Nearly double is the number of threads that have seen a reply today (in Mundane Babble) as opposed to the regular Philosophy board?
Is it that many of the newer spate of visitors here are not of a Philosophical inclination? Do they feel more comfortable Babbling Mundanely as opposed to discussing Epistemology and Metaphysics? Am I looking into this too closely? Could it be a blessing that we are not beset by a legion of Goths all determined to loudly proclaim the virtues of Nietzsche?
Or is it the recent tone and tenor of discussions in the philosophy board itself? Why does it seem as though several topics are being monopolized by only a handful of ideas and thinkers? Are we afraid to argue? Has the discussion left that sphere of knowledge we call our own and ascended unto the heavens where only immortal thinkers may ponder them? Or is it just me?
Wait, listen to this first and picture a mass of Goths dancing with depraved abandon at a Marylin Manson concert, waving Nazi banners and sweating profusely:
There is a recent migration underway, in which many of the people who joined some months ago with no interest or capability in philosophy have all, en masse, realized that there are other threads more appropriate for them. I noticed that this migration is quite sudden. I think it’s because the non-philosophical folks mostly only replied to each other, so when one moves, the others need to follow them in order to carry on with whatever they are doing.
Edit: An Experiment. Simply list Mundane Babble and The Rant House first on the list of forums hosted here instead of down at the bottom, for perhaps a month, and see how the post frequency/relevance is affected.
To express my sentiments to our Nazi members, I offer to lead your ideology and your pursuit of victory.
However, there is some fine print you might want to look at before you sign. I’m not sure you’ll agree with the rules of my dictatorship. I make Hitler look like a confused school-girl, so keep that in mind.
(I’m kidding. Though at this point the readers of this post are experiencing irony. Enjoy.)
I’d say the recent trend has to do with people trying to apply philosophical principles to REAL LIFE, what I simply term “practical philosophy,” as opposed to the host of mental masturbation that appears to occur in the more “philosophical proper” areas…
Uccisore, I’m no philosopher and I think I actually did join before this influx you’re talking about because I noticed it myself. I joined this forum mostly because as I reviewed it from time to time and found that there was something I could learn. More recently I got frustrated because, yes, it did seem like more and more babble. I was participating in decent discussions primarily in psychology, religion, essays, creative writing and social science. But then I lost interest in the threads- they are/were particular people that were posting a lot of stuff that reminded me of why I never joined a message board before.
Are we being advertised to some new audience? I don’t know… We (those who are responding to this thread) are not the only ones who feel this way, in private conversations others have expressed the same concern. Chatting is great but that’s not the primary reason for being here. I don’t want to be sappy but I’ve had a great experience here and I just hope the forum will maintain the integrity and atmosphere that drew me into it in the first place.
Who are the shepherds who brought the flocks over here? I’m not as new as Bessy, but I’m still a relative newbie, so I’d like to know to whom we should all baaaaaa down to
psyque- how did you find this site? Some chick named “Rosemary” said she did a Google search for something completely unrelated to philosophy and ended up here. By the way- I was not reffering to you in my comment- it’s fairly obvious if you think about it…
Vort- Actually, my PS was in response to ucc’s post. I actually didn’t get all of your last message–I mean, I wasn’t sure what parts/elements/qualities of ILP you had good and bad words for.
As for how I got here, someone from another forum directed me here (I’ll refrain from naming names, so he doesn’t get guilted by association… ). But like I said to Bessy, I may have to remove myself soon, lest I lose complete touch with my 3-D life…(either that or do something to really piss off the moderators to get myself banned…hey, if I can become the first person ever banned for life on _____, I could probably do it here too… ).
I meant banned for life from ANOTHER site (I won’t print the name, but people in the know, know…the moderators prided themselves on making that site somewhere where anybody could speak his or her mind freely, unlike all the other philosophy sites (or something like that)…the only catch was that your mind had to be like theirs…oy… ).
my contributions to the religion forum are greatly under appreciated. love jesus, hate christianity, dont forget. and i disproved atheism, and identified the sensa-data perception conflict as no more than semantics in one single post. i rule bitches.
I apologize, I meant no offense. Not that such is an excuse, but it is the best I can offer.
As much as I wanted to know how or why it is that people could join a site called I Love Philosophy and not engage in discussion on the Philosophy board (I had assumed that new members here had arrived at ILP by searching for a site dealing with Philosophy, I also am aware that the internet is vast, so there were probably plenty of avenues leading to ILP).
Err run on sentence.
Anyway, as much as I wanted to know those things, I wanted to know why, as of late, it seemed as though only the same names were appearing in the Philo area. Of course I believed the two things are interconnected somehow, the delicate ebb and flow that once took place seems different now. Personally, I am burnt out, and I had wondered if maybe others had felt the same.
Another thought I had was since changing servers, perhaps many of the Philosophy contributors are MIA. What has happened, it seems to me, that many of the threads in the Philosophy forum end up being public discussions between two or three people, and with the overall number being smaller, it sometimes becomes the same two or three people committed to arguments across various threads. Not that I have done anything to change this, personally I am content to say Boobies! in the Word Association thread.
Now I am babbling.
I joined in early feb - googled “philosophy” and this site was top of the list… I’d been reading “confessions of a philosopher” by Bryan Magee and had re-read “Sophies world” soon after. I’ve read short appraisals on confucius/plato/aristotle/hegel/rousseau/locke/descartes/marx/nietzsche/machiavelli and I’d had the ‘smart-nerd invents God’ idea rattling around in my brain for a while and was looking for somewhere to post it.
In short I’m not a trained philosopher. I quickly found that I felt stupid on the philosophy board - and re-located to babbling. I don’t mind sticking my two-cents in a pure philosophy thread if I find the subject interesting and (more importantly) I can follow the arguements without starting to cry (P=M>z…? ). But I’d hesitate before posting a new thread there without doing some serious reading beforehand (which would be hard time-wise given the lifestyle I live at the mo.). I think on the philosophy board that the problem for philosophical newbies is - it’s not so much what your proposed content is - it’s how you are able to get it across, and of course how well you can defend your position - it’s frustrating to get immediately squashed by someone using ‘jargon’ (I do realize it’s my fault for not reading more) a newbie like myself doesn’t thoroughly understand. Or even worse, to get your idea baseball-batted completely out of the arena for not being serious enough. A question of technique winning out over content perhaps…? (covers head with hands, ducks waits for subsequent hail of pure-logicalic/descartesian dialectualistic/hegelian synthesistic abuse… )
That said - the philosophy board should be kept fairly exclusive, I like babbling, but as far as learning anything, well - it’s quite illuminating sometimes to watch a good discussion, with all it’s byzantine intricacy, unfold on some of the pure philo. threads. Though sometimes admittedly I sit back in amazement at how many ways humankind has come up with to split a hair.
All forums go thru cycles of high activity and low activity. I think most 'net junkies do, too. For my own part, I’ve been pretty busy lately and haven’t had as much time as I used to. And I get a little tired of arguing with the same jackasses all the time. But the joy always come back.
Sorry about the massive influx in mundane babbling section. i’ll try to cut down. hehehe
Well, i don’t know about other people. As for myself, I do read other sections of this board, but I don’t post there. Simply because I don’t believe I have enough insight and thoughtful comment that would further the threat that is posted over… way over there. After all, do we really want that area to be spammed with lots of not very well thoughtout ---->stuff<----. LOL and i believe my use of world “stuff” pretty much sums it up.
I was never trained as philosopher . My thoughts on most of the subjects are acceptable and practical at best. Since, that is my aim.
However, I do think about many things. Life in general. Believe it or not, this forum in general has been very helpful to me. I mean, how many times can you read about a threat “what is your fav color?”. Where there are 99999 reply. Which was happening on other forums.
I have search and search and I have finally found a forum where people have some brain activity. hehe
Seems as though mundane babble is only place I am confident enough to post. Not too smart, not too dumb, Just right.
anyway, i’ll end reply to mundane babbling right here. before it gets too long.
i don’t really post a whole lot anymore on any of the sections, but i still read alot of the posts. i would say that my departure from the philo section was based on three things:
getting pissy about the creation of the philosophy (heavily moderated) section. this harkens back to my general dissatisfaction with academic philosophy which derives from being a young guy searching for answers, deciding to major in philo to pursue those questions, and finding the field to be far too caught up in terminology and minor points while being fairly useless in my search for meaning. the creation of the new section made me feel like the philosophy on this site was moving in that direction and i didn’t want to deal with it.
more interesting (to me) topics in the social science, religion, mundane babble, etc. i just find more questions in those sections to be relevant to the things i am thinking about.
general amusement/laziness. i am fairly burned out with a job and classes and an attempt to do some research for some brilliant thesis topic that will make some unwitting prof really want to work with me to the extent that they help the selection committee overlook my depression-deflated GPA. alot of the comments/topics in mundane bubble are light and funny, and stop my head from hurting.
Oops! Sorry, Willem…I had originally written “owner,” but then realized that it might identify the site (think “pronoun”). I also realized that, before my banishment, a couple of moderators had become disciples of the owner (brainwashed? ), so I changed the line. But you’re absolutely right: not ALL moderators are like that over at ____.
). But like I said to Bessy, I may have to remove myself soon, lest I lose complete touch with my 3-D life…(either that or do something to really piss off the moderators to get myself banned…hey, if I can become the first person ever banned for life on _____, I could probably do it here too… 
).
). But I’d hesitate before posting a new thread there without doing some serious reading beforehand (which would be hard time-wise given the lifestyle I live at the mo.). I think on the philosophy board that the problem for philosophical newbies is - it’s not so much what your proposed content is - it’s how you are able to get it across, and of course how well you can defend your position - it’s frustrating to get immediately squashed by someone using ‘jargon’ (I do realize it’s my fault for not reading more) a newbie like myself doesn’t thoroughly understand. Or even worse, to get your idea baseball-batted completely out of the arena for not being serious enough. A question of technique winning out over content perhaps…? (covers head with hands, ducks waits for subsequent hail of pure-logicalic/descartesian dialectualistic/hegelian synthesistic abuse… 
)
Sorry about the massive influx in mundane babbling section. 
i’ll try to cut down.