Although this is in large part a continuation of something else, it’s also a new thing. Its own thing. Got some heavy baggage? Put it down, walk away. You’re free. Wow. Don’t get many chances in life to do that. Change your tag. Change your attitude. Change your behavior. Try something new.
Me, I’m going to try to make more threads and posts about my thoughts and things I like and want to participate in and less posts just to disagree with people. I hung out in the old lounge a fair bit for a while, had to give it up. I like a good argument, once in a while, but man, every day? It was just brutal. Stopped being fun. I mean, what’s the point even? You think the world is run by Jay-Z and Beyonce who are the leaders of the Illuminati? (Some people do, haven’t seen that particular one here though.) Well, you’ll get no argument from me. If you think that, you already know that most people don’t believe you. Maybe you just want to discuss your theory with like minded people and have me mind my own business. Hey no problem.
And so yes, all very obvious, but I see this new place based on an old place, and some of it is new and different and good, and some of it is the same old shit, and even some of the same old shit is fun and comforting, but some of it is annoying and tiresome and the people involved don’t seem happy and… why? Why just fall back into the old rut? Maybe worth some thought.
Oops, I see that you said almost exactly the same thing in another thread. Sorry, I didn’t consciously plagiarize you. Credit where due: Brainwreck said all this first and more concisely.
Nah fred, I think you had a different twist on the topic. And I think that plenty of us knew that the old lounge had it’s attractions and repulsions, some of them being a bit of both like a rickety old carnival ride. It might be interesting to know what everyone here liked and disliked about the old lounge. Maybe airing things out a bit could cut off some of the animosity that got lit up over there.
What I liked was you could discuss anything without a mod breathing down your neck and censoring you for wrongthink. That is getting rarer on the net. Plus we have music as a common bond so there’s some shared values regardless.
What I didn’t like…not that much, probably some people that just add noise to serious threads, asking inane questions over and over to derail them which then makes them hard to read. Also ad-hominems in general, not a fan of name calling, supposedly we are adults here. Conversely not a fan of reporting people for perceived offences either .
Plus it was so tribal politically especially anything regarding the US, it was hard to discuss something on it’s own merits without being flagged as supporting or being against the involved party and many times just turned into a red-blue fight regardless.
I may have also been guilty at times of the above offences,
I rocked in there in 2016 quite angry about Syria and the prevailing neoliberal mindset at the time really rubbed me the wrong way…but hopefully I’ve been better of late.
Focusing on guitar currently, it’s a fantastic distraction.
I got called a terrorist lover / terrorist supporter multiple times in the old lounge for arguing against U.S. policies.
Lots of people probably don’t know how the lounge was when it started out. It was mostly the old guys passing feel goods and high fives for the first couple of years along with some music related stuff. Then the 9/11 thread happened… Pipeline and Syd will definitely remember that one. Things got pretty raucous, and I bet the mods got a workout. For better or worse, Syd was in full force arguing that 9/11 was planned by the U.S. Pipeline got involved in the discussion and made it known at that time that he preferred hands off modding. I think it must have been the longest going and most controversial thread to ever happen in the lounge. Eventually that died down (I think it got closed, actually). But it planted seeds, and I bet I started at least a couple hundred politics threads after that, to the point that people were complaining about it. I eventually started laying off some, but other loungers were starting to do the same and politics became a mainstay in the lounge, mostly stemming from that 9/11 thread, the way that I remember it.
There were some cool mofos talking politics in the lounge back in the day, as well as plenty of defenders and apologists of U.S. policies. I think most of the original loungers got tired of arguing though and strayed away from it.
But I remember when you showed up talking about Syria, Bevosss. At that point I had been burned out pretty well like lots of the other original loungers and was staying busy with work. The Syria thing was interesting (lot’s of heavy propaganda surrounding it), and I wanted to dig into it as well, but I couldn’t at that point. So it was really nice to see someone calling bs on the whole thing as well as backing it up with good info that no one else was bringing to the table.
