PETITION TO CLOSE DOWN BARBELITH AND HAVE IT REMAIN AN ARCHIVE, A TESTAMENT, A MUSEUM

16:45 / 04.11.09

Absolutely right, buddy! The chances of either speaking to Barbelith or speaking to Tom having an effect are near zero. However, Barbelith reacts wholly predictably to stimuli - with inaction - whereas Tom may not react predictably. Of course, if you are not on a mission to be nice to everything, it might be more productive to do neither.

09:34 / 05.11.09

"Barbelith reacts" No it doesn't that's the problem isn't it?

12:37 / 05.11.09

Well, I used the deliberately paradoxical 'reacts with inaction', but absolutely. It can't do anything, really.

12:39 / 05.11.09

Yeah I got that. Ironically I requested to have my last comment removed, for that very reason, and it's still there. Says it all really.

06:53 / 08.11.09

Barbelith's admittedly now a bit 'The Day After', the old place in ruins, the last few survivors stumbling about in a radioactive haze, falling to pieces, giving in to despair, but it's still got the edge on Facebook, surely?

Quantum

20:58 / 11.11.09

Depends on your metric- facebook is the second most popular site on the internet after google. If you use activity as a measure, if you use 'similarity to a model of the cold death of the universe due to dissipation' as your measure, it's barbelith all the way

12:39 / 15.11.09

Right. But is that necessarily a bad thing?

09:06 / 16.11.09

Yes inactivity on a message board is a bad thing.

deja_vroom

10:11 / 16.11.09

Nothing to fear or regret, friends. Always in tune to what's trendy with the kids, Barbelith redefined itself as a zombie board. Gray (matter, eaten) is the new black.

18:56 / 16.11.09

Barbelith is the.. Black Lantern of Earth?

Is that why I'm being all nice and lovely? Am I actually... dead? Blimey.

grant

16:42 / 17.11.09

That... oh god.

Quantum

08:01 / 20.11.09

Must...resist...haring off to google image search...

Baobab Branches and Plastic

19:14 / 04.03.10

I certainly don't remember a time when the board was populated by a better bunch of people*. I remember a time when some other quality folk posted around here, sure, but that's about it.

*Barbelith has always had it's twunces, and I reckon there are actually fewer around today than there were three or four years ago.

haus of fraser

07:01 / 05.03.10

Sorry, dude, as I'm sure you'll soon realise if you read those threads, many of us are very unhappy with the current situation.

21:16 / 11.06.10

Isn't a message board to some extent an archive anyway... albeit an irregularly updated/updating one.

Chew On Fat

06:39 / 27.07.10

Is there anybody there?' said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champ'd the grasses
Of the forest's ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller's head...

Chew On Fat

06:25 / 05.08.10

No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Lean'd over and look'd into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplex'd and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:

Tsuga

01:35 / 07.08.10

Wasting time, I write something.

I'm not ready to stop. But, to keep going, I need to think of a word I can contract haphazardly with an apostrophe in order to lend some gravity to my mass; which is admittedly, and quantifiably, at rest. Still'd.

It's sad but compelling to poke at the remains, I feel like a kid with a stick.

23:30 / 18.09.10

Have you see 'American Dad' at all, either of you?

Tsuga, you sound like Roger, and COF seems a little like Klaus.

Tsuga

00:18 / 24.09.10

God, I have no memory of writing that.

03:38 / 18.10.10

Is everyone doing 'end of Barbelith' poetry, then?

If so, it's not a bad idea. I intend to channel my inner McGonagall, and see where that takes us, I guess.

'Grant Morrison,
You, in your ivory tower
If you'd spent just an hour
Running by, naked, in the April showers
When I felt like a flower
And you were so crazed by your majestic powers
As an artist, you tit.'

03:41 / 18.10.10

The above is poor work, but surely guys, ladies, we can come up with worse?

Speedy

14:08 / 19.10.10

Grant, let this place be your testament,
This, and that time you posed in your underpant

20:12 / 23.10.10

Speedy, we've batted ideas back and forth, but, let's face it, violence, while tempting, is not the answer.

■

23:10 / 08.03.11

Screw it, having spent almost an hour reading and marvelling at the Feminism 101 thread compared to the superficiality of Twitter, bloggery and journalism, I'm changing my vote. Stick Barbelith in Carbonite right now. Preserve it in all its evil and stupid majesty. We'll never have the time or energy to build anything this interesting again.

18:25 / 19.03.11

The bit when Alas more or less accused Dead Megatron of being a rapist was a high point for that thread, personally.

But it pretty much killed Barbelith, didn't it?

Olulabelle

22:17 / 05.11.11

Nope. I think it was people like Alas that kept Barbelith going for as long as it did.

You maybe should look closer to home.

12:24 / 06.11.11

So you think I killed Barbelith?

I suppose there's an argument for that ('he was allowed to get away with murder because he knew some of the big beasts socially') but, equally, I did try to entertain them.

As I tried to entertain you, that time. Not hard enough, obviously, but still ...

J'ACCUSE!

I feel bad now, years later, that I didn't start a banning thread about you, Mr Fear. We could have had a competition; whoever gets the least votes by midnight on a certain day has, decently, to go.

I'd have fancied my chances, actually.

Char Aina

13:45 / 22.11.11

I think Barbelith died because it* wanted and yet didn't want to be an invisibles related message board.

Like a coffee shop calling itself 'Tea Pain', or something.

*Barbelith didn't want anything, obviously. People who describe their opinions as Barbelith did.

IT'S ALIIIIVEE!!!!

I love that there is a 3 year old, 8 page long discussion about closing it down. I vote for Carbonite, personally. Why remove all this ?

Less searchable M0rd4nt

14:07 / 28.12.12

The spambots are making a better case than I ever could.