Friendships have been forged here, opinions forced, trolls fed and egos massaged… I am grateful to have met all of you…especially the ones i have connected with in real life…..
But with new posts getting 3-7 replies over several days (compared to a facebook post i made just before i started typing this, which now has 113 comments) is it really worth the server bills each month? I’m just throwing it out as an idea…. would you be horrified if we closed the forum? Personally i think what we need is an up to date site with information about new album releases, touring, and a shop that works simply and efficiently to buy music in whatever format you wish….
But i’m open to comments from the several dozen people that keep this place alive….
good question. its been fun, like many of the forums ive grown to love, they have came to a near halt. a handful of regulars, who have some productive conversation and lots of bullshitting. here the bullshitting is the minimum. i can see how this place would appear obsolete and there are other options to contact each other. there is a more personal side to this forum, its like a backdoor to say hello to some of my favorite artists.
financially it sucks to think you guys are hurting so bad you gotta scrap this site. another site i frequent had a server failure and asked for donations to replace it. im not sure if you anyone thinks its worth that option.
sure we can say hi and keep up to date on facebook, but the quality of posts by fans on your facebook arent anywhere near as thoughtful as they are here. there may not be many of us, but there are some really good lurkers here. ive always felt a little special and even now its really cool that i can address you personally. it added such a human side to music and musicians for me. no i wouldnt be horrified, and if you kept it going i may try to contribute more.
i dont know how negativity comes across on the label side. i have seen some pretty rude things said, and stuff i have taken personally. let alone, wut you the artist must feel. if this place is just a stressor and being in touch with the fans on such a level isnt for you. i say let the old dog go.
what was your goal when you created a twisted forum?
Yea I would understand if you did decide to close it, but it would be a bummer. I agree with slamminsalmon, I dont think ive ever been able to direclty comminicate with my favoirte artists until this forum came along, it is a little more personal. Not to mention being able to discuss the concepts and meaning behind your music with other true fans. Ive only been a member for a little over a month now i think, but Ive already had some very intersting discussions with other fans. And the fact that twisted artists actually contribute to the forum is really awesome, you don’t see that very often.
Another forum I go to recently gave an option to be a supporting member. For a small yearly fee they can access the forum without advertisements, and their usernames show up in fancy text. I don’t care enough about that forum enough to pay but I would pay a yearly fee to keep this forum going as long as its reasonable. Thats another option too, I didn’t even notice until just now but there are no ads on this forum, maybe a couple ads from some other cool companies or music festivals or something could generate enough money to pay for the fourm?
If Twisted decide to close the forum, that is their perogative although I think it is a cool resource to have. Twisted records certainly has been a bastion for proper intelligent psychedelic music - I hope that aspect remains.
I am sure that lovers of psychedelia will continue to morph as does the rest of the world.
Slamminsalmon you put that very well. Well before I created an account on here to post, I would frequent these forms admiring some of the wonderful input by other fans regarding your music Si, and the level of respect in those cases for your music isn’t even comparable to the kind of attention you get in heaps on your facebook account publicly. I feel that if you made an attempt to reconnect with this side of your fan base it could be very rewarding. Which I realize is a pretty presumptuous remark, but given this is your first post, in well probably close to a year is somewhat warranted. This site is an amazing archive of gush and love in many cases, it would be a shame to lose access to all that for new and old fans alike.
Some of my greatest musical discoveries over the last five years, which really enriched my hearing habits, have been initiated by the members of this forum and on this forum. One that pops up in my mind right now is Trentemoeller’s ‘Take me into your Skin’ which got me hooked for quite a while. I would never have dared to hear something non-psyish before that. Most tracks or albums recommended by the psychedelic thinking people here has been spot on to my liking (Great minds think alike :D).
Furthermore the direct interaction with the artists is something I really enjoyed (mostly passively reading other people’s conversations with the twisted-artists). I felt it to be quite unique to be listened to by world-class artists.
My perception of the troll-situation is that it has been pretty calm and peaceful over the last months. So I wouldn’t worry too much about that.
As I’m not a member of facebook, I cannot comment on the quality of postings on there. Though I recon that postings here often are insightful and pleasant to read.
If you close this forum the entertaining and most of all enriching quality of it will certainly be greatly missed. But if the forum drains resources that need to be used to create beautiful music: you gotta do what you gotta do.
Si Facebook is useful for you to connect with your fans, and absolutely useless for us to connect with each other. Of those 113 posts how many were of the “sweet track” or “WTF man! Woot! This party is gonna be crazy!” ilk? All of them? Check out how many posts Cheech and Chong get if they write something like “4:20”. Put that 113 to shame. If somebody on Facebook wants to start a meaningful conversation, whoops, there it goes down to the bottom of the stream. I’ve actually started to like some of my friends less because of Facebook (“hide all incessant irrelevant posts by this twit”) and it seems like, god, what an ego cheesefest! Judging from the photos everybody is a fabulously tanned skydiver in Machu Picchu. I’ve been on Facebook for years and all it is for me is a necessary evil.
I hate to sound maudlin but the people on here are genuine friends! True I’ve only met one in real life (hoping to up that count at the Oakland Halloween show), but the quality of the people here (my self excluded) should be obviously high, and they’re SUPERFANS! They can identify 20 seconds of an ancient Twisted track buried inaudibly in a mix; these people are a ‘human resource’ that would be cast adrift in a sea of Facebook banality. If you do decide to close the forum please give us a little notice so we can start our own (hello nerds!) or… start friending everyone on Facebook?!
Would make Cloudalker a saaaaaaad panda.
The quality of posts here and on facebook are immensely different.
Here, we (can) have actual discussions.
Look on facebook and you see a lot of: “Yo man…lookin forward to xxxxxx this weekend! Shitz gunna be dope~!”
I think if twisted artists posted more around here, you could attract more people.
Not just for mod stuff or to post a quick set…but actual social discussion.
Simon, set up a Q&A thread for yourself, and answer the first 25 posts. See how many people you can pull in.
Post a link to the forums on facebook, tell people to join up and make this place more exciting.
See what happens. There is a lot to play around with.
It’s really not hard to filter out the nonsense/trolling/garbage posts either. Just set up some anal mods to delete the bullshit. (I’ll even volunteer to do it)
This place has real potential to be something amazing. Just needs a little tender love and care.
-CW
ps: Simon, I have a little request… If you get an extra moment, would you mind sending me a pm or email with a way to privately contact you? It’s not mandatory or for anything business-related, just light discussion. Your pm box here on the forums is full or locked, otherwise I’d have messaged you there.
i am a recently joined member but i have already been affected by the forum. i posted a thread asking about details for the Ott show and the fact that I got a personal response from him was different than any experience with musicians i had ever had before. I ended up bringing 7 people to the show because he took his time to respond and help me out.
the idea of having more direct contact with the musicians is what got me to join twisted; so i could contact and have some sort of conversation with the musicians that influence my life the most. facebook provides the ability to do that, but i think that people will agree with the fact that it is less personal than this forum.
it would be sad to see it go, it seems to have great conversation with great people
Well, as “dead” as this forum is, what can you really expect? We’re on the forum of a label that very rarely releases albums (don’t take this as criticism, I think it’s a good thing. Quality > quantity ). So, naturally, there’s just not that much to talk about. After a while, people will have squeezed out every last bit of the talkworthy aspects of any given album. There’s Ott, Shpongle, Younger Brother and Prometheus, and none of them are known for their fast approach to releasing new material.
There are the occasional discussions about specific songs, good music by other artists, upcoming tour dates, new releases on the horizon and all that, but other than that there’s just not much you can talk about on the private forum of a very small and focused label.
Conclusion: While I think that activity is indeed very low, I still like the times when a new album is coming out and the hibernating Twisted followers come back to life. Would I miss it too much, though? Probably not, as the really relevant information can be found somewhere else. But I haven’t made any friends through this forum either, so it’s not like I would “lose” anyone. Electrobot, Cloudwalker etc. probably have a different opinion on this… .
Agreeing with Jahful, Facebook does bite swollen baboon ass. Someone could spend all of their time weeding through the drivel posted on Twisted FB pages and not even come close to this mammoth archive of respect and knowledge that is this forum. Nothing kick starts this place like a post from Si, Ott or Benji. Especially if its news delivered by them personally.
If this forum being dead at times is a concern then simply post on here from time to time and im positive it will surely be revived. I read in an interview that you had been hooked on creationism vs. evolution video debates on Youtube. Im sure there would be more than a few people here that would be delighted to have such discussions with you Si.
Yes, Trolls have been fed and these creatures will continue to plague the BB’s around the web. These types of things must be ignore or quickly squashed by the Mods. There are a lot of options here but I dont think deleting this forum should be one of them.
I agree with everyone above that Facebook is for quantity, whereas the twisted forum is for quality. Some people think that much of what happened to MySpace might happen to Facebook as well. Our totally unknown band Spiritual Science (we never played live) had 16000 ‘Friends’ at MySpace… but when we participated in a remix-contest, guess how many actually came to support us?
As an ancient saying goes (I can’t remember the song…)
“There’s No Saftey In Numbers”
Edit:
Gnome Doser - 21 August 2011 11:37 PM
I read in an interview that you had been hooked on creationism vs. evolution video debates on Youtube. Im sure there would be more than a few people here that would be delighted to have such discussions with you Si.
Topics like that would be a lot more relaxed (less trolls) in this forum. I wouldn’t even dare getting into that kinda stuff on YouTube. =)
with regards to facebook, i strongly agree with what phigital said. if you think about the percentage of facebook followers that actually go to the shows and buy the albums and videos, and compare it to the percentage of people on this forum doing the same, i think it’s obvious that this forum is where the true fans come, even if it isn’t the thousands you may get from facebook. it may be good exposure, but you can draw the fans in close and get them more involved and hooked with a forum like this.
as many have said above, quality is more important than quantity, and this forum is truly a quality place for good conversation. granted the occasional pointless threads (guilty myself) and things of no importance do take place as well, the quality posts make this place something that a lot of people are willing to fight for.
.
