The Bullies Win

[koganbot]

Rolling teenpop got trollbombed again so Dave had the mods lock it for good, not wanting to have to tattle on the trolls every month or so. Dave and Mordy say that I shouldn't look at this as the bullies winning, but I think that's a very good way of looking at it, actually, though obviously the situation is more complex than that simple statement. Really, ending the thread just ratified a situation that was long in place, which is that most of the smart people have decided that ilX is no longer worth fighting for, so they're no longer around to contribute to the tone of the place. Dave and I both had been willing to let the thread die at the end of 2007, and it had already lost some of its sparkle by the end of 2006.

Dave says "we have found something that's post-poptimistically maligned with the same vehemence as 'disco sucks' (basically most of what we're calling teenpop) and I still think it's an important conversation to be had, just not where p3dophile jokes are the funniest thing ever."

I agree; not only is teenpop worth discussing, so's the emotional disturbance we caused by discussing it seriously, though I wouldn't want to read too much into the fact that we were under attack. Bullies attack teenpop because they can, and they attacked us because they could, just as they attacked Paris Hilton because they could. Bullies like to hurt people, and they don't need deep reasons, just a target.

In any event, if you've never given it a look, rolling teenpop 2006 and the beginning of rolling teenpop 2007 were glorious.

Comments

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Agreed on the emotional disturbance, though as you're suggesting I'd hesitate to project that onto the people who were just trolling for yuks. The bigger problem is with the other people, the smart people who left, not being willing to make what-we're-calling-teenpop-as-one-word their home base -- whether this was for music preference or social reasons I don't know (of course I imagine there's a healthy dose of the former, but I think the latter are relatively unique to the music we were talking about, which is part of what made it interesting).

Also, I can play the "relevance" card: the industry's only going to keep getting weirder, and people need to be as open to hearing Christian or Disney or any other niche-pop as anything else. Not that they have to like it, but it's probably going to get bigger a lot faster than it goes away, and there's a lot to be said for understanding it -- not because we need to understand everything, but because an awful lot of it has a lot to say.

[koganbot]

The bigger problem is with the other people, the smart people who left, not being willing to make what-we're-calling-teenpop-as-one-word their home base -- whether this was for music preference or social reasons I don't know (of course I imagine there's a healthy dose of the former, but I think the latter are relatively unique to the music we were talking about, which is part of what made it interesting)

This thought is rather condensed. Could you elaborate?

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Actually I'm not sure exactly who I'm targeting with this, but my thought is that there was something widely tainted about the thread and the project of the thread sometime in 2007 -- that the casual observers kind of bought into the idea that there was something off about what we were doing. Contentwise, I don't think anything changed.

I'm also preemptively defending against the (reasonable) point that a lot of people genuinely don't like a lot of the music we talked about (jaymc brought this up at some point) -- musical preference has something to do with it. But the social issues that may have been lurking somewhere were pretty widespread, and I think the fault (if there is one) lies with otherwise reasonable people who were put off first (and probably foremost) by musical preference but second (and still importantly) by a sense of wrongness about the conversation. (I also think this social uneasiness isn't solely music-convo based, and that it touches in much wider social anxieties about children and the role of children in the general media environment.)

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

*something widely perceived to be tainted. As I said, I don't think the content of the convo changed all that much from the middle of 2006 onwards.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

*touches ON much wider social anxieties.

[koganbot]

Well, the content didn't change as far as subject matter but it did in that not nearly as many people were posting, and we lost a lot of the European input (so there was a subject there, to some extent), not because the thread was tainted but because a lot of the former contributors were long done with ilX, or were giving the board much less attention, part of the reason being that they'd been bullied themselves on other threads or were tired of observing the stupidity and meanness and dullness or they were finding other conversations elsewhere they liked, like poptimists, for instance. Edward left, Lex left, Jeff left, Mike left, Will was spending more time doing Stylus Jukebox, Anthony Easton wasn't around as much, etc. And there were some people like Miccio who were always somewhat twerpy but had interesting things to say but when I lashed back at him at one point he pretty much stopped coming around. And Tim Finney and Tim Ellison pretty much stopped posting on the thread, and this all had a cumulative effect, as people who might have clicked it to see what these people had to say then would have less of a reason to click.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

You're probably right, and I'm probably reading too much into the one outside thread that I participated in and defended the thread -- it seemed like there was a lot of general hostility being aired that I was surprised (though not that surprised) to see being expressed, but I forget that most of that hostility wasn't coming from the people who made the thread what it was. So at the moment I may be conflating the reasons you're giving (which are specific to the board culture) with the (valid but maybe not totally appropriate here) reasons I'm pasting onto a wider culture -- which I think includes a few people who were uneasy with the thread in a very vague way (and usually because they didn't read it or understand it very well) but not its useful contributors.

[koganbot]

I wouldn't say that you're reading too much into that Hilary/Humbert thread. I thought your conduct on it was very courageous, and as a result you were made a special target, or at least that's been my impression (though I haven't been surfing ilX to get an overview of the destructive commentary aimed a you and me and Xhuxk and Mordy). But that thread came against the backdrop of ilX's ongoing intellectual and moral decline; without that decline, trollbombs and destructive threads wouldn't have had much of an impact, because we'd have had enough people keeping our own conversation vital (and as I recall from skimming the Hilary/Humbert thread, it itself included some very smart contributions, but the result was just to put the teenpop thread in more of the spotlight and further embolden the bullies; and the wisdom on that thread provided by you and Tom and Tim Finney et al. didn't seem to encourage people like Jess or Deej or Al to stop acting like Good Germans and tittering along with the creeps)(though I didn't pay enough attention to that thread or to the behavior of the people I'm calling the Good Germans to know if the appellation is justified; what do you think?).

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I think the creep line is too blurry beyond the obvious level to make the distinction in any meaningful way, and anyway my interaction with the board as a whole is and was way too limited for me to make that call -- for the most part I remained (outside the teenpop thread) a lurker, which is part of what made me more of a target when I came out with guns blazing and a (justified but probably no less irritating to the community) chip on my shoulder about other people's behavior.

And I don't think the uneasiness about kids & media is simply a case of "sides"; I think it's a deeply embedded aspect of American culture that often gets pegged to conservatism but can just as easily express itself on the left or the sarcastic semi-left where I tend to hang out (yer Gawker etc.'s, maybe). Beyond the dislike Tom is echoing, I understand where a certain uneasiness comes from (e.g. Tom Breihan talking about High School Musical in '06) but it doesn't change the fact that it's not what we were doing -- hanging around middle schools waiting for the afternoon bell or something. Why or how liking Ashlee Simpson and talking about her music earnestly somehow "naturally" leads to this is something that deserves exploration, but frankly I'd rather just ignore it when I can because I doubt it has any great root, just a convenient (and generally sanctioned) mix of anxieties.

And hell I can't put myself above tittering along with the creeps occasionally, if not exactly vocally, because a lot of what they said and did was funny. So the casual titterers had no great investment in the attacks OR the conversation, and the cheap laugh won out. When there are more cheap laughs (at conversations' expense) to be had than conversations themselves, I imagine the intellectual downfall is slow and fairly natural.

[koganbot]

But I've overlooked your crucial point, which was that the Hilary/Humbert thread revealed that the "normal" nonbullies nonetheless had a basic uneasiness towards teenpop and towards our taking it seriously. Hence their being Good Germans.*

*Hmmm. The phrase "Good Germans" is itself prejudiced. No offense meant towards anyone here who actually is German or of German descent. I don't assume that Germany's behavior under Hitler revealed a national characteristic.

[koganbot]

Hah. I just saw that Robin linked this account of an attack on German students in Weymouth.

[koganbot]

tired of observing the stupidity and meanness and dullness

The stupidity and meanness and dullness of ilX, that is, not of rolling teenpop, which certainly avoided meanness, even if it had its dumb or dull moments.

Marit

[koganbot]

Btw, for Marit Larsen newbies, rolling teenpop 2006 had great discussion of her.

[koganbot]

Oh, and for deej fans, he was one of the shitbags who was part of the thread hijacking at the end.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

i wouldn't dignify them by calling them bullies? they're just lame internet weirdos (or in some cases, jealous hating bitches). surprised it didn't happen earlier anyway, ilx is that kind of place now and has been for a while. nothing to be done about it except leave them to it. I must admit I have no idea why anyone would post there any more, the entire board's become a laughing stock!

[zenith.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking about registering there again just to post death threats and the like, but I can't afford the legal hassles.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

This is a shame on one level, but on another I think it's a good thing for the teenpop conversation and particularly its participants. I can personally attest that when you're not worrying about what ILX thinks anymore the quality of yr thinking, interaction and life tends to rise back (to the levels they were at when you were buzzing about what ILX thought).

I felt angry and upset back when I read the bullying on the teenpop thread but the reason I didn't contribute there is simply that I've never liked the music at the centre of it enough to really engage with its analyses.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

(i plan to go back on ilx and gin up a bit of listenership for slugzes, by starting old-skool mark s threads, on ile and ilc and noize probably)

[justfanoe.livejournal.com]

I already wrote this in an e-mail, but I'll copy it here for posterity:

The teenpop thread was an important part of the online discussion, and it certainly played a part in my development as a music fan (without teenpop thread, probably never would have thought to take Ashlee seriously, for example). But I think it's pretty clear it's time has passed. I don't think it's necessarily good energy defeated by bad energy. If the trolls had come around in '06 the good energy would have squashed it. It's just that the good energy has slowly dwindled out and the bad energy has slowly taken over. I hate to say this, but it's not really that great a loss. The conversation continues on poptimists and Bedbugs. See you all there.