All Active Users Click This Very Important Poll Thread
 

Hi how are you doing this winterz night?

If the weather is so cold how could you skip this very important question




How long does MB have left??? Years? Months?

You decide. By posting. A lot. Batlord, Mindfulness. I see u. U must respond

To be clear this thread is about the downfall of internet forums. How relevant are they nowadays and what makes u stick around?

In agreeance

Also have u read the RockGuitar101 thread where they get banned by right-track? Good read

Um, if it's a poll thread shouldn't there be a poll? :confused: Maybe we should have another poll, to decide on whether or not this one should have a poll?

Forums should have died with the advent of facebook. But somehow they didn't. I guess it's because they are still the only form of online social networking where people come to exchange lengthy opinions. Fb is mostly for short form communication and/or picture viewing, instagram and tick tock for picture or video browsing. Conversation is left to forums. And some people still want to talk and engage with others.

I think it might depend on who controls the forums. I've been active on two forums including this one and they've both have changed from night to day to me. On the writing forum, where I was actually something of a big shot, even though my writing skills aren't all that great, it was what we used to call a benevolent dictatorship. In other words, even though the owner called the shots, he encouraged a free flow of ideas with the caveat that personal attacks would not be tolerated, and for a couple years, it was a happy forum.

Then came the ill- advised transfer and that's when I came here. And this was a different place. There seemed to be no moderation whatsoever and personal attacks were as common as right wingers getting covid. To me, it was a toxic atmosphere and I left this forum twice.

Now we go to today, where my old forum is now closer to a fascist style dictatorship. Now you don't dare criticize the leadership (there were avenues where you could under the old owner) lest you may be banned. Here, on the other hand, we still have the same anarchist spirit but without all the toxicity that once prevailed here. I really like it here now.

I think Adidasss has it right when it comes to forums in general and particularly this one. It's a way to interact with people with generally the same major interest, in this case, music (even though we're usually talking about something else :laughing:). I think some forums on some small scale, maybe even this one, can thrive for years as long as there are people who want to communicate with each other.

Yes but what if the website is deleted?

I have always liked how laissez faire this forum has been run, allows me to make threads like this one lol

This forum is owned basically by Google and I think they have more important things to discuss instead of the continuance of this forum. It is possible one day that they could just dump us like a cleared cache though.

Delete Exo y/n? Delete Trollheart y/n? Delete the Batlord y/n?
Warning: all evidence of these people will be deleted, as their real lives are mere constructs based around their internet personas.
Continue y/n?
Are you sure y/n?

Is that a real teddy or just a meme? If real, I need that uniform for Millie! :love:

Edit: Also, still no actual poll...

Hey, I deleted myself on my old forum. I'm sure the overlords there were pleased :laughing:

I used to post more in music groups on facebook, but they kind of turned into a cesspit. Most of the time it was younger men talking about how much they love The Microphones, Antlers, sad white boi **** or alt pop. It just got really boring, and all of the interesting people left. The one group I was still semi-active in got zucced for mentioning Varg Vikernes/Burzum, yeah, that's not an exaggeration. It's one thing to praise the *******, but to mention his name or project? That's kind of a silly.

I still miss his Youtube channel tbh. Simpler times.

Have u read his twitter? Prime-o stuff if problematic

Oh wow I have not.

Edit: is it Thulean Perspective? The one where one of the recent tweets is a thinly veiled anti-Semitic screed using the Smurfs as an allegory?

hmm I mean it's a gold mine of terrible terrible allegories I reckon, I remember his replies more than his normal tweets

Most of the extremely active forums are full of vapid posts with ax grinders, contemptuous and full of hate. I try to keep it positive. The laid back atmosphere here is a nice change.

One music forum I'm on completely got rid of the politics and
religion part because it got so vicious. It’s a whole lot better now.

Another forum has people who don’t know or care about
other member’s beliefs outside of music. It’s really wonderful.

Years ago, I was on a forum that had only one thread.
That was glorious when it came to general “everything” talk.

That sounds so cool! Wondering how many pages that got up to? Also what were some of the more common topics?

Thankfully we offloaded all those members onto more boring nerd music sites.

Well, when you’re not really into, let’s say, golf,
then it seems like the perfect forum to join, eh?

It’s been a really long time since I was there, but it had already
been around for years and had thousands of members. It wasn’t
too much different than here, but it never pretended that it was
a single-issue community like this one does. If someone came in
and dropped a new subject in the thread, it could be ignored or
steered in that direction. Again, not for people who come to
expect mostly a single subject (like music). It was fun, but
the party would take away from your real life easily.

Yeah golf fans who just want to talk about golf and think golf is the only thing worth talking about seem pretty boring.

yeah, to those who find golf boring.

Very interesting to read the experiences of you guys on social media, esp. as MB is the only place I go, never having been motivated to work out what tik-tok or facebook can do to improve my life.

For a while I was a member of a world music forum, but traffic was v light and (*checks page*) it seems to have closed down 3 years ago.

I really like MB, even with its now-reduced membership, and hope it keeps going as long as we all do. If google ever decides to close it, I wonder if we have any back-up plan? Can we copy and paste it? Can we beg to join the alternative site that I think tore actually opened once?

I'd say Facebook, but who knows what devious plans Zuckerberg may have. Maybe Google will have some other sort of social platform we could just do our thing in.

Hopefully, nothing will happen with MB though.

Faceplant and Dickrot are large wanky turdariums,
but there’s lots of smaller forums that can meet your needs.
If this place ever folds, it’s not that difficult to start your own,
but it does involve some bucks. On one music forum I’m on,
the guy is upfront about the costs to him and even has a
running total on donations. It costs about $225/month.
Latest topic: Mingus’s secret eggnog recipe. :D

On another forum, we lost a relatively young, very frequent
poster (from Denmark) of avant/experimental music back
around October, so we’re devoting a year-long thread to him
next week talking about his influence on our musical lives.
Latest topic: mostly just talking about year-end lists of ours
and others. (Both of those forums have respected music
journalists who’ve written for major publications and
Bandcamp, so there’s a healthy dose of year-end stuff).

I’ve been watching another music site that I may end up
on in March, but they’re really into music lists all-year
round which is kind of a time-consuming black hole
that I’m still debating if I want to be involved in.

… and that’s just some music ones …

There are some other good ones out there,
but, again, if anyone wants to start a site like this one
(if Psychoblather gets flushed down the googling turd hole),
you can do so with donation help if you don’t have the regular funds.

When an instrument related forum got 86'ed a while back someone created a temp one through proboards:

https://www.proboards.com/

It helped to bring everyone back together until the issues were solved with the original site. It also helped that someone had a bunch of email addresses from a lot of the members.

Anyone remember BBS's? How about Chat Rooms?

I guess you old bitches will just have to learn about Discord.

What about Datcord?

I prefer Duhuddercord.

But what if Discord shuts down? :D

Don't be sowing discord, now.

Oddly enough, I'm familiar with Discord because that's where I've been conducting my classes ever since Mexico suspended face-to-face teaching back in March 2020. I'm not too sure if it's any substitute for MB though. Have you guys opened many text channels there? Do you use it mainly for talking or typing?
Perhaps I should log in and answer my own questions.

Wouldn't that be cheating?

Please join our discord!!

Isn't discord chat+video? Do conversations stay recorded? It doesn't sound like a replacement to a forum.

It's text, call, and video. Less ability to preserve and look up old posts, but the call and video options are a big advantage

Just imagine having your parentage disparaged by myself while being able to see the fried chicken bits falling from my beard onto my nude body as I recline like Dionysus on my bare mattress on the floor.

^ That's very kind of you Tristan. Thanks. Perhaps I'll take a look over the holidays.

Thanks for clarifying, Marie. TBH I'm not sure about chatting in real time. I quite like what we have here, which gives us time to pause, reflect and compose.
I'm not sure I'm ready to take this relationship to the next level. ;)

:rofl: Difficult to resist a sales pitch like that...