Longtime ILXors - how has this board changed over time?

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.