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Underground > Conversation >

Maybe I'm being naive but...

12:54 / 02.06.03

Hey,

I really haven't been here a great lenght of time. I've lurked on and off for a few years and only really found the time to start posting quite recently. So feel free to tell me I'm talking shite.

I started off with this: http://www.barbelith.com/underground/topic.php?id=11966#post215569
Where, truth be told, I was being a bit of a manipulative asshole and hoping someone would start a big debate/arguement. Indeed they did. And very interesting it was too!

I don't have the opportunity to post as much as I would like to. And, to be honest, I often find the Conversation area to be quite insular. Only for old-timers to reminisce on how much better it used to be around here. I know that's not often the case, but it can sometimes seem that way to someone relatively new. Though the same is true of any community (online or not), it can take time to break in.

However, I just find what I'm looking for elsewhere. I read Comics adn thoroughly enjoy it, Film I find challenging and entertaining both (especially the current Matrix thread - it sucked, btw :-) ), Headshop and Switchboard I really wish I had the time to contribute to, but hats off to those that do! ... and so on.

It just struck me that there have been an awful lot of posts recently about how this site is 'dying'. And I don't think you're giving yourselves the credit deserved. Every site like this has phases where conversation peters out, or whatever. The community and resource built up here really is damned impressive. I can enter one thread and ask any question I like and get a multitude of answers, a user coming over from America arranged to meet up with people and be brought around London. This rocks!

Credit where it's due. Well done.

13:10 / 02.06.03

Heh. Perhaps a bit of context is in order, from one of the old-timers...

"Is Barbelith dying?" was thread from long, long ago. It was ultimately inconclusive, but the question kept recurring, from different sources, in different manners, couched with different levels of rue and hysteria.

In the process, it became first a cliché, then a joke: these days you hear it deployed when somebody's engaging in needlessly melodramatic navel-gazing.

So when somebody asks "Is Barbelith dying?"—or, more likely and more melodramatically, "dyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyying"—there's a better than 80% chance that s/he has tongue firmly in cheek.

13:14 / 02.06.03

Ah, the thread I saw here (Conversation) I presumed was a joke.

It's what I saw in the Matrix thread and a few others, about how "this site used to be...", "we fight all the time", "remember the honeymoon days of our bygone youth" etc. etc. that had me wondering.

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:17 / 02.06.03

Generally, people claim Barbelith is dying when they are being disagreed with in deadly earnest, and when they see somebody else being disagreed with in jest. It's a nice rhythm.

13:19 / 02.06.03

I think dying is an art and like everything else, Barbelith does it exceptionally well.

13:20 / 02.06.03

How utterly mortifying.

I'm all right now, though.

14:01 / 02.06.03

Okay, guess I was being naive.

I'll go back to my stretching my caffeine tolerance just that little bit further.

14:09 / 02.06.03

I think Barbelith is great, but really, I mean really, is it feeling alright? I mean, it's looking a little peaky, are you sure it's not dyyyyyyyyyyyyyying? If it does, do we all get spat out into the cyberwilderness and have to reminisce about how great it was against a backdrop of static? What would it reincarnate as? Would it rise from the grave?

(To Barbelith- I love you and I know you're not dying, don't listen to any of it, even if it ends up just you and me in a dystopian postapocalyptic future fighting machines with the power of our minds/a friendly Terminator/rocks, we'll be okay you and me, huh buddy....buddy? Are you OK? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!)*kneels raising fists to sky*

19:35 / 02.06.03

probably if barbelith would start eating right and doing yoga, it would feel better.
i don't think it needs an organ transplant just yet.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

19:50 / 02.06.03

It's summer, and an early one at that which is encouraging some Barbeloids, especially in the UK, to go blinking into the outside world to enjoy it while it lasts, other Barbeloids are in the middle of exam hell or have finished so are away from uni and their cool 24-7 net access, a few others I know of are on breaks-from-Barbelith and still some others are between jobs so again, away from their 24-7 free access.

And I must admit that I don't feel in the mood for anything more particularly weighty than a fluffy Conversation thread. But I suspect that, although there may be a bit of a lull over the Summer, with threads that look like a rerun of Why Don't You? but I suspect that once the weather turns crap again the place will liven up again.

08:42 / 03.06.03

absolutely eveything ze said plus other boards seem just as quiet as well so methinks 'tis a phenomenon which extends far beyond Barbelith.