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All good things must come to an end

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Kali, Queen of Kitteh

13:11 / 21.12.12

YAY

Wait...how do I do that?

13:14 / 21.12.12

Ditto the Dazzler, and Kali's paragraph:

"Barbelith made me a better thinker. Period. I had never (and will probably never) find an online environment that made me check my own head, choose my words, and examine my assumptions as much as Barbelith did. Sometimes this was agonizing; often, the relentless drive to "unpack" every statement was hella irritating. But overall, it moved me from a generally lazy Internet conversationalist to a much better critical thinker. "

I honestly often think that certain people, even the Internet in general, is worse off for not having trained here. Add to that the fact that people I consider my dearest friends I met here a decade ago. My life is better for having had this place in it.

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

13:15 / 21.12.12

Sadly, mixmage, that paragraph is actually my clever husband's writing. Unless you meant my soppy bit. Which if you did, never mind me, carry on!

13:43 / 21.12.12

I, too, was late to the game. IIRC, I managed to slip in right before the board closed to new members and during the tail-end of The Fetch's total meltdown. Good times! I was warhol superstar for a while before settling in under my current handle.

I don't think I was quite prepared for the intellectual rigor of the board at first, and spent a lot of time lurking so as to acclimate myself. This was the first message board I joined. Seriously. First ever. And I'm so glad for that. This place and it's members set my expectations of what online communication should be: insanely clever, honest (sometimes brutally so), unafraid to challenge and to be challenged, and helpful. It's that last bit that really characterizes what this place meant for me back in the day. As a young man just beginning his explorations into magic, this place and it's members helped me take steps toward a positive, effective practice. And it wasn't just about the magic. I can recall a time or two when I came to the board feeling broken and messed up and you people, most of whom I only knew by screen names, helped me pick up the pieces and continue on. In those times, I know that I didn't feel worthy of the help or the compassion. But I was given both in great quantities, without hesitation, by people who did think me worthy. I can never thank you folks enough for that.

I'll leave it to others to decide whether I gave as good as I got, but I can say with confidence that I do take a certain amount of pride in some of what I was able to share here. I hope my contributions overall were a dash of spice in your life. I hope the help I was able to give made a difference. I hope I made you laugh at least once, on purpose.

I have a Twitter account, but I don't really do anything with it. I mostly post on Google+ these days, and occasionally throw something up on FB. I'll do the big reveal on FB in the TINB thread so y'all can friend me if you want. I noticed a couple names in that thread that I've got to friend, for sure. Message me if you want to find me on G+ or trade email addys or whatever.

13:59 / 21.12.12

I must have scrambled up my password before I left this place for good.

Still, I have fond memories of the Head Shop and the Temple (and whatever it was called before that).

Currently, I study philosophy and theology, and I teach at a university in Washington, D.C.

I wish you all the best.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

14:18 / 21.12.12

Hey, it's me: Mordant Carnival.

Barbelith was a huge and formative part of my life. I've met some incredible people through this place, many of whom still make up my social circle and support structures today. I should certainly put my name down on the "Barbelith ppl helped improve my brain" list. I met wise, caring, wonderful friends who I'm privileged to know; and had discussions that reshaped the way I look at the world.

This was an amazing place at its height; and if it got kinda less amazing at other times, maybe the lesson there is to know when to let things go.

Love, MC.

14:42 / 21.12.12

I don't think I've logged in since 08, but I have lurked maybe once every six months during Barbelith's long and slow death. I've always felt that Barbelith was one of the best designed forums I've ever seen. I was always disappointed that I never got to find out what happened to my favourite posters like Ganesh, alas, Stoats, Flyboy and his partner, whom I can't remember the name, and a whole bunch of others.

Anyway, thanks to Tom for everything and thanks to all those that helped shaped my thinking, shaped my politics, and gave me kicks in the arse when I needed it (look it up for yourself, there are some doozies).

If anybody remembers me and wants to chitchat
https://twitter.com/mmmontycarlo

15:53 / 21.12.12

I have to say this is one of the loveliest threads I've ever read on Barbelith and I'm so glad that Matt Jones reminded me of the date. Really enjoying hearing how everyone is doing. Spread the word to other people you know who used to be here! It's great to hear how everyone's doing.

16:25 / 21.12.12

Barbelith gave me critical thinking skills and coached me through mental illness. It was the third parent of my adolescence. No jokes. What Barbelith meant to me was massive. Thankyou all for being part of my life.

I'm a knitwear designer/craft writer now. I tweet from @knityounexttues and write vaguely pornographic things about craft at www.knityounexttuesday.com.

16:49 / 21.12.12

I am in the pub with Mike Modular who I actually met a year ago, who knew me from Barbelith even though we'd never met or even properly spoken on here. He says hello

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

17:52 / 21.12.12

The other awesome thing about Barbelith, as my first real experience of the internets, was that Haus and Flyboy basically taught me EVERYTHING I KNOW about online communication, and in particular how to deal with trolls and other assorted dicks.

And that everyone taught me how to question everything- not about other stuff, but about myself, and my own assumptions and thought processes. And you can't BUY that shit.

Essentially, without Barbelith I'd be much more of an asshole in general, and much more likely to let people who DO deserve assholery get away with it.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

17:54 / 21.12.12

And in the spirit of old-skool Barbelith creative self-pimpage, if anyone wants any Archers/Cthulhu fanfic I got some right here.

BUT I CAN'T REMEMBER THE CODE!!!

So here's just a url.

http://ambridgearcane.blogspot.co.uk/

Back in the day that could have made a great Creation thread...

Also self-pimping, I'm @mudkipstoat23 on Twitter. But I mostly just talk about The Archers.

18:06 / 21.12.12

I was thinking just the other day, long past is the time that I would type just the letter 'b' into my address bar and have this place immediately pop up. The one that will is more relevant to me just now, but nowhere near as vital and important to me as this place.

What a great place to hang out Barbelith was, with so many cool and smart people who have definitely changed me for the better with, most of the time, nothing but their words. I've got some people from here I count as dear, dear friends and this place is directly responsible for hooking me onto the more interesting tracks my life has taken since. I came to this site because of the Invisibles and it was directly responsible for me ending up working on (and being in!) All-Star Superman. Because of here I spent six years working under my favouite artist in the comics business and learned more about the craft than I would have in ten years of schooling.

At the moment, as I write, I'm sitting in the closed store of a super-cool jungle cafe on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica that I'm managing for the month. Been out here for six so far and will be for another three att least. I'm in the middle of deep shamanic medicine work with an astonishingly lucky confluence of Peyote, Ayahuasca and Iboga arriving in the area with their proper keepers. I'm being deeply humbled and joyfully buoyed by the work, having the most revelatory experiences of my life and putting to the test years of upward work. I'm waking up in my life, remembering who I am, circulating celestial energies with higher-dimensional doctors and serving lovely tourists with food and smiles. Last night, in the kitchen, I combined the restaurant's ginger cookies and coconut ice cream with a hot peanut-butter and ginger-chocolate sauce of my own devising.

Then, I ate it.

IT ALL WORKS OUT IN THE END.

Being back here and writing really brings home how much I miss this place and what it means to me. Nowhere ever inspires me to write and think the way this place did. Thanks Tom for building it, and thanks everyone else for making it a home. Love all you guys.

Still Decrescent

18:08 / 21.12.12

Yay! I feel like jumping around the apartment to loud music before the novelty of a revived lith falls away.

I noticed Morrison says the 2012 experience in The Invisibles is probably temporary and mostly just a burst of _everything you want_ and empathy. So, exactly like every twenty-third day of your life, if you're lucky. I like that, a nice revelation, over END OF THE WORLD IN FIERY DOOM AND FALLING JAGUAR MONSTERS AND NO MORE NOVELTY O NOES! But that's me, always trying to avoid falling jaguar doom and boredom.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

18:09 / 21.12.12

I WANNA "LIKE" STUFF. I wanna "like" SO MUCH STUFF.

Instead I shall ^this^ this whole thread.

Still Decrescent

18:24 / 21.12.12

I miss most of you now that I've got no active twitter or facebook going on.

And, Stoatie, (in my best Judy Garland), I think I miss you most of all.

18:37 / 21.12.12

Barbelith taught me HTML, and also that socializing on the internet was a thing that could go on a resume.

So I suppose Barbelith is in a very real way the reason my family can now eat.

Which is nice.

I still check this place out every couple of months or so, mostly because I (more than some) used this place as a kind of outboard brain. Oh, I wrote something about that thing in response to something someone much more knowledgeable than me wrote about it... where was that?

It was here.

Some of the people I admire the most, I met here. More importantly, some of the people who made me laugh the hardest, I met here.

I still have a MUSIC SAVES LIVES T-shirt, and a NO KISS-KISS BEARS FOR YOU, QUEER GRANNY! T-shirt, so I'll often be thinking of Persephone and Flyboy when getting dressed for work. (They're undershirts now, and super comfortable.) Most of my daily music intake relates one way or another to mix CDs I got from here.

Is it weird that I keep wanting to upvote or favorite posts in this thread?

I spend some time online at reddit, some on tumblr, some on twitter, lots on liminalnation.org and some still on my guildofscientifictroubadours.com site. And, I guess, on Facebook, which is where I learned this thread was going on. ("Thread" for an internet discussion was a word I learned here.) Always as grant or grantimatter (wherever "grant" was taken).

Outboard brain is part of brain.

18:39 / 21.12.12

Heh - crosspost with Stoatie.

(Who makes me want to know about The Archers, always.)

19:04 / 21.12.12

Looking around the rest of the site now, I find Dusky Sally (Mazarine that was?) has created an origami timesuit.

wembley can change in 28 days

19:15 / 21.12.12

I was a wee bit young, mentally and reading wise, in the heydays, but that never stopped me. I've always wished the board would revert from zombification and go back to being the heartbeat of my internet, because NOW I fucking know so much fucking more about gender politics and Deleuze and BDSM. Not necessarily at the same time.

I moved to Finland. I had a bit of a career in experimental theatre and performance art. I got sick of office work. I'm moving out of Finland in a few months, with absolutely no idea what the future brings. I'm 35 and I'm actually going to make that kind of a life change; which makes part of me say "why on earth do you have a life that still requires major changes", while another part of me goes "YES! You are the resurrection!"

I was always hundreds of kilometres away from the lith hub, so I never felt very close to more than a few of you - rothko and mondo, I look at you. But one thing that Barbelith instilled in me, and maybe now it's a utopia, but I'm still running with it, is the idea that the internet can be civil, and interesting, and that pictures of your lunch every day is nowhere near as interesting as browsing magick recipes, reading a first-hand account of an epileptic moment, being inspired to write 500 words on The Birds vis-a-vis feminist discourse, and all of this in the breaks in a boring office day. Without wanting to sound too rose-coloured, I feel like Barbelith represents the way I wish the internet had gone, rather than the cesspool it resembles today. This probably has as more to do with the fact that Barbelith is/was populated by reasonably like-minded individuals. But great individuals you all are.

I'm hoping to move to the UK, incidentally. Maybe I'll catch y'all in the meatspace. Thanks so much Tom for all the work. Thanks all for being so fucking awesome. I feel like I was part of the best club on the web that was.

19:32 / 21.12.12

Wow. Are we there yet? What time is it? I'll say farewell and hello this December 21st with a gift: I hereby give up my fiction-suits of "Hadalis", "Apostle Hadalis of the Church of Shaggy-Doo" and "Triffid King." If she'll let me, I also give up half of the shared identity known as "Tiresias Rex." As for my new moniker? Just call me "Scott." In other news: a shout out to the "House of Hadalis" cell from May 26, 2000 in Winston-Salem, NC: the delightful Kali, the somber Jolly Roger/The October Ghost, the ebullient Mononoke, and the mysterious Tiresias Rex (who never showed to my party). Also fond salutations to Macavity and Sleazenation who showed up late to the party....by a few months.

As for the others: Blessings to my absent friends Jack Fear and ElijahDaProphet. And to the fabulous Groovecat...wherever and whatever he may be these days.

Twelve years...wow. Not a time suit in sight. But we made it through twelve years the slow and sluggish way.

Barbelith not only gave me a creative and inspirational boost for two years, but it introduced me to Kali...a fine lady whose wedding I was honored to officiate at in March 2009.

Thanks for this, Tom. Thanks for this site.

I'm married now (ten year anniversary). One wonderful daughter named Lee. A home outside of DC. Serving a small church.

So...fare thee well to Barbelith. I may come back. This Supercontext thing is so subtle...

Be kind, people. Question authority. Watch your cholesterol. Save the planet. Join the rescue mission.

Walk in Beauty,

from the Hostess Fruit Pie-loving Invisible formerly known as Hadalis (2000 - 2002)

19:39 / 21.12.12

I can't believe I remembered a) my password and b) my username!

Does anybody know where Ganesh and Xoc ended up? I wish there was a way I could email Ganesh and thank him for his ridiculous patience with an immature pipsqueak such as myself

19:52 / 21.12.12

A postscript to my previous message:

Tried to edit the previous post...not sure if it was approved...so here we go with a few extra words...

It's been twelve years...not eleven since I last played here.

And Barbelith not only introduced me to some amazing souls, but it also gave me the necessary creative and inspirational jumpstart I needed for two years. Plus, it brought the lovely Kali into my life (yes, she flirted...a lot!)...a woman whose wedding I was fortunate enough to officiate at in March 2009. Blessings to her and Matthew!

Thank you for these gifts, Tom. Thanks again for this site.

The persona known as Hadalis, signing off. See you on the Other Side, folks...oh, wait...there is no ...there is only...

See

Now

And always, we begin again.

See now, we are

HERE.

Still Decrescent

19:54 / 21.12.12

I assume most of the board just humored me back in the day, you were all so smart, so cool, so occasionally incredibly goofy. But I had a helluva time, and even as a mostly-archive, Barbelith still has some of the best threads on the internet.

20:20 / 21.12.12

I'm still in the pub and I've posted more in this thread today than I posted on here since 2005 and that's not even an exaggeration. But weirdly I was chatting to someone randomly about North Carolina about an hour ago, and I was remembering visiting Hadalis, and I look on here and there you are! Yay

wembley can change in 28 days

20:30 / 21.12.12

I keep fucking looking for the Like button.

Poke it with a stick

20:47 / 21.12.12

Barbelith always made me feel vaguely like I'd stumbled into a party thrown by the older, cooler kids and that they just about tolerated me as I giggled on second-hand smoke and a shandy.

On the other hand, I actually got to hang out with the older, cooler kids for a while and not always entirely disgrace myself in their immediate vicinity.

9 or 10 years here and I still feel like a noob, but I guess that means I'm still learning things from you guys (though more infrequently now).

Cheers, all.

Kali, Queen of Kitteh

20:51 / 21.12.12

Aw man, I wish we all frequented Barbelith again because there really is no other place I'd like to spend forum time in the world.

And yeah, I keep looking for an effing Like button as well. Stupid Book of Faces.

Still Decrescent

20:58 / 21.12.12

^this.

Also, ^^this.

Also also: pretend I hit like on every post so far. I would if we could.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

21:13 / 21.12.12

So, seeing as how this is the only thing people are posting on right now, I've done a handy "^this^" topic to appear underneath it.

So that all the time we're doing this, there's a "^this" underneath it on the page, so we can all not feel bad about not being able to *like* stuff.

I have no idea if that works.

BUT DON'T FUCKING POST IN IT.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

21:19 / 21.12.12

Hehe. I remember the first time I ever met Barbefolks in real life. It was an anti-war demo in autumn 2001. I remember my flatmate saying "look, it's just not healthy to ACTUALLY GO DRINKING WITH YOUR IMAGINARY FRIENDS". Internets was NEW AND SCARY to us.

Healthy schmealthy.

Never looked back.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

21:47 / 21.12.12

Since grant's mentioned Liminal Nation, I thought I'd come by and encourage folks to give it a look. It's not quite as populous as the B., but it is thriving. Bit Templey but the range of discussion is increasingly broad.

There's an apps process, and I know that can be a bit daunting; however, it does ensure that people who put 53 magyykl grades after their names don't come in and track pillock all over the carpets.

21:53 / 21.12.12

Thanks, Mordant. I’ll bookmark it & check it out.

22:27 / 21.12.12

Reading all this while Pandora streams music to my earbuds offers just the right amount of romantic ambiance to the moment. Over the year I shrugged off just about any sense of significance to this time and date. But a facebook notification popping up on my bamboo skinned smartphone seems like the appropriate level of novelty for this masquerade of fiction-suits. If this is what it was all building towards, I'm fine with that.

Some things have changed; I'm older, perhaps less earnest but also more focused. My art continues to reward me for diligence and in that way there is still magic in my life. I still craft art with those who are interested via imandala.org which has conceptual roots here. I've also been published a few times, including a Children's Book which I tweet about @PLUGO. I'll follow those of you who's twitter handle is new to me and just subscribed to mondoagog's list (who's tweets are always a welcomed sight).

I have fond memories of sharing the story of my dogs here. They defined 15 years of a lifestyle only recently ended.

Sojourns up and down the S.A.L.V.I.A. scale are much less frequent these days, yet I still find uses for those experiences. I've had the honor of saving a life, maybe two. I still work at making the world just a bit more tolerable for close friends and the occasional stranger. These are values I attribute to time spend in company such as this. There's a rescue mission on the way and everyone's welcome.

I haven't been to a Barelith meet-up in the California Bay Area for a number of years but I find myself smiling at the thoughts of them. I occasionally come across bits of art created in response to one group writing project or another and still wonder whatever happened to the wondering notebooks. Sometimes a particularly insightful or funny line I read on Barbelith will come to mind. It will pop-up clearly as though I had just read it.

I'm particularly grateful for that additional layer in existence. I'm amused by imagining Barbelith as a sort of secret online society, or some kind of Invisible Collage to which I'm an alumnus.

Thanks for the memories 'Lithers, real and imagined.

22:30 / 21.12.12

Oh wow. This whole thread is kind of making me tear up.

The Nexus/Barbelith was the first internet community I was ever actually a part of, and for the past couple weeks in particular, I've really missed it. Things don't always seem to line up right, do they? I was so very, very not even remotely done cooking all those years ago, and I'm not sure who needed this more, the uncracked-egg me of the late 90s and early 00s, or me now. So I'm really extra fucking grateful for this. I wish I could've been a better contributor, but damned if I didn't luck out like crazy getting to have all your ideas thrown at me during my formative years. I miss the collective concept of you all, of us, and yeah. This was an excellent clubhouse for me to run and hide in as I stumbled vaguely towards becoming sort of an adult, and all my scraped knees and bruised elbows were the better for it, so thank you.

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