Any reason why ILM is so quiet these days?

But how is that different from threads about an artist or about an album? You could just as easily describe them as "this is where people who are more devoted to this artist/album than you are have already been talking about it with each other for months."

I don't get the rolling threads hate at all. Seems like a good place to find music and share music. And more convenient than dealing with 100 separate threads about a single album with just 3 posts in each. It's not like if you decide to post in them then you can no longer take part in the other kind of threads.

1. people don't like feeling like dilettantes
2. expertise was, at least until recently, over-rated
3. comfy little establishments full of regulars are not always the most inviting places

Just because: rolling genre threads from last year last updated this year with total number of posts in each:

R&B - 433
House & techno - 402
Outernational - 397
NotIndiePop/Shambhala - 220
Eno/Pop-Punk - 197
Pop - 93
Soca/Chutney/Jab - 86
Grime - 55
Eastern Pop - 37
Noise - 33

There was also a rolling rap and a rolling dancehall/reggae thread.

And a rolling afropop thread: Rolling Afrobeats / Afropop 2016

The 2016 rap thread: rolling industry plant thread 2016
The 2016 dancehall & reggae thread: rolling dancehall & reggae 2016

aye but not accessible from the 'last 1-4 weeks' links so didn't include

cue bitter people obsessed with the elusive "gatekeepers" of good hip music or whatever.

― lute bro (brimstead), Thursday, 4 February 2016 10:57 Bookmark

lol Industry Planet appears to be the post count winner by huge distance fwiw

Nice to see Outernational among the busier ones - broader scope for inclusion I guess

true ilm heads know we been had rolling threads since the early 00s but back then they were only about jay z and nas

fucking hillis

hopefully goes w/o saying that i pray evan r's mysterious antagonist is finally apprehended and brought to justice so that we may all bask in twice as many "harmless opinions"

who among us can forget shimmering, lambent pearls like Really inviting, easygoing, interestingly produced R&B songs from one of the genre's all-time most charismatic singers or the scintillating It really depends on the situation. If I'm cooking dinner or something I'll reach for this, but if I'm in car and can easily skip tracks I'll go for.... has it really only been eight years?

rolling metal is always really long:

Rolling Metal 2016

Another reason I dislike rolling threads, adding to jaymc's otm summation: maybe I use ILM differently than some of you, but for me the appeal isn't necessarily that it's always happening in real time. When I hear, say, some old Van Dyke Parks record, or an album by an artist I have somehow just discovered despite them being around for years (most recent example: Yagya), I'm not going to search individual posts to see what ILM thinks about these things, I search threads. It's always been fun to spend some time reading the accumulated thoughts of the community (not just the most recent posters with the biggest mouths). For me, ILM acts as a comprehensive archive of thoughtful people with general good taste, not a constantly active source of serotonin spikes like Twitter. Maybe I'm using ILM wrong?

This may also explain why the absence of the search function has rattled me so!

i'm the same way. though i'm sure if i scrolled down a lot of rolling threads i would hear lots of good stuff. i just don't keep up with current stuff. but i think those threads are fun for people who do. sometimes i will scroll through the metal threads and click on stuff that gott punch and siegbran post links to.

For everyone complaining about the broken search, just add "site:ilxor.com" to your Google search.

Yeah I've barely used the internal search function in years - Googling makes it easier to pull up weird shit when all you remember is a particular phrase and the fact that you posted on the thread.

baffled by that r|t|c post - who's being quoted?

google method can't turn up stuff on hidden borads though

the first quote is me, on chris brown. the second is me, also on chris brown

Rolling threads can be useful, but difficult places for lurkers to jump in. I tried to follow some Rolling threads back in the day but it was usually critics writing about advance releases I didn't have access to until weeks or months later, at which point discussion had ended.

that's the rolling metal promo thread!

This rolling threads argument again? It's not as if anyone complaining about them actually posts on single-track threads when they get made either so whatever really, if you want single-artist threads try starting them.

and the toxicity and aggression was 100 times worse circa 2008 or so

hopefully goes w/o saying that i pray evan r's mysterious antagonist is finally apprehended and brought to justice so that we may all bask in twice as many "harmless opinions"

who among us can forget shimmering, lambent pearls like Really inviting, easygoing, interestingly produced R&B songs from one of the genre's all-time most charismatic singers or the scintillating It really depends on the situation. If I'm cooking dinner or something I'll reach for this, but if I'm in car and can easily skip tracks I'll go for.... has it really only been eight years?

― r|t|c, Tuesday, 7 February 2017 12:58 (one hour ago) Permalink

baffled by that r|t|c post - who's being quoted?

So yeah, he's referring to my post. Not exactly the height of deep criticism, I admit, but I explained my relationship with an album I'm enjoying in a thread about that album, and for some reason it set him off like blood in a shark tank.

Maybe some people really get a kick out of that? But it sure didn't make me feel good, nor did it facilitate any discussion in the thread. To me it just sent the message "don't post here or I'll destroy you."

i love music

^ this

yes.

there are some weirdos here who hate themselves and mostly post shitty things on ILM but I think they are mostly Britishes and I think that's part of their national identity or something. must be the weather.

honestly adam i don't see what on earth offended him. i don't want to call out any one particular person as "The Problem" or w/e but yeah i think one of the reasons facebook succeeds for me is because public discourse on the internet is just full of this sort of thing, drive-bys wanting to score zing points on your life experience. if i'm going to say anything interesting or meaningful (and to save the zing cru time, i'm not) i'm probably not going to say it in a public forum.

jaymc on the money. I've got a better, more interesting, more demanding job than I had 10+ years ago, I'm married, I've got a 2-year-old daughter, I'm not writing about music for anyone anymore, I developed other hobbies (than writing); I still listen to and buy loads of music, but my life is radically different.

Can't say I took it to social media instead though; I've abandoned twitter.

i always view ilx through sna so i don't distinguish much between ilm and the other boards. but ilx is still one of the best place to talk about music imo. facebook, eh, i have only a few friends who are really into music and the rest post something like "hey, recommend new music to me" and there's no discussion, just random recommendations. twitter i use mostly to follow current news and people in my professional field. whoever said they "just trust ilx" more was right on imo, people here are usually smart and knowledgeable. i was not around during the early ilx years so that mythical past was never as meaningful to me as other long-timers.

btw this feels otm:

btw, since it came up earlier, i've never much cared for the rolling ilm threads, because i've never felt invested in genres per se, and they seem like they're intended for people who are. i guess they can be useful as sources of recommendations, but i've sometimes felt stifled and overwhelmed by the context: "this is where people who are more devoted to this genre than you are have already been talking about it with each other for months."

― Wozniak on Kimye's Baby (jaymc), Tuesday, February 7, 2017 2:37 AM (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

especially when there are posters chastising others for "freeloading" off of genre nerds whose literal day jobs require them to keep up and write about new music

This is the only place I go. I don't use social media. 95% of the twitter I see is via links people post here. I sometimes log on Facebook and feel weirdly resentful of those that actually made meaningful friendships back in college and have stayed in touch. Then I log out and come back here to watch people snark at each other. I also check certain places on reddit for news on specific hobby topics.

In my case 'social media' as such has served its purpose -- I had to step away from it beyond professional purposes for a number of reasons in the end, but one was the growing realization that a variety of people were using my feed as a specific news source above all else. No joke, this was told to me more than once. Flattering but also kinda unrewarding beyond the 'Hmm, gee, this one got a lot of RTs/likes' feeling, compounded by a suspicion that many of the most vocal people in this regard were (bluntly put) straight white dudes like me who seemed to think I was their guide to pointing out authors who weren't straight white dudes like them. Instead of, you know, taking my hint and doing more of that themselves rather than using me as a safe lens for it (or, more than once, pulling a boneheaded move of arguing a point with someone in my comments who wasn't a SWD, then agreeing with the point when I came in and backed up the commenter they were arguing with, apparently because they were comfortable with me saying it instead -- THAT was charming). Combined with the fact that FB/Twitter devolved -- or achieved its ultimate goal -- in becoming a 24 hour news channel without respite or time to reflect or react, which the 2016 shitshow made infinitely worse, and I didn't want to spend my day dealing with endless streams of 'here's the new fucked up thing' restated 100 different ways every five seconds.

As such, ILX feels...calmer. Strangely. In the meantime I've gotten back into writing longer emails and physical letters again, and I rather enjoy it.

I've posted more in the past year (although little on ilm), but more out of the fact I've had more waiting time at work and have had some life changes that lend well to interacting on ilx in little snippets

lurking here over ten years ago.. ok, nearly fifteen years ago.. I hardly posted because I wasn't sure what I'd be able to add to the conversation. lots of people having ideas about music and able to express themselves confidently in prose. still remember the one time I chimed in on a discussion and described the atmosphere of a song and someone (maybe Tim F?) liked my description and it made my day

I used to be very ilm-centric in how I found new music (and read a lot of blogs, review sites) but now it's more established channels (genre-specific sites and retailers, things I see locally, satellite radio) and some of the music's never even been mentioned on ilm! or it's listed in a single post and I don't feel like chiming in. should probably start a thread in that case.

I have to also say that Ned has cemented himself as an on- and off-board legend and his legacy is safe regardless of whether he posts any further here

With me, I never got to the point where I was doing social media "right". Half the stuff I post to my feed are these five thousand word essays what I write three days after everybody else stops caring (which means I disappear up my own fundus a lot but it's at least my own stupidity and not somebody else's). My Facebook feed is mostly just me and my revanchist Usenet friends who haven't died yet.

I post here more than I should because I'm going through some serious life changes and things are a little unsettled for me right now.

As a music resource this place is peerless, although the knackered search function has sort of fucked up access to the old music goodies in the archive for now. I remember the moment when I discovered ILM. I was reading some bollox music review in '09 and googled "hypnagogic pop"!

Worst "genre" created by a journalist part 4534547668686 : 'Hypnagogic Pop' by David Keenan.

I found ILX googling for "Charalambides" iirc

(twelve years pass)

there were a handful of migrants from other music communities over the years that populated ilm in waves. maybe finding the right spot to plant a seed would lure in unsuspecting new blood. or lead to catastrophe

ilms not too bad

With me, I never got to the point where I was doing social media "right"

yeah, when I see Scott talking about running Facebook music groups and whatnot, I wonder "How is that possible?" All I ever see on FB is people arguing about Israel, memeing Trump, and calling for the head of some white male poet.

When it comes to music I'm an obscurantist with an unhealthy fixation on the 1970s. I'm used to thread-killing, because man what the hell can you _say_ about Miriam Backhouse? I can't think of anything.

I like ILM and ILX because there are other obscurantists out there, evangelical in the same tentative way I am, and also because it pushes me outside of my comfort zone a lot. This has helped me get through some difficult times.

But at the same time I understand that people who spend all their time posting on Internet message boards, whether or not they're "trolls", are usually pretty messed up people. When I'm feeling better and saner I post less.

I don't know how I got here, or when.

compare
It really depends on the situation. If I'm cooking dinner or something I'll reach for this, but if I'm in car and can easily skip tracks I'll go for Looking 4 Myself

and
putting that noble idea of album as microwave muzak aside for a sec and considering the holistic artistic statement then i still think that, at the time, l4m said something interesting for itself as a grab-bag. there were plenty of other grab-bags then, disjointed and nakedly cynical - imo l4m managed to carry a rare thread of touristic enthusiasm thru its peaks & valleys of tasteful & trash

Both of these posts express the exact same opinion about l4m, except rtc adds the notion that "Looking 4 Myself" includes skippable tracks in a transcendent and artistic way, which is an empty bullshit opinion from an empty bullshit person, and only a reality-challenged person (coughdeejcough) could find any apophenic tea leaf use in a bullshit post like that.

rtc, scratch a penny on your thesaurusisms and you're every bit as skim milk as ilx's most skim milk poster. Being a little more quotably eye-roll-worthy won't cover up your flaccid mediocrity or your internalized high school pecking order trauma, and it won't fix whatever neurosis you're working through on the internet instead of in front of a therapist.

hey we just figured out why people hate ilm

Therapists, unfortunately, are mostly useless. I know, the client is always wrong--but still.

there are some weirdos here who hate themselves and mostly post shitty things on ILM but I think they are mostly Britishes and I think that's part of their national identity or something. must be the weather.

Just a bit of casual xenophobia, let's be cool.

hey now, you guys were dour before brexit

and tbf I post a lot here, am shitty and hate myself, and I've never even been to the britishes

tbf i'm american i think i threatened to kill whiney once because of something he said abt mr. bungle :/

shit used to get waaaaaay more heated than it does now

I think there's maybe a divide between ppl who see posting to ilm as a kind of music journalism, a way of conveying ideas and hypotheses etc, and ppl who see it more as a way of socialising, like chatting about football or the weather or whatever. if you're in the latter camp then it doesn't matter if the content of your opinion is interesting or original, because that's not really the point.