I’m more fond of Jeff than I am of some of the others over there. He’s generally a cluey and decent dude, but he has one glaring blind spot. And, even in that blind spot, I think he’s clueless rather than malicious.
OTOH, I don’t have the appropriate chromosomes to be the subject of that blind spot, so I’m not in the best position to judge.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m glad for his presence on the BBS and he seems to understand that something has gone terribly wrong there, but I don’t think he fully comprehends how a technically oriented mindset has exacerbated the situation.
Well, let me describe the evolution of my own mindset on the place. I first came to boingboing.net when a co-worker forwarded links to me of articles he knew I’d find interesting. This would probably be around eight or nine years ago, and at the time I wasn’t aware of any “community” as such. (I don’t even know what form, if any, comments on the blog took at that time.) I just read the nifty articles and saw a few ads and figured that was the whole of the experience. I didn’t expect anything at all. There was just stuff to read, and ads to support it. Things began to change once I found a way to comment on articles, and found the courage to do so. Eventually, the comments turned into another feature of the experience for me, another way of killing idle time at work, and as I started becoming familiar with the usernames of regulars, I started making friends. Neat! However:
I can’t say I ever felt that BoingBoing ever really solicited my attention. It was always just there, whether I read it or not. The articles were meant to be interesting, of course, but weren’t written for me. I always got the impression that Mark and Cory and Rob and Xeni and Maggie would essentially be writing and posting the same shit whether they had an audience of twelve million, or an audience of twelve; it really did seem like a labor of love. Sure, by then it was long since monetized and profitable, but it never felt profit-driven.
I do think that this mindset was what led to the enabling of comments on the blog in the first place, but I don’t think that this happy optimistic mindset survived for too long. I remember when Mark and Xeni and Cory used to engage with the commenters all the time. They don’t really do that anymore, you noticed? For some reason, the 2-way exchange of information just isn’t all that valuable to them anymore. Rob still comes out to play, and Jason seems to want to be in on the 2-way back and forth (but only on his terms), but that’s about it. Jason has mentioned that the BBS is a drag, that most commenters constitute a tiny percentage of all BoingBoing viewers as a whole, that the blog is a soapbox for the “Authors” and the BBS is nothing more than a place to discuss the Authors’ posts.
Sure, we were “led to expect a platform where [we] can engage in open discussions, build and maintain friendships, and so on.” But that was, apparently, our mistake. Such was not the intended purpose of the BBS. They permitted this little infestation of boisterous, engaged commenters and encouraged it to grow into a community while it was still fun for them. But now that we’ve made friends and set up small subcommunities and played some games and put down roots, and started to tend the gardens…
Well, hell. Nobody ever told us to do that. They turned a vacant lot into a tasteful, well-furnished garden with seats and shade and conversation pits, along with flyers and temporary art installations and performances… and sometimes we felt encouraged to put on little shows and games of our own in this garden. Plus, we were actively encouraged to weed the flowerbeds and salt the slugs!
But then we put down roots. We moved in. We’d get smart-alecky with the landlords. We’d loudly mock the wares at the concession stand. We’d put our feet up on the upholstery like we owned it, we’d publicly deride the tastes and ethics and talents and judgment of the landlords, we’d sigh about how far the joint’s standards have fallen… and when one of our buddies poked too hard on the wrong day and got kicked out a bit too hard, we rose up and demanded satisfaction.
Like we owned the place.
Yeah, like that. Nobody told us to put down roots on the BBS. Nobody told us it was a place to make friends and build a community. We just went ahead and did it organically, which is one reason why it flourished like it did. But it turns out we were borderline trespassing by doing so.
What I came to realize is that we, the BBS commentariat (former and current) are an audience. We tune in, they show us what they got, our time is more-or-less pleasantly wasted, and that is meant to be the sum total of our relationship to the site. Once upon a time, they had The Submitterator, whereby users could contribute content to the blog, for which they’d generally tender thanks. That went away. If they still mine the BBS for ideas or links, they sure as hell don’t acknowledge it anymore.
No, if there was a time when they sought any emotional investment from their audience, those days are long past. They’re a blog, and we’re eyeballs. I think they only keep the BBS around out of habit, or maybe because Rob still feels some obligation to the community that grew in it. Nobody else there gives Shit One about the BBS, and the Publisher would cut it loose in a heartbeat if he could convince everyone else to let him. Our “right,” as you put it, to expect anything more from them, if it exists at all, is wholly unenforceable. Which is why we’re here and not there.
Jason has made it plain that the BBS does not contribute significantly to their bottom line. He’s told me that it’s a wash at best. I don’t know how much they paid Falcor, but it obviously wasn’t enough.
Can’t argue with that.
Wasn’t there a weekend though for Regs (and other BBS users) a few years ago? Like a formal get together with meetings and the hosts and whatever? Somewhere is California, I thought?
I recall wanting to go but the price being too much- $1500, maybe (plus air fair, for me…).
Maybe it was their try, and maybe it was too much work for the profit (if any) involved?
Who knows. A damn shame any way.
I suspect that this is underestimating the impact of the BBS. I came for the articles but stayed for the comments, and it was years before I even registered to post let alone started to contribute. I know I read a lot of articles so I could go to the comments and see what people were saying about it.
Also, it’s not like squatting on an abandoned lot, we didn’t repurpose an unused part of their website. You don’t set up a BBS without the expectation that people are going to engage with each other and build communities. It’s what BBS’s are for, and that’s always been the case.
And here’s my thing about that [checks milk crate is sound before stepping on it]:
What is BBS really known for, really known for? How is it mentioned in books like A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius? It’s about a group of then-young adults being disruptors, founding their own zine, shaking up the establishment. The border between audience and presenter is forever blurred! Because World Wide Web!
And that’s not really that radical, because it’s exactly what Vannevar Bush proposed in 1945. Here’s the link:
https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/303881/
The Future, which starts Now, means it’s unlikely any one person will get rich (though some will)… but lots of people can contribute and make some coin doing so.
And that means a supporting community is essential.
Like her or hate her, it’s how Amanda Palmer does things. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Hit Record are perhaps a better example, with G-L using his Hollywood leverage to float some smaller boats (he’s also up-front about how everyone makes money, which is rare).
But what makes bb weird is that they espouse all that, often report on it (though less of late), and then when they attract people of the same ilk, they scold and ban them.
That’s bullshit.
Think of the common observation people have about how the commentariat, those with topic-starting privileges, often generate better discussion than the headline pages.
Isn’t it strange how it seems none of the commenters, some of whom are very good writers who align well with bb, have ever been invited to be bloggers (at least in a long, long time)?
And if you’re going to sell stuff, cool! Just be up-front about it, and don’t alienate chunks of your audience by, oh I don’t know, having tonnes of neutral tech stuff and a certain amount of for-men stuff but virtually no for-women stuff. Oh, and have some of the neutral tech stuff have distinctly for-men ad copy.
Especially when you keep posting positive articles about Cindy Gallop. That makes it look like you don’t know what you’re doing, that you haven’t done any market research, and that you’re not paying attention to your own damn self.
So no. In my books you don’t get to say “Interactive! Global! Network! Inclusive! New ways!” and then tell everyone to shut up because you’re the star, they’re the audience, and the real model is not Future Now but some cross between a tabloid newspaper and a 1950s-style sponsored show like The Colgate News Hour.
Fuck that.
They had a shindig. It was SUPER pricey. It was in CA so not convenient for anyone on East Coast. It was NOT oriented in any specific way toward the BBS community that already existed but was just in general for people who visit the blog. There was, for example, no BBS group meetup scheduled into the plans. It was all just presentations.
Yep. And that’s a relatively recent development, too.
At least a couple of us, to my direct knowledge, were invited to contribute articles for pay, but that was indeed some time ago. I am unaware of any BB bylines from any name I recognize from the BBS commentariat in the past couple of years.
Xeni certainly seemed to be a larger presence on the blog a few years ago, and certainly MKB is sorely missed. I don’t think Caroline and Andrea make up for the loss of those voices, though it may not be fair to expect that of them. But that’s certainly an excellent point you raise.
In case I wasn’t clear about my own mindset, this attitude you mention is JLW’s, and as far as I can tell, nobody else’s. But if the rest of them feel he’s wrong about this, I’ve seen no evidence of it.
Anyway. I only offer my perspective as an effort to describe what I think is going on. I don’t endorse Jason’s attitude at all, myself. I wish you guys could make him see things our way. I’ve tried repeatedly, and given up.
I have been starting up a business and learning a lot about “building tribes” and all the cool stuff these days.
The idea that it is a total money-grubbing situation to do that is wrong, and it’s why we are pissed about BoingBoing.
Fact is, I would have been happy to give BoingBoing my money and lots of it because I loved it. It got me.
If Xeni had made some products that actually related to the work she was doing at BoingBoing and specifically met my interests, I would have bought it.
Look at what Rob did with the safe opening thread and the Kickstarter. We loved that. That was what I dreamt it could be. We could have riffed forever on that safe opening theme. His video he made was hilarious. Guys, we spent like $300 to watch Rob open an empty safe! I’d have def given him more to do more stuff like that.
Instead they kept pushing stupid Amazon affiliate links that had jack shit to do with our conversations or interests.
If they had created events where community members got to co-create, got to hobnob, we’d have all ponied up for that. All that “maker” stuff - yeah, maybe we could have all been somehow making something together?
Frankly, we are probably an affluent group being pretty tech savvy. Our issue was they weren’t taking enough money from us. We wanted to support them. We wanted the business to be about us and our needs, and they weren’t listening.
It’s such a lovely (and yet still somewhat grimy) turn of phrase that I have definitely adopted. Thank you for it!
I agree jlw is the worst perpetrator. He should watch some old clips of Hollywood stars interacting with fans at red carpet events (I’m thinking 1950s-60s) and learn how to at least fake graciousness.
Back in the dot-com days I met a few millionaires and one billionaire at work. The billionaire held the door open for me as we left the boardroom and thanked me for all the time I must have spent on my presentation – which my millionaire boss ruined by interrupting constantly.
Even in a me-seller/you-consumer environment, you’re supposed to treat the audience nicely, even when they’re frustrating you. It’s something I struggle with myself, so it annoys the crap out of me when higher-profile people fail at it.
I’m not sure jlw isn’t just the most visible one, though. I’ve seen too many people spout on and on about cultural anarchy! level the playing field! when really what they wanted was to get ahead themselves and damn everyone else.
I saw someone once do an “interactive” art piece that turned audience members into extras/props. They freaked out when audience members said they didn’t like that, and freaked out again when the friends they’d got to help said they would have liked to be thanked for their work (not paid, just thanked).
The icing on the cake for me was LC changing his picture.
LInk?
Melz has the link above:
https://bbs.elsewhere.cafe/t/a-conversation-gone-wrong/663/53?u=patrx2
It’s the thumbnail with the middle fingers.
The free articles are how they solicit your attention and that comes associated with branding like “happy mutant” which, in turn, invites you to feel that you’re part of something. Mark’s profit motive is fairly obvious, given how many of his posts are extolling the virtues of cellphone batteries, but for the authors in general it’s less direct—they’re building an audience for their books and other projects. The interesting things are there to keep your eyes on the site until such time as they have something to promote. I’m sure there’s fun in it for them as well, but it’s also noteworthy that few of them actually follow their own site closely enough to notice all of the duplicate posts.
Perhaps part of the reason Jason is so difficult is that he (to my knowledge) doesn’t have much to promote, so he’s only concerned with ad revenue, rather than the secondary benefits of being able to advertise a book tour. [quote=“Donald_Petersen, post:83, topic:663”]
Sure, we were “led to expect a platform where [we] can engage in open discussions, build and maintain friendships, and so on.” But that was, apparently, our mistake. Such was not the intended purpose of the BBS. They permitted this little infestation of boisterous, engaged commenters and encouraged it to grow into a community while it was still fun for them. But now that we’ve made friends and set up small subcommunities and played some games and put down roots, and started to tend the gardens…
Well, hell. Nobody ever told us to do that. They turned a vacant lot into a tasteful, well-furnished garden with seats and shade and conversation pits, along with flyers and temporary art installations and performances… and sometimes we felt encouraged to put on little shows and games of our own in this garden. Plus, we were actively encouraged to weed the flowerbeds and salt the slugs!
But then we put down roots. We moved in. We’d get smart-alecky with the landlords. We’d loudly mock the wares at the concession stand. We’d put our feet up on the upholstery like we owned it, we’d publicly deride the tastes and ethics and talents and judgment of the landlords, we’d sigh about how far the joint’s standards have fallen… and when one of our buddies poked too hard on the wrong day and got kicked out a bit too hard, we rose up and demanded satisfaction.
Like we owned the place.
[/quote]
I think that’s an accurate representation of how Jason, at least, currently views the situation, and I like that you’re challenging us to think about it from his position, but I disagree with his assessment.
As @strokeybeard says, “You don’t set up a BBS without the expectation that people are going to engage with each other and build communities.” When you set up a bounce house on your lawn, kids don’t need to be “told” what to do with it. BB could have had a much more limited comment system, like Disqus, if all they wanted was for people to comment on posts by the authors. Either they intended to build a community around their brand, or they really, really ought to have known better.
Having set up a bounce house, Jason has discovered that he doesn’t like the noise, and he’s started shouting at the kids because they’re not bouncing quietly, in the correct fashion, and people are starting to cry. Maybe he has a point about the noise, but he’s not making it in a way that’s consistent with the values that BB extols. When you post about how great online communities are, and why it’s important to treat your users with respect (as Jason himself has tweeted), you’re clearly signaling to people that your online community is going to be managed in a similar fashion. He’s simply not making the effort to do so, and people are rightly feeling betrayed.
And that’s the point for me—it’s not the dispute itself, it’s his reaction. It’s the fact that BoingBoing (of all places) isn’t able to maintain a healthy dialog with its users. If they just want us to sit down and shut up, then they should have signaled that from the beginning. Don’t dress up like a clown and then get angry at kids when they jump onto your lap.
And maybe that’s all this is about—they’re realizing that they shouldn’t have dressed like a clown, and we’re realizing that they’re not actually fun.
Again, that’s his responsibility. BB set up a BBS and signaled that it celebrates online community. If the BBS has turned out to be a drain on resources, and his response is to disrespect its users, then he’s only making it worse by turning it into a factory for resentment.
That having been said, I agree with @strokeybeard that he’s selling it short, and as I alluded to earlier, this may be attributable to a narrow focus on ad revenue. The secondary benefits of having a large and highly skilled community coalesce around your brand are considerable, but he apparently lacks the finesse, interest or charisma to tap them.
Leaving there for here is how we enforced it.
Thank you for articulating so well what I was trying to express above. 
This.
I mean, what if they ran little sales related to status/happenings/accomplishments on the bbs? Stickers or patches or whatever? Hell, what about selling some t-shirts or whatever- related/aimed at the bbs? I’d have gone in for some of that.
As a small example: there was a bike thread over there- it had been around a good long time. I’d have likely kicked in for a BBS team jersey- and happily paid them a cut.
Or: Rob liked mechanical keyboard. Lots of other people on the BBS did too. What about a custom cap set?
Maybe instead of me talking about what they didn’t do there, we should talk about what we want to do here?
This seems more fruitful, in the long run.
At this point, I’m not quite sure if we should build a business around out community. It might detract from the community itself to have a sanctioned blog.
What I have been doing is long-form articles and columns that I just throw up here. They tend to be weird, somewhat informative, and possibly useful for people in the scene.
Edit:
I’m speaking on my own behalf. I don’t speak for everyone, just myself.
Which, ironically, was another literal way of saying “fucksocks.”