyone believe you do. If you have time to write a real entry YOU HAVE NO LIFE and do not pwn at LJ.
   
   
5. TOO COOL TO COMMENT You absolutely must be the epitome of a comment whore. There are two simple rules to comment whoring: [one] DEMAND comments from everyone on every entry and raise hell when you don't get them. Threaten people with a friends cut for extra points. [two] NEVER comment back to comments left to you and never comment on anyone else's entries. You are far too cool to waste your time with comments. If you must comment, make it short and holier than thou. Everyone must know how much of a privilege it was to recieve this comment from you.
   
   
6. BE PART OF ELITE COMMUNITIES and lots of them. The more rating communities you're in, the better. One or two or three isn't even nearly enough. Anyone can slip into one or two of those. Only the coolest LJers can get in handfuls and handfuls and handfuls of them. Make sure you always point out just how many cool communities you're in so others will know how unworthy of you they are.
   
   
7. AVRIL IS SUCH A POSEUR Never have an uncool band or artist listed under your current music section of your post. Even if you secretly love Avril, Ashlee or Britney, you cannot, under any circumstance, admit it. Pick the coolest song you have on your playlist and fill that in as your current music instead. Bonus points if you put the name of an underground band that no one has heard of. Knowing underground bands makes you so much cooler than everyone else and you have to keep reminding them of this every opportunity you get. But whatever you do, just remember this: don't let anyone know that you're a Xtina, Lindsay or Hillary fan. They're poseurs and liking them would make you a poseur.

Hopefully you will take from this the necessary skills you need to PWN LJ TO THE MAX. Now go off and be the coolest, hippest and most envied LJer you can be. PWN your ass off.