Finch Platte Wrote:
Lol. Just curious, can you give examples of boards where the mean people are?
Sound Opinions Message Board (SOMB)
Hipinion (and its parent board, many years ago, PFMS, which was originally the Pitchfork message board)
I mean I don't really think those places are
mean, but they certainly don't go out of their way to welcome newcomers. And if you don't really "get" people there and where they're coming from, they can seem a lot worse than they really are.
I tried for a little while, way back after PFMS dissolved and most of it split off to form hpn, to post on another one of its offshoots, Exploding Plastic. Maybe it was just me at the time, taking things too seriously, but people there seemed downright hostile. It was mostly the older boarders from PFMS, and they didn't seem too interested in opening up their clique to any outsiders.
Also, there was a SOMB offshoot called Lots of People Posting (LOPP) that, ironically, didn't have lots of people or lots of posting, and I kind of made a brief attempt at posting there for a minute. I honestly never really liked any of those people or even had much regard for their taste in music so I'm not sure why I bothered. But some admin or mod there was even going so far as to edit my profile information to add in childish insults in the "about me" fields.
And whenever I've tried to use technical forums for any of the software packages I work with, I've encountered some of the worst trolls on the internet. Occasionally responding to my own questions, but usually responding to other people's queries that I dug up in trying to research something.
All of this is to say, if you think CMJ/Obner were ever excessively mean or indifferent toward newcomers, you've had a sheltered life on the internet. Lucky you, I guess.
