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I mentioned this in passing a while back, but it's taken me a while to come back to it.
Again, the intention of this thread is not to propose alternative names for Barbelith. That is a later work, if ever. The intention is to discuss why, historically, the board has been named Barbelith, and the impact it is now having. If you have suggestions for a new name, it may be best to put them in the Conversation thread, or leave them for any next stage in this discussion
I am doing a lot of work on admissions currently, and I find that, with some notable exceptions, an awful lot of those admissions are based on somebody being interested in one of two things:
1) The Invisibles
2) The Chaos Magicks
Now, both of these are very good and noble things in which to be interested, but it does appear to be canting our admissions, and the current activity of the board, away from (or further away from) the discussion of philosophy, art, books et the rest.
Does the name have a role here? Well, there's the usual irritation whenever anyone decides to justify behaving like a tit by telling us how disappointed George Mormonson would be with us. More broadly, though, I have a feeling that the name has an undue level of resonance with a culture that it is no longer exactly what it was. In the several years since the end of the comic, the numbers of people being profoundly moved by it, specifically to search for and then to attempt to join Barbelith, seems to be undergoing a "long tail" effect - smaller numbers, more focus. Which may be why, confronted with a sign saying that they will have to proffer an application to an email account, people who are invested in joining Barbelith, with the implicate symbolism, may persevere where people who just wanted to join what looked like an interesting board would not.
Of course, it may just be that they find us in disproportionate numbers, not least because of the Google issue. Perhaps removing this would simply lead to fewer applications, which is _probably_ going to be a bad thing. But is the name giving the generalist impression we might be looking to present?
Second up, there's the question of brand association. Barbelith is not to George Monbiot as Byrne Robotics is to John Byrne, or Millarworld is to Mark Millar. I don't think passing off is an issue, per se, but are we presenting ourselves _accurately_, at this stage?
Against that we have, most obviously, the established equity of the Barbelith "brand" - it has been around for years, it is known and linked to as Barbelith. Also a lot of sentimental associations. And, of course, one could argue that the rest of Barbelith was and remains ancillary to the real work of analysing and annotating the Invisibles. One would probably be mocked, but one could certainly do it.
So, is there a case for reopening the question of what to call this forum? |
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