I've seen a lot of people use third gender pronouns when referring to lj users they're not particularly familiar with, presumably because they don't know or don't want to look up how they identify. It's always pinged as strange for me, but I don't have a lot of exposure to third gender pronouns in general. My lazy preference has always been to use "they," although I also (dangerously) find myself defaulting to "she" in fannish spaces.

...but god, that story.