This is all going to sound a bit An Elder Remembers now, but I was trying to think longitudinally, if that makes sense. I've been around since the early days of the Nexus, and I've been trying to cut through my own veils of nostalgia in order to address the question of whether, as a message board, we had a Golden Age (as is not uncommonly suggested) - and, if we did, why that time is viewed more positively than the present.
When posters have linked, occasionally, to archived Nexus threads, 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. Even that first bout of trolling was novel enough to be exciting rather than simply irritating or repetitive. I still lived Oop North, and my contact with Barbelith was relatively 'pure', not then influenced by meeting Barbeloids in Real Life. I was comparitively new to online communication, and had found a community in which people talked about things I'd never had a chance to talk about before.
So has the board changed or have I changed? Both, obviously, and it's difficult to see which was more instrumental in the slow fading of my own, personal Golden Age. After my own move to London (and, specifically, after Xoc moved down to join me) and meeting some of the Barbeloids in the flesh, I think I became increasingly detached from the board, using it in a less confessional way (of course, making us Googleable further shredded the comforting illusion of privacy...). Perhaps this is partly why I then perceived it to have changed: maybe my subjective sense of the place having 'dumbed down' was more a reflection of my no longer getting the in-jokes...
Haus has occasionally expressed frustration that the older posters don't contribute like they used to, and I can see that. Myself, I'm no longer in a position to devote as much time and energy but, more than that, there's a feeling that everything's been said, that I'd just be covering old ground. Intellectually, I know this isn't the case, but it's hard sometimes to shake an oddly deadening deja vu.
Tt. And, like a doddering oldster, I've forgotten where I was going with this train of thought. Will think more about the current state. |
