Any reason why ILM is so quiet these days?

You are a patient friend.

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.

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.

― tales of a scorched-earth nothing (Doctor Casino), Tuesday, 7 February 2017

I agree with this. I think there's a lot of brilliant posters on more quiet forums who don't have any time for mockery. I don't want to banish zinging or anything but I think people should be a bit more careful.

Xxpost to NV: Well, okay, how about on an Internet forum where you have the option of skimming right past their post and saying nothing? (Or, if you are a patient and generous sort, offering a polite paragraph on how, indeed, that is a widely held opinion that many of us here might agree with aspects of, or have in the past, but may not be as universally held or objective as you might think, but hey it takes all kinds and welcome to the board, nice to see new folks around here!)

curious what threads u all are reading? by my watch, there hasn't been a clusterfuck in ~2 years, hell i haven't even read a good zing in at least 18 months

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.

― tales of a scorched-earth nothing (Doctor Casino), Tuesday, 7 February 2017 16:41 Bookmark

i) it's never ever just been this

ii) the sort of banal input ur all kumbayaing right now is several billion galaxies away from the curious, thoughtful and righteously inexpert beachcombers ilm was built on who deftly and voraciously negotiated lightness of touch with depth of feeling [wipes tear from eye, throws dogtags into ocean]

iii) just re this nauseatingly spiteful, pernicious and foully mealy-mouthed "genre nerds whose literal day jobs require them to keep up and write about new music" recent meme of matt dc's - plz don't ever confuse the ghoulishly entitled and bizarrely resentful airbnb wanderlusts of ilm's keepin it mediocre dickhole dad posse with how actual regular people with jobs, families and responsibilities engage w/ music, cos they have absolutely nothing whatsoever in common

iv) ftr everyone damn well knows i am not and have never been a bully or a troll and if anyone can point out an occasion when an evan r post has 'yielded some interesting takeaways' i will paypal them 50p

anyway i feel like i'm moaning about quality control after the fact. it's easy enough to avoid threads about stuff you don't like/stuff that doesn't interest you. if everybody could adopt a policy of staying out of threads that they don't have anything of value to contribute to i think we'd be peachy and peace would reign across the value. oh, and the "music i hate" threads are all terrible because codifying your taste in the negative is for rubes.

peace everybody

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.

I agree it's terrible how we've shut out this kind of insight

Does r|t|c stand for Robert Thomas Christgau?

iii) just re this nauseatingly spiteful, pernicious and foully mealy-mouthed "genre nerds whose literal day jobs require them to keep up and write about new music" recent meme of matt dc's - plz don't ever confuse the ghoulishly entitled and bizarrely resentful airbnb wanderlusts of ilm's keepin it mediocre dickhole dad posse with how actual regular people with jobs, families and responsibilities engage w/ music, cos they have absolutely nothing whatsoever in common

lol fuck off

I agree it's terrible how we've shut out this kind of insight

― wins, Tuesday, February 7, 2017 10:14 AM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

on the other music board i engage with the real/fake instruments argument happens once a week

fyi rtc if you strike it through it's still in the post. FP'ed, i have no idea what yr beef with Evan R is but boy are you making a good performative case for the downsides of weird ''opinion not useful enough'' gatekeeping.

Brad clearly explaining the benefits of the hazing procedure there

as someone relatively new here and much younger than most, this place was indeed pretty intimidating at first due to the sometimes aggressive debates etc. but that seems to have calmed down mostly except for the rare occasion someone is both aggressively overconfident but naive about something?

i don't really know how anyone new would even find this place really these days, i think i stumbled across it via an offhand mention on another board, or it might have been via TSJ sidebar? there's not really anywhere else that comes close

fp's are to be seen and not heard dr cas

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.

word

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

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/18/73/df/1873df2c5a28fb528a7a9f956f101e70.jpg

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

yes

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?

I probably should take this to the ilxor appreciation thread but dammit I like reading Casino's posts

Anyway, I guess ILM probably isn't that quiet after all and we're probably not going to do anything about a hypothesized decline until it becomes more apparent

r|t|c admirably soaring above mediocrity by pointlessly being a dick, great work

i for one will not rest until i've ruined this board for turrican

Just googled "Miriam Backhouse" btw

ILM lives

just re this nauseatingly spiteful, pernicious and foully mealy-mouthed "genre nerds whose literal day jobs require them to keep up and write about new music" recent meme of matt dc's

I've said this maybe once and mostly referring to two people in particular fwiw (and you're not one of them).

plz don't ever confuse the ghoulishly entitled and bizarrely resentful airbnb wanderlusts of ilm's keepin it mediocre dickhole dad posse with how actual regular people with jobs, families and responsibilities engage w/ music, cos they have absolutely nothing whatsoever in common

This is entirely true though but I think everyone deep down knows that anyway.

gosh people are so needlessly mean to bright, enquiring young Turrican

Also you only need to take one look at other message boards to realise that level of traffic and 'meanness' are not exactly inversely proportional, quite the opposite usually, so why this has deteriorated into 'ILX is too mean' yet again I don't know.

FPs should be announced IMO because this is an important signal to those around you, and to lurkers/newbies, that there are standards here and that some noxious dick comment hasn't just passed by with everybody chuckling 'ho, ho, our little scamp, hope he never changes!'

I view this as part of the work of maintaning worthwhile spaces and communities, and tbh it's something I've learned in ILM as much as in my women's studies undergrad days and the various subcultural/vulnerable communities i've been fortunate enough to be welcomed into since then. So if I call out an FP I'm trying to pay that forward. And aww, thanks niels.

great r|t|c posts

https://pbump.net/files/post/trumphat/make.php?p=Make_ILX%7CMean_Again&h=r

i love talking music on here because...jeez i don't know, it's a mess out here in the real world.
― nomar, Tuesday, February 7, 2017 11:10 AM (fourteen seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i guess this is similar something from a cliched anti-bullying Facebook artist meme but i try to never say anything that will zing anyone too harshly because i don't know what the hell is going on with them in their life at that moment.

Hi y'all.

FPs should be announced IMO because this is an important signal to those around you, and to lurkers/newbies, that there are standards here and that some noxious dick comment hasn't just passed by with everybody chuckling 'ho, ho, our little scamp, hope he never changes!'

I view this as part of the work of maintaning worthwhile spaces and communities, and tbh it's something I've learned in ILM as much as in my women's studies undergrad days and the various subcultural/vulnerable communities i've been fortunate enough to be welcomed into since then. So if I call out an FP I'm trying to pay that forward. And aww, thanks niels.

― tales of a scorched-earth nothing (Doctor Casino), Tuesday, 7 February 2017 17:31 Bookmark

okay but ur not getting the 50p

curious what threads u all are reading? by my watch, there hasn't been a clusterfuck in ~2 years, hell i haven't even read a good zing in at least 18 months

― flopson

flopson i think that _is_ a good zing

Also I can see exactly how unpopular everyone actually is and pretty much the only music posts that regularly get people FP'ed are wake-up-sheeple Racoon Tanuki type grandstanding and deservedly so.

There are some pretty obvious reasons why there are fewer and fewer female posters here but I think they're largely unrelated to a few AnCo fans having their music taste laughed at.

Just googled "Miriam Backhouse" btw

ILM lives

― Wimmels

oh i could do this all day for the benefit of the three people who care :)

except at some point i'll probably slip up and start talking about focus, because i'm so deep into it i can't tell the difference between "obscure" and "ubiquitous" anymore :)

What's is a mediocre post? I don't ever remember people getting angry at posts being low quality (unless it's just bad behaviour).
A lot of the time I'm just happy to see anyone talking about whatever band I'm looking up.

What's is a mediocre post?

this one

no i mean this one

i always think its funny that the most time i spend on ilm is when threads like this pop up. it's kinda funny!

yeah, I was just thinking how not quiet ILM is today

"yeah, when I see Scott talking about running Facebook music groups and whatnot, I wonder "How is that possible?"

i can add you to that group. there are lots of ilxors there. it's not that thrilling though. and i don't really run things. just delete the occasional post that doesn't fit the rules.

I lurk more than I post, and tbh posting on the political threads are easier than the music, film, and book threads: most of us have a common purpose, often taking the form of zings and bad gifs; it takes less effort to be original, and it's more suited for posting at work. I tiptoe into genre threads because I know how specialists behave.

Generally, unless I count Wikipedia, I've learned more from ILE than any site in my lifetime. I've met some good folks too.

(i have such a love/hate thing with facebook. i'll post a lot and then regret it for weeks. and i don't even drink anymore! i just get more self-conscious about it or something and think people must be sick of me/hate me. and yet i have never really cared if people on ilx were sick of me/hated me. i don't know why. and i end up hating other people on facebook in a way that i never have here.)

i only post on the ilm threads that hew to my dorky taste, but also where there's more of a chill fun vibe & where posters that i "trust" are gathered, more often than not ... if it's ppl complaining about each others opinions or showing off i'll go elsewhere ... competitive opinion-having isn't really my bag except in jest to all caps yell about poll results :)

i do read quite a few ilm threads though i dont always post

there are good zings and bad zings

ILM wouldn't have been as great as it was without a foundation of clowning received wisdom, kneejerk rockism and disdain towards popular (often female and/or black) artists. And when I joined it was very much the kind of place that inspired you to up your posting game and your critical thought - sometimes leading by example, like when you read an amazing Tom E or Tim F (or rtc) post and sometimes yes, by getting knocked back when you proffered something ignorant or basic. These days I guess there is much less of the former (I sometimes wonder how many relatively-new posters read some of the archived stuff from the start).

And there was definitely a time when it was an incredibly toxic place. Most of those responsible have been kicked off.

Also find it quite amusing how some of the dickhole dad posse were perfectly happy calling me a waste of space in the dogs thread the other week and now piously all about keeping it positive! My goodness.

(and the same it true of that group. i loved it at first and posted all the time and then it just started to bug me. it's just people posting pictures of what they are listening to and there are good conversations but i just end up feeling sour towards people's GREATEST BESTEST FAVORITE OF ALL TIME THIS RECORD CHANGED MY LIFE posts and all the endless classic rock - like i should talk - but whatever. even the person who started the group doesn't post or moderate anymore! people here are just more my speed. even the people on here i don't really know that well sorta end up interacting like everyone else and they get the vibe for the most part. or they are just smarter. interacting with strangers on the internet though can be.....blahhhh.)

Also find it quite amusing how some of the dickhole dad posse were perfectly happy calling me a waste of space in the dogs thread the other week and now piously all about keeping it positive! My goodness.

i have no idea what any of this is about but it's pretty hilarious out of context

"actual regular people with jobs, families and responsibilities engage w/ music" - this salt of the earth bullshit is not your style, rtc

and i end up hating other people on facebook in a way that i never have here.)

― scott seward, Tuesday, 7 February 2017 18:00

Maybe it's the avatars.

ned really should have started a friggin' website for pete's sake. with advertising. get some $$ for all those links. you can make money with link sites, no?

sometimes leading by example, like when you read an amazing Tom E or Tim F (or rtc) post and sometimes yes, by getting knocked back when you proffered something ignorant or basic

yeah this environment has genuinely improved my writing and thinking on all fronts bc of the above

i'm trying to think of that long-ass indie-rock thread that miccio started years ago....can't think of the title. stuff like that would never happen now. buncha goofballs!

it's probably been a while since someone crafted a post in a word document or whatever. some of them were so long and no typos! maybe contenderizer. is he still around? he was like the last stand for going long.

Who and what are the dickhole dads?

I miss contenderizer

contenderizer is still around, mostly appears in the metal thread once in awhile iirc