ILM is kinda sucking these days (boring and meta ignore not safe for work)

God, even this thread is boring.

Good to see the old style Marcello coming back.

More elitism, more intimidation - then standards of discourse might be raised since posters will be expected to work harder.

-- Dingbod Kesterson, Thursday, June 5, 2008 2:11 PM

I understand where you're coming from, and it's certainly plausible that an uptick in elitism would weed out lolposts and make everyone start posting in paragraphs again, but it seems just as likely that this place would become just as boring as Dissensus as a result.

I dunno. I found the Ashlee Simpson thread elitist and intimidating in the best sense of both terms - I don't know enough about her music to join in the discussion, and I'm afraid the writing doesn't quite convince me that her music is worth knowing, but hey! Serious, intelligent and evocative discussion on ILM in 2008! Who'd've thought it? A few more threads of that calibre would be more than welcome.

The main reason it sucks now is because nearly everyone who is the least bit interesting has been banned.

Dissensus painted itself into its own corner very early on and it's never really recovered.

OTM on that Ashlee Simpson thread

We could be the zingy One Touch Football.

what i remember being annoying about dissensus was how slowly everything would load

Yeah that's the annoying thng about Dissensus

Is that still going? Only ever looked at it once or twice.

actually Dom, recently there's been a very similar thread over on OTF re the quietness of the Music section.
guess its just one of those phases for all as has been mentioned previously.

The QUIETUS-ness of the music section morelike amirite?

Yeah that's the annoying thng about Dissensus

-- Dom Passantino, Thursday, June 5, 2008 9:35 AM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

ha well i just gave up before actually reading the content at a certain pt

I've been feeling the same for a few months now, dunno why...I scan New Answers prepared to not see anything I'm very interested in & rarely if ever read the poll threads.

I'm in one of those periodic phases right now where the only thing I can listen to is The Fall or talk radio. And what is there to post about the new Fall record...? GUYS THIS ONE IS REALLY GOOD I'M SERIOUS (It really is though)

Re: the rolling threads I don't find them exclusionary or clubby at all, & I esp. value the big ears and opinions on the psych/drone thread though I rarely post there...

The QUIETUS-ness of the music section morelike amirite?

v. smooth sir.

Current top four threads on Dissensus:

Grime Top Tens
incedental (sic) music
New Skweee Mix
crucial new riddims

QED

LOL more like

i get the impression that nothing interesting ever happens on that board

i think one big problem is that new pop music is increasingly irrelevant to anyone's lives

New pop music is fantastic and selling, what's wrong with you

I'm here for old stuff. Can I wait til new pop is old?

your honour, i move the following be blasted into the sun and re-funkified:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=566k5h8M9f8

what is new pop music for? staking out tribal ground? we have a million other ways to do that now. cause it sounds good and makes us dance around? i've already got more songs than i can ever listen to that do that already. to challenge a staid society? please.

Your name is Nick Hornby and you have been formally been disqualified from ILM. Now foxtrot off to the first Old Tyme Dancing messageboard you can find for all your Wee Georgie Elrick needs.

My own self-amused argument of late -- pop music is the biggest musical subculture there is, because it's *all* subcultural.

yeah sorry, that was pretty low-quality trolling. see that's what comes of just sticking it onto the bottom of a longer thread rather than having the pressure and performance of a new thread all your own.

xpost

Ned i have no idea what you're talking about

The Billboard Hot 100 Top Ten:

1. Lil Wayne feat. Static Major - "Lollipop"
2. Leona Lewis - "Bleeding Love"
3. Coldplay - "Viva La Vida"
4. Rihanna - "Take a Bow"
5. Katy Perry - "I Kissed a Girl"
6. Usher feat. Young Jeezy - "Love in This Club"
7. Jordin Sparks Duet with Chris Brown - "No Air"
8. Ray J and Yung Berg - "Sexy Can I"
9. David Cook - "The Time of My Life"
10. Madonna eat. Justin Timberlake - "Four Minutes"

Seriously, who gives a shit about any of these songs? Even "Four Minutes" didn't spark 1/10 as much discussion as "Hung Up" did.

the answer to ilm sucking is obviously more navel-gazing

Tracer: it's hard for me to easily sum up, honestly (and I really, REALLY have to get back to some work here) but I think the slow-grind collapse of the music industry specifically is taking the wind out of the idea of 'pop music' as universal cultural benchmark. Related to that, I think that's a big reason why 'pop music' as such has gained such relative cultural cachet from commentators this decade, it provides something to hold onto even while the business side of it ebbs away. Again, I'm not stating this as pithily (or probably accurately) as I'd like, but I'm trying to make a distinction as well between 'here is why I like or dislike (x)' -- that's why I think Snrub's complaint just now is an invalid one -- and an assumption that there's an actual mass engagement with (x) in the first place. Subject for another thread at this point, I think, or an old one continuing this kind of discussion.

Seriously, who gives a shit about the Billboard charts?

As good an indicator of the most popular pop music at a certain moment as any I guess.

The Billboard Hot 100 has been out of touch ever since it jumped Debby Boone's shark.

the madonna song is totally phoned in wackness, which is why no one gives a shit

10. Madonna eat. Justin Timberlake - "Four Minutes"

o noes!

(sry, back to your discussion then)

How dare you have a career.

-- Ned Raggett, Thursday, 5 June 2008 02:01 (13 hours ago) Link

How dare YOU have a career!

-- Jeff Treppel, Thursday, 5 June 2008 02:05 (13 hours ago) Link

We are the new Chip and Dale.

-- Ned Raggett, Thursday, 5 June 2008 02:09 (13 hours ago) Link

Surely you meant "Mac 'n' Tosh," sir?

(sry, back to your discussion then)

Why ILM has been boring:

Not enough big wide-ranging discussions of new music. The best ILM threads are the longest (mostly). I was disappointed at how weak the Portishead Third thread was. Say what you want about the Vampire Weekend thread but there was some really strong discussion in there.

Not enough enthusiasm/evangelisation of stuff we actually like. I want threads to sell me something and convince me why it's good. All of the poll threads assume familiarity with their subjects so if I know nothing about XTC - "Big Express" I'm not gonna learn much about it from the poll. Or rather, why would I care if someone thinks song X is better than song Y when I don't know either?

At least with the rolling threads I can read through and get some potentially interesting recs. I don't really post to the metal thread but there I'm likely to find someone telling me why some random metal album is awesome.

I also think that, while there's been quite a lot of music this year that I like, there's not been THAT much for people to get excited about on a wider, cultural scale - the things I like this year are more solipsistic than ever before, perhaps - Elbow, Spiritualized, etc. I'd have loved people to get excited by The Do, and though people would, but it didn't happen.

Very true. There have been a few threads this year devoted to a new disc or a new act that led to a long discussion that broke off into interesting directions, e.g., the thread about No Age's Nouns. But it's been few-and-far-between in that regard.

But I don't think this is necessarily an indication that something's gone wrong (although, as I said above, I don't think poll threads are good for conversation). When I look at "upcoming releases" calendars, I see lots of highly-anticipated discs that might be, as Nick puts it, "cultural items" on the horizon (maybe within niche communities, but "cultural items" nonetheless). I'd guess that some of those discs will lead to threads with the kind of deeper discussion that we've seen on ILX in the (relatively recent) past.

although dude you were responsible for that shoddy "12 perfect songs" p-fork dick-suck so in a way you are responsible for ILM being crap

We need more bold, proactive posting about musical theory and critical analysis. My two cents. Well, two more.

Louis:

Given that M@rk's Resonant Frequency column is all about musical theory and critical analysis, these two posts are in conflict. I think you missed the point of the poll (as did most). It could have turned into an interesting discussion -- which song(s) that M@rk named were perfect? which weren't so perfect? what other songs are "perfect" to each of us? and what makes a perfect song?

The poll itself isn't the point of the thread; I was aiming more so to discuss the theory behind it.

We need more bold, proactive posting about musical theory and critical analysis.

Musical theory? Such as?

xpost, to Louis - I mean, if you're gonna target the lack of critical/theoretical discussion on ILM, the better target would have been my own recent "Music That Enhances Sex" poll, quite obviously.

I agree ILM has been especially boring lately. And I'm tired of these threads with blanks in them i.e. ____is the new____ or _____ is so ______ they make ______ look like _____. I just don't find that kind of thing inspiring at all. Come to think of it, it's kinda like Mad Libs, but far, far less entertaining.

I kinda like sleeve's idea that polls could be on a separate board, too.

I Poll Everything

i like the rolling threads. better than starting a thread on some random jazz album that'll get 0 - 5 posts and fade away.

It's sweet that people liked the Ashlee thread, but you realize that it was populated by people who stopped coming here because they got trolled out, right?

Shame

i like the rolling threads. better than starting a thread on some random jazz album that'll get 0 - 5 posts and fade away.

i already answered this - keep up! if you start a thread and it gets five responses there is something wrong with the way you asked the question.

and in that case - is it really worth talking about at all?

thats bs, plenty of great albums worth talking about w/ perfectly fine questions that dont get more than 5 posts bcuz the thread starter is not tim finney