Ted Gioia the esteemed author of several books on jazz and the blues, has this to say about his bad experience on setting up a website for fellow jazz fans:
"Now snark is everywhere. But its most fertile breeding ground is the Internet, where it has become the de facto tone of Web interactivity. If you doubt it, spend some time reading through the comments on a few dozen blog postings and Internet articles, and count the snark attacks. I found this out firsthand, to my amazement and dismay, after launching a jazz website in 2007. I had looked forward to forging a Web community of music fans who would share their enthusiasm for songs and artists, and talk about the music they loved. Instead, a strange crew of nasty, angry people showed up, and their bitterness seemed to spread like wildfire, often chasing away the peaceful music lover. Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised - after all, this type of vituperative discourse is all over the Web. But I had thought that jazz fans would be different. Hey didn't the jazz world invent the cool? Yet the fact that even present-day disciples of Bix and Prez are hot under the collar tells you how far the cultural tone has drifted."
I wonder what FNB's thoughts are on his adventure in creating this Web forum community?
Along with the site FNB has created the Shooman. The greatest comic triumph in world history. I look forward to the day when he's turned into a movie. But who will play him? I'd go for Paul Bettany that plays the character of Will in Margin Call and previously the comic Chaucer in A Knight's Tale.
It is best not to have too high hopes of the internet, I'm afraid.
I did not create much, just let people express themselves without fear. It is amazing how well people will behave if you let them.
The intolerance on other sites for differing opinions did much more for the site than I ever did. But then again, the vast majority of Americans simply cannot understand the concept of the talented amateur.
One note, we have more UK traffic than USA traffic! Only just, but still.
There's a wealth of real knowledge and insight on this forum that you cannot find in the fake community sites that are filled to the brim with bogus astroturfing shills for various tailors of ill repute, expense and group think posing as sartorial grassroot movements. The fabled qualities of Alden cordovan in #8 is probably the best example of group think gone viral.
This is the real grassroots movement, populated by free thinkers and those gentlemen amateurs in search of their own style and to qoute the iGents favourite 'sartorial excellence'.
I've learnt a lot from the posters here, a tremendous amount and the edifice that has been created by FNB and Jim/Russell Street over on Ivy Talk is to their credit. It so easily could have gone the way of Ted Gioia's experience.
And as Big Tony encourages, its time for the big talkers and mega-posters to get involved with some learned articles that back our inflated egos and positions
Last edited by The_Shooman (2012-01-07 07:32:45)
Contson has excelled himself this time: had bespoke shoes made 1/2 a size too big!! war har har har har!
http://www.permanentstyle.co.uk/2012/01/th.html
I see that Creepson has put Budd down as 'Mayfair' Now, it's close but it is crucially over the line into St James's. Ugh.
Which was the one who used to call Picadilly Circus Picadilly Gardens as he wrote about a made up 'stroll' of his around all the 'best places'?
I can confirm that Budd is indeed not too far away from St. James High Street and is not one of the stalls at the May Fair.
^Everyone knows that it is Piccadilly Market, Jimmy! Soon, it is rumoured, Crompie is doing a feature in The Rake and Shovel on a factory visit to Trotters' Independent Trading in Peckham, makers and purveyors of every best accessory for the city gent.