Things You Hate About TLO

[qcrisp]

Where do I hang out on the internet? Hardly anywhere. Facebook (not out of choice, but in order to adminstrate a public page), and TLO. I used to hang out a bit at Morrissey-Solo, Momus's blog, when he still had one, and one or two other places, but that's all gone for me. I'm not a teenager anymore (though I was for some decades) and flame wars over whether Morrissey has sold out or not, and their equivalent exchanges on sites devoted to different matters, have very limited appeal for me these days.

Goodreads has taken the place of some of those that have fallen by the wayside.

So, it's TLO (of long standing), Facebook (under duress out of some kind of depressing inevitability), and Goodreads (willingly but in a sparse manner).

There are plenty of posters (all of them?) at TLO who have views different to mine, but, over the course of 44 years of life, I have generally felt that, however antagonistic I find someone's views, that's my problem. Of course, if someone wants to instigate something, one has a choice between ignoring them, fleeing, or defending oneself. I do get the impression that there are some people who are incapable of imagining that they might be as offensive to others as others are offensive to them, and thus incapable of concluding from this that they don't have an exclusive right on this earth not to be offended.

Anyway, if it comes to a 'peace at all costs' solution, and if (which I doubt it does) this means all those who don't subscribe to Ligotti's well known philosophy to the letter exiting this place to make room for those who do, then I would be happy to make an exit, too.

I rather think, though, that this is not the real division among posters here, and that the real division is more along the lines I described in the paragraph above that. Some understand that 'not being offended' is not a right exclusive to them (if it is a right at all), and some don't.

	TLO THOMAS LIGOTTI ONLINE

[dr. locrian]

I take responsibility for a lot of the problems that TLO has experienced in recent years. When Cynothoglys left TLO, we lost probably our best moderator, and I haven't spent the time necessary ensuring that conversations don't spin out of control since then.

We are all human, and conflicts will occur even on TLO. It's partially growing pains. When I created the website in 1998, I never could've imagined how large and complex it would become. That stated, the site is coming up on its 19th birthday.

Thanks for your patience, everyone, and please try to monitor yourselves as much as possible. If you find yourself filled with anger or anxiety over something someone posted, please don't respond. Write to me or Brian if you feel a discussion thread has gone over the line.

I don't mind a variance of viewpoints here. That's one of the reasons threads like Catholic Corner I and II were tolerated for so long in spite of the fact that they were entirely off topic and just a couple of members were kind of taking over TLO at one point. As Strength mentioned, we're largely here to communicate with each other about Thomas Ligotti and weird fiction in general. The topics can and will expand from there, and that's fine. But please help Brian and I keep TLO a worthwhile online community to visit.

Thanks for reading all of that.

	TLO THOMAS LIGOTTI ONLINE

[dr. locrian]

P.S. Also, please refrain from personally slamming not only each other but also non-TLO members. It's fine to disagree with some public figure's stance (writer, visual artist, etc.), but resorting to name calling, defamation and other nastiness has the unfortunate effect of giving TLO a bad reputation generally.

In short: if you're unsure whether something you're about to post is acceptable or not, don't post it.

Thanks.

	TLO THOMAS LIGOTTI ONLINE

[ramonoski]

I seem to miss out on all the drama, but based on these second-hand accounts I'd hate TLO if it eventually resorted to using edited copypasta replies, such as

Quote

What in the name of Aickman did you just say about me? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, I’ve been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Qaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed submissions to various magazines and journals. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I’m one of the top writers in the entire New Weird corps. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will brutally Tuckerize you in my next story. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of White Dads across the USA and your username is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your literary career.

Anyway. Jokes aside, truth is that I'm really bad at handling drama. I'd rather walk away and let the other person think they "won" or whatever if that keeps me out of it. But I'm talking about drama. I'm all up for people discussing and debating and confronting opposing views on any given subject. But going down to namecalling, or using hearsay and assumptions as ammo, that's not cool.

For whatever reason, we're all here at TLO. Let's not be dicks to each other, at least.

	TLO THOMAS LIGOTTI ONLINE

[symbolique]

nil

[njhorror]

Mmm, what do I hate about TLO . . . no ice cream. Carry on.

	TLO THOMAS LIGOTTI ONLINE

[Ibrahim]

I believe it was Qcrisp who explained, in a post a while back, the functioning of the petitio principii, and i must say that, enfuriatingly common as its use is in many mundane situations from workplace shenanigans to late-night discussion, it is always saddening to witness it put to practice amongst intelligent interlocutors, as is occasionally the case here on TLO.
If i have contributed my share to perpetuating conversations of a negative or vehement aspect, then this is certainly in some measure indebted to having no choice but to repeat my first argument in answer to the reiteration of my correspondent's first argument.
Silence, as Dr. Locrian pointed out above, would have been wiser.

	TLO THOMAS LIGOTTI ONLINE

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

Quote Originally Posted by Hidden X

the kind of right wing views that would get you insta-banned on most genre fiction boards are tolerated here, and as a result have many active vocal proponents.

Isn't that just With Strength I Burn? However much some of us didn't like some of his statements, his conduct has been fine (as far as I've seen) and he contributes topics unique to himself.

We had a thread discussion about the "thanks" button and most of us (including me) liked it, I think.
I never reject a friend request but I don't understand the friends function on the forum, does it do anything?

I agree with Symbolique that the front page list of recent topics should be longer, much longer.

The word "sh!t" should not be automatically censored when the "N word" is allowed. Especially when that censors names like "Yosh!taka".

I enjoy the Recent Reading thread but I'd suggest that maybe we should try to limit that to the most obscure or unrelated types of books and lengthen the threads dedicated to the authors. I'd rather all our insights on these authors were gathered on their threads, very few people will trawl the Recent Reading thread for these. The authors in our community are more likely to miss what's being said about them on Recent Reading. Our Machen threads could have been much longer if we kept most of the Machen discussion on his threads.

Can threads on the same subject be merged? I know forums that do this and I appreciate the neatness. Sometimes new threads are created pointlessly.

Why was there multiple Catholic Corner threads? Did they keep getting locked?

I hope I didn't offend anyone when I joked that I didn't know who Ligotti was. I didn't mean to give the impression I didn't respect him or any of you.

[Druidic]

Strength is one of our best posters. Can't say the same about lurking trolls who invade us.

I don't agree with certain reactionary ideas on certain topics, but it shouldn't be a moderator's duty to filter out uncomfortable views – provided they are posted in a civil manner.