Why are you not posting

thanks dan. same to you.

treesh our origin stories are remarkably similar tbh

it's weird because i, in most respects, have a pathological fear of rejection. something to discuss the ol' psychoanalyst's couch.

Eh not the whole profile now buck, just the origin story

Physician, heal thyself.

fwiw mike-t-diva I always think of you as one of the disco experts around here

I would post more but often what I have to contribute is redundant - nearly always, someone has already said it faster and with more eloquence than me. When I see people casually tossing out posts full of insight and with flair and humour, I want to be positively contributing to the conversation in the same way.

Yeah, disco and Discogs are mostly where you'll find me posting...

I feel like I should post more, tweet more, email more, zoom more, talk to people 2m apart more. Shit is exhausting tbf.

I would post more but often what I have to contribute is redundant - nearly always, someone has already said it faster and with more eloquence than me. When I see people casually tossing out posts full of insight and with flair and humour, I want to be positively contributing to the conversation in the same way.

this for me.

but also I'm busier than ever off board and can't even lurk as much as I used to. hard to believe but there are even days where I don't look at ilx at all!

mike t-diva, I relate strongly to a lot of your post. I was a lurker far longer than I ever posted. Started posting again because a) this place has become much smaller, and because of that more tolerant; and b) from a selfish pov, I might get the occasional zing or apathy, but at least I don't get someone's racist friend chiming in as I would on Facebook or an avalanche of look-at-this-nazi posts (meaning quotes of actual nazis, not that I get called a nazi) as I do on twitter. If you have numerous online communities outside of social media, gotta say I'm jealous!

I lurked for years before posting, never posted enough to be a regular. Went through periods of not posting at all because I didn’t feel that I could commit the time and energy to even be noticed, let alone engaged with. But thanks in part to the occasional otm and an unexpected excelsior, I’ve come around to being comfortable as an occasional poster, and I don’t feel shunted aside for not being a regular anymore. All it takes really is a bit of friendly interaction and engagement to make someone feel welcome, and for all the talk of how ILX used to be different and better in some ways, I think that’s one thing that nu-ILX does better. There are people here I think of as friends - whether it’s because of a kindly interaction at some point, possibly forgotten by them but not by me, or because of my early sojourn in the slack, at a time when I really needed people and they were there for me. But as the slack grew I found it impossible to be an occasional contributor and still keep up, whereas back here in the warm confines of ILX, it seems to work out fine.

i've already embarrassed myself enough

But as the slack grew I found it impossible to be an occasional contributor and still keep up, whereas back here in the warm confines of ILX, it seems to work out fine.

Very much my experience as well. As LBI put it upthread, you can drift in and out of ILX and remain a member in spirit, and this flexibility is part of the appeal, as though every return were a new beginning in medias res.

For a moment I thought that was referring to the ILX Slack channel.

You were correct!

oh wait yes lol

“as the slack grew” must have seemed a cryptic phrase haha

nashwan sowed seeds of doubt in my mind and so for a sub-caffeinated split-second there I parsed 'in the slack' as slang for 'in the slammer'.

*dialectal slang

tbf nobody keeps up with the slack

i think i'm somehow not emotionally cut out for the strange sort of public intimacy that comes with being a truly prolific poster. i was 18 the first time i posted in ilx's tetchier days and i received a fairly catty response from a (former) regular who i promptly insulted as if this were some random internet shitbin. i was still wrapping my head around the idea of a forum where posters generally knew and respected each other and so i was embarrassed enough to stop posting for a while. i got into tons of great music, posted sporadically and stupidly from time to time, grew up a bit, stopped smoking weed, posted more coherently and felt a bit more "accepted" but never enough to become a regular. i've been reading and intermittently posting here for well over a decade, yet i'm still very much on the periphery. i keep a barrier up, though i have a ton of love for posters who don't

I don't have anything interesting to say on here. What's changed I think, is not that I have run out of interesting things to say on here, it's that I have become painfully aware that the things I have to say on here are not interesting.

I don't mind joining in chatter / recommendations from time to time, and I do mostly enjoy reading the conversations.

like mike t-diva & others here i went through periods of lurking and posting over 16(?) years, making it through The Brutal Years by changing usernames and never ever ever talking about myself to avoid provoking zings and pileons. until at some point after a period of lurking and getting a sense that the sharp edges had dulled a bit around here i decided it felt weirder to lurk anymore, like i wasnt admitting how connected i felt to this place, and decided to start posting more openly and treating it like what it was for me - a community that was very important to my online life. (although my posting style has not really improved over the last 15yrs and remains close to what boxedjoy described, redundant thoughts others have said faster & better.) tbh looking back now i regret staying aloof for so long and not having it in me to put myself out there more during the years of ilx's tumultuous adolescence, for the relationships i didnt build.

I don't even know if I'm posting -- like I have no idea whether my level of engagement with ILX is what people are referring to as "regular" -- I have been doing it a long time though, fortunately I didn't know my shit was supposed to be original or interesting

I think most of us posters are like anonymous ancient or medieval workers, each carrying a humble stone to add to a structure that becomes a great pyramid or cathedral.

(This is really "why ARE you posting".)

An Elder Brain Architect-Deity guides our hands.

but whose stones are the most otm?

“as the slack grew” must have seemed a cryptic phrase haha

― epistantophus

haha, as i was first reading your paragraph i honed in on that too and smiled at the ambiguity :)

i have dipped into the slack a few times, and in a different time for me, or different circumstances now, i think i'd enjoy it there too. but i already have a few "slack-like" places with friends and people i know, and i prefer to stay on the slightly more asynchronous ilx boards, even though when i get Pepped up i may post so often that it's like a yahoo! chat in 1998 (which was my posting prime, tbh)

i would like if everyone on this thread posted more, just throwing that out there, but i understand why you might not. fwiw, it took me a long time to feel welcome here, and part of it was just being ignored for a few years and just sticking around until enough of the old schoolers had left that i had graduated to middle school. or 6th grade. one of those. i'm still in 6th grade, on ilx, and i am the tallest boy.

anyway, i guess i just hope that the people who don't post are doing it for positive reasons and because it fits their lives and personalities and preferences for communicating, and not because they're worried what people will say, or worried about that sting when you put a lot of time into something and no one responds. or someone responds in a dismissive way. or i accidentally post a giant image of a cat puking right after what you posted, but it had nothing to do with you and was actually part of a long-running series of cat puking images that i've been posting for years that are all connected, and yet no one has made the connection yet. like that, kind of. in can sting, in the moment. it's easy for me to advise "just don't worry about it!" or, on the exact other side of the advice-effort-continuum: "think of it as like a writing exercise or prompt for yourself that is valuable in and of itself, and if someone else has something to add, all the better", or in the middle, "try asking a question of someone else" or "find the one thread that makes sense to you and become part of the walls", or any other nonsense. it's all dumb. it's all good, it's all pointless. none of this truly matters. so if you're happy to lurk, then i'm happy to know you're lurking. but if you're discontented with lurking, in the words of Peter Sloterdijk, "You Must Change Your Life"

possible posting and lifestyles: just never look back, never edit, keep going, drink coffee, wiggle your fingers, don't worry

in the words of Peter Sloterdijk, "You Must Change Your Life"

He cribbed that from Rilke, akshuallyyy.

the book is on my shelf, it was part of my partner's studies. i've never once read it or even opened it. it's just a big thick book from a philosopher that says "You Must Change Your Life" on the spine, and i believe it

there's nothing in that book that is more convincing to me than the immediate things that come to mind when i see it

A superb way to interpret all self help and or philosophical titles imo

good stuff Karl. If I am not posting much it is in this positive mode yes. I read here daily and enjoy it. By the way I just remembered to give "Binasu" another shot and it's extremely pretty yes.

As a left-field closer to a sonnet about a rundown statue of Apollo, it's a terrific line, especially in the original German, where it rhymes.

xp

Glad some serious replies showed up. In a mix of self-loathing, insecurity and a shameful need for validation I shy away from posting because of all those times I'd put in efforts to contribute which end up getting unacknowledged in the conversation, making it feel a little like walking up to a group of people talking in closed circle and trying to shoehorn in a thought over a few of their shoulders but nobody really hears you. Then you kind of listen a little longer and maybe try again or move on defeated. Then you see someone they all know say anything at all and everyone trips over themselves to reply. Dumb to be that insecure, but when none of your few IRL friends really care about the niche music you like and you reject regular social media anyway, the craving for interaction becomes a little more desperate. Also when you have ADHD keeping yourself away from distractions like this during work hours is a good idea!

Heh, I had a screename once that riffed on source of that Rilke quote, although I had forgotten it was via Delmore Schwartz.

Nice. I like it.

Evan, I appreciate your posts! I know we’ve both posted similar thoughts on a previous thread.

And KM, you are a gem. I hope you don’t read that as germ, even for a second, because it says gem.

Thanks epistantophus! Appreciate yours too!

this is meant to be a nu zing era not some cuddlestein fucking piffle

evan you are a shoegaze. epistantophus you are a longname. KM you are a former cartoonist

I recognise a lot of what Evan says. Not being around enough (hey, I work for a living, unlike you feckless wasters), the dread of coming across as dumb, portentous, humourless, or worse, barely there at all. It's all ego-bollocks of course and often I just like reading all the smart people on here. Like just yesterday I have wanted to applaud the Coen brothers thread.

epistantophus, germs are people too, so no worries :)

imago i am a future cartoonist as well, and you are a word that i only came to fully understand in the last year, when i was trying to write a REALLY weird post here that involved insects and i had to look up the life stages

I love the Coen brothers thread!

Imago, don’t worry, I’ll come up with a compliment for you, too. Just give me a few hours.

A clever writer realizes the more autobiographically h/she posts, the higher the screen between him/her and the world.

I miss just about everybody here. Let's say ILX is a more welcoming place than when I joined in December 2004.