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Barbelith's Clique(s)

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19:52 / 17.09.03

"The problem with defining a clique is it seems such an inteterminate notion for an equally interteminate set of relationships."

True. We are a unit, a whole, a group, a clique relative to the rest of the net and the world. This is the level that feeds my foolish and dying idealism regarding this place.

True, within this group their are subgroups and some are smaller and some larger, some with little to "power" or "sway" over the rest of the board, soem with much power and sway over the board. This is the level that I am currently frustrated with.

There is certainly an "in crowd."

There is certainly an "out crowd" (like me!).

And there are several assorted "hanging out not really either" crowds.

No clique can be rigedly defined because each clique membership is not set in stone but is relative to the individual within the clique. One member may be tight with a specific group (crowd or clique) and also be tight with someone not so tight with that same crowd, thus, this person is both in a clique and out of a clique, and their friend is not in that clique, but marginally associated with that group through the tightness with their friend who is tight with that specific crowd.

Clique boundaries are fluid and fractal.

So, when I have been spouting off, carrying on, and waxing assholish about some "in crowd" I nor anyone else can't really give any reasonable list of definite mebership: the limit and boundary is undefinable, but the "grouping" is still there.

20:09 / 17.09.03

It all about how you perceive things. If you go looking for a clique you're gonna find one.

20:22 / 17.09.03

Close, bio, I would say.

But that isn't much different than how we percieve anything else. Our perceotion of "things" (abstract or concrete) seems to me to depend on two things:

1) our necessary human need to group bits of things or parts of things in to structures.

2) that there is some reasonable approximation in reality of that structure or grouping.

So what I mean is that not only does how we look at things work towards seeing "cliques," but it is also what sorts of things (relations, bits, parts, and etc.) are present to be seen.

21:20 / 17.09.03

You know what we need? A nice big Venn diagram. Everything is better with Venn diagrams.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

21:21 / 17.09.03

fridge- I love you. I really do. I've spent most of my life trying to convince people that everything can be sorted with Venn diagrams. They're ace.

Tryphena Absent

21:36 / 17.09.03

And Duran Duran piped in. That would help everyone.

21:50 / 17.09.03

The point is someone is always going to feel outside regardless of whether others percieve them to be or not.

And further there is nothing that can be done to make someone who feels, rightly or wrongly, outside of a clique that they are anything other than outside if they don't want to.

So to recap, there can be no working taxonomy of cliques and there is no way to prevent the accusation of cliquedom no matter how welcoming you are.

07:49 / 18.09.03

I wish someone would just come out and name the members of the clique. It's like the mystery villian from the latest X-Men thread where everyone was hinting about the villian even though everyone had a good idea of who it was. Who's in the clique? Who's in the clique? I demand to know! Am I? (and if not, do I need to find a sponsor or something like that?)

07:56 / 18.09.03

You can recognise members of clique quite easily, just look for anyone getting smacked in the head with a steel chair, thrown through a table, or tapping out.

08:11 / 18.09.03

And Duran Duran piped in.

Only if we can have some Nik Kershaw too. The man's a fucking genius, I tell ya!

08:24 / 18.09.03

What if they're too heroic to tap out but they pass out from the pain and lose the match anyway? Are they still in the clique?

12:40 / 18.09.03

Maybe we could start some sort of Outsiders clique. And then we could declare certain forums to be our turf and if any of the other clique came snooping around, we could get all in their face.

12:54 / 18.09.03

Let me see if I've got this straight.

There are real, definite, definable cliques.

But membership is so fluid that you can't provide a roster for any of them.

And yet these amorphous, occasional groupings somehow manage to comprise a censorship-happy fascist regime.

Uh-huh.

How conve-e-e-e-e-e-nient for you, to have a "them" against which to rail, without actually having to pin anyone down as being one of "them," just in case they should take offense and/or lose sympathy for you. In other words, it's more of the "accusing-without-actually-accusing" bullshit that Mordant mentioned in another thread.

Well, I'm callin' you out, sonny Jim.
It's time to put up or shut up.

Let's name some names, Mr. Kazan.

Who is "in"? Who is "out?"
Who's fer yuh, and who's agin yuh?

Let's have it. If you wish to be taken seriously, you cannot afford to play coy. Lay it all out, dawg, so's we can all be sure we're on the same page, here.

(Oh dear, I seem to have dropped this gauntlet. If perhaps you'd be so kind...?)

Matthew Fluxington

13:07 / 18.09.03

No one is obligated to be your friend. Invariably in large groups, people find people they are comfortable with and gravitate towards them, and socialize with them outside of the large group. Think of Barbelith like a school, or a workplace.

Stop whining about 'cliques' and make your own friends.

13:09 / 18.09.03

I thought there were numerous cliques--NYC Barbelith (which includes bio k9 and Applepicker, even though they aren't New Yorkers), The Brighton Gang, The London Crowd, etc. I was having jerseys made up and everything, dammit.

13:16 / 18.09.03

*in the style of Jay when he and silent Bob strike back* I AM THEM, I am in any clique you care to mention, I am the CLIQUEMASTER! I exclude all you fucks, when I get to work on the clique you know it's my maadskillz that make it what it is baby, this place knew no cliques before I arrived and there will be none when I am gone, I am the KING OF CLIQUES!!!

Tryphena Absent

13:20 / 18.09.03

I think this is more specific than that. Who does ICBM perceive as being embroiled in these cliques?

13:36 / 18.09.03

That is indeed what I am asking, yes—for membership rosters, primarily of this alleged subgroup that holds undue "power and sway" over the board as a whole, and which is causing poor ICBM such "frustration."

Until we have some names, the whole thing is just baseless insinuation and vague whinings about The Man keepin' the bruthas down. Simply saying "It's all a conspiracy!" doesn't make it so. ICBM should list the conspirators, if he wishes to be taken seriously.

Tryphena Absent

14:01 / 18.09.03

I think the fact that he has refused to provide any actual evidence over the last few days is what has marked him out as a troll. If he'd said, I think this moderator deleted this particular thread unfairly than maybe it might have been taken seriously. Or if instead of bandying words about cliques he had said I think Anna de L, Jack Fear, Quantum and Qalyn are very cliquey and only listen to each other it might have grown in to something.

Barbelith does have groups that stick together- I think the most obvious recently have been the New Yorkers: Flux, Todd, Qalyn (and Flyboy who seems to be honorary) with the Joycore threads but it doesn't necessarily mean clique, it just means they're mucking around and that's fair enough.

I would still like to hear it from the horse's mouth so to speak, even if I can guess who makes us these 'cliques'.

14:18 / 18.09.03

Well, I guess it might be the London based 'lithers who know each other and are prolific posters. We've probably got moe sympathy with each other because we know each other IRL. I've actually realised since I started writing this I've no idea if I'm in it or not. Oh well.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

14:24 / 18.09.03

Stop whining about 'cliques' and make your own friends.

Oh, yes. It always seems like such a good idea, and then the stitches fall out during dinner and they make mess.

14:29 / 18.09.03

Oops, you're right, Anna, I left Flyboy out. Sorry!

14:30 / 18.09.03

So which clique am I part of?

14:34 / 18.09.03

You're NYC Barbelith, Lionheart, but you're not active enough. You're on the roster, don't worry.

Tryphena Absent

14:40 / 18.09.03

I think I'm in the clique entirely by association (if you can be in a clique any other way) but then that's assuming there's just the one London clique and that it's difficult to get in to. There are cliques within cliques and to a certain extent it depends on how often each person turns up at meets. The higher the attendance the more cliquey you become. So erm... really I think there is no clique, just people who go to pubs and things and talk complete crap at each other and turn up to the majority of their local meets and who sometimes meet entirely offline because you swap numbers incidentally and then suddenly they're friends. So Illmatic, you're definitely not in the clique.

I think I just realised that the whole idea of the clique really is ridiculous- it's just location, location, location. You got a goddamn problem, move to London.

Tryphena Absent

14:41 / 18.09.03

Or New York.

Regrettable Juvenilia

14:44 / 18.09.03

The location = clique thing is pretty obviously flawed, though. See the case of Bill Posters, who's London based and a popular face at meets, but seems to feel outside of some kind of hierachy on the board.

Jack Fear is OTM, as usual.

14:45 / 18.09.03

Is there a Boston clique? One with secret handshakes and an impenetrable fortress of solitude? Because I'd like to join it, but only if I get a special "Laughing-signal" to contact me in emergencies. Oh oh, and a T-shirt.

Tryphena Absent

15:02 / 18.09.03

Yes, well no offence to Bill but I think that's just odd since he clearly isn't part of the clique either. See this is making no sense at all- Flyboy I think you missed my point, we only create the clique in our heads. If we feel we belong to no clique than we feel we don't belong to barbelith's either but if we feel that we do belong to cliques than we can belong to barbelith's.

There is no clique, just sets of people who know each other. It's obvious that ICBM or whtevr was in a clique, was placing himself in a clique of people who were outside the clique. See?

Matthew Fluxington

15:47 / 18.09.03

It's less about location, and more about who you're friends with.

I can't believe that anyone would seriously take issue with the fact that a lot of us are real friends in real life. It's not a sinister masterplan, it's just the way real life works.

There's a reason why there's cliques in NYC, London, and Brighton - there's just a lot of us living around there, so we see each other more often. There's some crossover because some people have travelled and met with other there - which is at least 40% of the reason why Flyboy is definitely in with NYC B-lith moreso than any other UK-based poster. But a lot of it also just has to do with a common aessthetic and friendships that extend beyond this particular message board.

Flyboy seems to be the connecting thread between London, Brighton, and NYC. He's the lynchpin!

Matthew Fluxington

15:53 / 18.09.03

I've always found it kind of odd that we don't have any California cliques. What is it about Barbelith that keeps away the Californians? Also, we've got New York and London - where are the Paris and Munich cliques? At least they've got the language-barrier thing. LA and San Francisco have no excuse!

16:10 / 18.09.03

I always found it kind of odd how the people who are the most likely suspects for being in cliques are the same ones who always complain the loudest that no such things exist.

People are funny that way.

You are funny that way.

I fart in your general direction.

Clue in Jack, mod says that the membership of a clique isn't a static thing.

What shape are the clouds outside your window? Do they stay that way? Does that mean they do not exist?

Let's sharpen our HB pencils here people.

16:18 / 18.09.03

You should know at least as well as anyone, "000", if that is your real username, that at the center of the center there is nothing. Didn't you read The Cobweb?

Our Lady of The Two Towers

16:25 / 18.09.03

'I fart in your general direction'... I dunno 000, is that how the cool kids down your way are saying "actually, no, I have no proof" these days?

16:36 / 18.09.03

I wish I was part of a clique. No one on Barbelith will even sleep with me, let alone let me join their gang.

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