Any reason why ILM is so quiet these days?

Facebook and Twitter feel like appropriate spaces to make declarations (often by reference to linked news, opinion pieces etc) which then spur discussions. The bar is higher for thread starting on ILX - and higher than it used to be because volume is down - so people are more likely to just participate in existing conversations... Or not, if they have nothing of interest to say on the current active threads.

Ned is an excellent Facebook user for example - his wall provides a good case for what works about that format.

i never see ned on facebook. but on twitter we are thick as thieves.

ned's a lunatic! nothing but posts about the Warped Tour morning noon and night.

he has sent a few of my tweets viral - if ned leverages his personal brand in your favour it will boost your level of engagement to the max

Often shocks me how dickish the earliest years of this forum were.

On the contrary they seem laughably polite and courteous, I'm talking of the early early days, errrrrrr, before I showed up, for one.

Whenever I search an old thread on a band, author or whatever, a lot of the comments seem really cruel and way more narrow minded in the earlier posts.
I was looking up posts on Poppy Z Brite and people were pretty nasty about the writing and the transgender stuff. Just one example of course but I wouldn't have wanted to join the place back then.

What you would get a lot in the early days was like three posts saying "X is a stupid ugly bitch" and then one long, thoughtful, nuanced post from Nabisco, and everyone remembers the fourth post rather than the preceding three when reflecting back on the sepia-toned early age of ILM.

But were there any posts about Kyle's mom?

I feel like mid-period ILX was the most dramatic tbh

rev are you in https://www.facebook.com/groups/ilxorsnowplaying/ lots of people joined the past few days but hopefully they might post in it

Do think of Twitter as a kind of downmarket version of ILX for people who never found their way to ILX.

Rev OTM up there BTW. Old ILX was sort of naive and exploratory with semi-regular tantrums, newer ILX is stable but unexciting middle age, all the craziness happened in between.

Message boards in general are in decline, right? If anything ILM is outperforming the rest of them.

reddit seems to be doing fine

Cosmic Slop: I think I'm a member of that group but I don't post. I don't really care for fb as a discussion platform and mostly use it for logistics and lurk otherwise.

So many message boards I've joined and participated in the past fifteen years have died. ILE/ILM is the last one I check with any sort of regularity.

My favorite thread have always been the ones covering the tentpole pop/indie/hip hop albums. There do seem to be less of those kinds of threads lately.

The fb listening group just makes it easier to post photos/images of album sleeves than uploading something to imgur and posting it here. It's the rare post there that gets more than a few likes or more than one comment. It's fun(ish), but not a replacement for this place.

I guess the main reason I view fb and twitter as secondary repositories of ILM-talk is that there's no good way to search the archives of either one. Here, if you want to go back and find what people were saying about Justin Timberlake between the breakup of NSync and the release of his first album, it's not too hard to find content if it's there. If you wanted to do that on fb or twitter, you a) couldn't, because those conversations would've happened before either service even existed and b) it would take you HOURS to locate it.

Twitter search isn't that difficult. Also at least 80% of my favorite Twitter users are non-ilxors.

https://twitter.com/reverenddollars/status/99276008250818560

Just took me ~hours~ to find my first tweet.

i hate twitter. but i get it. i guess. why people are there. i'm not a phone person.

Just took me ~hours~ to find my first tweet.

tbf, the advanced search feature is a lot more useful now than when I was a regular twitter user. I didn't realize they'd beefed it up. The same can't be said for facebook, however.

yeah facebook is a memory hole

Oh totally.

I've always wondered why they've never added a strong search function.

Because it's all about the RIGHT NOW, BITCHES!!!!!!

(not that you guys are the bitches; just sayin')

another reason it is quiet

because when one of my favorite posters asked for more women in the runaways thread she was derided and as a result of stupid japery she's left ilx altogether

that's why you cant have nice things

i plan on never leaving & making you all miserable as a result YOURE FUCKING WELCOME

you're one of the reasons i'm still even here. jbr too, but i can chat with her on facebook.

lol we'll be here at the end posting in the eagles thread like statler & waldorf

another reason it is quiet

because when one of my favorite posters asked for more women in the runaways thread she was derided and as a result of stupid japery she's left ilx altogether

that's terrible, i feel awful for contributing to any of the unnecessary noise in that thread, hope she has not really left ilx

the straight white male poll was the final straw i think :/

I find certain aspects of ILM really frustrating, and while I post a lot have on occasion tried to forgo due to perceived dickishness from some parties, but I always try to remind myself: don't take it personally, it's the internet, this is how it works, most of you I've never met, etc. I do miss some posters, some voices I looked forward to and/or respected. But by and large I don't find ILM hugely different from what brought me here a very long time ago, bar maybe more cartoonishly kneejerk negativity and sensitivity, which at least in the latter case reflects a general increase in awareness, imo, of how we use the internet and perhaps how we use the internet improperly (louder, faster!).

if an ilx beef threatens to take over a perfectly innocent thread you can politely direct people here.

if an ilx beef threatens to take over "if an ilx beef threatens to take over a perfectly innocent thread you can politely direct people here." you can direct people here.

if beef on an ilx trees thread get out of hand, come here to look at beef

if an ilx beef gets out of hand on the beef thread come here to look at trees

that was a rough july on ilx...

otm

when one of my favorite posters asked for more women in the runaways thread she was derided and as a result of stupid japery she's left ilx altogether

If by stupid japery you are referring to this stupid poll then I don't disagree, however I don't see any derision on the Runaways thread, unless it's being accused of being a man by another woman, but if that's how she interpreted it there's nothing anyone else can do about it.

Anyway, seems a pity to me, hopefully she'll be back.

now I feel like a heel -- again, I'm really sorry, I genuinely have no idea who anyone is unless they use their real names

do hope jbr will reconsider, won't go :(
made me happy to see her posting more lately & starting some excellent threads

jbl these days no? Anyway consign that

*cosign ffs

srsly

if this is the endgame of the culture wars then idk what to say or do

learn to do and say nothing.

also I dunno it's the (northern hemisphere) summer, aside from Ned my "friends" on fb are very quiet right now (like Ned had 20x the number of posts of my next closest "friend" last week), lots of people are on the road, or their brains are melting from the silly heat

seems like it could be a good time to run a retrospective ILM ballot poll though? I dunno I just want a place to shoot the shit about music once in a while, and fb mostly sucks for that

you need to get in a 2 year queue now for those, Euler. Johnny Fever said fuck it and was gonna jump it and start one but it never happened.
The all-time revisited poll was canned permanently I think.

I only have about 20 followers on twitter and most aren't interested in talking about music. Not to me, anyway. And obviously nobody ever sees my tweets so its pointless trying to start debate there

Johnny Fever said fuck it and was gonna jump it and start one but it never happened.

Nah, it had been planned from the beginning to happen in August/September, but if gr8080 and seandalai are available to move it up, I guess we can.

I cant even remember what the poll was going to be.

Albums & Tracks from the beginning of ILM thru the present. (aka 2000-2015)

oh yeah, the one that people will be campaigning for anything to stop Kaputt from winning