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General Headshop reflections

  
  

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Jack Denfeld
21:18 / 02.06.06
But it doesn't make you a jackass.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
09:57 / 03.06.06
Also jackass-blind over here.
 
 
elene
10:50 / 03.06.06
Well, I gave up posting in the Head Shop because I don’t really know anything about philosophy, cultural studies or identity politics so all I ever contributed were personal anecdotes. I never felt intimidated by anything but my own ignorance while I was posting there though.

Also, and irrelevantly,

well, the F word was used.

I think that using the word "fuck" as an exclamation, adjective or adverb is just poor style, as using superfluous adjectives generally is. Used as verb it's perfectly fine, of course, and used as a noun it's really too insulting to fit in here at all and should be censored.
 
 
Jack Denfeld
11:36 / 03.06.06
elene just used the F word.
 
 
elene
11:58 / 03.06.06
Oh, thanks! Good job you replied, Jack, because I didn’t want to double-post but in the meantime I realised that one might use it as a noun without it having to be an insult. Like, "you <F-word>!" (I’ve never really managed to get Bad Lieutenant out of my head ) should of course be censored, but "oh, that was such a great <F-word>!" is OK, I guess. Do people really use it as a noun like that? No one’s ever said that to me, but that may have something to do with the way I <F-word>, of course. Oh well!
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
12:50 / 03.06.06
should of course be censored

I'm not sure I agree.
 
 
elene
13:24 / 03.06.06
Well, thank goodness for that! Sorry, I'm stopping this now.
 
 
Lurid Archive
13:32 / 03.06.06
Well, I gave up posting in the Head Shop because I don’t really know anything about philosophy, cultural studies or identity politics so all I ever contributed were personal anecdotes. I never felt intimidated by anything but my own ignorance while I was posting there though. - elene


Given elene's contribution's in the HS I personally feel this is a shame. If we are discouraging someone like elene from posting, then I wonder if the image of the HS is a little too narrow....though I'm not sure what to do about that, really.
 
 
elene
15:24 / 03.06.06
Thanks, Lurid, but there's nothing stopping me posting, or putting me off posting. I just notice that I don't have the philosophical knowledge to put my experience in the more abstract form the Head Shop aims at. I ought to read a few books and acquire that knowledge but it seems I'm too lazy, or busy, or tired to do so. Anyway I haven’t done so during last four years. If someone says being this, that or the other is like this and I know firsthand that it's not, or not always, then of course I'll say so. So I was just making a bit of drama, I suppose. Please forget it. But thanks again too.
 
 
All Acting Regiment
19:12 / 03.06.06
Maybe we could set up a thing where people who don't feel they understand very much about a certain idea or theory- or even feel that they understand a phrase like "cultural studies"- could start a thread asking about it? And people who've ogt answers could answer?
 
 
Disco is My Class War
06:47 / 04.06.06
Personally, every time I see the description of the Head Shop I make a note to myself to suggest changing it. Cultural studies and identity politics are both really specific terms. They may, at times, be pertinent to discussions that take mplace in the Head Shop. But often they're completely irrelevant. If Head Shop posts consisted entirely of those about CS or identity politics, I would be avoiding it like the effin' plague. (Not being a fan of either, although in terms of academic discipline, I'm in Cultural Studies, so er. Go ahead and laugh.)

Perhaps it's time to rewrite the blurb? 'Theory' is probably a pretty open, relevant word to use.

And on to anecdote or not to anecdote, I just did a search and found this:

And I feel it's important that this stuff is seen as complex intellectual debate, and responded to as such, rather than threads acting as a depository of personal confessions which don't get self-reflexive or critical, which can tend to happen in the Conversation a bit.

This may have been part of the trend against personal anecdotage. And in which case, I'd say again: anecdotes or personal information written to make a point, yay. Anecdotes like "my favourite drug trip" -- do it in the Conversation. Then again, perhaps it's not about the writing of the anecdote, per se. Perhaps it's about what one is prepared to countenance as a response. In the Conversation, people are usually prepared to respect someone's confession as a purely 'personal' artifact, and the etiquette is to respond in kind. In the Head Shop, the etiquette is to offer up your experience as a way of attempting to illuminate or argue a point. So you gotta be prepared to have that text argued over, as well.

(This is actually changing, particularly since Feminism 101. I think the expressed desire for a distinction between Head Shop as a 'political' space and Convo as a 'non-political space' is disappearing in favour of seeing the political everywhere. To me, this is great. On the other hand, it means that the distinction btw HS and Convo is now almost obsolete.)

By the way, it's worth doing a search for 'Head Shop' in the policy. We've had this conversation over and over.
 
 
*
16:54 / 04.06.06
I'm thinking of starting a thread in Head Shop for applying critical theory to daily life, which would consist of anecdotes submitted for critical discussion. I think this would accomplish a few things— it would ground the Head Shop more in the World Where Things Get Done, people without critical theory background or comfort might be more inclined to post in it, and people might be exposed to theoretical frameworks in a way which demonstrates their immediate applicability to real life. Thoughts?
 
 
illmatic
18:22 / 04.06.06
I think that's an excellent idea, entity. You might find this old thread of interest.

I'd add that I think this is one of the reasons why there have been consistent calls for a "SBR" forum - people want ways of articulating or engaging with their aspects of their lives that don't fall into what we'd call "theory". The Temple deals with some of the same concerns at times - though in obviously different ways. I don't think we need that forum myself - as I think that these concerns can be addressed with the current set up. But, good call.
 
 
SteppersFan
20:06 / 04.06.06
I've spent a couple of hours reviewing recent threads in Head Shop to see if my perception of HS being overly combative is accurate. I'm pleased to say that in most instances it is a good forum (as I mentioned above) - and much nicer place to be than I remember it being. (I think someone mentioned upthread that it has become more friendly than it has at times been in the past; I certainly remember it being a more challenging environment a few years ago than it currently is. Your memory may differ.) I particularly loved the "politics of birthing" thread (http://www.barbelith.com/topic/21330/from/35). I would have responded to that earlier on (I'm not sure my comments would be relevant to where the thread has got to.

However, one thread in particular seemed to me to illustrate the kind of forum behaviour that scares me off posting in Head Shop: "'Pikey' 'Council' 'townie' - derogatory class rhetoric" (http://www.barbelith.com/topic/11140). On the one hand, I can understand that people will react to a post like “If loathing a certain demographic who demonstrate all the signs of glorifying stupidity and making a virtue out of bitterness (after all, The Sun has a lot of readers no?) makes me a bigot, then so be it.” No arguments there – a harsh response from the forum was probably justified.

However, on the other hand, later in the thread, Creation apologised for something saying “that was a very ignorant statement to make” and got the response, “The first of many, it would appear. As Lurid has already suggested, perhaps it would be an idea to post with a little more sensitivity in future. I doubt I am the only person who finds your sweeping, ill-informed generalisations and simple-minded condescension grossly offensive.” It seems to me that that individual got severe criticism, again, for something he was actually _apologising_ _for_ _already_. To me, _coming to it cold_, that seemed “harsh”, even “vitriolic”, especially when two other posters join in with the criticism. It looked uncomfortably close to bullying to me.

Now, maybe there are extenuating circumstances; maybe there was some additional back story in terms of his previous behaviour, or maybe he said something really, really out of order that I missed, but I have to say the forum behaviour in this instance looked pretty harsh to me. Even though I didn’t agree with him, the treatment meted out to him would certainly make me think twice about posting in HS – the guy seemed to be sincerely trying to find his feet.

Plus, later on there’s some fluff about “This is an idiotic thread. Again.” Which sounded pretty bad tempered to me.

Please nobody take this as personal criticism. I'm just offering, as requested, an example of Head Shop operating in a way which scares me away.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
21:38 / 04.06.06
Have you read the whole thread, in all honesty? Because the "this is an idiotic thread" comment comes from someone who later in that thread says they do not consider themself to be a part of Barbelith as a community - and I doubt Hellbunny would consider it misrepresentative if I said that at various times on the board he's expressed his frustration with the board in different fora - how this can be considered an example of the Head Shop being bad tempered I have no idea.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
21:54 / 04.06.06
Also, I can't see any apology from Creation - could you be more specific as to where the apology is? To me it just looks like dude was continuing and adapting his line of argument, occasionally conceding a specific point regarding which he had been thoroughly discredited...

Will people who bang on about "chavs" continue to get a rough ride? Yes they fucking will, for as long as my fingers can still type and I still post to Barbelith. But that's not just about the Head Shop, I'll do it anywhere they show up, and can provide links to proove that.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
23:12 / 04.06.06
Creation apologises specifically for belittling the profession of digger driver in the face of Hattie's Kitchen pointing out that her father was in a similar profession.
 
 
Jackie Susann
00:35 / 05.06.06
I think threads like this would be more productive if we accept people's impressions of the fora, rather than requiring proof. If people aren't posting it's because of their impressions, not because they have sifted the evidence. So it makes more sense to see how people perceive them, and think about what we can do to change that (if we want to change it, I mean).
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
00:59 / 05.06.06
But this way people actually go into the fora they are avoiding, Jacks, and perhaps learn something new and exciting about the forum - in this case, that it's not as nasty and vicious in there as 2SF thought.

(Mind you, right now it's a bit comatose - maybe because the gender and identity politics have been going on in the Conversation and the Policy).
 
 
*
04:23 / 05.06.06
Do you think people will have the same experience of the forum if they go in there looking for proof that it's a badscaryplace as they would if they wandered in because a lot of other people were having a good time in there and made them feel welcome to have a good time there too? I think I'm with Flybs on this one.
 
 
SteppersFan
09:02 / 05.06.06
Well, over the years, I went in there looking for a good time, but got scared off; this time I went back in there to carefully assess if my impression of it being scary was correct now, and fortunately, it's not as scary as I thought. I suspect others *might* still get the impression that it's a bit scary at times and possibly a difficult place to "get right". However, FWIW, I don't think HS regulars should divert energy to making it more welcoming because there's a nice tone and atmosphere in many / most of the threads, so maybe lets just make more high quality threads .
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
09:02 / 05.06.06
entity - Which bit (that I've said are you with)?
 
 
*
16:39 / 05.06.06
I think threads like this would be more productive if we accept people's impressions of the fora, rather than requiring proof.

Well, this bit, but 2SF has somewhat wrongfooted me. Ze's being difficult. :P
 
 
Disco is My Class War
18:22 / 05.06.06
Except that was Jackie.
 
 
*
00:24 / 06.06.06
Now you're all just being difficult.

(Yes. It was. I'm sure it was Jackie before, too, when I looked at the name and it plainly said Flyboy... I'd better go away now. And maybe check this bottle of random brightly-colored pills I've apparently been thinking were candy.)
 
 
Saturn's nod
21:10 / 27.09.06
Bump, because relevant to discussion in Policy & Help resulting from the statistics recently produced by Tom Coates
 
 
Disco is My Class War
01:56 / 28.09.06
Jumping right in.... It's usually refreshing when someone intervenes in an ongoing debate to ask people to clarify their terms, or be less obscure.

Lula, I was perfectly serious, and I was taking you literally. I responded to the content of what you wrote. I'm sorry if you see that as being misread.

Whether the word is hegemony or something else -- and okay, perhaps it's not a word, perhaps it's a whole vocabulary being used in a thread -- there has never ben a better time on the net to do research, to look things up, to find reading lists, to take a stab at figuring out what someone is talking about that you don't understand. And like fred says, people can always ask.

This last bit is just a personal rant, but the debate back there in the Stats thread was starting to get personal. I don't know how I came to be perceived as a Head Shop member 'with some standing', or how serious comments I made about the ability of posters to find out about language they may not understand was taken as misreading and thus marginalising other posters. I hardly ever start threads in the Head Shop. I post much less often than most people. I got booted as a moderator, for chrissakes, because I didn't do enough! I've never taken a stand policing the boundaries of 'what content should be in the Head Shop'. So why is my 'standing in the Head Shop' being used as some tool to claim oppression? What standing? What are you talking about?
 
 
Olulabelle
07:31 / 28.09.06
Misted Disco, I don't think I was claiming to be oppressed at any point. I also think words like oppression are very emotive ones.

Regarding getting personal in the stats thread, I really felt as if I was being deliberately misunderstood but I wasn't intending to make a personal point. However, the thread was certainly making me feel very uncomfortable. Now this thread is too.

I think if you want to rant it might be better for both of us and the board for that to happen via PM and I'll address it in private, unless you think it is something thew whole board needs to share. But I can't see how doing it here is contributing to the discussion about the Headshop at all.
 
 
Lurid Archive
07:43 / 28.09.06
Actually, I'd agree with lula there that you do have *some* standing in the HS, Mister Disco. You are an active participant, and that doesn't actually include very many people - you post less than Haus, sure, but more than others. You got booted as a moderator due to inactivity, surely? But you aren't inactive any more, and you would be an obvious choice for a HS mod if we need more. (You should probably be a HS mod anyway.) The fact that others think you have standing or some sort of privilege which doesn't actually confer on you any real sort of advantage shouldn't be that surprising.

For the first part, of course people are right that one can look up what they don't know. I think that the point is, if I'm understanding correctly, that people don't feel comfortable putting themselves in the vulnerable position of admitting that they don't know something, or only just looked it up 5 minutes ago, when everyone else is conversant the the terms and concepts.

And at this point, I'd like to say that dealing with this problem need have nothing to do with dumbing down, or losing intellectual rigour or anysuch. Indeed, I think that points about the need to maintain the level of debtae in the HS can serve to reinforce the impression that people without the intellectual background shouldn't contribute. No one means that, of course, but responding to anxiety with talk of standards sets you up for that sort of misunderstanding.
 
 
Olulabelle
08:08 / 28.09.06
I'm going to try and articulate exactly what it is about this discussion about the Headshop that makes me feel unconfortable.

Firstly I think it's important to recognise that there are posters who feel uncomfortable in the Headshop but who make interesting and worthwhile contributions elsewhere on the board. They may not share the same reasons for feeling uncomfortable about posting in the HS, but they all do. Lets call them Group A.

There is another group of people who post in the Headshop and do not feel uncomfortable about it. Lets call them Group B.

I think that part of the problem here is that these groups are not 'hearing' each other correctly.

Over in the stats thread I tried to address the issue of being in Group A, but instead of the overall subject being addressed, what happened is that my post was looked at microscopically, almost dissected in order to, it seems, point out why I must be wrong. Suggestions were made that if I was unable to understand or follow the debate, I should go and look things up. When I used this as an example of feeling uncomfortable, it became personal.

This is a good example of how someone can end up feeling in a difficult place about posting.

So the result of all that was that the wider issue of Group A's feelings became lost in the minutiae of examining my post.

When Group A says, "We feel excluded/uncomfortable." Group B hears, "The Headshop should dumb down." or perhaps "You are elitist." It probably does feel like a personal attack. Perhaps that's why posts like mine get examined so closely.

I think that sometimes there are wider meanings to sentences, and often these are the sentences that are broken up piece by piece and examined. I'm not suggesting that's wrong, but I do think they should be read in context and in the stats thread I don't think it was necessary to break down mine. I think this tendency to examine is sometimes taken too far, to the detriment of real debate. I understand that debate involves examining what the other person has said, but I think perhaps sometimes things are overexamined.

In this case we have ended up talking about one particular point of one particular post when what we should be considering is the overall feeling of Group A.

Unless the people in Group B like the Headshop as it is and wouldn't welcome more contributions, I think we would do well to actually try and work out a way to help Group A feel more comfortable about posting.

Either that or Group A will give up trying to explain, which is what usually happens when we have this discussion.
 
 
Jackie Susann
08:10 / 28.09.06
How about, when people who already feel comfortable posting in the HS post there, they take a moment before we hit 'post reply' to read over what we've written, thinking about whether it's more than necessarily inaccessible, or whether it would tend to exclude people from the discussion who could otherwise by interested. If people still don't want to use the forum after that, I don't reckon there's a whole lot more we could do to accomodate them.

As for increasing traffic, and I know it's kind of flopped before, how about barbe-reading groups? Ideally, texts that would be of interest/challenging both to non-specialists and advanced readers. I am going to fail to suggest an example here.
 
 
Olulabelle
08:12 / 28.09.06
Sorry. ...feel more comfortable about posting.
 
 
pointless & uncalled for
08:27 / 28.09.06
Suggestions were made that if I was unable to understand or follow the debate, I should go and look things up.

I'll add to this.

Being sent off or expected to go and reseach a principle, argument, theory or proposition is not an infalliable approach. Without proper guidance, how can one be certain that they are interpreting the source material to the HS standard or even sourcing the right material to learn from?

Posting from one's new learning only to have it insinuated that you should go and read up on the subject is particularly soul crushing, particularly if one is not given to great personal in the first place. One is left with a sense that if you tried to learn but got it all wrong anyway then what's the point. Better to restrict onself to quips in the Convo.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
08:46 / 28.09.06
Lula, the only problem I had with what you posted in the Stats thread was that it made a very broad statement about who was and was not able to post in the Head Shop, which was a) a generalisation (speaking for the experience of everyone in your Group A) and b) not incontestable, and you are now making an argument based on the idea that it was a) a statement of personal feeling and b) incontestable. If you'd simply said that you, personally, did not feel comfortable posting in the Head Shop, we would have been able to address that, whereas what you did was to draw a line and tell people that if they could not do a, they would not be able to post in the Head Shop. We've already been through this, and I think emotive terms on all sides - wilfully misunderstand, misread, oppression, marginalise - are unlikely to help us.

Now, Lula, if you want to tell us why you, personally, do not feel comfortable posting in the Head Shop, that's fine. If you want to advance your theories about how the Head Shop could stop (in your opinion) excluding people, also fine. But sweeping generalisation followed by rapid personalisation and accusations of misreading, microscopic examination ktl is getting us nowhere.

you post less than Haus, sure, but more than others.

Actually, I stopped posting in the Head Shop for about three months, pretty much, in part to see what the place would get up to without me about, and in part to see whether it conceptions about HS as being my domain would change. I think the Head Shop is up against a lot of received wisdom which simply is not correct - does anyone say of the Temple, for example, that it excludes people? Or the Switchboard? Both of those have recently seen very cross words exchanged by their members. Mordant and others went in very hard on chaoflux. Lots of people went in hard on Dragon (who was, admittedly advancing a fundamentally unpleasant agenda), if by "going in hard" we mean "vocally disagreed with".

Ignominious - well, if one is given reference materials to plug what is apparent from your use of a term or concept is a gap in it, I don't understand why that would be crushing. Possibly I don't understand what you are driving at- could you give an example?
 
 
Saturn's nod
08:53 / 28.09.06
I would be very interested to see more posts about what makes a good Head Shop post. Please will people write a bit about what they appreciate, what makes a post easy to read and useful to the thread? Examples for other threads would be ideal. I would see that as an investment in the overheads which might help widen access. This is what comes to mind for me as an answer to feelings of exclusion: how can a trail be laid out to make it easier for people who find it difficult to write for Head Shop threads? For me that trail would start by talking about which posts are accessible and which threads are welcoming and demonstrate good quality contributions and what the signs of those are.

There are some hints in up-thread already:

Deva: It's about showing your working, and being aware that thinking is a collaborative process aimed at elucidating some real thing, as opposed to 'having opinions', which is a way of subordinating the messy alterity and reality of the world to one's personal desire to look clever (or, really, usually cleverer).

Haus There is absolutely no problem with somebody drawing from their personal experience in the Head Shop, and many of our most valued posts and posters have done so extensively. It's like the idea that you aren't "allowed" to be emotional in the Head Shop - what is not encouraged is the substitution of emotion, or personal experience, for engagement with the subject or with other posters. This often takes the form either of a lengthy rendition of episodes from one's own life, without any attempt to tie that in to the subject under discussion, or a variant form in which it is stated early that nobody is allowed to disagree with what they are about to say, because of some autobiographical feature of theirs, followed by a sseriesof offten contentious statements.

On this point, I draw a distinction between anecdote and critical situated reporting of experience: perhaps the first I most clearly understood to be exploitable in silencing, wherease the second is aimed precisely at opening up the different experiences people have in order to uncover what is really incommon.

In anecdote, used in the unpleasant sense Haus uses here, I find a problem because it comes across as if the experience is being displayed to deny the existence of others' different experience, and it gets used as a silencing technique to deny the experience of others.

Critically situated reporting in contrast is explicit in political stance: the reporting it aims to illuminate the analysis under discussion by relating relevant experience. It's very powerful and beautiful and can help others to speak about the similarities and differences in their own experience. The motivation is clear and explicit as part of the critical framework: different kinds of experience from their own situations are perceived as welcome contributions to help triangulate a robust consensus.

I understand language as inexact: the way I perceive, it's only by gesturing at each other that we begin to work out what we might mean. Communication is developed through the exchange of reading and writing: it becomes possible to move towards understanding what each other means. Incorporating feedback about how people experience the forum and how we can move forward from there has a potential to make the whole thing more fruitful, because more people are able to contribute.

I very much value clearly held intentions in writing: my intention here is to move in the direction of the HeadShop being more accessible by bringing to light the qualities that make the good posts and the good threads good. I want to hear more voices. I hope that as I hold my intention clearly in mind, my writing will be shaped around it so that I communicate effectively: but the evidence as to whether that works or not comes from the responses I read.
 
  

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