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Ganesh:
I'm generally struck by how off-topic they are, in the sense of conversations meandering from one subject to another. I'm a particular culprit, with my stupid-clever Dick Emeryesque one-liners. In terms of its structure, the old Nexus reminds me of nothing so much as The Moon Online: a small group of intelligent, articulate posters, little or no strict moderation of topics, and lots of in-jokes. All of which is funny, endearing and, at times, conversationally quite meaty, with the downside that it's hard to remember exactly which thread one was talking about X in, when none of the titles or abstracts (abstracts?!) refer to X in any way.
As the board progressed through several templates, I remember we went through a phase of playing around with different fiction suits. One of the formats had a 'visitors' section' at the foot of the board, in which people could post without logging in or registering. This engendered silly but amusing clowning ('Julie Burchill' contributed quite a lot), and I rather missed it when the board changed again.
I'm not sure whether the board's move toward 'seriousness' was a gradual, organic shaping up of common politics/philosophy (initially with the common uniting factor of 'invisibleness', although this inevitably declined over time), a conscious decision on Tom's part (the 'manifesto') or a bit of both. I remember the use of multiple fiction suits and off-topic meandering became less acceptable. The moderation system, as I recall, sprang up as response to the first wave of trolling - Eloi Tsabaoth and Technoccult - and evolved with successive invaders. Several of those trolls forced us to consider where we drew the line regarding racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.
I'm not sure that there was a Golden Age as such, but I think I got more out of the board back then, at the point where we'd developed beyond merely being a place to chat about Georgie M and started trying to direct our discussions in a slightly more structured way.
As a veteran of Seethru, which became The Moon Online, I identify with some of what you're saying here. The first months of Seethru, when I lurked and didn't even post, seemed characterised by a sense of surprise, play and joy about the forum in itself -- the medium and what it had enabled.
This was, or seemed, relatively early days in terms of internet communities, before everyone's mum was online (October 2001) and it was exhilarating just to be part of this group of people, all seeming to be basically of the same social group (largely media-based, middle-class, professional, metropolitan), sharing a sense of humour and cultural history, connecting through text, and all interacting in "virtual space", from our houses.
I remember threads about favourite breakfasts, and have you got any scars, and what sort of bread do you like, which carried the kind of getting-to-know-you hyperness and too-fast friendship of the first hour in a new Big Brother house. ("Oh my God I can't believe you've got a birthmark on your knee just like mine, and you like brioche with goat's cheese, I love brioche and goat's cheese?") There was intense flirtation; there were falling-outs that felt really important. It felt like love, and war. People on TMO sometimes hark back to the times when "the board mattered", with a kind of wistful raised-eyebrow what-were-we-like. The first real-life meets were the culmination of all this energy, with aftermath and post-mortem threads taking up the next week online.
Anyway, what's happened with TMO perhaps suggests an alt-universe parallel-world development from Barbelith, if they started off feeling quite similar. Barbelith seems to have hardened up, formalised, become more structured and regulated. TMO has kind of fallen apart, become looser, lazier. You're lucky to get a thread on topic for more than a dozen posts these days. The longest discussions are just one-liner banter and chat of your "Night Shift" variety -- clever and quick banter, sure, but not something anyone would read twice. TMO went through maybe two years of being really solid and substantial, and now it does feel like it's in a permanent silly-season or summer slump, even in the fall. That's not an awful thing. It's not bad to have a playground you can hang in with your grown-up pals, where you can open your mouth and spew out any rubbish without much risk of censure; where you can let off steam in some private space away from work and family (except that most of the community paired up into couples and now live together, and the rest either hate each other or have crossed the line from internet buddies to genuine for-real friends).
However, I wouldn't really recommend TMO as a model for other internet boards to follow now. It evolved, maybe it devolved, and right now it's mostly like your "Conversation", with a bit of film, comics and politics on the side. There is some great writing among the dross, and it's fun for those involved, but I'm glad Barbelith exists as well, alongside. |
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