Any reason why ILM is so quiet these days?

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.

sometimes I would like a board I could post to for ppl who don't have anything worthwhile to say but who are lonely and would like to poll some 35 year old album or something so I wouldn't feel guilty about cluttering ilm up with that sort of thing

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

― mh 😏, Tuesday, February 7, 2017 10:53 AM (twenty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

christ I know (hope?) this isn't what you were going for but I can already see it:

A: man, we really need more new posters, particularly women
B: I KNOW LET'S POST ON /mu/

NO

what's the 2017 version of a belle & sebastian email list and do we want them here

xxp Yeah, I mean, ilm can be both, right? You can exchange substantial arguments as well as quickie opinions. And often those quickie posts stir greater conversation. Look at the Carly Rae Jepsen thread, for instance. There's not a lot of profundity in any given post. Users are discussing a song they like, not filing a Pitchfork review. But that casual discussion can still yield some interesting takeaways

Liking music is not all opinion-jockeying. I barely even care about my own opinions; I'd like information/context/history. Clearly I'm in the minority but I still exist.

^^ tom

I think there's maybe a divide between

classic koganian 'hallway / classroom' theme on ilm, in this thread on simon frith and others:

Simon Frith's "Performing Rites : On the Value of Popular Music "

otm rather. I'll tell you what's changed in the last decade: the proliferation of Autocorrect

includes skippable tracks in a transcendent and artistic way, which is an empty bullshit opinion from an empty bullshit person

erm is this truly such a headscratcher my guy? it is only really bullshit if u float around deciding thgat trax are empirically good/bad and remain rigidly discrete regardless of context, which is... not the case... like... at all, so welcome to 20th century art i guess

guys stop it, this is the war room

it's funny because people seem down on the rolling threads but to me those threads have some of the best discussion and also pretty friendly sense of community IMO

also the 70s album title thread is the best thing in the history of the Internet

I actually feel like ILX has a much healthier relationship w/classic rock now, a sort of acceptance of its awesomeness but at the same time not overly reverential and a kinda ironic silliness about it, much better than the GET OUT OF MY ROOOOM DAAAD petulance or YOURE A FUCKING IDIOT IF YA DONT LIKE THE BEATELS stances of early ILX

frankly look at really old ILX threads and check out shit from like the early 2000s a lot of opinions that aren't very high level that wouldn't fly back then

if anything we've just had a lot of opinions and learned to be better at posting and so lots of old posts i would have made i wouldn't make now because i recognize them as dumb, so that's probably some account for the decline in volume

tbh i am starting to suspect that bamquern has maybe not been hkm all along after all

Yeah, I'm with soref and Evan R. on this - miscellaneous non-groundbreaking, non-artist-discovering chat about music can still be a wonderful thing, and it is still better on ILM than anywhere else!

I don't think I've ever helped nurture a new artist here or, probably, introduced anybody to anything at all but if I'm gonna shoot the shit about 90s rock I grew up with or 70s no-cred bullshit I'm getting into now, or indulge in some trainspotting diversion like New Jersey hunting or whatever, it's gonna be more fun on this website than with most randos I might meet at a bar. I mean out there in the world ''they're inauthentic and don't play their own instruments'' still counts for critical insight into pop, in most small-talk situations.

Then there's stuff like artst ballot polls, which might seem to the ''ILM is where the cutting edge reveals new music'' crowd like the most pointless of exercises, but I find that kind of deep book-club (mixed with giddy fan club) thing really great- there are like hundreds of songs I hear differently because of some story someone on here told about what it meant to them at a certan time in theiir life, or how the way this one line is sung is the key to the whole thing, or check out the mournful bongos coming in after the chorus, or whatever the fuck.... I think all that's super great and ime hasn't really gone away at all?

New blood, and more diverse blood, would absolutely be good things, but I don't think it tells the whole story to say ILM's on the skids just because it's no longer the #1 place where a certain critical mass of crtics and young listeners go to eagerly consume and parse out what's current and hot.

Liking music is not all opinion-jockeying. I barely even care about my own opinions; I'd like information/context/history. Clearly I'm in the minority but I still exist.

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Tuesday, February 7, 2017 11:27 AM (eleven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yea i agree w/ this. like i remember making some offhand post a long time ago in one of the solo guitar / post-fahey folk threads about listening to zia mohiuddin dagar a lot and his influence on jack rose and then a bunch of people chimed in w/ very knowledgeable and interesting posts on the dagar family, structure and compositions of ragas, influence of indian classical music on a bunch of these american guitarists, it was great. ilm still has that kind of thing

Liking music is not all opinion-jockeying. I barely even care about my own opinions; I'd like information/context/history.

yeah very OTM

btw some of the "don't be mean" posters seem to work themselves up into the wildest, ad hominest invective at the first opportunity so i'm not sure who exactly is supposed to be carrying the personal baggage around here - somebody laughs at your opinions, well, that's what opinions are for

Tbf this probably depends a lot on prior life experience - I imagine that if you are someone who has not typically been welcomed into the back of the record store to shoot the shit about music (insert: gendered social behavior, nerd hardmannery, etc etc), then what reads to the insider as a hey-we're-all-zinging-here opinion-laugh can operate much more as a barrier to newcomers.

I'm getting deja vu as I type this, so I'm pretty sure we have whole threads about this in particular but it'd be something to keep in mind - freewheeling putdowns of perceived dumb opinions are ONE way of carrying on music nerd social banter but maybe the cons outweigh whatever the pros are.

if anything we've just had a lot of opinions and learned to be better at posting and so lots of old posts i would have made i wouldn't make now because i recognize them as dumb, so that's probably some account for the decline in volume

The purpose of ILX is to show the fly the way out of the fly bottle.

btw some of the "don't be mean" posters seem to work themselves up into the wildest, ad hominest invective at the first opportunity so i'm not sure who exactly is supposed to be carrying the personal baggage around here - somebody laughs at your opinions, well, that's what opinions are for

Sure, but let's not pretend that doesn't curb or at times completely stifle the discourse here. I'm a full-time critic who avoids posting in certain threads, simply because I'm confrontation-adverse and don't have the energy to deal with one incessant troll. If that's the kind of forum you want, fine, but can we least stop pretending why it's a mystery that a 20-year-old college student (or for that matter a woman of any experience level) wouldn't feel comfortable posting here?

re: "don't be mean" -- I feel like something of a broken record here but what reads as "being mean" to men often reads as "trolling potentially leading to worse" to women

^^^^^^^^