Why do people leave ILX for good?

i am turned off by gallows humor tbh because i feel it's insensitive . i lost my sense of humor in the 80s with Reagan and i have been humorless since! if it works for some people that is great for them but it's at least part of why i don't engage with political threads on ilx.

also yes, TM was elderly and lived an awesome life. i also lost my dog this week so i have been managing a ton of grief.

aw, Lechera. Hugs.

political gallows humor, i should say
other types are actually fine w me

thanks alfred. she was my perfect baby :(

my friend claimed not only that he didn’t realise Toni Morrison was black

Wait, you sayin' he wasn't Italian?

not casually joking, exactly, that's not a good way to put it. more like gallows humor, you know, or using humor as a way to process disturbing information.

I definitely do this. And I realize that I do a significant amount of "code switching" depending on to whom I'm communicating. If someone is likely to be dealing with stuff on a personal level, or processing "trauma" differently than I do, I am way less likely to employ gallows humor. And even when everyone is processing the same trauma, there are different degrees of it, so being, as they say, gentle, or sensitive, is the way to go, if you don't want to hurt people or come across as an asshole. ... or, end up with a conversation that ends up excluding people or viewpoints because they choose to avoid it, whereas on social media, there's more of a tendency to call out insensitivity, whereas on ilx, well, there used to be more calling out, now there's more avoidance. ... idk, on some other thread, not long ago, Morbz made a comment about my "moronic wokeness" or something like that ... which to me, was funny, because ... I have been called out here for using the "R word" and definitely irl, I am ... not that person in my social circle.

The minefield that was social media for me right after the Ghost Ship fire was ... a minefield.

And I think there's also a general feeling of "emotional detachment" on ilx -- like at one point I was arguing about specifics of tax policy, and dayo was super otm at one point, saying I was "too close" to the issue. ... Like, there is a tendency here to pile on posters or make them feel uncomfortable, at least, when they are "too close" to an issue, or get emotional about it because it is personal. ... I know, for me, that when Ghost Ship happened, and ilx response was largely "welp, this was tragic, let's make lists of things," meanwhile my response was shock, grief, and survivor's guilt.

xps to reiterate i'm not saying every white ilxor needs to pay their respects to toni morrison by posting in the toni morrison thread whether or not you just have an empty "RIP to one of the greats!" post to claim your seat. i'm saying the reason the toni morrison thread is not particularly active is because toni morrison's core audience does not post to ilx, and perhaps that is a reason that some of us don't hang out here a ton? again this really doesn't have anything to do with toni morrison! i haven't even read toni morrison!

and btw i feel the same about RIP threads as many of you especially for octogenarians but like let's be real about the reason that the david berman RIP thread has 100 new answers and everyone can speak eloquently about how meaningful his lyrics have been to you personally but the same conversations about toni morrison are mostly happening in other online spaces and not here

i'm not saying every white ilxor needs to pay their respects to toni morrison by posting in the toni morrison thread

lol too late :)

ILX's overwhelmingly white male demographic breakdown is actually kind of an outlier from most of the spaces I inhabit. Like it's easy to forget but (looks around work space) I'm literally the only white dude among several rows of women of color, the place I tutor is 100% female staffed and serves black and latinx youth, what little social life I have is predominantly female-dominated, etc. So it's weird to note both that I'm part of the homogeneity 'problem' here and that this is the very rare place where I feel comfortable conversing openly with other white males.

i did have something to say about toni morrison only it took a few fucking days -- don't shame me for finally getting around to it

sniping on ilx doesn't exactly make ppl want to stay

Also I've been calling for years and will continue to call for more non-white dude ILXors but at this point it feels a little like hoping that people will eventually drift over and see what a magnificent job we've done at maintaining Friendster amidst the choppy seas of internet progress.

speaking for myself I didn't see the these bump, but honestly I wouldn't have posted anything but be RIP because all I could post is some really cliche college freshman level understanding of her work and I don't really think anyone needs that

Also I've been calling for years and will continue to call for more non-white dude ILXors but at this point it feels a little like hoping that people will eventually drift over and see what a magnificent job we've done at maintaining Friendster amidst the choppy seas of internet progress.

― Where Is The Univers (Old Lunch), Thursday, 8 August 2019 17:03 (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

asking in a possibly exasperated but not snarky way, man

do you think that a constant performance of "that thing wite ppl do when they disparage wite ppl" across the board from wite dudes had a good, bad or neutral impact here

personally i have nobel prize winners filed in my mental 'better read this within the next 20-40 years' guilt-list, planning on hella thread revives once i get to all of them tho

Ime women and people of color/Black people whose voices we're saying ILX would benefit from have no incentive to fight their way into a space where they're going to have to deal with viewpoints opposed to calling out systemic and institutional racism, when they can create their own spaces where they are centered and in leadership and recognized as creators & drivers of content. lol I wouldn't even suggest to anyone else that they take on this headache without the years of friendships and memories and growing pains to cement the fondness that I feel for ilx and ilxors.

Like are we proposing to PAY them? Because otherwise it's not their fuckin job.

Like are we proposing to PAY them? Because otherwise it's not their fuckin job.

so, how much an hour are we talking about?

Ime women and people of color/Black people whose voices we're saying ILX would benefit from have no incentive to fight their way into a space where they're going to have to deal with viewpoints opposed to calling out systemic and institutional racism, when they can create their own spaces where they are centered and in leadership and recognized as creators & drivers of content. lol I wouldn't even suggest to anyone else that they take on this headache without the years of friendships and memories and growing pains to cement the fondness that I feel for ilx and ilxors.

Like are we proposing to PAY them? Because otherwise it's not their fuckin job.

― There's more Italy than necessary. (in orbit), Thursday, August 8, 2019 1:20 PM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

ya i agree w/ you

We can all wish that ILX were better than it is, but none of us can do anything much to ensure a future ILX with more participation by women and minorities, other than to welcome them and treat them with respect when and if they arrive. They are not arriving.

While we are all waiting for these diverse people to put in an appearance we may as well make the most of the ILX we have now. Outside of active recruitment of new and diverse voices, what else can we do? Just criticizing ILX as falling short of our ideals without identifying an avenue for improvement seems like a futile exercise.

“Recruitment” lol cmon now

We want YOU...

to argue about whether Chief Keef raps off beat on purpose

lol

Haha

i've committed to posting significantly less so as to make space for more marginalized people i hope eventually to stop posting entirely i encourage everyone else to do the same

“Recruitment” lol cmon now

I wasn't recommending we all go out and recruit women and minorities onto ILX. That seems like going to great pains to address a problem that has such minimal practical effects. I was suggesting that standing around telling each other "we really need more diverse voices" while doing nothing about it amounts to nothing more than hand-wringing.

Would love to hold an ILX recruitment drive

I rather think it's worth remembering how many women in particular were very much here for a long time but either left of their own volition because they felt things were getting far too uncomfortable or were essentially driven away for similar reasons. Let's not kid ourselves about that.

Morrison is one of my very favorite authors and Jazz is one of my favorite books, but I guess I didn't say so out loud. Not sure what to do about that.

ned otm; several names jump to mind

This discussion is nice but kind of impenetrable for a pretty new, infrequent user like me. I found this board through Google since it was some of the only discussion around on some bands I would look up. That has to be a lot of us? I don't know the back story. Where am I?

you're on the messageboard dedicated to the Acura ILX, the new standard in affordable luxury vehicles, just like the rest of us

i'm saying the reason the toni morrison thread is not particularly active is because toni morrison's core audience does not post to ilx

toni morrison has won the pulitzer prize, the nobel prize, and the presidential medal of freedom--it's odd to imply that her "core audience" is some sort of niche in service of your point. she's in the running for the most respected american author of the past 40 years.

just as much of a factor in the difference between the reaction to her and berman here is that amazingly, after all these years, this is still a board mostly populated by music fans.

i say this not to deny the demographics of ilx because we all know what those are. if we need to recap again that this place is a closed system and has been for 9 or 10 years so be it.

I am the father of a queer latina fwiw

Wish there was a presidential medal of indie rock.

it amounts to nothing more than hand-wringing.

this happens every couple of months, like clockwork. it always results in 100s of posts of ppl meta-arguments about the state of ILX. I usually don't participate cuz they seem pointless. Not sure why I weighed in on this one, maybe cuz Marcos was posting and I always read posts of my fellow apocalyptic dub enthusiasts :)

That's where the 'welcoming and treating with respect' come into play. There really are no tools for enforcing respect, other than clear social norms and social pressure to conform or be ostracized. But his is a double-edged sword, because the better this works, the more homogenous the participation becomes, leading to calls for more diversity and an open yearning for the return of disruptive and disrespectful posters.

afaics, the greatest gravitational pull of ILX for new users has always been exerted through ILM and its appeal to fans of small music scenes that are not much recognized in the broader internet. Some of those new ILMers then spread into the rest of the boards.

Btw, sometimes people leave ILX for the simple reason that other ways of spending their time become more compelling, namely jobs, families and an interest in new social groups.

-it's odd to imply that her "core audience" is some sort of niche in service of your point.

i'm stating, not implying, that black people are toni morrison's core audience because toni morrison herself has explicitly said this!

Google is what initially brought music-haunted teenage me to ILM 15-odd years ago. I (mostly) lurked for a couple of years then vanished into the nothingness whence I came, only to return in 2017, soon after I started seriously listening to non-classical music again. Although I wasn't around for the whole thing, much of the palpable toxicity has evaporated in the interim. We can certainly do better, but it's pretty clear to me that ILX has moved away from vacuous one-upmanship (emphasis on 'man') over the years.

We need Dom Passantino to return as a bisexual woman of color from Brazil.

I rather think it's worth remembering how many women in particular were very much here for a long time but either left of their own volition because they felt things were getting far too uncomfortable or were essentially driven away for similar reasons. Let's not kid ourselves about that.

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 8 August 2019 bookmarkflaglink

Let's not kid ourselves that those women would've automatically posted about TM's work. It's a very faulty assumption.

And ilx often reflects what is out there. We can talk about it but let's not kid ourselves that TM was anymore than some minority interest, as is the case with a lot of writers.

Right.. Sort of indie rock demographics (a survey would be interesting). I wasn't thinking of any distinction between ILX and ILM... is there anyone who started with the former? How?

xp

xyzzz, you’re warping what Ned said into a strawman, and

We can talk about it but let's not kid ourselves that TM was anymore than some minority interest, as is the case with a lot of writers

??

Rightly or wrongly, I tend to assume that regular ILX posters who mostly avoid ILM got started on the latter only to desert it over time (comrade alphabet being a prime example).

xp

xp i think he's saying nobody likes writers, except for dan brown, that guy could write a pretty good story

"minority interest"

what

Very few threads on authors have lots of discussion in them. And ILB is a small sub-board.

xyzzz, you’re warping what Ned said into a strawman

Quite. My point was not about Morrison's passing, but in general.

as is the case with a lot of writers
??

Regular readers of any kind of books are a small minority within the general public. By the time you winnow it down to avid readers of a single author who wrote highly literary books about black people in the USA, however popular or lionized that author may be among her peers and her readers, you're talking some pretty small numbers.

Toni Morrison's name is well-known to the general public because of her long association with Oprah Winfrey, not because a majority of the general public has read her books and were deeply affected by them. Literature is a niche interest. Always has been.