Why do people leave ILX for good?

if you guys miss those women posters so much, you should personally invite them back! encourage them to return!
the alternative is to go back to facebook. where most of them are active.
lamenting their absence over and over is futile

xp: Every time I mention message boards in front of my 14-year-old, he repeats the words back to me with sarcarstic implied quotes: "message boards..."

Sometimes I think about encouraging friends to post, maybe try to increase the number of women but mostly to get new interesting people here. But then I realize I don’t want them reading through my posting history....which isn’t tol bad, but maybe too candid

the funny thing about people talking about the death of message boards that reddit is basically just forums/mbs with a goofy upvoting mechanism

I got my friend to post here: slothroprhymes

I beg him to post regularly again but he just doesn't have the ilx bug anymore I guess. Only shows up occasionally these days.

What if we could be the posters we wished to see in the world tho

There's no way I'd invite friends to ilx tbh. Every user should go through the ordeal of stumbling onto this gfs place.

otm

i got beth parker to post here. my work is done.

why recruit and train/season new people when you could just invite the old people back?

they'll come crawling back eventually

no they won't
they don't crawl!

Every user should go through the ordeal of stumbling onto this gfs place.

― Le Bateau Ivre, Tuesday, February 27, 2018 9:04 AM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't know if you missed the posts about the exodus of female ilxors, but even before that, this has never really been a girlfriends place.

I did tell one of my friends about ILX, or ILM specifically, as they're a music fan with broad tastes and someone who had helped persuade me away from some rockist tendencies I had in my late teens/early 20s, but iirc they post on DiS and I probably put them off by saying I hadn't read DiS myself but ILM people are pretty snobby about it.

Come to think of it they're a big fan of Sufjan Stevens so maybe it was for the best.

my wife hasn't posted here in years.

i did tell her the trump threads were pretty good. i think she looked at one. she likes twitter.

there should be a random googler week. open the board up so that people don't have to log in. just for fun. for a week.

i don't generally get much out of these blow-up megathreads but this one's been kind of interesting.

so first off "why do people leave ilx?" isn't the question we're answering at this point - people have always left ilx, for any number of reasons, but there have historically been new posters to make up for the departures.

there aren't now because the ilx model is socially obsolete. a thread like this, even when it's interesting, is hard to read, hard to keep up with. more importantly, like la lechera says you can't cultivate followers or quantify how much people like your thoughts.

and this is why i'm here - because i'm in a lot of senses an obsolete person. i post on message boards because i don't want to know how few people are genuinely interested in what i have to say. i like not having the pressure to say things based on whether or not people will "like" them.

honestly, what ilx 2018 reminds me of is ye olde days of usenet. not the end, which was spam and endless recriminations and rancor, but the early days. like ilx today, usenet was... esoteric. there's some kind of weird "seven ages of man" shit going on in my mind.

the weird thing, weirdest thing, is that i don't really know any of you, that's the difference. i got my set of old usenet war buds on facebook and we hang out and talk a lot and with y'all it's different. maybe one day, i don't know!

My w1fe posted here a number of times before I met her or even knew about the board. Several people she knows post here on occasion still. She hasn't posted since 2006.

Did your w1fe introduce you then, or is it pure coincidence you started posting here too?

(also is your w1fe a sock?)

lots of people have come to say hi to me at my store. even posters who rarely post or who mostly lurk and whose online name i didn't remember. it's nice. they are always nice.

omg omar's married to garu g???

there aren't now because the ilx model is socially obsolete. a thread like this, even when it's interesting, is hard to read, hard to keep up with. more importantly, like la lechera says you can't cultivate followers or quantify how much people like your thoughts.

— Rashomon

I am too young to have “really” known the old internet — pre-social media. But it seems better? Even blogs were more curated spaces than self-promotion devices. There is creativity happening in places like Instagram but it’s all instantly commodified or something or more accurately decontextualized — dissolved into a thousand newsfeeds. That’s why the zeitgeist is so “loud” now and everyone sounds the same. I don’t read reddit but it seems like... hell or soemthing like it, and probably in the end bcc it is too democratic...

One of my good friends is the mod of a humungous subreddit and she doesn’t think it’s so bad so who knows.

i post on message boards because i don't want to know how few people are genuinely interested in what i have to say. i like not having the pressure to say things based on whether or not people will "like" them.
same
if not wanting to cultivate followers makes me obsolete, so be it! i don't see this changing about myself.

i would like to visit Scott's store someday

Total coincidence! She posted 2003-2006.

i would like to visit Scott's store someday

I should probably try to do this before I leave MA!

I've been bummed out by ilx once or twice but I can't imagine leaving, let alone for good. Been here for a while but it doesn't seem terribly different from when I first arrived. Yeah, a bunch of smart/perceptive/funny people are gone, but I also think it feels a little less ... cliquey? I treat it like a bunch of smart kids shouting across each other at the lunch table about everything at once, in a good way.

It seems melodramatic to think of it as "leaving ilx". But I do realize it takes that kind of thinking in order to actually tear yourself away if a break is needed.

there aren't now because the ilx model is socially obsolete. a thread like this, even when it's interesting, is hard to read, hard to keep up with. more importantly, like la lechera says you can't cultivate followers or quantify how much people like your thoughts.

and this is why i'm here - because i'm in a lot of senses an obsolete person. i post on message boards because i don't want to know how few people are genuinely interested in what i have to say. i like not having the pressure to say things based on whether or not people will "like" them.

honestly, what ilx 2018 reminds me of is ye olde days of usenet. not the end, which was spam and endless recriminations and rancor, but the early days. like ilx today, usenet was... esoteric. there's some kind of weird "seven ages of man" shit going on in my mind.

As mentioned above, the connection to Usenet is not accidental. I find this model easier to read than the over-cluttered, pointlessly complex formats of most contemporary social media, though!

Like, I use Facebook all the time but how does anyone search for and find anything there?

facebook is death and i think of leaving it all the time

xpost Very carefully.

I think there's a fine line between an ascetic Web 1.0 experience and appearing so old and busted that new users are turned off reflexively. We've walked that line for a while, but I think Google is getting tougher and tougher on places like this, so we are losing out in search rankings which means a smaller people of passersby to get interested.

On top of that, there's no doubt we're optimised for a desktop web world — and many of the people who would join a place like this are on phones now. Zing is okayish if you're already invested, but you're not going to pay up just to read a thread.

The shifting gender balance is by far the most concerning thing, to my mind, all that said. (Would be v. keen to hear any technical ideas that might help w/that)

compulsory partner recruitment

I treat it like a bunch of smart kids shouting across each other at the lunch table about everything at once, in a good way.

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, February 27, 2018 8:45 AM (twenty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM. There's something about feeling like the dumb guy at that table that makes ILX very appealing to me. I gotta hustle to keep up.

facebook is death and i think of leaving it all the time

― marcos, Tuesday, February 27, 2018 10:02 AM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I recently defriended everybody except for my family. Had been really tired of FB for years - like you said, it's death - but didn't want to get rid of it because it comes in handy for certain things like school announcements, local events, and keeping in touch with relatives.

Everybody else was mostly just part of a 10-year-long ongoing high school/college reunion.

I was very slow to sign up for Facebook, as I was pretty distrustful of it (and dubious of its merits) from the start, and I think time has only further borne out my initial suspicions.

for me, my continued presence at the table is a demand to be allowed to sit at the table and contribute. which i do to varying degrees depending on my comfort level and the likelihood of being attacked
this is reality when you are a female/female-coded/femme person in the world (apologies if i don't have the terms correct) even if no one can see that you are a woman.

when assholism ran this place, it was more difficult and many women didn't feel it was worth their effort.
if you can make it worth their effort by offering them a seat, inviting them to return, saying "we lament the loss of your voice at the table" maybe they will come back?
just a thought

^^ I like this idea

If anybody has left because of a person(s) I'm not sure they will come back if said person(s) are still here

Most of the bullies/major irritants are gone, right? At leasr most that were mentioned on this thread. (Some, I guess, as we’ve seen swing by on occasion for drive by style attacks on the community.)

at the very least the culture of rewarding assholism has changed to a noticeable degree
the apprehension about their potential return is a real concern for me and others too i'm sure
i just have to balance the benefits of continuing to be here and realize that for now, if i retreat, i lose more than i gain. if that balance changes, i don't see why i would stick around either. i don't need that shit.
that's just me

Id like better gender diversity too, not sure that a txt with “congrats, you are ready for (a return to) ilx” will persuade.

there should be a random googler week. open the board up so that people don't have to log in. just for fun. for a week.

― scott seward

cosigning this, sounds fun

then don't send them a text like that
there are ways to approach this if you are serious. if you want 100 reasons not to do it, i can come up with those too
i am reminded of this https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/12/opinion/real-men-might-get-made-fun-of.html

I know there’s pressure not to be a dorky, try-hard male feminist stereotype; there’s always a looming implication that you could lose your spot in the club; if you seem opportunistic or performative in your support, if you suck up too much oxygen and demand praise, women will yell at you for that too. But I need you to absorb that risk. I need you to get yelled at and made fun of, a lot, and if you get kicked out of the club, I need you to be relieved, and I need you to help build a new one.

Bullies do more than just bully, the rest of the time they might be interesting, intelligent, entertaining - whatever you want an ilxor to be.

I feel like there was a year or two where there were so many faps and people all really socialized a lot off board. That died away, people kept some friends, went to friendster/myspace/fb or not. I was a late fb joiner and never used it until Trump got elected and I felt a need to connect more online because I was also traveling a lot and didn't have permanence. That has kind of led me back to ilx.

Other people often like the bullies and overlook and excuse the fact that they are arseholes.