Question for Anyone Who Posts on ILX

What do you think it says about you as a person in the world (particularly socially, technologically, psychologically) that you read ILX, post on it, and (for the sake of this question) find a community that you enjoy participating in on ILX?

can't afford - socially, psychologically, financially - to spend all my life in the pub

I was particularly thinking about whether I consider myself a particularly technological person. I don't, because I have a number of friends who are comp sci majors, minors, or otherwise engaged in serious computer work. But compared to most Americans I probably am. I wrote a computer game, I consider myself pretty familiar with the Internet and have used over the years bbs's, usenet, mIRC, MOO's, and maybe equally damning, I spend so much time chatting with digital strangers on ILX.

xp lots of ppl can't afford to spend life in a pub but don't gravitate towards a place like ilx

i know! was just speaking for myself :)

so why did u? or what was it about you that when you couldn't afford to hang out in pubs, the solution you found was ilx?

i like having conversations and making funnies. vast bulk of message boards full of too many noisy idiotic scrotes to make either possible? my pre-ILX interneting was drawn to community communication too mostly.

I've wondered this before and I kind of suspect that most people here are pretty bored with their jobs/school or are unemployed.

I've always, since I was a kid, participated in Internet communities. It could be because I've always been bored, but I also suspect it's something about when + how I grew up and an early positive disposition towards the Internet

I trace my presence here back to my days in school when I would be paying attention to whatever lecture the teacher was giving while simultaneously filling my notebook with convoluted doodlings and drawings. I've always had this inclination to kind of do two things at once.

honest answer: its just a thing i do? i dont think its filling any gaping social hole or anything, and i am def not a techy dude (plz note i still have to pull up the show formatting help thing half the time when i post). psychologically i dont think it says much either? ive never otherwise been a message board dude, so maybe i am an outlier.

Ultimately I'm pretty comfortable here! As part of one of the two core communities that led to its founding, it's just always felt like one of the core 'home' spots I have on the Net, and I'm comfortable enough with the Net, so. Combine that with a breadth of subjects and things to talk about and the ease of use of the place and hey.

i was also hired by the govt to keep tabs on this "ned raggett" dude so it pays the bills i guess

U fucker

you have only your unnatural knowledge of the digits in pi to blame

maybe related question: Do you think that most ppl could probably be comfortable here if they were just introduced, or do you think we're probably at the level of cultural participation that we could be at?

Let me introduce you to a new poster here by the name of G. Beck.

I tend to gravitate toward ilx when my social circle of the time is too narrow in focus to discuss more than one topic ever, or when I have one of my turns and don't see people for months/years. As long as I duck and weave around the various trolling and cliquery (which tbh is true of the entire internet) it works pretty well for me.

tbh I can't get used to the interface of other message boards - after years on ILX, similar sites (if there is such a thing) seem like a pain in the ass to navigate

i think the intimidation factor is a little overblown re:ilx - i mean i remember being a little weirded out when i first got here and having to get the hang of the place but i guess it depends on sorta your comfortability to be sorta faceless in a way for a long time

there definitely is an ilx-type and I think this is more true today than ever. there isn't a single (open, at least) republican on the site today, very few teenagers, etc.

i think there are prob plenty of republicans but they dont bother being political because its not really a forum looking for those ideas

i think the intimidation factor is a little overblown re:ilx - i mean i remember being a little weirded out when i first got here and having to get the hang of the place but i guess it depends on sorta your comfortability to be sorta faceless in a way for a long time

otm, and tbh I think it works best when you're happy to just participate without lofty expectations. Also the intimidation factor can drive one to attempt to find a voice, although by now it's pretty clear to me that being yourself is the best way of getting the most out of ilx.

*perceived intimidation factor

the biggest factor is that i love not just music and pop culture but smart, informed criticism of the same, and ILX is the best source i've ever found for tips, crit and general discussion. beyond that, i suppose i spend time here because i crave a kind of communication and stimulation that i can't seem to find elsewhere. this saddens me somewhat, but so be it. also, compared to other message boards i've spent time on, noodle vague otm re: the blessed absence of noisy idiotic scrotes.

i think thats another (maybe unfortunate) vibe wrt this site, where people just sorta opt out of certain positions because its got a few brick-walled thought circles, i know i do it on the reg - for example i dont think there are many die hard obama supporters that are going to roll into the rolling political thread swinging, but that def doesnt mean they dont exist on ilx xpost to iatee/republicans existence

i think thats another (maybe unfortunate) vibe wrt this site, where people just sorta opt out of certain positions because its got a few brick-walled thought circles

That's true of everywhere on the internet ime

that being said i do think that its interesting that some of those WARNING SIREN topics are surprisingly respectful and back and forth - i think some of the saner internet conversations ive ever seen wrt gun control have occurred on ilx for starters.

I wrote a computer game

lol how can you follow up "I am not a technical person" with this tidbit

he wrote it on a piece of paper

I like this place because it reminds me of my bbs days.

tbf, it was an interactive fiction game written in inform.

there are significantly more difficult (and impressive) ways of writing a game

people here are fun about politics and there are over half a dozen threads about the fallout series

I keep losing sight of the original question and writing about why I like ILX. So but:

I think that what using ILX says about me is that I am a very social person who likes to connect with people (or if not connect, at least read about the lives of, and especially people that I would not normally meet IRL) and who is comfortable enough with technology to not find text-based communication on the internet a weird way to make and maintain friendships, but not so tech savvy that I have ever gotten the hang of threaded discussions, and who psychologically doesn't have a lot of patience for noisy idiotic scrotes (thanks NV).

we are all in mordy's game right now

i was surprised by how many ppl were game for codeacademy on ilx. i think that first got me wondering about this. also, u know, other reasons.

mIRC

IRC, bro, IRC

mordy have you tried inform 7? i stuck my head back into the language the other day after many years of absence and it's all crazy now.

is inform 7 the one w/ the natural language? i used TADs 2 and then the first inform with the natural language thing that emily short helped develop. i think that might be 7.

I've definitely been a part of internet communities since I was a kid, long before it became 'socially acceptable' (is it acceptable nowadays? feel like I still get the raised eyebrow when I say 'hey I'm part of this thing online')

let's see, earliest was Prodigy BBS boards (remember coming across a wheel of time BBS). then it was IRC because I was really into N64. then various message boards before ILX.

I'm also an only child, and maybe didn't dig speaking to my parents in chinese all the time

the first ever mp3 I ever downloaded was (I'm pretty sure) master of puppets, sent to me by XxkingmattxX on ICQ. took like an hour.

IRC, bro, IRC

what's funny is that since i've adopted the mac in the last few years i don't even use mIRC, i use Snak. but i used mIRC for so many years that's how i think of IRC

xxxp yeah. i haven't used it (yet) (possibly will never) but i thought it was cool.

anyway what ilx says about me is that most of the friends i made after high school were music critics.

is inform 7 the one w/ the natural language?

haha, by having never used i7 you have proved dan's point \(^__^)/

the irc / college radio venn must hold a lot of ilx

Bunch of reasons: I don't have many irl friends who are seriously into music, I spend a lot of my day at a computer (with nobody looking over my shoulder), the people here are pretty cool and interesting and enthusiastic and have turned me on to a lot of artists etc. I would never have checked out otherwise. I'm happy I stayed.

Never used irc or been on college radio.

sb'd you for that.

Maybe more fundamentally: I'm quite a social person and love hanging out with different people but my job involves little human contact and my main hobby is running on my own for two hours or so. ILX fills the gap a bit.

xp - that's cool. I'm in an accepting mood today.

jim kelly and marv levy will haunt me to my grave

who was that one guy who played for the bills ~c. '91? there was a famous super bowl play. maybe a defender who recovered a fumble and ran for a touchdown? but was tackled at like the 3 year line or something?

maybe don beebe, a wide receiver who had the only decent play when the bills got thrashed by the cowboys one of those times. he chased down leon lett, a dallas defender who had recovered a fumble and was running it back for a touchdown, and stripped the ball iirc?

leon lett was totally who i was thinking of. guess i didn't remember which team he played on, only that the bills were involved.

http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/web04/2011/10/13/10/enhanced-buzz-19317-1318515488-19.jpg

what

your mind is truly a marvel and i mean that 100% sincerely

xxp

i meant

http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/web04/2011/10/13/10/enhanced-buzz-19317-1318515488-19.jpg

i mention that b/c i am fact-checking an article on judith butler next week for work.

what up jb! much love to "paris is burning"!

Uh oh, looks like I've gotten into a bit of ... gender trouble:

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/dailymusto/somelikeithot.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/cc/Big_mommas_house_2.jpg/220px-Big_mommas_house_2.jpg

hi horsehoe!

hi VG!

i don't miss avatars or sigs and i find the ilx look really clean+soothing but while we are on this subject is there another way to view a thread besides "open some of the thread" and "open all five zillion posts in the thread half of which are embedded youtubes"?

no :/

hi theon

You crazy kids <3

oh and hi jaymc <3

hi trayce!

everyone hi

oh and dlh: you can switch off images, it also disables the YT's into links :)

sorry, I'll stop saying hi now

PS I LOVE YOUSE ALL

hi jmc! hi everyone.

xps to trayce oh that sounds good thanks.

sry i am intoxicated

Gosh, really? ;P

as horseshoe astutely keyed onto

ilx means perceptive

ILX means drunken weekends where people do crazy things like start a thread where everyone posts pics of themselves in their undies!

Man those were the days. Or not. Im not sure.

drunk ilx v underrated

Bookmark and then view previous, dlh

i think the reason ilx is a better read than other forums has less to do with the intelligence or temperament of poster & more to do with the fact that a significant number of posters are professional writers (to some degree)

I am one of the luckiest ppl on Earth I guess, because my IRL conversations with friends mirror my ILX conversations in terms of convolutedness and source-citing and veering from the academic to the profane and back.

― Bam! Orgasm explosion in your facehole. (DJP), Friday, January 13, 2012 3:17 PM (Yesterday)

well

really you have only yourself to blame

Yes, sandbox was a lot cozier.

Higher risk of tapeworms though.

i don't miss avatars or sigs and i find the ilx look really clean+soothing but while we are on this subject is there another way to view a thread besides "open some of the thread" and "open all five zillion posts in the thread half of which are embedded youtubes"?

― occupy the A train (difficult listening hour), Saturday, January 14, 2012 1:26 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this reminds me of a something I think about sometimes but didn't think merited its own thread - the fact that much of neo-ilx dates very poorly when the img and YouTube links are broken. everything from 10 years ago is completely readable. lots of stuff from 3 years ago, notsomuch. I think there's something sad about that!

i think the reason ilx is a better read than other forums has less to do with the intelligence or temperament of poster & more to do with the fact that a significant number of posters are professional writers (to some degree)

I kinda see what you're saying, the difference is that I think people here actually want to discuss things. I used to post on RYM a lot and like half the threads in the music forum were about the Beatles or Radiohead (when TKOL came out the board was unreadable), then threads where people say things like "just try and tell me the Smiths aren't the greatest band of all time" b/c they're either 17 or trying to get a rise out of people, or awful recommendation threads. Like someone will post "recommend me some electronic music" and be very specific about what they want, and the responses will be stuff like "drop everything and get BOARDS OF CANADA!" (even though the OP doesn't like anything even close to BoC) or worse, people who just post a list of like 25 different artists (yeah, check 'em all out bro!).

Here, I don't feel people have the need to just show off their favorite artists or how much they know time and time again. The rec threads here are actually pretty good

this reminds me of a something I think about sometimes but didn't think merited its own thread - the fact that much of neo-ilx dates very poorly when the img and YouTube links are broken. everything from 10 years ago is completely readable. lots of stuff from 3 years ago, notsomuch. I think there's something sad about that!

i'd be curious what ppl who have been around forever consider to be "the best" era of ilx.

personally, based on memory and encountering old threads, i would lean towards the middle part of last decade. i think the fact that it was still pre-"web 2.0" meant that people ended up wasting spending more time here as opposed to on facebook, etc. also, even though ilx had been in existence for a few years, it was still being transformed, seeking stability and identity as it were? adolescent phase...

as a result just about any given thread from the time would feature non sequiturs and hamfisted trolling cozying up with flashes of genuine insight and brilliance. there was much more ~personality~ to the board, for better and for worse. i think it was a healthier ecology overall.

these days i'm happy to click on a random thread from 2004 or 2005 or so, even if the immediate subject matter doesn't interest me so much, because i know that it will still be an entertaining read. i can't say the same for board content of the last couple of years or so.

i don't mean that in a "you people are so boring!" or "ENTERTAIN ME!" kinda way. just more making an observation. heh.

i guess it makes sense, all things considered. so many topics have been exhausted. the mean age of posters is probably beyond the "wild and crazy" years. there are so many other online destinations which would tease people away from here.

but i do miss the days when things were more rollicking, wild and wooly, etc. for example i think that when the whole noise board thing went down, it introduced an entire culture here that fed into a healthy dynamic. to speak in general terms, both people that hated the instigators of it and the instigators themselves were both pretty great at the time i thought.

so sometimes i think it's gotten a bit dull here. but that speaks more to me, i guess, and my desire for soap operatics, and other nonsense. i just think ecology is really important if you want to have life. if you want to have a thriving life, then there has to be viruses and other nasties, etc. otherwise everything becomes antiseptic. there's a reason why "grunge" originated in seattle.

like this, which just got revived : Are we allowed a thread about "Surf's Up" the album, particularly the album cover

such a beautiful, quintessentially ilx thread imo

I dig on ILX because it often offers a higher level of discourse than I usually encounter IRL regarding the middlebrow culture that I favor, without the virulently awful, subhuman misanthropy found in most of the other places where people discuss things online. Clearly, it's a largely one-way conversation for me, as I've been around here for seven (?) years without leaving much of an impression. Which is to say that I'm not really here for the mixers and sock hops, I guess?

Which is not to dismiss that aspect of ILX. I had my day in sun when I was pretty deeply involved with Barbelith back in the day on a much more social level. I just don't have the energy or wherewithal for anything on that level these days.

Oh, and PPS (just reading through the thread properly), I did both irc and college radio, which is apparently also why I'm here.

only place on the Internet where Gossip Girl/OC/Dawson's Creek talk isn't troll-bait or scary fanfic-bait

New answers for Mordy.

antisocial networking

http://www.newadvent.com/cathen/02001c.htm

Like all other moral rights, that of voluntary association is determined by the ends that it promotes, the human needs that it supplies. The dictum of Aristotle that man is a "political" animal, expresses more than the fact that man naturally and necessarily becomes a participant in that form of association known as the State. It means that man cannot effectively pursue happiness nor attain to a reasonable degree of self-perfection unless he unites his energies with those of his fellows. This is particularly true of modern life, and for two reasons. First, because the needs of men have greatly increased, and second, because the division of labour has made the individual more and more dependent upon other individuals and groups of individuals. The primitive, isolated family that knows only a few wants, and is able in rude fashion to supply all these, may enjoy a certain measure of contentment, if not of culture, without the aid of any other association than that inherent in its own constitution. For the family of today such conditions are unsatisfying and insufficient. Its members are constrained to pursue many lines of activity and to satisfy many wants that demand organized and associated effort.

Since the individual is dependent upon so many other individuals for many of those material goods that are indispensable to him, he must frequently combine with those of his neighbours who are similarly placed if he would successfully resist the tendency of modern forces to overlook and override the mere individual. A large proportion of the members of every industrial community cannot make adequate provision for the needs that follow in the train of misfortune and old age unless they utilize such agencies as the mutual benefit society, the insurance company, or the savings bank. Workingmen find it impossible to obtain just wages or reasonable conditions of employment without the trade union. On the other hand, goods could not be produced or distributed in sufficient quantities except through the medium of associations. Manufacturing, trade, transportation, and finance necessarily far more and more under the control of partnerships and stock companies.

Turning now from the consideration of these material needs, we find that association plays a no less important part in the religious, moral, intellectual, political and purely social departments of life. Men cannot give God due worship except in a public, social way. This implies at least the universal Church and the parish, and ordinarily it supposes devotional and other associations, such as sodalities, altar societies, church-fund societies, etc. Select souls who wish to embrace the life of perfection described by the evangelical counsels must become organized in such a way that they can lead a common life. In every community there are persons who wish to do effective work on behalf of good morals, charity, and social reform of various kinds. Hence we have purity leagues, associated charities, temperance societies, ethical culture societies, social settlements. Since large numbers of parents prefer private and religious schools for the education of their children, the need arises for associations whose purpose is educational. Literary and scientific associations are necessary to promote original research, deeper study, and wider culture. Good government, especially in a republic, is impossible without political associations which strive vigilantly and constantly for the removal of abuses and the enactment of just laws.

In the purely social order men desire to enroll themselves in clubs, "secret" societies, amusement associations, etc., all of which may be made to promote human contentment and human happiness. Many of the forms of association just enumerated are absolutely necessary to right human life; none of them is entirely useless. Finally, voluntary associations are capable of discharging many of the tasks that otherwise would devolve upon the State. This was an important feature of their activity in the Middle Ages, and it is very desirable today when the functions of government are constantly increasing. Chief among the organizations capable of limiting State activity are those concerned with and the improvement of working classes. In so far as these can perform their several tasks on reasonable terms and without injury to the State or to any class of its citizens, the public welfare is better served by them than it would be if they were supplanted by the Government. Individual liberty and individual opportunity have a larger scope, individual initiative is more readily called into play and the danger of Government despotism is greatly lessened.

I've embarrassed myself enough here already to make this a "no stakes" social outlet

lol @ me drunk (or high?) 5 years ago itt

I like smart people with interesting opinions on cool shit, and the ratio is higher here than other sites.

I belong to the wank genetationnnnnn