Longtime ILXors - how has this board changed over time?

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.