luka

Well-known member
None of those things. I was thinking of the encounter groups, the group therapy sessions
 

luka

Well-known member
So worth thinking about how a commitment to 'honesty' might enable our worst instincts, or even create them.
 
One of the things that's difficult is that we are all conflicted messes so much of the time. Emotional honesty is hard because you have to squeeze stuff into a form that others will understand, care about, react to. language by its very nature forces you to leave stuff out, tell a single story. to have something make sense to someone else we have to sacrifice parts of the experience
 
Reminds me of this bit from david foster wallace (i imagine you all hate) in good old neon

What exactly do you think you are?
The millions and trillions of thoughts, memories,
juxtapositions — even crazy ones like this, you’re thinking — that flash
through your head and disappear? Some sum or remainder of these?
Your history? Do you know how long it’s been since I told you I was a
fraud? Do you remember you were looking at the respicem watch
hanging from the rearview and seeing the time, 9:17? What are you
looking at right now? Coincidence? What if no time has passed at all?*
The truth is you’ve already heard this. That this is what it’s like. That
it’s what makes room for the universes inside you, all the endless inbent
fractals of connection and symphonies of different voices, the infinities you
can never show another soul. And you think it makes you
a fraud, the tiny fraction anyone else ever sees? Of course you’re a
fraud, of course what people see is never you. And of course you know
this, and of course you try to manage what part they see if you know
it’s only a part. Who wouldn’t? It’s called free will, Sherlock. But at the
same time it’s why it feels so good to break down and cry in front of
others, or to laugh, or speak in tongues, or chant in Bengali — it’s not
English anymore, it’s not getting squeezed through any hole.
 

luka

Well-known member
One of the things that's difficult is that we are all conflicted messes so much of the time. Emotional honesty is hard because you have to squeeze stuff into a form that others will understand, care about, react to. language by its very nature forces you to leave stuff out, tell a single story. to have something make sense to someone else we have to sacrifice parts of the experience

But also that at the point of emotional excitation everything else is excluded. when angry you express anger. When you're despairing you jump off a bridge. The bigger picture isn't really available.
 

droid

Well-known member
this is a bit defeatist droid, so what are you doing now? nobly captaining the ship while it goes down?

Its just basic duty of care after some very negative feedback. No matter how scinitllating the conversation, youre not going to invite your friends to a cafe where beatings regularly occur, are you?

And no, nobody ever mistook me for noble, or a captain.
 
There's a loyalist bar at the bottom of the street where I grew up. UDA haunt. It was intimidating to walk past at night as a kid, had pint glasses thrown at us, someone was shot dead outside, my brothers were beat up a few times in the 90s, always bother in july and around the parades. Shithole. It's been quiet for about ten years but nobody my age or up who remembers would go in there. I found out a few months back that younger ones are starting to use it for birthdays and raves. The person who told me wasn't local and had little knowledge of its past. There's a lesson here droid. Do I have to spell it out? Luka is an orange man. We must encourage new blood.
 

luka

Well-known member
Dissensus is self selecting. Ive never invited anyone. Or at least if I had they turned tail and ran as soon as they saw it.
 

droid

Well-known member
lol, I know you want to kill Luka and feast upon his heart and brain. I just want him to be less obnoxious.
 

luka

Well-known member
People just appear here. Since Barty joined things have been going from strength to strength so I wouldn't worry too much about the numbers. They're looking good and trending upwards.
 

luka

Well-known member
We would all like to end what Barty referred to as the boom and bust cycle. That is a problem that so far has been insolvable. The dream is to get on an upward gradient and keep following it.
 
Who can give me insights on traffic and lurkers? A few nights earlier in the month the music forum had upwards of 500 viewers, who the fuck are they?
 
The barrier to entry was that everyone seemed intimidatingly clever before. Not a bad thing necessarily, as kpunk said in niceness is evil rant

All worthwhile boards are to some degree intimidating: that was certainly the case on alt.movies.kubrick (on which Padraig and I cut our teeth) when it was good. It was intimidating in the same sense that I used to find the NME intimidating, when Penman and Morley wrote for it. Intimidating in that it demanded something of you, made you want to be more than what you were, made you want to be worthy of it. ILM is intimidating. My problem with ILM is, again, not antagonism, but smugness - the one-liner, one-upmanship culture of getting one over on someone else with no deeper project.

This still exists but to a much lesser degree. what are the barriers now? assuming there are lurkers who might like to post but don't
 

luka

Well-known member
Trillhouse, who appears from time to time to promote his mixes of Japanese video game music said it was the speed discussions move at, the fact that those discussions refer to other previous discussions embedded in various 60 pages threads, and an incestuous history which snakes back 15 years
 

luka

Well-known member
But ultimately different people will be repelled for different reasons. For some people it will be too laddish, some people will have the opposite reaction, finding it too nerdy, too incel. For some people it will be intimidatingly clever, for other people it will be beneath them.

We don't need to do much different in my opinion. Just keep the quality of conversation and commitment high. Build trust. Try and minimise the squabbling.
 
I can see that. That definitely gives the impression of a discussion between friends that all have the same reference points, so not welcoming. I think it was longer more in depth discussion on a few threads that encouraged me back too. Maybe we need to be pro-active about it. Outward facing, Maybe like i dunno... a zine, here's what we have to offer everyone, join us!
 

luka

Well-known member
I can see that. That definitely gives the impression of a discussion between friends that all have the same reference points, so not welcoming. I think it was longer more in depth discussion on a few threads that encouraged me back too. Maybe we need to be pro-active about it. Outward facing, Maybe like i dunno... a zine, here's what we have to offer everyone, join us!

I don't think so. I think the fact that it is a discussion between friends makes people want to be involved, to crack the social code and be part of it. We are not a lending library.
 
Top