zhao

there are no accidents
only point of contention from above is that funky is a LOT less london centric than Garage, which is REALLY not interesting outside of london. funky has had a lot of international appeal far as recent UK scenes go, second only to brostep.
 

bruno

est malade
is it? i was under the impression it was the thing (london) grime producers did after the genre died. in any case i'm completely disconnected from all of this, i mentioned it as something semi-new and uninteresting to my ears on first listen (as opposed to old garage).
 

john eden

male pale and stale
There are similar threads on other forums at the moment: urban75, uk-dance, blood and fire.

But still good discussions on most of them too.

More places to go to talk = less focus perhaps.

I can't access dissensus at work now either.
 

crackerjack

Well-known member
obnoxious, narcissistic, self-aggrandizing, quasi fascistic ones will be tolerated, (obnoxious) communists such as hundredmillionlifetimes will be banned.
bruno

Can we just bury this idea that HMLT was banned for being a bit too far left? His politics are much closer to the Dissensus mainstream than, say, Craner or Vimothy and from I'd guess there are/were one or two mods who'd regard themselves as communists (though perhaps of a more anarcho bent).
 

e/y

Well-known member
nor is mr. reynolds and his all-encompassing theory of the continuum. all are treated with much respect and reverence, and some grovelling

I don't think this is really the case. I'm quite new here, but over the last few months I've been reading many of the older threads, and quite often people disagree with Reynolds (in many instances, rather strongly) on multitudes of subjects, including the 'nuum. There are even separate threads which question the validity of it, to various degrees, and you only have to take a brief look in the p*st-dubstep thread to see how upset people were with him. Obviously there is a lot of respect for Reynolds and his work - because he's a very good / important writer, but to me there absolutely isn't a sense that he's a sacred cow beyond reproach.


also, there is/was another Padraig?
 
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craner

Beast of Burden
Exactly, now Matt Ingram on the other hand...

(Only joking.)

Considering this board started life at the fag end of the first Bush Administration, based around a network of blogs that have largely shut down, it's not in bad shape. I think it is undeniable, however, that the forum is not as busy or sparky or funny or grandiose as it was even 3 years ago. A lot of arguments and feuds burnt themselves out long ago and there's a general exhaustion and confusion politically and culturally that is replicated/reflected here. Also a lot of characters have become caricatures and are thoroughly bored of their own reflection.
 

grizzleb

Well-known member
Just seems to me that dissensus is going the way of all forums really. They are less relevant nowadays as people migrate to facebook.
 

Martin D

Well-known member
not enough trolling threads.

Trolls often kill a board and are a nightmare to deal with and when it goes "real" world you're only left with one choice.

I think all the rolling threads here have slowed it down, and you don't often see as many on any other board, that's my thoughts.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
i think the people who banned him owe him an APOLOGY and should ask him to come back.

Come off it man, this is ludicrous. To imply that HMLT got banned because of his political views, or even because of the (ahem) robust way he liked to put them across, is a gross distortion of what actually happened (ah, I see crackerjack got in there before me). He got banned because 75% of his posts were just invective-laden diatribes of highly offensive and usually unprovoked ad-hominem attacks on other members, frequently interspersed with huge swaths of Zizek quotes. Spirited and impassioned debate is great, I'm sure we all love it, but that's not what HMLT engaged in most of the time; as I recall, his favoured rhetorical tactic was just to call everyone a "fascist". Laughably, he used to apply this term even to people with impeccable anti-capitalist/anti-imperialist credentials - remember when he turned on droid, of all people? - but who had a somewhat more nuanced and mature posting style than he did (which is not saying a lot). In fact there are, or at least were, a good number of other members who came from a pretty similar angle politically but were never banned or even suspended, because they were actually capable of engaging with people they didn't agree with without resorting to hysterical, childish name-calling. The dude was a straight-up troll: a very well-read and politically informed troll, but a troll nonetheless. If you just want to insult and offend people, fine, fuck off and do it on 4chan.

I hadn't heard about the nasty PMs and physical threats but I can't say I'm in the least surprised.

Edit: it's especially ironic that you're defending him by pointing out the name of this forum, when the simple fact is that HMLT couldn't cope with people who disagreed with him about ANYTHING - which, sooner of later, was everyone. Either you agreed with every word he wrote or you were some combination of "neocon", "imperialist", "racist", "Zionist" and, inevitably, "fascist"*. It wasn't exciting, it was just really fucking tedious.

*Ooh, don't forget "gliberal", "pomo" and "disavowed"!
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Anyway, in answer to gumdrops' original question, I think the forum is certainly a bit quieter than it was a few years ago but "dead" is an overstatement. Look at the Adam Curtis thread: lanugo is claiming Curtis is a shill for the NWO because he seeks to explain global socioeconomic phenomena in terms of the human motives of politicians and business leaders rather than portraying them as depraved psychopaths who cackle madly as they drink the blood of Christian infants; grizzleb, IdleRich, rob_giri and I are disagreeing with him; padraig (u.s.) is sticking up for lanugo and we've already had words like "stupid", "childish" and "fuck off" flung aroung. It's just like old times! :)
 
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crackerjack

Well-known member
Anyway, in answer to gumdrops' original question, I think the forum is certainly a bit quieter than it was a few years ago but "dead" is an overstatement. Look at the Adam Curtis thread: lanugo is claiming Curtis is a shill for the NWO because he seeks to explain global socioeconomic phenomena in terms of the human motives of politicians and business leaders rather than portraying them as depraved psychopaths who cackle madly as they drink the blood of Christian infants; grizzleb, IdleRich, rob_giri and I are disagreeing with him; padraig (u.s.) is sticking up for lanugo and we've already had words like "stupid", "childish" and "fuck off" flung aroung. It's just like old times! :)

Funn y you should mention Lanugo and HMLT in successive posts. I did wonder there for a while...
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Haha, I can see why you might think that, but HMLT didn't have lanugo's monomaniacal obsession with grand conspiracies and while I often disagree with lanugo, in all fairness he doesn't possess anything like Mr. Lifetimes' raw obnoxiousness.
 

crackerjack

Well-known member
Haha, I can see why you might think that, but HMLT didn't have lanugo's monomaniacal obsession with grand conspiracies and while I often disagree with lanugo, in all fairness he doesn't possess anything like Mr. Lifetimes' raw obnoxiousness.

Agreed on both counts. But yunno, people change...
 

gumdrops

Well-known member
the music board is def kinda dead (or it could just be i have nothing new to say myself, i have to think carefully before posting there now in case its already been said)

the others a bit less so

but without the music board i think the other boards suffer a bit
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Agreed on both counts. But yunno, people change...

That's true, of course, but I do really relish the image of HMLT as a doddery but permanently furious octegenarian, hobbling up the road to his local corner shop in a threadbare jacket decorated with pin badges bearing the hammer-and-sickle and the Palestinian flag, RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE still just about legible on the discoloured T-shirt underneath, then yelling "FASCISTS!" and feebly attempting to set about the bemused Sikh behind the counter with his stick because the price of a pint of milk's gone up a few cents...
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Basically Wolfie from Citizen Smith crossed with Victor Meldrew, with shades of Steptoe Snr.
 
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e/y

Well-known member
that made me laugh uncontrollably, and I don't even really know who HMLT was.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Definitely not dead but quiet at times. I agree with what people have said - I think that the rolling threads tend to encourage short posts just listing a book/film or whatever and a few bits about why you like it. They don't really lead to debate in the way that an actual thread entirely devoted to one subject might. I also think that there are a few too many posts in various threads that consist only of a link - some kind of explanation should always be attached I reckon - although I'm sure I've done it myself.
HMLT had to go I reckon, when he was around there was nothing but increasingly vicious arguments which meant that no kind of actual debate could really take place. Also, when he was banned but sneaked back in in a new name he was always tolerated until he flipped out again. Whether or not it's best for dissensus I'm sure it's best for him, I don't think it can be good for someone's mental or even physical health to be spending that much time getting that annoyed about everything. On the other hand I could never figure out why that Australian guy kept getting banned.
True about it being London-centric I fear. I'm not quite sure why that should be - I joined because I was googling a record which led to Woebot's blog which led here and that kind of thing can presumably happen to anyone whether they're based in London or Peru. I guess that the more people from London there are the more stuff gets written about London and so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy or vicious circle or something. Definitely a shame because I liked it when there was a more international flavour, it just made things more interesting.
Always found your posts interesting Bruno.
 
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