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A renewal of focus.
Barbelith is not the be-all and end-all of message boards, and should not try to be. We cannot be all things to all people, and to try to be such is a sure path to disaster.
The key, I think, is to play to our strengths—to determine what Barbelith offers that cannot be found elsewhere—and, in all honesty, I think it's the politics, the theory, and the magick.
Gather 'round, O Best Beloved, and Uncle Jack will tell you all about the early, early days of the board, when there were only about eight of us here, and there was practically no discussion of pop culture, and what little there was, was refracted invariably through the lens of "revolution." There were lots of earnest (and, in retrospect, silly) discussions of How is Movie X 'invisible'? but, in the end, it was something we couldn't find anyplace else.
In opening up to the discussion of media for their own sake—i.e., enthusiastically rather than analytically, criticizing the art itself rather than its broader societal implications—there was some dilution of purpose, and some movement towards homogeneity with the zillion other message boards out there. There was some agonizing over the decision, way back when; but it seemed like a good way to grow the board and attract new posters who might otherwise be too intimidated to join.
Now the pendulum has swung the other way, and there's a very real strain of anti-intellectualism on the rise here—just as there is in the larger culture. And thus another bit of Barbelith's specialness is eroded, as it assimilates and in turn is assimilated. The march toward homogeneity.
It's probably too late, now: the genie is out of the bottle, and there's no going back. But (and I've said this before) I think it's worth considering that perhaps Barbelith was never meant to flourish forever, and perhaps it would be better to make our three brilliant albums and then break up at the height of our powers than to end up squeezing our fat middle-aged arses into leather trousers and doing the rounds of football stadia reprising our long-gone "greatest hits."
All that being said:
There are lots of other boards out there for the discussion of movies qua movies, of music qua music, for RPGs qua RPGs—that is, for their own sake. There are other collaborative writing fora out there, other conversation pits.
But there is still no place that blends politics and theory quite the way this place does.
Our strength. What we do best. Play to it. Leave the rest (inasmuch as it's possible) to those places which do them better. |
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), record an EP, get people interested enough in comics to have a reading group, that kind of thing. But revolution by one's self is a hard thing to do. Barbelith for me is a support system. I can bounce any outrageous idea I have off someone here and get feedback of many different kinds. I enjoy talking about games and comics and movies and collaborative creation and all that, but I think if Barbelith is still really about revolution, it's about taking these ideas and applying them to people and situations outside of the board.