Longtime ILXors - how has this board changed over time?

Gratifying to the ego if not accurate. ;-)

Also I always found it annoying that you had to write yr name and email before posting anything but that's prob just me.

Finally enforced regitration is unecessary. And when introduced on ilm I believe it will kill it, but shit happens.

x-post

Or the clock radio thing.

Dear Sir:

Show the enclosed paper to others, make copies if
you like.

I am 51, a Paranoid Schizophrenic, High School
Diploma, Pentecostal, 6'1" tall, 225 pounds, black
hair, green eyes, and get Social Security Disability.

I was born in Forsyth and still live with my
parents. My brother Bob is a medical doctor. I
spent 3 years in the No. Dak. State Hospital and
had 50 insulin coma shock treatments. I escaped
once with a car and butcher knife and was nearly
killed by the Police.

I have never stolen, raped, or killed. A
psychiatrist, Dr. Martin Freese, said it was a
miracle.

I have had sex with over 120 women, most of them
prostitutes.

I am a very handsome and charming Virgo, same as
Alexander the Great, Ivan the Terrible, John
Wilkes Booth, Jesse James, Admiral Bligh, Emperor
Augustus, Cesare Borgia, Cardinal Richelieu,
Marquis de Lafayette, von Wallenstein, General
John J. Pershing, Louis the 14th and Richard the
Lionhearted.

In 1965, I received a batch of letters from
Wyoming school children, saying that my Buffalo
Bill song called Pahaska, was their favorite song
and was sung in class every day.

According to neurologists, I have suffered far
more than any human who ever lived, because when I
was insane, I had skeining power. Skein is found
in Goulds Medical Dictionary.

According to psychologists, I am the smartest man
ever to walk on the earth.

I would like to personally impregnate hundreds of
bright single women in order to produce a crop of
great geniuses to improve the world.

Thank you for disseminating this information.

Sincerely,

Tom Lloyd

http://ilx.wh3rd.net/search.php?board=1

whiskeytown, was that supposed to be funny?

I still like a good ILE thread, I've lost track but do threads still really kick off and get great occasionally at about 22.00 UK time, with loads of posts and jokes and things??

There was a great period of that for a while.

[ Now, this is my first time attempting to post a picture link. Let's hope this works! ]

[ Now, this is my first time attempting to post a picture link. Let's hope this works! ]

[ Ok, my previous attempts to use the "IMG" method of posting pictures has failed; I am now trying the other method ]

xpost true, getting old

But before I ever posted here like 4 years ago every post was like an essay, right?

xxpost

um, xpost

not that i read that many boards or anything, but i *very* much appreciate the non-american character of ilx. sometimes i wish i knew the limey/aussie/nz references better, but it's still grebt. and i think that the yanks here (i am one, obv) are for the most part pretty cosmopolitan/aware of the world outside america. at least by yank standards. sorry if there are too many of us.

xp

I'm American and I don't get it either.

Punching women in the face. (53 new answers, 53+ unread)

Fine - potentially interesting. Clearly worded.

O Boy! It's the Democratic National Convention! (627 new answers, 627+ unread)

Of some interest to me, though the number of posts suggests a level of detail that's perhaps offputting.

This is a thread for listing every word in English (368 new answers, 83 unread)

Err- whatever.

Longtime ILXors - how has this board changed over time? (78 new answers)

Meta-shit. Invevitable, I suppose, and can't remember there being one quite on this subject without it being aggressively started, so OK.

Weird Animals (15 new answers)

Filler. OK.

warning warning DO NOT SEE 'THE VILLAGE' IT IS A PIECE OF SHIT warning warning (182 new answers, 182+ unread)

Don't know what the Village is. Don't like the way the title is worded or capitalized.

ANAL OGIES (9 new answers, 9+ unread)

For God's sake.

"I'd rather not talk about that because it's something negative" (18 new answers)

Interesting topic. Great thread.

Big Brother (UK 2004) - Chain of fools: thread 8 (102 new answers)

Great for me and other UK BB fans. Good talk, though if you're not from the UK very dull, I imagine, though Dan seems to love it. So, selfishly, great.

HPENCIL (4 new answers, 4+ unread)

Waste of time. Presume it refers to hstencil in some way. Don't like threads about people.

This Is the Thread Where I Say part 17: Intelligence Is The Best Revenge (352 new answers, 352+ unread)

Just not for me. I've got no interest in ILE being a general 'how you doing?' chat board, but it's not like this subculture takes over, so I can't really complain.

whaddaya look like now then? (42 new answers, 42 unread)

I don't like the word 'whaddaya', but this succession of photo threads is OK, I suppose. I occasionally have a look to see what people look like, though once I've seen them once I don't really want to see more pictures (unless they are v.hott, obv.).

Assholes in South Africa shooting wildlife (50 new answers, 50+ unread)

A Calum thread, I believe. I dunno - for various reasons, his animal rights threads never end up being very interesting, and its not all his fault.

The Thinking Man's Sex Kitten (123 new answers, 2 unread)

Just a kind of list and photo thread, I think, which doesn't really float my boat. Seeed to be about lots of Americans I'd never heard of for a while, then broadened out a bit. Questioning the assumptions behind the concept of the thinking man's crumpet might be interesting, I guess.

you happy now? you are? why's that? (22 new answers, 22+ unread)

Pass.

digital camera advice, please (9 new answers)

I don't know much about cameras but it's a useful thread to enough people and maybe me if I ever buy another one.

What are you listening to in the NU-ILX ERA????? (78 new answers, 78 unread)

Never really saw the appeal of these threads. If people say something inspiring about something I haven't heard then maybe, but they just tend to be lists, I think. Maybe I'm wrong - hardly ever click on them.

Fruit - C or D? (15 new answers)

Ah, good old fruit.

Bush: "Maybe Iran had a hand in 9/11 instead...." (4 new answers, 4 unread)

I'm all 9/11'ed out, but I appreciate these threads being there.

Ilxor Impressions (be nice!) (199 new answers, 11 unread)

NOOO!!!

this is the thread where we talk breathlessly about the best TV show on North American television: THE AMAZING RACE! (8 new answers, 8 unread)

I like that it makes it clear it's North American. I'm not fond of the cutesy 'this is the thread where we' thing, but I and others have said that before.

Can you ride a bike? (73 new answers, 73+ unread)

I don't really care whether people can ride a bike or not, but I suppose something interesting might just come out of it.

NU-EXCELSIOR (184 new answers)

My worst ILX vice. I find 90% of what's on there unfunny, mainly because it's out of context (even when several posts are pasted), and because it's labelled 'this is funny'. But I can't stop clicking on it to see if someone has put something of mine on there, and then I hate myself. Also, I really don't like the whole 'EXCELSIOR' thing but I guess it's hear to stay. My attitude to it softened a bit when I learned that it was a reference to comic book speak. I thought it was just a 'hey! crazy old-fashioned word!' thing.

Ebay: Cash Cow or Evil Bitch? (6 new answers)

I generally don't like too many 'bitches' etc. in titles, but otherwise yeah - this thread's OK.

This is the thread where we all post as the young stars of Hollywood (44 new answers, 44+ unread)

Again with the 'this is the thread where we'. I'm rarely that impressed with these 'do a pastiche' threads, everyone trying hard to be clever with their turns.

Trig Brother 2004 Saturday 31 July (83 new answers, 83 unread)

Social event organizing. You have to be there.

jaymc is in a band! (28 new answers, 28 unread)

Goodo!

What do you hate? (123 new answers, 123 unread)

Bit too general a question to provoke interesting responses, I think. Also, generally in life I've had enough of people getting angry and annoyed with trivial things. Room 101 was always crap ha ha (British TV show - sorry!)

Famous crime scenes (39 new answers, 39+ unread)

Hmm... don't think I'd click on it, but if you're into crime, yeah.

Lindsay Lohan: "Hot, Ready, and Legal!" (359 new answers, 15 unread)

I don't know why I read that the other night and chipped in with my boring observations. Hollywood starlets coming of age. Err yeah - whatever. Lots of C on Ts.

Predict Trends Of 2005 (98 new answers, 4 unread)

A folorn request, I think. If you could do this for real, you'd make a lot of money. So mainly just lots of one-line joke responses, including me recycling one I made on ILE in predictions for 2002 or something, as a vague joke to myself.

General movie anticipation thread (82 new answers, 82+ unread)

I'm prefer a bit of focus.

Social Network Sites Showcasing the Mentalists of our Age (3 new answers, 1 unread)

Some shit.

Sysadmin Follies (2 new answers, 2 unread)

Some IT worker thing.

favorite sexual position???????? (9 new answers)

There are already loads of threads about this. They wouldn't have been hard to find.

West Indies Vs England 2004 (1 new answer, 1 unread)

For cricket fans.

I'm all about freeze-dried bananas right now (23 new answers)

Filler, but good humoured, witty filler.

thee "L0BSTER L|BERATI0N FR0NT" wtf?? (15 new answers, 15+ unread)

wtf indeed. Too much wtf. And funny letters.

Do You Know What I Mean? (40 new answers, 2 unread)

A bit of scraping the barrel from an otherwise thoughtful question setter.

OBIT: It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Jackson Beck! (1 new answer, 1+ unread)

Don't know who that is, but some effort in the thread titling. RIP, I guess?

Who on this bitch is from THE SUBURBS¿ (92 new answers, 6 unread)

More 'bitch'. There have been a lot of threads about suburbia. I think I prefer questions that go beyond 'lets share experiences of x'.

What star sign are you... (190 new answers, 190 unread)

For astrologists. There are a lot of astrology threads. I like the ones where people argue about it with Vic, a bit. Maybe this is one of them.

THREAD CONNECTIONS and a mule

Was 'Thread Connections' ever funny? And I do hate the whole thing of coming up with new twists on old title names that are then impenetrable to anyone coming to ILX for the first time.

What Video Games Are You Wasting Your Life Away on Now? (Vol 2.) (42 new answers, 42 unread)

I don't know why I lost interest in my Playstation.

OLYMPICS 2004 (19 new answers, 19+ unread)

As ever, I'll get into it once it starts.

Edinburgh Military Tattoo - classic or dud? (10 new answers, 4 unread)

Yeah, why not?

Berlin (8 new answers, 8 unread)

Ah, Berlin. Threads about foreign places are often quite good.

Katrina Vanden Heuvel = ROWR (28 new answers, 28+ unread)

Don't know her, but I'll take your word for it!

Club Freaky Trigger THURSDAY 29th July (134 new answers, 134 unread)

More London indie club hijinx. Next.

"HI KIDS WE'RE HOME EARLY" (27 new answers, 27+ unread)

Is this about times you've been rumbled by your parents? Actually, I don't care.

MANPRIs (21 new answers, 21+ unread)

What?

MODERATOR ANNOUNCEMENT: ILE to accept posts from registered users only (465 new answers, 1 unread)

More meta-shit. Essential meta-shit, sadly. There was fighting on it, yes?

"Manhunt" withdrawn from Dixons stores (110 new answers)

A good going over of an old but new topic.

DON'T THINK: What's making you laugh the most these days. (54 new answers, 54+ unread)

I like thinking.

death and how to live through it (10 new answers, 10 unread)

Don't like this title much. Somehow, even a capital D would have helped. I've looked at it now and I see people have put a lot of time into their posts. Good stuff, though not for me, just now. Actually, I've never really seen ILE has a place to talk about stuff like that, but that's just me.

Big Brother (US) - DNA

It's a shame Big Brother is such a flop in America.

It is.

Oh, I get drawn into things I don't really have much interest in all right. That's when I know I'm not enjoying ILX and should take a break. And I did say that as meta-threads go, this one was OK.

Maybe it was a bad idea. Sorry. As I said - it wasn't supposed to be an attack, and I really don't think I was that negative! I said I liked quite a few threads, and why. As I said, I really should do a comparison with the older list, but I was serious about my thumb hurting and I thought it was clear enough if you go back to the 2001 list that many of the things I do deprecate were not so prevalent then.

I don't expect people to change way they post or start threads. It would be ridiculous to ask them to do that just to please me. Paulhw asked how it had changed and that was just supposed to illustrate it a bit.

Carry on.

The only thing I'm confused about is why he even answered the question. I clicked on the thread because I was intrigued by the amount of answers there were, what with the usual anti-nu-ilx suspects not having been around much lately. I'm only answering (non-answering actually) because I'm genuinely curious as to wtf roxy is getting pissed off with Dastoor about.

I'm with Jimmy the Mod.

(err xpost, see what he said for himself I suppose)

xp hooray return allyzay ps we're not pissed but we're the newcomers so obv we'd feel slighted

unless you think that people won't like discussing things that you like? or if you don't like discussing things with the people here anymore?

Filler. OK.

:(

FYI it is an amalgamation of zoological oddities and curiosities meant to broaden one's (and my own) awareness of biological diversity.

Hrmph!

Roxy is right though, too. (which makes Ally wrong). He wasn't really answering the question, seeing as the question wasn't "why not give us your personal review of the New Answers page?".

xpost I think a huge part of the problem discussing the "difference" between the old and the new has to do with people always assuming any perceived disrespect towards either side is directed towards the entirety of the group, which is never really the case. And I think that what Ken says in his last line is just about a good summary of it: whether or not the threads were better/worse/same in topic three years ago, there is no question that the people who post on the board changed. If you dislike discussing things with XYZ people within the new group, or you preferred the XYZ people of the old group who have disappeared (this is an inevitable phenomenon anyway, people get tired of things, not necessarily "driven away" as often claimed by people), then you will dislike the tone of the board. Not wanting to partake in certain things isn't necessarily a condemnation of the people involved or a judgement call of "good v. bad", it's just a statement that you don't want to partake in what is happening in that area.

You can, I suppose, compare it to the phenomenon of bars, to clear up my convolution here, right. You have your neighborhood bar. You have a set group of people in your neighborhood bar you are friends with. You might also have some people there you really dislike, but at any rate you're used to all of these people and you're used to the tone of this neighborhood joint. Now, suddenly, your neighborhood joint becomes a "hot spot" and there is an influx of people. Some of the original regulars are going to be offended on principal. Others are going to feel that the "tone" has changed, people play different songs on the jukebox or your beer runs out on draught more regularly or whatever, and have a hard time adjusting. Other people still enjoy the bartenders there and resolve to make new friends. Still more people stick with their original group, while still going to this neighborhood hot spot. It's not saying that any of the old group's responses are good or bad, or that any of the new people are good or bad for coming in. It's just a human response.

I feel bad, though. There were a lot of frivolous snap judgements, like commenting on a Top 40 singles chart, or something.

xxxpost

Has the tone or style of conversation changed?

I mean, no, he didn't do a comparison but his replies to each thread indicated reasons why he felt the board had changed in some way, for him personally.

I'm not sure what constitutes a "longtime ILXor," because I am pretty sure several of the posters on this thread have been here for a long time now and would count as such?

xpost someone here has tiny little arms? Ugh, seriously, I can't handle that, I'm done.

xpost, no prob alba.

1) personal, unwarranted harrassment from a definite "longtime ILXor" (who seems gone though perhaps posting this will bring it)
2) having fights with Tom over things I've posted to ILX and me throwing a regrettable stroppy fit and doing things like abolishing ILX from my computer, deleting my photo archive, etc to spite him.

So, to me, a longtime ILXor, the board has definitely changed, just as I have changed a lot, and because of both of those things (plus the two mentioned above) I use the board less now, but, hell, I'm like one of 10 people who doesn't seem to dislike Jon Williams, I'm certainly not going to dislike your average ILXor. For a while it was a bit bothersome to me, because I no longer felt I could use the board for the purposes I was originally using it for, but pretty soon I realized that was quite childish and I really didn't care very much and like the occasional distraction it might offer now.

xpost no, I am never going to defend the proposition that everything old is good, mookieproof, far from it, I am wholly in advocation of deleting the entire archive, truth be told.

And your naked penis contribution is monumental!

That is all from me. Goodnight, sleep tight, and for the record everyone on this thread is ok by me. *salute*

ps N/alba/AllyzaySC/etc don't go!

Whatever the public wants, ken.

"Posting on the thread
with a gun in my hand..."

*hides*

Good luck on yer papers.

i remember when people would argue and 'debate' in long paragraphs - that don't happen anymore and i suspect alot of that's due to the growth of the place, people don't want to get caught in the xposting.

I'm confused.

maybe someone could blank it out or something.

oh dear :/

And BTW, I try my hardest to at least put up a facade of being intelligent, of having something of substance in my cranium, but honestly, when it comes to music, I'm just coming out of a period where I was actively avoiding any "new to me" music and only relying on my musical comfort foods for aural nourishment. And before that, I went through a period where I was only doing that which would allow me to survive. I listened to my Ultravox and Visage and Japan (to name the most "obscure" artists I was into at the time) and assorted various '80s artists and such only to the point to where it wouldn't interfere with my schoolwork, homework, club and organization duties, volunteer work, and nascent social life. In fact, even though I seem like I'm a busy individual these days and am in fact living a fully grownup existence, I've got more free time these days to devote to music listening than I ever had as a teenager.

So that's why I can't contribute worth a shit on ILM, unless you count the few times I post something and it ends up getting ignored or glossed over. That's why I'm forced to stick to the "chatty" threads. I lived to exist for such a fucking long period of time that it's only been recently that I've been able to expand my horizons, and I was kinda hoping on having that happen by frequenting this forum. So I'm fucking sorry I'm one of the idiotic masses around here. I'm just trying my hardest, time and again, and it seems like it's all for nought.

Oh, and I think the longtime posters who have chosen to drop out of sight around these parts have done those of us who really haven't been here all that long a GREAT disservice. Every single one of you oldtimers have contributed in some way or another to getting every single one of us (relative) newbies to come out of the darkness of lurkdom and start posting here. We don't get to hear their fresh perspective on any number of things. That's really unfair of them.

This is true, but it's (a nearly inevitable) consequence of the mode of interaction a message board allows. One's intelligence and one's humor are basically the only traits that are able to conveyed and, therefore, appreciated. (but even on those two qualities, you're selling yourself short)

Are you aware of the fact that whenever somone says "Chicago FAP!" there's this eternal protracted debate as to when and where and why and how? If you said "Chicago FAP!" tonight, we'd all pretty much bend to your will, short of driving to whatever backwater you live in.

With ILM, you can search the archives for seemingly every band you can think of and come up with several threads devoted to them. So, the bands that almost everybody knows have already been C/D & S/D'ed to death, thus, most of the new threads are related to more obscure bands in sub-sub-genres and relatively few people are able to participate.

I think alba's post on actually doing commentary on every thread is maybe the craziest (and I mean this in a good way) meta post ever!

Its been 2-4 years posting for some, and that is a very long time.

I don't find this quite true, at least not for myself. My favourite threads are often the ones where people discuss everyday or personal matters instead of "intellectual" ones, and I'm most impressed by the everyday wisdom and genuine empathy people here show. I you could call that a form "intelligence" too, but you don't need to write lengthy essays for answers to prove it (not that I have anything particular against essays). I liked the thread about male-female violence, for example, because people discussed a subject familiar to most of us in an deep, but not necessarily "intellectual" or "academic" way. I also like the odd trivia threads, like "Weird Animals", because it's nice to notice how so many folks besides me can get fascinated by such peculiar subjects.

Mostly though its because there are just SO MANY PEOPLE these days, its impossible to keep track of everyone, especially as there are more and more changing psuedonyms and email addresses. The time difference makes a bigger impact than it used to be - UK ilx and US ilx are now light years apart in terms of subject matter, tone etc, and with the exception of long time posters like Ned and Dan, the two camps barely seem to talk to one another at all.

Also, the link to FreakyTrigger and the culture surrounding it is virtually non-existant these days.

It goes in waves though - the boards have been poor recently but there was a period from about February to April this year when the whole place seemed pretty cool again.

the end.

Well, believe it or not, I've been following ILx since 2001 but it is only in the last couple of months that I've felt entirely au fait with ILX. Perhaps it is because of the leaving of some of the old-schoolers giving others a chance to catchup with the in-jokes and terminology.
It is only until very recently that I've stopped feeling like an intruder in some kind of clique. I'm not saying that the original community was a bad thing, far from it, but ILE used to be utterly impenetrable for a long time - every post I wrote, whether I thought it was witty or interesting, was guaranteed to sink like a stone - often dragging the thread down with it. This in turn made me feel rather unworthy.

and I want to second every sentiment in there.

Eh? There have been two huge London-based ones in the past week, with plenty of pictures galore, as well as the (comparatively smaller) LA one! Give us some credit! ;-)

You're right, it's not completely true. I should've said that other traits are harder to convey and pick up on, not impossible.

no its still strong, during the break a few ppl off ilx have started contributing to it, and most of the ppl that post comments also post here.

London ilx has had a shift from FAPs to events in the last six months, threads on these are full of anticipation and talk post-event.

posit: the advent of noize was the single most important event in ilx history

there's thruth in that. for a start the brits had to get more american, or they had to die

image posting used to be somewhat frowned upon in general, iirc. it's strange now to imagine how different and, for some, grating the noize aesthetic was around here in 2004.

there's thruth in that.

I gotta give lols where there are due here

also, not being "nice" xpost

haha did not catch u lj

haha whereas nowadays what killed noize board was the rest of ilx becoming too much like it! or at least, like some sort of amalgamation of its zing-happy brevity with the cosy bro-ness of pre-noize ilx. i can imagine how it came across as highly impolite at first! sometimes it still is. i'd love to see the usual ilx register applied to a british messageboard about, say, cricket. oh wait, i have done. permabanned. XD

btw ilx is MUCH friendlier than it was in 2006 - the snark level, be it thru SB or w/e, has dropped dramatically, and people are far quicker to give each other a break, mostly because if there's a problem it's dealt with rapidly, and the proliferation of poster numbers has made it easier to avoid trouble. maybe also quite a lot of established posters beyond the o.g. canon have become real bros IRL, which wasn't so much the case in days of yore?

I've never known what to make of the noize board, assuming it was just about noize bands. Is that how/why it started? What's the history?

(I guess I'm somewhat longtime... been kicking around since 2002.)

JF, you do realize that hstencil, msp, jack cole, gygax! and dead dead bird were early noize board denizens.

Dangit!

Lol. Funny that 2002 is still not considered old skool. I started posting in 2001 (sept). Fuck. So long.

Hey, so what about now? I joined in late 2005 and feel like, since around the time when the new-new board (stylesheets, radio button polls) debuted, things have had a pretty consistent vibe. Certain posters/interests have come in and out of focus, but generally I feel like the language and rhythm of ILX has not changed much in that time... although I do think it's different than it was even when I joined, when there was still some vestige of an older, longform posting style going, and more nasty-argument venomous barbarism with fewer apologies and retractions. (note, i am drunk, this may not make sense) But I've never kept up with the big names, or the big feuds, or hardly any of the clusterfuck threads, so it could be that for all I know ILX was sundered by some major crisis in mid 2011 and I just totally missed it.

Yes, the intellectual banter seems to have gone down, but that could be due to the fact I don't read as much anymore and thus miss out on it? I get nostalgic about the early days (10 years ago?!?) but time/people move on.

the brits had to get more american, or they had to die

xxxpost
i think dayyyo was right about friendliness (i've been reading ilx for 10 years but most of my posting has been in the last two or three and i remember the queer nervousness i had whenever i said anything before and it was mostly embarrassing stuff that was the product of youthful shite talking and mental illness) and creep of noize board aesthetic which was jarring at first for a mannered starchy ilx.

more americans helps the tone a lot, for me, i find.

ILX just slowly filled up with more and more of the people that many of us went to ILX to avoid. :-/

There are so many people that I used to really treasure, who just stopped posting over the years. I've lost count. That loud voices predominated over quiet voices, but it's the quiet voices that I miss. And then to see an old thread revived, with old names in it, it's a little twinge of regret.

I've been lurking on ILX for, quite literally, millions of years. Here are the changes I've witnessed during key eras.

Hadean: There aren't even any electrons at this stage, but somehow a very early form of ILX exists. It's home to a community of lichens who, in my opinion, are some of the nicest dudes ever to grace the boards. Deep thinkers.

Archean: For a long time nothing happens. There's just this thick grey fog through which the voice of Ned Raggett occasionally booms "Hey!" or "Weeps!"

Proterozoic: The Sinister newsgroup comes into being. Well, when I say "the Sinister newsgroup comes into being", what I really mean is that the continent of Africa, from which man will eventually originate, detaches itself from Gondwana, the great proto-continent. The rest (Belle and Sebastian etc) follows as a matter of course.

Phanerozoic: During this period there's a lot of debate about "rockism" by actual rocks, the self-hating hipsters of the Phanerozoic. Things finally quieten down when one of the rocks points out that stones in glass houses shouldn't throw themselves.

Carboniferous: Flame wars (mostly caused by volcanoes, comets and marsh gas) but still no recognisable human life.

Cambrian: A cockroach is anticipating its wedding 5.5 million years in advance and just will not shut up about it.

Ordovician: Evolution produces something called "D*m Passantin*" and almost terminates itself for shame.

Silurian: There's a distinct possibility of bananas. It's mostly ferns, though, producing their incredibly dull "fern fiction". At least their spelling and punctuation is good.

Jurassic: Dinosaurs? Whine-osaurs, more like. People just will not shut up about their personal problems. So what if you're bored, miserable, depressed, lonely, and it's a Friday night? It's the Jurassic.

Cretaceous: A gigantic war between the morons and the cretins. The cretins win, eat the morons' brains, and instantly became as stupid as them.

Cenozoic: The era of the lazy zing, automatic misanthropy, reflexive cynicism, and conspiracy theories. I actually think the CIA was behind the entire Cenozoic period. If not them, the RIAA.

Holocene: Blighted by Top 10 lists and the Suggest Ban button, this era does at least have my own desperately attention-seeking elaborately-literary troll-posts to recommend it. But basically everything that isn't a ranked list, a work rant, TV-themed water-cooler dribble, or a piss-off kiss-off is tl;dr.

wait, what..

I was here from the (almost) very beginning. A month or two after it was erected, I guess. It was just very vibrant. But I can understand how it was so intimidating. Thing is, you just had to throw yourself in the pit. The nastiness was all in good fun. But now it is much more cosy, I guess.

Is Ned still around? I don't see his posts anymore.

Ned will be posting until they turn off the internet.

I was a random Googler in the early days. I'd say there were about four periods:

1. 2000-2002 Tiny group of people, few posts but longform and in depth. Very much linked to Freaky Trigger, Usenet etc...

2. 2002-2004 Quite a few more join - probably from Sinister. Plenty of FAPs. Tweeness is accepted, encouraged in places even. Generally a very nice accepting place to be (especially if you're an indiekid), but maybe a bit TOO nice for some people's tastes.

3. 2005-2007 Noize Board/Zing era. Huge influx of posters, many from the US. Much faster and snarkier posting style. Image bombing. Multiple boards. Multiple usernames, sockpuppets etc. Hugely meta. Took me a while to adjust and I remember getting upset and leaving on more than one occasion.

4. 2008-2012 Plateau era. A slight mellowing off. Not as volatile as before, but not exactly a return to the second era either. Posters are more comfortable with each other's steez and so it's more apparent when somebody's trolling or whether it's just a bit of banter. Not as many new posters joining and generally a little easier to keep up with.

heh im not sure about indiekid acceptance in 2002. Mostly because former indiekids were here and had lots of guilt. If you were a former indiekid but hated indie by then you were accepted.
Though in 2001 it was worse!

imagebombing was the worst thing to happen to ilx.

dog latin for ilx board historian

The early days of ILX - especially ILM - were very much "reformed indie kids discovering that there was life beyond indie" in a refreshing and polymorphous way - and it wasn't nearly as polarised and tribal as it is today, with Metal vs Goon Crew or whatever. I wouldn't dare post on a "rolling Genre X thread" these days - in a way that I did feel much more comfortable posting on an individual artist thread 10 years ago, saying "hey, what's all this, then" and someone very clever would explain.

i wonder if mark s misses categorising threads?

I miss categorising threads. That was one of my favourite pastimes, and a great way to reacquaint oneself with the history of the board.

there is no metal vs goon crew. Some even post on both.

Of course you were going to take that literally. But the rolling genre threads and tribalism is hugely offputting and intimidating to me. That's my observation. I'm allowed to feel that way, you're allowed to feel differently. Now I'm going to stop the meta because it invariably makes me feel worse, and not better. Good day to you.

thing is, i don't think i was as close/aware of the various posters and their nuances until about 2004 anyway. to me ILX was just this one big voice/hivemind up until about 2004 when I started going on FAPs. Plus I was never a part of any of the Freaky Trigger / Usenet / Sinister / Noize crowd and even after 2004 I still considered ILX to be largely a single person rather than a lot of people with many different attitudes and tastes, so when it entered the Noize/Zing era it often felt like my best mate had turned into a total wanker.

In general three are less chickenbears and tarts andore and more IA.

I think the Rolling Threads thing is very much indicative of Plateau era ILX. It's not ideal, but a necessary evil in some ways as it's an easy way to deal with snarkiness/elitism. Whereas before it was difficult for a dilettante to speak up on a thread about, say, a hip hop or dance artist for fear of being beat down, now a lot of people don't bother and just let the experts get on with it. I don't know which I prefer.

im pretty sure there was balkanisation long before rolling metal/rap/bobbins etc threads

I dealt with all that (and the endless lists and polls) by giving up on ILM, tbh. xpost

There's as many polls on ile!

Newbies wouldn't always be shot down, though. I stumbled into a lot of dance threads in the very early days saying stupid things like "I know nothing about dance but this sounds great to me" and Matt DC or TIm F or The Lex would patiently make suggestions until I slowly started to learn. Now maybe that was because DC and Tim and Lex were people I had actually gone dancing with by that point. It's entirely possible that was more down to Poptimism / Freaky Trigger / that very early pop-oriented club that Tom used to do back in Oxford whose name I have forgotten. I have had the opposite experience to you in many ways, DL - that in the early days, ILX was a gang of individuals I met up with in the pub all the time, and knew their foibles, it's only in the post-2005 time that it has become more faceless and there are some people that I recognise regularly, but mostly it's a mass of unindividuated screennames.

Are there any FAPs thesedays? They seem to be a thing of the past now, apart from one FTrig one last 'between Christmas/NY' that I nearly went to..

I have been posting here for almost 11 years and...

Oh god.

the sprawling morass of endlessly changing usernames doesn't help this of course. I find it nigh impossible to keep up with who's who. I only found out yesterday who the late great was, and i've been chatting on the same threads as him for months and months now.

also what doesn't help is that it would not be obvious to a newcomer what is being discussed in a thread called "Rolling Fruity Goon Swag" or "Partisans" or "Bobbins" (I actually label my mp3 folders this way now). ILX is a mess of jargon, completely intimidating to those who don't know it. Reminds me of the book I'm reading at the moment - The Pale King by David Foster Wallace - which is peppered throughout with bureaucratese and office slang that gets reeled off by the characters like a mother tongue but makes no sense (and indeed is not supposed to make sense) to the uninitiated reader.

we're not running some kind of public service here y'know.

re: FAPs - there was a London FAP just before Christmas that I went to. Weirdly it felt like I was the only one there who hadn't already met everyone, but I'm sure it was the same for a lot of people. Lots of faces from people who'd stopped posting years ago too, so it partly felt like a reunion. Def would like more FAPs though. Def worth doing, especially before end of summer.

maybe ilx just isnt as london-centric as it once was. (No bad thing)

What is a FAP?

"Fancy A Pint"

It's the sound ilxors make when they all meet up for drinks.

usually a get-together after work amongst colleagues, but as far as ILX was concerned was usually semi-booked about a week ahead..

xpost

And you go along, and you know everybody's name but you recognise no faces...

Yeah, I don't know the difference between "Partisans" and "Bobbins" (apart from that the latter was Anna's long-running joke) but then I tend to think that that kind of jargon is used specifically with aim of keeping dilettantes (like me) out.

Which is fair enough, but y'know, not like it used to be. I'll just go over in a corner and quietly rust to death. Wait, no, sorry, that was on the wrong thread, that was for the passive-aggressive thread.

Partisans v Bobbins is one thing I've never seen explained. It also took me a couple of years to realise the "mongrels" threads weren't full of people posting about their dogs.

Partisans = bass music / dubstep / what's left of d'n'b etc
Bobbins = house and techno

strangely there isn't as much crossover between the two when it comes to posters. Partisans is mostly Vahid, Jordan, Jimi and a few others whereas Bobbins is Tim, Matt DC et al.

took me ages to find out fruity swag / goon crew = hip hop as well.

Partisans is mostly american posters right?
xpz

i think "bobbins" is a british word for nonsense or something. i originally thought it was in reference to a sewing machine, which intimidated me from checking out the thread.

Reminds me of the book I'm reading at the moment - The Pale King by David Foster Wallace - which is peppered throughout with bureaucratese and office slang that gets reeled off by the characters like a mother tongue but makes no sense (and indeed is not supposed to make sense) to the uninitiated reader.

Rolling with the book analogies, ILX sometimes reminds me (as a relative newcomer) of Lord of the Rings in that there is this historical substratum of epic historical characters events (shaded with "Golden Age" nostalgia) that only gets mentioned in passing but makes the reading experience much richer even for those that weren't around and haven't made the effort to go and read the 11-volume "Tales of Noize" spinoff series.

I Love TMI = 50 Shades Of Grey?

No, I know exactly why one is called the Bobbins thread. It was Anna who called it that - she was writing for a dance music mag at the time, so was very aware of the controversy that could be generated if you called House Techno or Techno House, but she wanted a thread where she could discuss House and Techno, etc. without getting into those pedantic arguments, so she just used the word "Bobbins" as a cover-all. And it stuck.

No idea where "Partisans" came from, though.

took me ages to find out fruity swag / goon crew = hip hop as well.

Those terms are at least somewhat descriptive as those are not all-encompassing Rolling Hip Hop threads really.

no? what are they then?

i guess avoiding traditional genre tags stops people going round saying "you can't talk about that in here, it's not techno" &c. &c.

Partisans = bass music / dubstep / what's left of d'n'b etc
Bobbins = house and techno

This is it.

ILX feels more stable than it has done in a very long while, I suppose it's into comfortable and slightly boring but basically enjoyable middle age now.

basically enjoyable middle age now

this

On the whole I think we spend a lot less time chasing laughs and a lot more time ~being nice~

No, I know exactly why one is called the Bobbins thread. It was Anna who called it that - she was writing for a dance music mag at the time, so was very aware of the controversy that could be generated if you called House Techno or Techno House, but she wanted a thread where she could discuss House and Techno, etc. without getting into those pedantic arguments, so she just used the word "Bobbins" as a cover-all. And it stuck.

the first one was "ELECTROHOUSE bobbins", i fought in that war, don't tell the metal plate in my head it wasn't pedantic and bloody!

Whatevs, chief pedant! I just searched for it, because we were both very drunk when she explained to me why it was called that. This is one of the foibles of ILX, that Anna made reference to it being a sequel to a previous thread, but of course I cannot find the original thread now, because it was called something other than "bobbins" no doubt.

Same as it ever was.

the sprawling morass of endlessly changing usernames doesn't help this of course. I find it nigh impossible to keep up with who's who. I only found out yesterday who the late great was, and i've been chatting on the same threads as him for months and months now.

― Quickly, take hold of my hand, asshole! (dog latin), Thursday, August 9, 2012 5:11 AM (46 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This. The only people I know who they really are are Ned and Jaymc.

no? what are they then?

for the most part they're about the Gucci Mane/Maybach mixtape strain of hip hop. I wouldn't expect to find a lot of discussion about a new Roots album or whatever.

Biggest difference between new ILX and old ILX = working search function vs random drunken and probably made-up rubbitch that an ILX0r told me while completely mashed in the bathroom queue for Trash.

There you go.

biggest difference poxy fule

Yeah it was electrohouse bobbins initially that then morphed into minimal house bobbins a couple of years later and is now just house and techno as there's less of an overwhelming trend these days.

The emergence of chat threads that aren't topic specific.

Site New Answers leading to anti-balkanisation.

ooh, good one

yeah SNA is the biggest factor in increasing generic niceness across ILX I reckon, no-one can get too snobby about which board they're on or what tone it has because we're all in one melting pot rly.

I do like how, despite that, a lot of the sub-boards have retained a lot of their character.

Are there any FAPs thesedays?

Some American cities seem to have them regularly-ish, maybe? Or they just have busy threads but don't hang out. Half the Sydney posters and half the Melbourne posters pub or dinner or gig or karaoke weekly or more.

It also took me a couple of years to realise the "mongrels" threads weren't full of people posting about their dogs.

One can only imagine you also assumed they were fucking their sheep.

American cities do have FAPS pretty regularly, organized through the city threads. The most common reason to FAP is a visting ilxor from out of town.

I'm genuinely surprised by those who feel the site feels more exclusive/elitist/cliquish in 2012 than it did five years ago. I totally buy it versus 8-10 years ago, 'cause I see those early threads and there's something really of a small community there, too small to have cliques necessarily. It reads a lot like Usenet boards that I used to read via daily feeds through a dial-up BBS; civil, polite discussion about something everybody there is really interested in and trying to figure out. Ned's posting style has probably changed the least and still carries a torch for this entire approach, IMHO.

But the stuff from, let's say, 2004-2006, when I first heard about the board and started trying to check it out, seems a lot more .. volatile. I don't know about the history of noize or "image-bombing" or what all, but it seems like this is the time of a lot of the banning, the woah-how-did-this-turn-into-500-posts-of-two-or-three-particular-dudes-grinding-an-eternal-axe-with-each-other type threads. And again, maybe that's still going on now in threads I don't read, but even when I catch glimpses of it in the present day it seems less instantly personal, more likely to be followed with an apology or retraction or "yeah I was being an ass, sorry thread, carry on" or something. Like, generally, the community (though it's maybe gotten larger) has managed to regain a sense of there being norms and appropriate behavior.

But again, I'm a peripheral poster who's only in the last year started to have any persistent memory of particular posters by name (below the level of the Neds and so on). Name changes definitely do NOT help, which is one reason I've always resisted the temptation. (Is there a thread somewhere that keeps track of who's who? Almost merits being an FAQ/info-sheet even.)

I'm moving to NYC soon; if there's still a sizable FAP-type contingent there maybe I'll try to barge onto the scene...

In re Nath's question about where I am: hi there! Though I suppose Grampsy is correct about my booming voice in the fog.

And thanks for the kind comment, Doctor Casino; I suppose I've felt there's no real need TO change it...

... people read SNA?

I don't know about the history of noize or "image-bombing" or what all, but it seems like this is the time of a lot of the banning, the woah-how-did-this-turn-into-500-posts-of-two-or-three-particular-dudes-grinding-an-eternal-axe-with-each-other type threads. And again, maybe that's still going on now in threads I don't read, but even when I catch glimpses of it in the present day it seems less instantly personal, more likely to be followed with an apology or retraction or "yeah I was being an ass, sorry thread, carry on" or something.

I think there's at least as many threads where >50% of participants are thinking "Something has to be done about Poster X", but now things are more balkanised, and so more people have no idea about those threads at all (until they turn up on the clusterfuck thread?)

i much prefer ilx in 2012 to ilx in 2005. for one, the most egregious shitheads have been banned or learned to curtail their most obnoxious tics and those that haven't are idiosyncratic enough that they're easy to ignore ('oh, that's just X, doing their shtick again').

ILX feels more stable than it has done in a very long while, I suppose it's into comfortable and slightly boring but basically enjoyable middle age now.

Yeah. I've been sort of on-again/off-again for nearly 10 years, and that sounds about right. I did actually enjoy all the noize wars, the image-bombing and stuff. The early days of the Noize Board were pretty great, even though I mostly lurked there because posting too much felt like an invitation to a bloody nose.

Overall, I really value ILX. It's hard to find anywhere online or off- with as many smart, informed, interesting people. Smart, informed, interesting people who like spending weeks doing polls on Neil Young and the Cure. My kind of geeks, basically.

while the other half of the board hate polls!

Yup. Well, something for everyone.

ilx also has recommending it being the only message board with AG

original odd couple writ large

I Love Books FAP in London about once a quarter.

... people read SNA?

I thought I was the only one who didn't. Been reading ilm since a few months into it so I can't change now. I didn't even read ILE for the 1st few years as I thought ILM was perfect as it was.

I can't grok any method of ILX reading that doesn't use SNA. Include the boards you like, ignore the others, color-code them in groups by theme or interest, and off we go.

I'm just set in my ways I suppose.

Wow, I've never played with Site New Answers before but it just might change my ILX life.

it really will. i didn't use it for my first few years on ILX, for some reason. i think i missed all of the noize wars just because i didn't even know the wars were happening!

... people read SNA?

why refresh 12 pages in the shower when you could refresh one?

I really wish I could get ILTMI to show up in magenta though.

I mean, that's the color it is in my brain.

i look at ilx completely out of habit now. there is pretty much no reason for me to be here anymore. but i'm one of those people who sticks to routines. i often wish i could go away. but i can't. maybe i should try hypnosis. i can't stop smoking either.

threads are really long now.

as someone who jumps across a ton of subboards anyway, SNA instantly made my life easier and awesome and I can't fathom not reading the site via it (much like many ppl can't fathom reading threads without using bookmarks, which I've never really cottoned onto)

of course, the semi-hilarious thing about the advent of SNA and the democratization of the subboards is that I think the rise of its use directly parallels the rise of the city/regional/rolling subject matter threads, like the community basically keeps saying "you can equalize all you want, we will still figure out how to silo ourselves in the name of convenience/expediency"

I thought everyone used SNA.

How do people do it when they seem to pop up any time their name is mentioned? Is there an alert or are they just eagle-eyed??

Leave dates empty if you wish to search the entire database.

I've never understood how to use bookmarks either

just to be clear--when people say "noize board" are they talking about that "summer funtime pickle" thing?

Never used SNA or bookmarks! I just hop around and sometimes use the search function.

Bookmarks are essential. The day I discovered them...hoo boy.

The nicest thing about them actually is the guarantee that you don't overlook a revive of a thread you were big into like, three years ago. It pops up at the top of New Answers and it's like a little surprise package.

i look at ilx completely out of habit now. there is pretty much no reason for me to be here anymore. but i'm one of those people who sticks to routines. i often wish i could go away. but i can't. maybe i should try hypnosis. i can't stop smoking either.

I really quite understand this feeling. Like, the only reason I stay is because I've been here so long it's just all familiar to me. I've quit for up to a year or so at a time, but always end up back. And I start to understand things like, why people persist with voting Labour or Democrat - that no matter how burned out or dejected you get with what it's become, it's still way better than any of the other options out there. :-/

Oh great, now I've depressed myself. I'll go and laugh at rave kids encountering Dressage for the first time. That will cheer me up.

SNA --> Blog View (how to read everything, all the time. Turn images off, if surfing at work, though.)

PK - yes. IIRC it was J0n Williams who came in with that aesthetic and it changed the face of ILX forever. Does he still ever post?

he was banzored for life

ORLY? He was one of the few morans I actually really liked.

Yeah, he was nice, but I think he hacked ilx one weekend or something?

it was J0n Williams who came in with that aesthetic

Like everyone who started here, he came in all calm, quiet and polite. THEN he went noize.

It's astonishing to me, the excuses that people are still willing to make for ILX bullies. Like, people still repping for JW and Dom. That's one of those things that makes me realise that I will never see eye to eye with a person, and I really shouldn't actually bother to try to.

these threads make me all nostalgic for classic ILX exchanges like "take her, dude" and the mountain of O_o that followed it

There are only two eras, 'golden age' and 'cesspool'.

golden cesspool

i also can't imagine not using bookmarks. for those who have never done it, try this no-risk demo:

1. just below this text, to the right of my username and the date, click "Bookmark."
2. go do something else for 20 minutes.
3. come back to ILX, refresh the page.
4. if someone has posted on this thread since the time you clicked "bookmark" (which is very likely), at the very top of the screen you'll see a link that says "Longtime ILXors - how has this board changed over time? has new answers"
5. click on that link, and it'll bring you right back to the post you bookmarked (this post! whoooooaaaa we are becoming so very high this is trippy)
6. if the entire experience was too frightening and you are too high and you just want everything to go back to normal and you just want to sleeeep maaaaan, you just want to sleeeeeeeep, then go to the bottom of this thread and click "Remove Bookmark from this Thread"
---
as Doctor Casino mentioned, bookmarking is especially nice for threads on topics you're really interested in but that only get bumped on occasion. that way, you don't miss a revive. also, if you ask someone a question on a thread, it's useful to bookmark it immediately afterward. that way you'll catch their response, even if it takes them a few days to get back, without having to search for the thread over and over and check.

i've been on ilx since 04 and tbh when i discovered noize in 06, everything abt ilx/the internet clicked into place for me

xxpost Well, JW never did any harm to me - I mean, I wasn't keeping tabs on his every interaction and yes he could get quite irritating at times, but from what I can recall he had his inspired moments. D0m on the other hand....

I only use bookmarks for threads I want to read that I suspect will blow up in number of posts while I'm away or asleep. Anything to keep from having to load the whole thing. Otherwise I just rely on the little circle vs. the little dot. (Still wish it was possible to hide threads.)

one day will have to come a Fancy-a-Lobster day in Maine

remember, when an ILXOR changes their username it is the equivalent of Timelord re-generation

Some days I read nothing but bookmarks.

anti-bookmark, pro-SNA. Agree with the mellowed middle age observation. free jw!

Everyone should get a new username for a week and everyone can try guess who they are

actually now i think back I do remember JW doing some pretty inexcusable shit against a few select ilxors that was completely o_O

Sooner or later all these threads turn into the same discussion about the same banned posters.

^^^

I really wish there were a way to turn off the little circle on threads you clicked by accident, or no longer want to follow.

pro-bookmark, pro-SNA - both are necessarily to fully squeeze the juice out of ilx imho

i wish we had better ways to organize bookmarks, tho - i've got at least a few hundred and when i'm trying to find a specific thread it's a mess!

I just open the Bookmarks page and use Control-F, but I really don't get how they're sorted at all - I would get alphabetically or by date started but I don't think it's either of those.

I really wish there were a way to turn off the little circle on threads you clicked by accident, or no longer want to follow.

― Norton Malreward (White Chocolate Cheesecake), Thursday, 9 August 2012 15:16 (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes.

Plus, when there's been some sort of 'cookie reset' on the ILX server, and all the 'on' circles have been reset, awwwww

I use the browser's find function when I'm on the list of my bookmarks. Otherwise I'm screwed.

xpost, obv.

I'm in with scott and WCC - I suppose the reason I scorn Site New Answers is that I don't want _more_ threads to bookmark, I just want the ones I have bookmarked to come to their natural end all at the same time and then I can go! <- Actual Sisyphus

yeah, i use find too, but sometimes i don't remember the title of a particular thread - just the content

Little circles, SNA and bookmarks are awesome and I have no idea how I managed without them.

Some of the above comments make me feel like I'm reading a different board from some of you, but that's probably just because I have a user-friendly way to personalise and manage how I read it these days.

Basically, hooray for Keith and Stet.

hear, hear!

Thirded, fourthed, etc.

i tried bookmarks once, couldn't get them to work properly, i currently have about 10 threads bookmarked and sitting at the top of my screen from about 16 months ago but i can't get the bookmarks to turn off even though the threads have long died

SNA just makes everything more confusing? it's like, exactly the same but all the boards are smushed into one so you're not sure where you are. dislike

i don't know what little circles are

You click the link that says 'Remove Bookmark From This Thread'

confusion very much in character

I'm like lex - i have a bunch of bookmarks that i don't remember bookmarking. threads i don't even remember ever opening. i'll remove the bookmarks. Lex, just go to the bottom of each thread and remove the bookmark.

It's astonishing to me, the excuses that people are still willing to make for ILX bullies. Like, people still repping for JW and Dom. That's one of those things that makes me realise that I will never see eye to eye with a person, and I really shouldn't actually bother to try to.

almost the same but it's just a reminder that some people haven't ~matured~ yet

it is a bit sad when those people are much older than you but w/v/s

You click the link that says 'Remove Bookmark From This Thread'

i TRIED this obviously

I really wish there were a way to turn off the little circle on threads you clicked by accident, or no longer want to follow.

― Norton Malreward (White Chocolate Cheesecake),

+1, +several

Server restarts and the circles going away are always good for a small 'hooray' from me. I like the circles on the threads I read, but I like to be questioned regularly, a la 'are you sure you want to go back into that thread? It's more or less played out.'

Remove Bookmark from this Thread

little circles? whuh?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v296/WilliamCrump63/Screenshot2012-08-092.jpg

yes need to be able to reset those

Lex, have you tried this?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v296/WilliamCrump63/Screenshot2012-08-09.jpg

OMG delete all bookmarks worked!!!!

also I do have little circles I'd just literally never noticed them before

Yay Clarity!

one day will have to come a Fancy-a-Lobster day in Maine

― The Cheerfull Turtle (Latham Green), Thursday, August 9, 2012 11:07 AM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

WOULD ATTEND

my little circles aren't coloured or anything. maybe it's the view i'm using? Calibri style

it'll be an epic FAL xpost

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/SiteNewAnswersControllerServlet

i mean
Poll: what's the worst part of getting old?

ILX is the kind of message board that fits my life. This is my kind of place.

In the early days it was possible to be up to speed on everything. A thread with more than 100 responses was huge and probably indicated that Momus had been there. A side effect of fewer questions and fewer posters was that almost everyone read almost everything. So there was a period, shortly after ILE started, when people realized they could start a question about ANYTHING, even just have the first post read "qqqqqqqq" and an interesting thread would spin out of it. It was like a magic discussion generator.

ps, thankig u for the reset, stet or keith

Site New Answers is good. I tended not to play a ton in ILM because I was always looking at the ILE new answers page, but since I started using SNA I see a topic and I dangle a toe in. It's fun. (Annoying for the rest of you but as long as I'm amused, that's all that matters lol)

yeah in my first few years (11 years ago what have I done with my life etc, I was a lurker) I was strictly ILM because I felt like ILE was a little gang of friends in the UK and some random Canadian with a Britpop fetish wasn't exactly welcome, but then one day I clicked the Site New Answers button and have never looked back. Ditto with bookmarks - for a long time I was a circle-click proponent only but I love being able to bookmark things now. Especially for when I get interested in a topic, hunt up its associated thread and then don't miss future revives.

oh yeah and bookmarks are KEY

especially for rolling threads or looooooooong threads.

ps, thankig u for the reset, stet or keith

― Your sweet bippy is going to hell (WmC), Thursday, August 9, 2012 12:05 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i HATE the resets. i usually just gloss over the closed circles, looking for the open ones that i've been reading, so when they are reset it takes FOREVER to find all the threads i'd been following. i assumed they reset them for a reason, not just for the heck of it?

(ps i know, bookmarks. i don't bookmark every thread i want to read or am active in tho)

wait what are you talking about closed circles? what circles?

the bullet points on SNA beside each link have closed or open circles depending on whether you'd clicked them in the past, or at least on some stylesheets.

i use bookmarks either for threads that 1) are updated daily but may have had >50 posts by the time i get back from school/work (eg politics thread) or 2) threads that are updated very infrequently - because these would probably have a closed circle next to it so i'd never notice it was bumped without the bookmark (eg, out there r&b or something)

I am running oldest of the old school site setup, so I have heard of the circles from time to time and thought that they sounded nice.

I have just noticed that they are actually there (on individual board new answers as well), and possibly have been there all the time.

Quite scared now.

lol really? I never ever noticed that. It doesn't seem consistent though. From the looks of it they're supposed to be open for ones I've read in the past but there are definitely some solid circs on threads I know I've read.

it continually blows my mind that people have different ilx habits than me, for whatever reason. like not using SNA just seems insane to me

Like this circle is solid and clearly I've opened this thread a bunch.

I just thought those were little bullet points.

xp like wmc and i were talking about, the site was just "reset" so all the circles re-closed

also, the circle becomes hollow if posts have been added to it since the last time you opened it and then goes back to solid once you've "caught up"

It is solid if you've read the whole thread. The circle is open on threads you've read before but have new answers.

xp

You have to be logged in to make the circle change. Sometimes I actually log out if I want to check out what a new thread is about, because I don't want to get the open circle and be OCD-forced to read it for the rest of time.

of course, the semi-hilarious thing about the advent of SNA and the democratization of the subboards is that I think the rise of its use directly parallels the rise of the city/regional/rolling subject matter threads, like the community basically keeps saying "you can equalize all you want, we will still figure out how to silo ourselves in the name of convenience/expediency"

― keeping things contextual (DJP), Thursday, August 9, 2012 9:44 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think it's the bit i bolded. i think it's become much more common and even preferred to keep a certain long-running interest to a set of long-running threads. genres, politics, certain issues and interests, etc. i have to remember to scan away from my bookmarks a lot of the time.

the rest of the internet has become much more message-boardy in intervening years and sort of takes up the slack of posting about every little thing that happens, i find.

i use bookmarks either for threads that 1) are updated daily but may have had >50 posts by the time i get back from school/work (eg politics thread) or 2) threads that are updated very infrequently - because these would probably have a closed circle next to it so i'd never notice it was bumped without the bookmark (eg, out there r&b or something)

― k3vin k., Thursday, August 9, 2012 5:31 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is how I use bookmarks, too. Everything in between gets no bookmark love from me.

This all sounds very complicated.

I use bookmarks on the threads I care about so the circles seem redundant?

The circles are dangerous siren calls of "You didn't care enough about this to bookmark it, but there are some new answers, and really, if it's this vs work...."

one thing I love about the code for this message board is the myriad of ways it can subtly tell you that there's something on a thread you might want to read; it just fits practically anyone's idiosyncracies

The circles are vestigial; I had honestly forgotten they existed but yeah, back in the day I used the same kind of shorthand processing through the optic nerve of which threads to click on based on the circles. If some people are still in the habit of using them it makes sense that they're around, but bookmarks really do all of the things circles do, and more, and they don't get re-set.

x-post - oh I bookmark too often if anything so I don't think I've ever had that problem. Huh. That's weird.

I don't like knowing about these circles. I can't have a new "thing" to worry about. I like my bookmarks and that's that. I wish I'd never found about about these darn circles dammit! ;)

I don't need to
Click around on circles, click around on circles

I've found that I've leaned on/integrated with ilx a lot more in the last few years, despite having lurked and posted very irregularly since... 2003ish? I feel like ILM was an entry point, with some of the other topical things and polls that floated in ILE being a way I drifted into that side of things.

The combination of having a private board where people are more likely to share and the fact I went through a ton of bullshit in my personal life a couple years ago really made me feel a lot more like sharing and being less anonymous. In the last few years, I've either had a drink with or at least said hi in person to about 11 or 12 ilxors, and regularly email or talk to a handful of people off the board.

imo blog view is mostly there to get innocuously angry about random threads you'd have never clicked on because the topics are annoying

yeah I don't personally find blogview helpful -- I'm kind of an 'all or nothing' person

It is solid if you've read the whole thread.

my life coach tells me this every time we meet

Everytime I remember that 77 exists it just strengthens my resolve to quit again :) Fucken members only boards on ILX, man....

The number of interesting threads, artists, music that I have discovered through using blog view (I'm mystified by people who claim never to have heard the top stuff in the yearly singles charts - it's so easy to spot good tracks that are blowing up by using blow view!) >>>>>>>> the random stupid shit that pops up.

btw the mid 2000s, noize board, and the like were when things were actually interesting to me as free-form discussion and not intellectual post-indie theorizing about pop music (which I liked, but never felt I had much to contribute to) or the in-talk of people who met up regularly off-board. really felt like the old guard of the board wasn't really threatened by that, but the complaining about things being different really was the catalyst for confrontations

I sometimes think I'd be in a much worse place today if not for 77, it's definitely helped shape my self-actualization and ability to accept and read other people

oh yeah, blog view would be good for ilm, might be cool to have filter settings for it to limit it to certain boards!

does anyone use the Board Email Subscriptions?

ugh I'm dumb -- blog view's ideal for ILM.

"blow view!" is a really good idea for a feature actually - - only shows you threads that are BLOWIN' UP

I use SNA but ignore the circles.

I don't use bookmarks or blog view.

I tick the boxes next to the threads I want to read, hit refresh to get rid of the others, arrange them how I wish, and then ask my assistant to print off each one for me so I have something to look at in the toilet stall after lunch.

ILX is beemed DIRECTLY INTO MINE BRANE via neural implant

you guys are killing me

Even the Dutch board? xp

It's really difficult to tell when, say, there's a random thread titled something like I JUST WANT YOUR FULL ATTENTION - is that about a band, a track, a new thing, someone just attention seeking? But with blog view, when you see every person on ILM, one after another, going "holy shit, this track is amazing" - you know that it might be something worth checking out.

And mh, I honestly don't mean to start anything up again, but what the old guard were complaining about Noize Board was not "things being different" but some quite seriously over the line, aggressive and bullying behaviour. Which it's very easy to forget or overlook when you were not the repeated target of this. But not if you were, for example, singled out for repeated harassment for two years solid, because you once asked someone to maybe resize an image.

ENBB you should come now while the Lobster wars are occuring - fight for the Maine resistance force against the maple menace to th enorth! LObsters are so cheap now the local papaer was actually beggin Mainers to eat them

xxp Are you one of those people who use Google Glasses? This isn't the Middle Ages you know. Sub-meson neural interface with Autotranslate provided by the BabelFish module is where it's at.

devastating 2 me how succinctly this digression unintendedly answers the thread question :(

x-post - Yes! My dad was telling me about all these cheap lobsters last week. Gonna be there in October but would like to drive up sooner just cause it's so pretty. Also, CHEAP LOBSTER.

xp On a serious note, I think that technology has had an impact. There is a drop in long form posts. We're used to posting tweets, and viewing websites on mobile devices.

x-post what's that supposed to mean, huh? :(

old ilx never spoke of lobster

flopson keep in mind the whole reason ILE was brought into existence was because ILMers were getting tetchy about music threads turning into discussions about what people had done the night before

Any set of answers to the question which didn't mention Noize Warz would be a little lacking, though.

Mobile devices might be a major structural force underlying a different feel - - ILX was always one of the last bastions of long-form paragraph-style discourse on the internet, and part of its appeal to me is TOTALLY the unapologetically early 1990s look and feel, text text text baby! This also makes it easy to use on mobile devices, which is an unexpected boon, but it also means that you're now trying to craft a post and by the time you're done, 25+ one-line posts have gone by and your remarks are sort of out of place now. Those one-line posts are often really good, mind you...they're not all zings and ho-hums! But they do mean that the format and pace is more like an IRC room than a Usenet board.

DG told me ILE was my fault ;_;

Can I ask an ilx history question: what is the origin of the Noize board?

or the 'noize' term in general

ANother some-time ILXOR will be visitng Portland but she is verydiscreet - she will not eat the lobsters though

xpost Seconded, someone please clarify!

I wish we had a Maine fap when I lived there. Enjoy tha lobstuhs!

I will eat them all!

Noise board creation also had some personality issues involved, though, which is to say that noise-folks wanted to use space to act a certain way, and creating the noise board gave them a space to do it.
Noise board creation would be like if you had a party and a couple dudes wanted to wrestle in the living room, so you said hey, let's set up a wrestling mat in the yard for you two.

Nabisco otm

got it, thank you!

2004-2008ish or so was really zing-heavy. But it was kind of fun. Still, hurtful to some I am sure. It's a lot nicer these days. Some people annoy me sometimes, but at this point y'all are kinda like my family members... some of you say things that make me roll my eyes at the dinner table but I still love ya.

I still rmemeber when there was the complaint that the ILM board was going off topic too much so the ILE board was made - where a tart can be star

Mandee otm

and the days of Momus sitting with us by the fire, chuckling at his genital

Noize was a thing! Wolf Eyes and Lightning Bolt and such!

A bunch of Noize fans made their way onto ILX, they were (most of) young and brash and boys and American. They clashed a lot with the mods, and eventually someone (I'm curious who) had the brainwave of giving them their own board.

someone (I'm curious who) had the brainwave of giving them their own board.

Wasn't there a time when anyone could create a new board?

Haha the thing about using ILX on mobile browsers (apart from the horror of Remove Bookmark not working) is that it doesn't show you xposts, it just posts, giving you +20 boor points.

the mobile use creates many sudden happiness when it auto-corrects into something strange - your words

xps lol i didn't notice that u were talking about lobster, i am not depressed by lobster digressions.

could maybe write a more bitter vers of this but i think a 50-post digression about whether you use 'blog view' or 'site new answers' in a thread called "how has this board changed over time?" is symptomatic of the glut of boring stuff on ilx in 2012 and the conditions that everyday create more and more of it???

sorry for boring :/

Wait, isn't a discussion of previously unavailable tools for using ILX, and how that changes how individuals relate to the site, really germane to the question? I mean, I get that it's sort of like navel-gazing minutia in a way but I "get" it, personally.

^^^

Blog view and SNA are valid topics for discussion on this thread - they change how you see ILX, and may encourage short pithy posts even more that mobile devices and twitterisation.

what is blogview! HOW DO I SHOT BLOGWIVE!

Just looked at blog view for the first time and it made my head spin - don't think I could ever do that. Seems like you'd really have to be reading ILX virtually 24/7 to have any hope of following anything. Which I guess I sort of do anyway, but I'd like to think I don't.

It's one of the choices across the top, next to "Logout," and it presents recent chunks of posts with new answers in a blog-style scroll.

lots of scrolling => I am lazy => not much of a blogview user

don't mean to attack anyone in specific for being boring and i think the glut is a consequence of people feeling comfortable and a casual, chatty environment that has resulted from it: which (despite, being someone who posts infrequently and impersonally is not something i personally place a big value on) i can acknowledge is important to a lot of people

U OPEN My werld bioioitch!

No offense taken on the boredom front...some of the greatest posters ever are boring!

I wonder how much of this is just down to raw numbers of posters but I have no idea, really, how many active users there are now versus three years ago, five years ago, seven years ago...is there any kind of database that would give a sense of that?

"i can acknowledge is important to a lot of people"

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-K07eebumZmc/TvN1SmVvZvI/AAAAAAAACUI/TtxP5n9aL4w/s1600/strenco_steam_robot_1.jpg

lol otm

the ilx database, no doubt

BLog view just spiced up my chutney! I know I am offensvice but dues, I am sensitive too!

on the longterm trend from novella-length to shorter posts, isn't it also possible that many topics have just already been talked to death? ILX has been around for a while now, and i think ilxors generally do a decent job of reviving old threads rather than starting up new ones. and so while it's true that the real world is endlessly complex and new issues are always arising that deserve discussion, there are also a lot of things that have already been discussed in depth, and there's not really much that's new/valuable to add since nabisco already nailed it 7 years ago or whatever.

dunno, just a thought.

long posts making a comeback imo

WCC's points above about Blog View are otm. For me, it's a way to peek into a thread to get the gist of it without turning its dot into an accursed circle. Sometimes I keep up with goon squad beef that way.

could maybe write a more bitter vers of this but i think a 50-post digression about whether you use 'blog view' or 'site new answers' in a thread called "how has this board changed over time?" is symptomatic of the glut of boring stuff on ilx in 2012 and the conditions that everyday create more and more of it???

See, I read this quite differently. That on ILX 2012 people are friendly and polite and helpful enough to explain what they like and don't like, and try to help other users get the most out of their ILX experience, rather than just lazy zings going "LOL u newbie u don't know about the circles, die Britisher LOL" etc.

xpost to self
you know, if i was stuck on a desert island with some stranger and the death penalty came up (maybe, for example, this stranger was proposing that i should receive the death penalty), i could talk her ear off. but with a topic like that on ilx, one often just scrolls up and sees how the discussion developed several years ago, and quickly spot someone who was OTM. you might be able to post a link to a recent story that's relevant, or maybe post a goofy animated gif, but often there's not much new to add that's truly valuable. this may actually just be a self-esteem problem!

as much as i like the get-personal aspects of certain threads and am quite neutral about threads going off-topic on a message board about everything/nothing, i also fondly remember the time when thread policing consisted of a series of amusing and massive images fuck yeah

could maybe write a more bitter vers of this but i think a 50-post digression about whether you use 'blog view' or 'site new answers' in a thread called "how has this board changed over time?" is symptomatic of the glut of boring stuff on ilx in 2012 and the conditions that everyday create more and more of it???

― reductio ad burzum (flopson), Thursday, August 9, 2012 1:34 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark

actually, I think it's just that the internet has become more boring in 2012

xpost to flopson re long posts, my secret hope in reviving this thread was that it would come out that my tireless efforts to keep posting like it's 2003 have not been in vain, that this is indeed the new trend, then i realized the majority of my posts are probably written more in this decapped, one-liner drive-by style with karats or 'xpost' at the start and no period at the end

if it was 2002 there would be a couple lit majors trying to effuse over the nature of blogs and blog views and their relevance to music writing followed by a couple of cryptic references to something said at a fap

like, the ship has sailed on there being a new http://www.ulillillia.us/ created in 2012. (what, when did ulillillia change to a .us domain name?) all the ulillillia that are out there have been discovered already. there are no more new ulillillia. this is web 2.0.

i also fondly remember the time when thread policing consisted of a series of amusing and massive images fuck yeah

I feel that the only way to respond to frogbs half the time is with frog pictures, tbh

I don't know what ulillllletc is and the name makes it look like a virus so I'm not clicking on it, but I sort of relate to this idea that we live in a bleakly decadent fin-de-siecle era, with everything worth saying having already been said, and the only hope of artful posting being through Mannerist operations on the board's past, hence all the meta stuff and the fascination held by younger posters like me with the board's arcane and ephemeral history.

but alas not 20 pictures of frogs in one post :/
xp

ulillillia = "I was otherwise very normal before I became 4 years old"

so many words, so few nabiscos. responding to some run-on naif rant with little content with a big image was denigrated as cheap zings, but in fact, the words were just too expensive

This is the only thread where "having posted on a messageboard for 12 years" feels like an accomplishment, rather than a condemnation of my entire lifestyle, tbh

;_;

or not as funny
xp

does anyone else remove bookmark from a thread they're otherwise very much interested in when they've said something trolly cause they just can't help themselves

YES

sometimes a binladenthumbsupbycomputer.jpg really is worth a thousand words, though

I think I read ILX about 30% for run-on naif rants, 30% for the cheap-zing images. Nabisco is def one of my favorite posters on here, maybe just because (s)he made thoughtful contributions to threads I started, which makes me feel special.

Or I remove bookmarks for a week or so because I know I'll go on some tear or get too emotionally locked into a topic and want to come back to it later, more clear-headed

tbh when I first started reading ilm, there were a lot more people who regularly were published or wrote music stuff semi-professionally and I was more likely to remember their names than other posters

sorry for being a nobody :) (ooh I could c/p that into passive aggressive thread too, lol)

^^^ JOEKS

tbh when I first started reading ilm, there were a lot more people who regularly were published or wrote music stuff semi-professionally and I was more likely to remember their names than other posters

you know that a shit-ton of ppl who are regularly published/writing music stuff semi-professionally are still here, right

well yeah but I'd have to read ilm

also, it's ironic that this thread was bumped in the same week that the fourteenth thread about shaving pubic hair ever created was started

these pubes have been shaved before, you could say.

xxpost and those guys are all jerks :D

I remember VegemiteGrrl because she's the ex-australian who still interacts like an australian, but instead of constant lame insults it's constant cheerful half-joking

you had me going for a while there, dayo! i'll get you for that.

I wonder if you asked 4chan ppl if they felt 4chan was more boring in 2012, what would they say

xpost
case in point, back in 2004, i would have produced a 11-part youtube series about my pube policy, had youtube existed. but now i'm just like "my pube policy is the same as nabisco, nabisco otm"

xxpost to mh and I interact in a language that you understand. it's win/win!

i remember a thread where t0m admonished everyone for referring to simon reynolds as a "gobshite." different times. a few years later i really enjoyed those early encounters between the earnest types and the noize crew. everyone is too nice now but we're all old.

Like when they say "Just pullin yor tit mate!"

there's not really much that's new/valuable to add since nabisco already nailed it 7 years ago or whatever.

nobody on earth is OTM all the time

I am nicer to people.

The emergence of chat threads that aren't topic specific.

I wonder ... did this exist before
This is the thread where I say:

That's true, his stance on salting food is wrong and wronger. xxp

xp (Luna RIP)

idk, the period of clowning people with no self-awareness of how they sounded had its purpose, but failed in that it's possible to be clowned and still not learn self-awareness

really feel that the terminator series is about skynet wandering on to ilx and not figuring out how badly it had been clowned for years

I am nicer to people.
― Pangborn to be Wilde (Dr Morbius)

Link? (Kidding!)

The emergence of chat threads that aren't topic specific.

When I first started here, I was always too afraid to read this thread. I still haven't, but is that what this phrase refers to?

Not location specific, No rules: Welcome to ILX heaven

my rule for group-specific threads is that the london and australian threads will never make sense, but the gay threads usually have some great material in them

try a littel tenderness!

best youtube video i made today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxZM7Sj8-2E&feature=channel&list=UL

I'm a fan of SNA -- didn't use it right away but eventually became converted. On the other hand, I've tried bookmarks but have discovered they aren't a good fit with the way I use ILX. Which is to say, I mostly just like to dip into whatever's in SNA that looks interesting. I'm on the site often enough (pretty much every day) that I don't miss too many updates to my favorite threads, and if I do, it's no big deal. For me, having specific threads bookmarked -- with constant alerts when there are updates -- feels like an onerous obligation to keep up with them.

oh wait that was to zs talking ab out youtube but that was a while ago now. i'm slow.

I remember how some Ilx people touched my soul in a way only Jesus did

i've been on ilx since 04 and tbh when i discovered noize in 06, everything abt ilx/the internet clicked into place for me

started in 05 for me but oh yeah this X10000

as a sideline to the hacker aesthetic, the noize borad in its heyday was a place for shared music enthusiasm, earnest (yes) appreciation at a time when ILM was dominated by pretentious/convoluted music-crit and verbose posters who could be very condescending w/o realizing. i liked these guys - and they were always guys - but still the over-intellectualized verbiage on Ashley Simpson (remember HER?) got a bit wearying imho

now I come to ILX out of habit, click threads randomly. sometimes I feel out of it/too old but hey change - it makes you wanna hustle

haha, i'm kind of tempted to go looking for these high-falutin' Ashlee Simpson threads...I always liked "L.O.V.E."

Pieces of Me is an alltime jam.

noize board as all males is a misremembering

I meant the ILM heavies were all guys, noize was WAY more integrated than ILM ever was

oh! yeah, maybe!

for some reason i remember the pop music fans from back then as all male.

ha I heard Ashlee's song about "Whoa I didn't steal yr boyfriend" playing on the radio when I walked into my health club a few months ago and LOL'd thinking about ILM's 'glory days' the receptionist just stared incredulous so I said 'who could forget this classic' and he said 'well you have a kid so that must be why you know this song' and i laughed even harder cause my son hated her. "No but I knew a 56 y.o. critic who..."

maybe you had to be there ;)

Bullshit revisionism. And I say that as a girl who was on ILM from p much the first month. Old ILM had a lot of women.

One thing about the Noize Board that's not often commented on is that it functioned partly as a locus for NYC ILXors. I gather that some of the frequent Pickle Bar posters in the board's heyday gravitated there less because of the "noize aesthetic" than because that's where their friends hung out and where happy hours at Daddy's were organized.

xpost

well when I started posting in 2004 you were one of the few women - maybe 20% tops - as far as i could tell

haha, i'm kind of tempted to go looking for these high-falutin' Ashlee Simpson threads...I always liked "L.O.V.E."

time would be better spent getting back to your X-Men/Grant Morrison blog imho :)

True. I never went to a Daddy's, but Noize was a reliable source of info on upcoming NYC shows and events.

(xposts)

I mean, to Daddy's. Not to a Daddy's..

Bullshit revisionism. And I say that as a girl who was on ILM from p much the first month. Old ILM had a lot of women.

as usual you read what you want to read. We were talking about 2005.

2008 was a difficult year for ILX - there were many passions flowing like wine into the mouth

prithee - when and how did Momus eventually tell us all to "get thee fucked" and leave?

on ilx's best day, no doubt

it has changed a lot for me over the years.
i had no idea as to the whole community aspect of this place until i went to chicago a few years ago and met up with the local crew there (and djp !).
that one evening made me realise how brilliant it is.
i used to be in fear of posting stuff, and so held back a lot, but no longer.
the contacts i have had from random ilx folks re the last year experience have been very heartwarming.
something i would never have expected from ilx.

oh, and even after 10 years hanging out here, i still have no idea re noize/secret boards etc.

thread? anyone have that memory? in the barin?

the divine nature of latham green's spelling has not changed over time

yoy uknwo I realized I did not spell brain right but then I felt it seemed nic ethat way - like some word from middle-earth

exactly!

Hey let's fight some old wars!

i also fondly remember the time when thread policing consisted of a series of amusing and massive images fuck yeah

I am willing to admit it has been done in amusing manner like, five, times. Most of the time it was an airhorn at a dinner party - yeah dude that's hilarious but we're talking here! From some of the posters it definitely started sounding like "I don't have anything to say so I don't think anyone else has" / "bored now!"

idk, the period of clowning people with no self-awareness of how they sounded had its purpose, but failed in that it's possible to be clowned and still not learn self-awareness

The thing is, most of those people were quite aware of how they sounded, they were just glad that they could sound like themselves unselfconsciously without assholes. Then, suddenly, there were assholes!

i liked these guys - and they were always guys

a) they weren't always guys, dude b) at least they weren't bros.

as a sideline to the hacker aesthetic, the noize borad in its heyday was a place for shared music enthusiasm, earnest (yes) appreciation at a time when ILM was dominated by pretentious/convoluted music-crit and verbose posters who could be very condescending w/o realizing. i liked these guys - and they were always guys - but still the over-intellectualized verbiage on Ashley Simpson (remember HER?) got a bit wearying imho

those posters getting chased off ilm coincided w/ my move to ilx + subboards and only infrequent posting on ilm

sometimes wonder if the influx of B&S fans was actually an influx of people who thought they were characters in a B&S song

those posters getting chased off ilm

leave on their own or chased?

time would be better spent getting back to your X-Men/Grant Morrison blog imho :)

― Harvey Cartel (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, August 9, 2012 3:08 PM Bookmark

awww, thanks for the boost shakey! We have been talking again about reviving it! It could happen! Really! I'm about to start a PhD program so I sort of want to get a bead on how the free time will really shake out, before we revive it and then have to just as suddenly go on hiatus again.

question : what is the ilx equiv of tar and feathers ...

it's all good - I had just gotten all set to read along and then you guys stopped :(

xp

OK, topic diversion, which blog? I just got the new x-men omnibus and should mosey by.

ilx also brought me Doctor Casino's awesome travel/architecture pics on flickr

sometimes wonder if the influx of B&S fans was actually an influx of people who thought they were characters in a B&S song

And now they're all characters in a Saint Etienne song.

before there were tweets there was just twee

you guys are so nice! See, nu-nu-ILX is a supportive atmosphere for nerds like me. ^_^

mh: http://kangaratmurdersoc.wordpress.com/ is the blog, the Claremont material is all gathered here: http://kangaratmurdersoc.wordpress.com/category/uggu-chris-claremonts-uncanny-x-men/

This board is def better with me in it.

gracias

also be sure to check out S/D X-Men Runs , ILC has good X-threads IMO

sometimes wonder if the influx of B&S fans was actually an influx of people who thought they were characters in a B&S song

― your native bacon (mh), Thursday, August 9, 2012 7:50 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this may have been me at the beginning: "you're too tall, much too tall for a boyfriend. they run and hide from your buck teeth and split ends."

ILC is awesome in general! I used to lurk around different places on the web for comics (like Barbelith) and no one is really as good as ILC.

I sad no see no Kate anymore-o

leave on their own or chased?

let's split the difference and say that they left on their own after things got really uncomfortable

xp lol

ILNFL during football season = my favorite ilx thing ever

a) they weren't always guys, dude

"susan douglas" RIP

"a) they weren't always guys, dude"

who were the women talking at length about ashlee simpson on the teen pop threads back then?

the in-depth critical analysis by people outside the target demographic for garbage media has always weirded me out, I can't help it.

was there ever any evidence for calling the teenpop guys pedophiles? im not gonna go look up a teenpop thread bc im on my phone right now. but were they supercreepy?

no

the in-depth critical analysis by people outside the target demographic for garbage media has always weirded me out, I can't help it.

^^^^^

I mean, all Perpetua jokes aside, not really

I wouldn't charge pedophilia (come on now) but a bunch of old dudes extolling at length over some shit put out by a bunch of morons to make a quick buck off a young nubile face is ... odd. it just makes me wonder about the underlying psychology of it all. I'm fully aware that this position exposes my own prejudices.

extolling at length the virtues of... that should say

really? really? ffs.

who were the women talking at length about ashlee simpson on the teen pop threads back then?

there were at least two, maybe three, you can go look them up if you want

who were the women talking at length about ashlee simpson on the teen pop threads back then?

I just checked out of curiosity, and Abby McDonald and Je4nne Fury were both regular contributors to the first rolling teenpop thread (2006).

lol did you hear the dogwhistle lex

(I don't consider you "old" btw)

haha i do not believe for one second that jaymc needed to check

SMC I was already in this thread!

I consider myself old now but I don't consider it at all odd that really really old people love artists as great as Ashlee Simpson, I can only hope to emulate their flawless taste when I grow up

shit put out by a bunch of morons to make a quick buck off a young nubile face is ... odd

I thought it was usually more of an obsession with the whole producer/songwriter as it applied to these teenpop icons with a little too much navelgazing. All in all, about as creepy as Phil Spector.

or you're lex and you just have a genuine love of the music and it's very much in character

not to rehash old forgotten battles but i think ppl like what they like and sometimes you can have an interesting conversation by asking them why they like a particular thing, but you will never have an interesting conversation by making up unfavorable reasons for why they like it

there was some good writing about those artists in those threads, and as verbose as it could be, literally no one would have batted an eyelid if the subjects had been in any other genre

idk why it's accepted that I have a "genuine love of the music" but not them

this massively commercially successful music that presumably millions of people who bought it genuinely love

I don't consider it at all odd that really really old people love artists as great as Ashlee Simpson

it is totally odd, as the post upthread about hearing Ashlee at the health club indicates. Honestly, most people think anyone over the age of 40 who is interested in current pop music is a social outlier/oddity. This is just a fact of demographics afaict.

xp

lex, I meant more that you do a lot less beard-stroking and critical theory shenanigans and your enthusiasm is usually just about the actual sound of the song, not some adherence to a pet theory. I really respect that, even if I can't relate that well.

haha i do not believe for one second that jaymc needed to check

I did! In fact, half the time when I post something that occasions a "lol .xls" joke, it's just because I've bothered to search for it, not because I actually remember. (I think I was a fairly irregular poster on the teenpop threads, anyway.)

fwiw i think f.k. legit loved the sound of the songs he was writing about

that made it sound like I believe in such a divide, which I really don't

(derails rockist/popist bullshit with a hundred pasted wigglepanda images)

but you will never have an interesting conversation by making up unfavorable reasons for why they like it

yeah and that's why I watch such threads from afar, for the most part. I dunno what people's reasons are. I can guess, but then eh I don't really care when you get right down to it. But, personally, In terms of how much teenpop dominates the discourse on ILM, I'm glad it's sort of receded from the forefront since those heady days lol.

xp

not pedos, but amateur sociologists and "cultural observers". which is only slightly less heinous.

there was beard-stroking but i don't remember much critical theory on the teenpop threads THANK CHRIST, god, the minute anyone namedrops adorno or whoever in a music discussion it becomes anathema to me

i remember way back he wrote something on myspace about how these were generally very young artists w/ identities that were still in flux who seemed like they were trying to figure themselves out as artists, and that he responded to that uncertainty and displacement. nb ur mileage may vary on whether you think these artists were the most productive ways to explore those ideas/feelings, or whether an adult should be dealing with those feelings at all (i gotta imagine it's a pretty universal concern), but it was very easy to assume the comment was intended sincerely.

In terms of how much teenpop dominates the discourse on ILM, I'm glad it's sort of receded from the forefront since those heady days lol.

watch "call me maybe" win ilx trax '12

fwiw i think f.k. legit loved the sound of the songs he was writing about

Sure. I also think he loved songs that he could analyze, and teenpop was as good fodder for that as Dylan and the New York Dolls.

there was beard-stroking but i don't remember much critical theory on the teenpop threads THANK CHRIST, god, the minute anyone namedrops adorno or whoever in a music discussion it becomes anathema to me

― lex pretend, Thursday, August 9, 2012 3:31 PM (35 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

thank you for being a lex

I know this is just dude-bro schteez but yes. It's true. Women are so inherently gross - and ohmigod especially the teenage ones - and the music they like and/or make - are so inherently deplorable that it is literally inconceivable to the dude-bro mind that an actual man might pay attention to, or be interested in the aesthetic output of these disgusting deplorable creatures, for any reason other than that he wants to fuck them. Because teengirls are so gross and unworthy of serious attention that there is no other reason at all to listen to them. That is the only reason some of you guys can think of to pay attention to girls at all. Cause you might want to fuck them. You've made your point about how Noize Borad was a feminist paradise compared to ILM loud and clear there.

uh are you talking to me?

yeah, for sure! that's why i listened to all that stuff. i liked talking to him about music and that was the music he wanted to talk about. if he was all about korean pop then, i would've gotten into it too. being analyzable is as good a reason as any to talk about partic music xxxp

latham green misses u

xps

haha, i was about to say

when the teenpop being discussed was watered-down mass market versions of the moody synth-driven goth/industrial music I already liked (see: Kerli), those discussions were fun

when the teenpop being discussed was terrible non-entity horseshit made by racists (see: Paris Hilton), I just wanted to smack everyone involved for liking vacuous blondes more than black people

this was the main reason why I stopped following ILM teenpop threads

did the cheesecake factory just criticizing people for sexualizing musical artists

not to interrupt the blow-up but pretty sure andrew was referring to the noize board having girls.

btw bieber is teenpop and I don't really want to sex him much

somethin for th aldies - gota keep it hood - where we at

this is the kinda ilx thread where ppl are going to keep making slightly more and more provocative claims playing like clusterfuck chicken until someone doesn't swerve in time and it ends up on clusterfuck watch thread nightly news

I love all the aldies.

just so any bystanders kno to leave now, there are no innocents in an ilx clusterfuck.

clusterfuck chicken

you're looking for that huckabee/chik-fil-a thread

how many cans of beer do you shove in the carcass before cooking clusterfuck chicken?

my posts were gender neutral so I can't tell if that was directed at me or not

xp

I hate my coworkers

the minute anyone namedrops adorno or whoever in a music discussion it becomes anathema to me

― lex pretend, Thursday, August 9, 2012 9:31 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I hope that this is because you've read Adorno's music criticism and found it lacking, rather than some knee-jerk anti-continental stance with little to back it up.

my revive, my beautiful revive

Adorno is the best track on the new Miguel.

groan!

fwiw I am fully cognizant of the baggage I bring to this discussion, which is why I usually don't have it

some things never change over time doctor casino!

Doctor C, I'm trying to drive you back into the arms of Professor X. I'm with Shakey - can't wait for the blog revival.

xp - I understand the noize board had some girls, as long as they were willing to act like boys. I was correcting the hilarious idea that ILM was a sausagefest until the noize kids came along.

emil.y - i assume it's bc it mostly goes over his head + he finds it boring. i'm sure lex is not evaluating adorno on intellectual/philosophical merits

as long as they were willing to act like boys

WTF does this mean?

joe adorno penn state

EZ - it'll happen, it'll happen! should try and talk to David today about it, when i finish this next batch of photos for flickr...

lol Andrew, you realize you're talking about a group of IRL friends/roommates right

I understand ILM had some men, as long as they were willing to act like effete britishers

I understand the noize board had some girls, as long as they were willing to act like boys.

this is super super wrong btw

iirc ilm was like 300 dudes and 20 women, the noize bord was like 25 dudes and 5 women.

I understand ILM had some men, as long as they were willing to act like effete britishers

RIP Bill Magill

lol

girls act like boys act like girls act like boys AOW OH-OH AH OH-OH

next version of ilx really should include some option to wire threads with explosives from the get-go so that in the event of an impending clusterfuck nightmare you can just nuke the whole thing from orbit, aaaaaaaghhhhh

I thought that the "act like boys" thing was totes tom? And I was on the noise bored but not one of the posters who made it cool or w/e, I was conscious that I was "less" "cool" than the dudes. Pret sure they only tolerated me bc we hung out irl.

"otm" not "tom," obviously. New computer has not learned the ways yet.

What does it mean to act like a boy then, Laurel?

*adjusts balls, pokes functionless nipples*

I wanna go back to how Tom was a girl who acted like a boy

haha

http://thekubeplayerblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Ciara_like_a_boy.jpg

I should stop purposefully diluting the thread by posting single line laughs in order to subvert it to the zing-era paradigm.

next version of ilx really should include some option to wire threads with explosives from the get-go so that in the event of an impending clusterfuck nightmare you can just nuke the whole thing from orbit, aaaaaaaghhhhh

― Doctor Casino, Thursday, August 9, 2012 8:54 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hahaha I love this idea. I've no stake in this; stayed away from noize cuz seemed like a bunch of dudes on a constan injoke spiral (but moreso than ILX in general). I may have been wrong, it seems! But I will never know.