What are you most thankful to ILx for ?

For me, i would never have discovered vaporwave if it wasn’t for you guys. So thanks

You could say my 20s would have been slightly different without ILX. Taking the long view from here, I guess I'm thankful. The real treasure is the friends I made along the way (that I don't see or talk to anymore)

I have several lifelong friends. I don't see people as much as I would like but there are a couple that I feel pretty close to still.

Discovering the concept of rockism.

Oh and

He fumbled with his viscous turkey leg and, with a gibbering moan, wedged it between her squamous hamhocks. The sensation was not unlike that of cramming a fistful of pizza dough into a public toilet. They thrashed their supple, ashen bodies against one another like two frightened ponies who've been tied together and thrown out of a plane.

I Love Books is slow, quiet, and endlessly rewarding.

I dunno I kinda grew up in public here (my first post was on or my 21st b-day I think Way back in 2003) so it’s kind of hard to look at my time here with any kind of clarity or objectivity.

But I am grateful for the laughs and becoming acquainted with some good people.

awwww

The list of books, films, music that ppl here have turned me onto is too long to list. Also ppl are p funny.

saving me from facebook, reddit, tumblr, insta, twitter mostly; finding so much music, learning a lot, many laffs, all of this partly offset by how incensed i get fairly often

otm

I’m also thankful that there’s generally someone here who can provide a well-informed opinion on virtually any topic imaginable

It’s like rip said. I come here instead of social media and it’s really kept me sane. Even when lurking (which is most times), I’ve always felt like I had a community here, that was always here for me. Words can’t even express it, really.

Most serious answer is that ilx taught me to shut up and listen.

Gotta post somewhere.

Also specific user such as imago

I was mucking around in some old threads and found one where I called ILx "an agora for the agoraphobic". I think that says a good part of what I get here.

In another place I have noted that ILx is full of the best nerds to be found anywhere (obviously excluding myself from this, so as to soften any hint of unwarranted or undeserved self-praise) -- which much like what Οὖτις already said.

I learned a lot here by lurking—especially about music and the kind of “cultural politics of taste,” an issue that i find exhausting now but as an undergraduate was fascinated by.

thankful 2 ilx 4 this & nothing else

I was crushing on old-school Hillary Clinton (in her Twenties) -- probably because she resembles my supremely attractive friend Erin (who, despite liking me, is with someone else right now and so she's horribly unattainable). Goodness gracious, I'm an absolute sucker for blondes these days. But after dropping by a bookstore yesterday where my long-time friend Molly (who is not a blonde, mind you) works -- oh goodness, she's always stunning but yesterday I really wanted to pounce on her because she looked so exceptionally scrumptious (without even trying!) and was just so bubbly and charming. I wanted to playfully tackle her behind the counter and from there on it would've been wonderfully inappropriate! Anyhow, she's invited me along to dinner and some other event with a group of her friends on Friday -- it's not a date essentially, but at heart I wouldn't mind if it twisted into one. Ooh, I just remembered that she complimented my appearance! No-one ever does that! Squee! Cuddlestein Mountain! Nuvvieworld! Okay, I'm just getting ridiculous -- I'm just excited because it's a prospect to escape social poverty with a possible hint of romance. I'm probably being too optimistic; I can't help it! I've wanted something to look forward to!

-- Ian Riese-Moraine: a casualty of social estrangement. (eastern_mantr...), August 16th, 2005

This thread makes me think of that situation guys sometimes run into, the one where a girl is giving you head but not going down to suck on your nuts even though you'd really like her to. So you sheepishly ask, "could you suck my balls?" hoping she will, and then she does, but all you can think about is the sound of your own voice asking "could you suck my balls?".

― Bryan (Bryan), Thursday, December 2, 2004 8:05 AM (5 years ago) Bookmark

^ more appropriate fodder for this thread

wallogina

lack of threads encouraging me to express gratitude for things i am perfectly happy to continue to blissfully take for granted thank you very much

I must have been 19 and ILX had only been running a few weeks when I first happened on a thread about Laurie Anderson.

were it not for ILM I'd probably be financially better off, more successful in my career, but ultimately a worse and less interesting human being with a much smaller worldview.

oh and also the phrase 'That's my name don't WERE it out' popping into my head on a daily basis

did anyone figure out who ian riese moraine was? that's a part of ilx lore i am not familiar with.

im keeping my eye on anyone who repped/reps hard for both hilary and warren tbh

IRM language: goodness gracious, scrumptious, excessive exclamation points, proper double-dashes, who could it be?

idk, who writes like that now?

i will say, there is something very revolting about it

The salonnard wit, the cold wars between irreconcilable musical factions, the great revives, the rogue FP's.

i like the rolling fp thread. you go in there, you find out that some sneaky haters are trying to get you banned.

lots of things, def met irl friends via here, incl. global who I'm in a band with

there are so many iconic posts that I think about that make me smile

but mostly I think it made me a better thinker, definitely getting dunked on by people much smarter than me really helped

sometimes I see people my own age on Facebook and Twitter and oh god they post like grandpas just the dumbest most basic stuff and I think ilx just taught me how to be a better internet person

also Twitter has been easier to navigate because ilx taught me to (MOSTLY, certainly not always) avoid saying shit that will backfire

and I basically like everyone on here lots of funny and smart ppl even if I ever got mad about some shit that didn't matter

in-depth debate over the gender of the ass on the cover of Get Lucky

This is a really good question as a ground-zero/day-one poster, who kinda saw it as a continuum from alt.music.alternative and a private mailing list. I don't think it's any one thing but that sense of constant community is striking after all this time.

ilx just taught me how to be a better internet person

this (still learning, of course)

just thankful for youse being there tbh

I became a slightly better writer by copying most of you buttholes so thanks for that.

I went from a D to a C minus !

I'm thankful for a million excellent ILM recommendations but mainly for those longtime posters who are interested in every kind of music and willing to think and talk about it in public without condescension, pretension, or apology

we've got some damn role models up in here

i've made new friends IRL from here, expanded my musical horizons tenfold, and my life is honestly improved every day from everyone's wit and perspective here

<3

ilx freed me from the tyranny of uppercase characters and full stops

jesus that might well be a thing actually

Blasphemy.

1/3 of my friends on social media are from this place, and ILX freed me from being so rigid when it comes to listening to music; before, I used to think that I should only listen to one musical genre at a time but now I find myself listening to a melange of genres all at once. I'd also like to think ILX contributed to my becoming secure about being who I am in an odd, circuitous way.

Much of my time in the embodied, material world is spent feeling like somewhat of a failed adult human being, stricken with sporadic-yet-intense social anxiety, compelled to stifle my voice and my self in most situations, etc, etc, etc. There have been many times over the past decade and a half where having ready access to a community of such smart, funny, generally decent people, a space where I feel okay about opening up and just being whatever ridiculous person I am with some degree of fearlessness for a goddamn change, has been a boon if not an outright lifesaver. As a number of others have said, bashing my rough hewn self against the oft-unforgiving whetstone of ILXian discourse has forced me to be a better writer, a better thinker, and more expansive in my perspective. And to the extent that I've played any small part in helping to make this a place that other people are thankful for, it does my heart a world of good.

Grateful for the archives ! When I had my own desperate personal crisis in 2018/19 (workplace bullying/harassment), the early archives with all the different hopes and challenges people had, reminded me that there is a life outside work and there are many interesting things to fill it with.

The long answer I already wrote on another thread:

I'd like to say something nice that is more generally about ILX:
When I get the urge to engage in conversation (specifically online in lieu of an IRL option), I strongly prefer to have a conversational group of people who might care about what I have to say. The way ILX is structured, I can choose to share my thoughts/questions (at any time of day or night!) about a specific topic with other people interested in that topic who ostensibly read/ post on the thread because they also have an interest in the topic. Then I potentially (ideally) avoid 1) annoying/inciting the "rage" of other people by yammering to people who don't care and 2) can learn from others interested in the topic 3) post in several different threads without feeling like I am yammering in a manner coherent to myself alone, as I would if I were to share my thoughts on twitter, for example.

There's no Me Feed here unless someone specifically searches for posts by a specific user (right?). I realize that hashtags function in this way for some people, but I like the general environment of ILX because I am free from my own image, free from my public-facing identity, and yet also hopefully at least somewhat known to people on account of having been here for a while (since 2005?!) and having met/enjoyed quality hangs with a number of you irl (and online!)

So thanks ILX, you have weathered the social media storm and come out ahead in a number of ways. You are not perfect and you have had many bouts of being unwell as a space for my preferred variety of nonconfrontational conversation, you are still here and have the above-mentioned attributes to your favor. This post is not about me; it is about appreciating the longevity and specificity of our old pal. ILX. *toast*

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Thursday, August 1, 2019 4:03 PM (six months ago)

The TL;DR answer: being faceless and formless on ILX really helped me come out of my shell. I have made a lot of IRL friends through meeting ILX people. I used to not talk about music irl hardly ever (for a number of reasons) but now I do it all the time socially and professionally, which has made a tangible positive improvement to my life. Thanks ILX!

Nowhere else on the interwebs have I spent as much time, have I often reeled from the barrage of insights and quips, have I experienced genuine dialectical pleasure from the testing, development, and discarding of ideas.

Whatever else I can say I've said it on the Say Something Nice thread.

booming post LL.
so many OTM's throughout.

I do feel really strongly about the lack of a Me Feed here -- it's what has kept me here for so long, the ability to be part of a conversation without centering myself.

music: Talk Talk, Erykah Badu, lots of jazz, Robert Wyatt.

I got a lot of hip hop education here.

And after spending a long time out of the metal scene in the late 2000s, the rolling metal threads gave me great re-entry points.

I guess Ive lots to be thankful for here but also some stuff to want to set fire and drop off a cliff.

Ive made some good friends, though lost touch with em all lately (Jim/Sash/Haitch will say thats entirely my fault lol and they are proberly right).

Ive met loads of nice overseas ILXors. And chatted to some who I still dearly wish I could meet (even if past me has made an utter twat of myself which lets not go there).

Ive discovered some excellent newer bands - and some old ones I'd missed like Disco Inferno and the Chamelons.

ILX has frequently made me feel like a bit of a shit feminst/female, but its not ILX's fault, really :(

I also obtained one horrid flatmate (thanks but no thanks to Gareth) who moved in, rearranged my entire kitchen, stole my bf and moved out again but OH WELL SWINGS AND ROUNDABOUTS

In summary, Libya is a land of contrasts, thankyou.