Is ILF too cliquey? Are we pushing people away? BST question

[JonnyAngle]

"tgp price" = "hype price"?

Page one of tgp bst:

Wombtone mkii $320
Mobius $365
M5 $100

[PeteeBee]

I am pretty new. Please don't ban me, I like it here.
Come for the fuzz, stay for the crazy.
Mostly I like what is talked about - sometimes I post weird sounds and experiments but always everyone is nice.
I think I mostly keep coming back because of the interesting perspectives on gear in general. Someday it does feel like a silly boys club but I am pretty used to that since pretty much all of the music world is a boys club. I think the talent and perspectives of people on this board really make things nice to read and interact with. I am not a big poster but indeed a big reader. Lots of smarts here, yeah. that.

I have mixed feelings about BST - I have gotten some nice things here, even traded a bit.
All in all every deal went smoothly, I do think that it's really not a big deal if someone makes money off something I sold/was to sell etc. Usually I just want to move something out of my life that I have not really used or found to be not my style so once it's gone, well thanks.

No matter what the post count is sometimes it may seem like someone is taking advantage or whatever, but is that really true? When I try to sell something I mostly am thinking about something else I would rather have and so my attention is on that.
I think most people here make sure to send something that is exactly what they said it was, and hope to get what they were promised back in a trade. I am sure things happen and stuff doesn't go exactly right but I guess I have been lucky and as long as I can I will keep trying to believe most of the people on this board are good. I don't expect super service or something like that... ship tomorrow or I will cry is not my motto. I tend to think about the people here as standard musicians and a lot of musicians have issues that effect how punctual they are. Comes with the territory.

About things like someone making money off a deal they did - great doesn't happen much to me as I tend to lose about 10-15% or more every time so if once in a while someone gets lucky great.
It's really not my thing to follow people around and see what they do with something I obviously had decided to let go of. When I ship something, it's gone and I don't attach. Personally, I have bought things I thought I wanted and then when I got them - yech not my thing. So who knows how the inner details went and there is no reason to trash talk people for being human.

In the end, I love this board and think about it as a sort of touchstone with experimental sound things, there lots of clear minded explorers and mushroom brained shamen here and I am happy to know them. (well at least read what they think)

I love this outlook.

[karmablock]

This place is pretty cliquey. I think most of the non IRL friends I have on IG are from here. Could we be a bit more inclusive? Definitely. A post count for BST would be fine with me.

[Seance]

"tgp price" = "hype price"?

Page one of tgp bst:

Wombtone mkii $320
Mobius $365
M5 $100

The one and only time I bought through TGP was a Boss RE-20 for $150.
I think that's a good deal for that pedal. The seller was Canadian too, so
the shipping to me was also very affordable.

But my experience is limited. My gear-buying budget is slim and only ever
occasionally existent, so price fleecing on TGP or elsewhere is largely not
relevant to me. I can see how it would irk and annoy those who buy more
frequently and those who want to try cool stuff out.

I have, however, dealt directly with pedal-makers either through The Shark Tank
or the Hosted Builders threads. This is one of the great things about ILF. It's
interesting to connect on a personal/human level with people who make circuits.
It's great to support a pedal-maker directly because I'd hope that at some point
and in some way that actual sentient human beings out there will support some of
the things that I do (music, animated visuals, whatever).

As for the clique or too cliqued... I think inside jokes are good. They can go too
far and get too micro-specific. I think lumena is right. For the most part ILF people
are cool, have a sense of humor and post about all the interesting musical
exploits and sonic fuckery in which they engage. All of which makes ILF what it is.

ILF Collabs are also cool to see and full of interesting angles and perspectives.

In the end, I love this board and think about it as a sort of touchstone with experimental sound things, there lots of clear minded explorers and mushroom brained shamen here and I am happy to know them. (well at least read what they think)

[BetterOffShred]

I have had great dealings in the BST, but I do think it's kind of up to the seller to filter their pricing based off who's buying. Johnny 2post, yeah you're not getting a FuzzBro price .. sorry Holmz

And yeah the featured sellers and shark tank is dope. I would never have known about Copilot if not for this place.

As far as the cliques.. I think a lot of people have been here a long time and it's just not easy to be a part of the regular conversations there until you acquire the knowledge. Chank likes purple, ok I'll remember that in the future... Sharky likes frankenhooker, check. Etc. These kind of things endear us to eachother and it takes time. Nobody has ever been a penis to me here, and in fact everyone has been pretty cool. I guess it just felt like a bunch of dudes like me who don't care if you're a little weird. I'm sticking around.

[Chankgeez]

Chank likes purple

Likes?

[Kacey Y]

[rustywire]

@lumena idk you but I appreciate you more for that post and extend the belated welcome

Also fwiw as a continuation of my prev post itt:

NSFW: show

I regularly feel unwelcome here and most everywhere else, dismissed as "oh you're one of them" aka The Wrong Kind of whatever by assorted extremists and zealots alike. Taken for granted only scratches the surface. For all the talk of inclusivity, squashing bigotry and bullying, the most activist-minded are the biggest hypocrites and aggressors in practice, at least FME.

On more than one occasion I wrongly assumed my post count and its contents lent some sort of credibility of being sincere with such matters, where a contrasting or alternative perspective should be included in attempt to be accurate when making assertions about serious issues. Not once in my history here have I been approached by reprimanding admin or had any interpersonal, thread-spanning conflict.

I try to take great care with messaging as I have some personal issues which make choosing my words challenging. I have a knack for putting foot in mouth, despite best efforts to be surefooted. Nevertheless I'm met with misquotes, straw arguments, gas-lighting and baseless guilt-by-association accusations in the same lecture about being "unhelpful" or something by inebriated collectivist-minded people pressing others to conform. Time and time again such an individual will instigate and escalate a confrontation with falsehood, fallacy and propagandized platitudes, where my immediate instinct is to quell and mediate, connect. Sometimes that means to disassociate, as there's no reasoning with a raging bull thrashing about at anything that moves.

Ironically, I get strangers who do not listen between talking down to/past me, wrongly telling me about myself when we've never had a conversation. What do they have in common? Anger simmering beneath the surface; real contempt for an other who is different. I've seen firsthand what that does to people, it's eating poison while rooting for your *enemies* to suffer. Idk, it's been a dark decade and I'm done suffering fools who cant be bothered to get the principles correct because everything is a foregone conclusion. Also wasting precious little time casting pearls before swine [present company notwithstanding] Also too much longposting

[gnomethrone]

inebriated collectivist-minded people

Sorry for being a butthole to you on a few occasions, Rusty.

[$harkToootth]

[Ugly Nora]

I don't think you can fully judge a forum without looking at the positive qualities of the people in it. ILF has a long standing tradition of existence to its' members and to the gear community at large.

[Jwar]

I don't think you can fully judge a forum without looking at the positive qualities of the people in it. ILF has a long standing tradition of existence to its' members and to the gear community at large.

ILF has been great in a lot of ways but in a lot of other ways it has not.

Don't get me wrong, I do love the place or I wouldn't be a member, though I have given much thought to leaving.

To me we seem to have changed over the years though. In a way, ILF has always been kind of the way it is now, but it also seems like it hasn't.

I've looked back at years old threads and I see more acceptance as a whole than I generally see now. However, we didn't have nearly as many members and the new members didn't seem to do what they do now.

My point of this thread (or at least in my head) was to hopefully get a few newer folks to chime in and let us know how they feel. If they feel unwelcome, it'd be good to know. If they don't, that's also good to know.


The BST thing needs to happen IMO as well. Not sure if that's an easy thing or now. We could just ask Tom to change the rules and then we'd point it out to folks when they post outside of the rules.

[coldbrightsunlight]

are we going to get new posters who feel unwelcome posting here giving answers though? Because the whole thing about people not feeling welcome is that they don't... post...?




I would like this to be an inclusive place though and I try not to deliberately act in a way which prevents that? Which, as we're a collection of individuals, is all anyone can do.

[Chankgeez]

are we going to get new posters who feel unwelcome posting here giving answers though? Because the whole thing about people not feeling welcome is that they don't... post...?

What if we pay them to take a survey?

[adamajah]

I think BST is fine the way it is.

What I find pushes me away from ILF time and time again is when I see that most posts on here that aren't by/for the OG clique go completely ignored. And then I see those same OG people bitching about how this is supposed to be a community, all the while treating newbs poorly. Where's the LOVE in ILF?

But, overall I dig ILF and its peeps and am very glad y'all exist