JoCo toured as opening act with They Might Be Giants. While we all like TMBG, only a handful of forum people actually went there - even fewer provided detailed reports.
Fans who had ordered Artifical Heart's Level 4 started receiving their packages and went mental. Nobody knows what tune it is on the mini-clavinett-thingy. Meanwhile, us mere morals stood in silence watching those nemeses and download errors etc.
JoCo Cruise Crazy II happened. During that week a peaceful silence reigned. Then the forum exploded with 1001 pictures, stories, and most of all references you don't get if you weren't there. A quick summary for you that should make you glad you weren't there (and make every sea monkey cry out because I'm intentionally pointing out the negative stuff): Paul and Storm should have played longer/more often, JoCo's gig was (too) loud and not long enough, the boat was semi-ok (some main corridors apparently stank due to leaks in the smoking lounge), everything was terribly expensive, some people couldn't live without the internet and thus built their own internet on board, and there wasn't nearly enough space in the gaming room.
Then discussions shifted from JCCC II to JCCC III.
A radio show featuring JoCo began airing, but nobody around here paid attention because his role there is even smaller than it was during the TMBG tour.
Hah! I thought I was cynical but @Jutze has me totally beat. I'm so depressed now I can't even feel the terrible pain in all the diodes down my left side.
@Covenant asked: How many non US/Canuck fans made the cruise?
I know of two, @Angelastic and @Sus - but there might be more.
PS: One of the "famous" persons on the cruise turned out to be a smoker, but I don't know who because it's a secret and I feel left out. Therefore I'm cynical.
There was also @JanoSicek and his wife and kid, who live in Zürich. I'm not sure which one @mrgoldenbrown is thinking of from Britain but there were at least two (theyre a couple and I can't think of their forum names right now, but they were also on the first cruise and at Union Chapel last time.)
I know of a guy from Germany who was on the cruise, who I'd been hoping to meet but didn't, since he was also at the Amsterdam show and at the WWDC I was at but I did not meet him at either. We're going to deliberately avoid each other whenever we're at the same event from now on.
I was there when @mrgoldenbrown claims he discovered the secret, but my fangirl goggles prevented me from seeing it. (If you know how strongly my fangirl goggles respond to the various performers, this could be a clue.)
Speaking of references you won't get unless you were there, I was there and I still am not sure whether @Angelastic's use of the phrase "fangirl goggles" is figurative or literal. Was she "blinded" by her fangirlness or was she visually impaired by the fact that the MC Frontalot glasses she was wearing were not the correct prescription for her?
St Trousers/Blackpig is also going to be present from Yorkshire which is like England only better. )
You will know me by the humungous amount of hair I bring with me, and often leave behind.
Also hello @Covenant. I am not sure if I should welcome you as a n00b since you haven't been here since I've been here, or whether I should disappear for a few years and come back and say hello do you remember me just to add a layer of recursion?
Dunno about the rest of you, but coming to the forums lost all it's fun when everything turned into discussions of the first JoCo Cruise. Suddenly all the topics were about it, which I am sure was a LOT of fun for the in-crowd who had the time and money to go, but for me- it wasn't any fun. It made me feel left out.
But I lived in hope that when the blasted thing was over, things would go back to normal.
Nope
Now there were countless discussions of what I missed that happened on the cruise, and talks about the NEXT cruise which I would ALSO miss. ever since then the front page has been filled at least half way with discussions of SOME form of a JoCo cruise. All JCCC3 all the time...it gets old for those not a part of it. Right now there are 11 discussions on the front page of the forums with JCCC3 in the header. Which is why I am almost never here, and I REALLY miss you guys. I look in every 2-3 weeks...get discouraged by the all-cruises-all the time topics and go away again very quickly.
To whatever gods of the JoCo pages might read this- hear my plea! Create one ombibus folder for all things JoCoCruise. Into there have 3 subfolders for JCCC1, Jccc2 and JCCC3, and anything that gets posted about those topics gets stuck in the right folder. That way, hopefully, we can get back to the way it all felt 5 years ago- discussions of JoCo songs and projects, of internet games, of films and literature and silliness, of hanging with friends and just plain having fun- without feeling like a unicorn watching the ark float away...
I wonder if @Bry (or anybody who is Vanilla-savvy) might have some suggestions. At least as I remember, the old version of the forums made it easier to keep the categories separate from one another. The cruise stuff is all in a cruise category, but on the front page it's all lumped together.
I was idly wondering this morning whether the cruise discussion would be better served as its own forum, or whether that would just set up the appearance of some kind of have/have not split.
It's tricky. I can understand nervousness about explicitly splitting the community. On the other hand, I can see (from first-hand experience) where having cruise discussions dominate the forums has the effect of alienating those not attending the cruises.
There's already a bit of ad hoc self-segregation as cruise-related (and unrelated) discussions migrate from the forums to facebook groups.
@villicious Apparently I'm not Vanilla-savvy enough to avoid having three drafts of this post eaten by the forum software
@JoAnn_in_VA Welcome back -- it's really good to see you!
I have to agree that the cruise discussions feel a little exclusive to those of us who aren't cruise-crazy (was it @robgonzo who had similar sentiments sometime back?). Still, I don't know of a way to fork off the cruise discussions (or even tell the cruise discussions to fork off), being both generally unfamiliar with the forum software and generally unambitious.
It seems to me like a bit of a cultural shift -- the people on the forums who are generally most enthusiastic right now are Sea Monkeys, and the things that are out there to be enthusiastic about are largely cruise-related too.
(Even in the Old Days there was a bit of a dichotomy between people who lived places where JoCo was touring and people who didn't... I don't think it was quite so bad back then, but then back then I was in the overclass.)
It'd be nice to be able to hide threads that are categorized as Cruise, as we used to be able to do in the old forums. But if we actually sequester cruise talk somewhere else, or move them to a different forum, or something, we'll basically just lose a lot of traffic here, and frankly, a lot of people won't have much reason to check back here without the cruise, just as traffic here dipped quite a bit before the first cruise was announced. (Basically I agree with @mtgordon here.)
I don't know, I don't know what to do.
Actually I sorta know what to do -- if we want to have non-cruise discussion, if we want all those fun things that we used to do pre-cruise, we should just kick some of these off again. Let's have more games, let's have more discussions, let's do things that newer forum members, particularly ones who joined for the cruise, didn't have a chance to participate in, way back when.
The other thing I can do is shut up and stop cluttering up Cov's welcome-back thread
Short on time, but: I've looked into the Vanilla architecture & plugins for a "hide category" feature like the previous version had, to no avail. I've always intended to write a plugin to fill the gap (precisely because people like JoAnn are being chased away) but best intentions, yada yada. Hiding the category seems to me to be the best solution, since it allows people to opt out without creating a top-down split in the community.
We *also* need to foster more discussion on non-cruise topics, which I've been terrible at, sorry.
Welcome back, @Covenant, @JoAnn_in_VA! I've missed you. Please think about sticking around—I'll see about prioritising a solution for your community woes.
Maybe some of us old-timers should bump some older discussions. Maybe more of us should do more fan projects; Craig has been doing a great job there recently, and I know I should be doing a lot more.
I've also been a bit worried about the cruise discussion taking over the forums and making people feel excluded (to the point where people will ask if any sea monkeys are going to this or that concert, rather than whether any forum people are) but apparently not worried enough, since my only post in this thread was mostly about the cruise. Sorry about that. So @Covenant, @JoAnn_in_VA, welcome back! Please stick around, and post a whole lot about non-cruise-related things, so that new people can see what they've been missing out on by not joining the forums until there was a cruise to discuss.
Nice to see everyone in this thread back to commenting. I sometimes miss the old days when even without a cruise to prompt discussion I could barely keep up with the forum posts.
I think @bry is right and that a cultural shift has happened, although I remember seeing it before the cruises started - at some point pre-cruise I think there was almost a week without any posts.
I'd love to see the posts in the non-cruise threads rival the number in the cruise threads - I just think its tougher when there isn't something specific for a group of us to be excited about.... (and I appear to be ending on that not-very-helpful-but-hopeful note)
"...at some point pre-cruise I think there was almost a week without any posts."
That's true. I remember thinking at one point (and commenting, somewhere on these forums) that Twitter had killed this place. Many of the old regulars (I'm looking at you, Covenant!) had taken their lively discussion to Twitter or elsewhere. So I guess in that sense, we can thank the cruise folks for at least discussing something here!
And now look what's happening.... Covenant wanders back into the room after a long absence, and now even HE is talking about the cruise! (Yes, that was me getting bitchy and whiney about Covenant gettting bitchy and whiney about the bitchy and whiney thread).
Well, the "Get Whiney" thread was a direct response to the "Get Excited" cruise thread, so it's not too surprising that it's also somewhat cruise related.
I was alerted to this discussion about how the cruise posting has taken over the forums. It's true, the entire world is mostly about Twitter and cruises now!
I have always thought of this as your space, so you should all decide what you'd like to do about it, if anything. We could set up forums at jococruisecrazy.com if you wanted, though I think having to set up yet another account will be annoying, and I think there's at least SOME value to having them live in this space. We could see if there is some way to hide categories, we can reorganize stuff to help non-cruisers ignore the cruise, whatever you like. And if Vanilla doesn't have what we need and you think it's important to switch, I'll happily throw some resources at that. Just let me know if you need my help with something.
Or, looking at the map from even higher, if there are other tools or platforms we should be using to give this community a space to hang, I'm open to suggestions. It's 2012 after all.
Just don't write to me here, I never come in here. IT'S TERRIBLE! Just kidding.
Although I'm not usually an active participant in the forums, I do like to come in and check on the discussions, and occasionally write a brief note. I'll add my voice, as one who really wants to go on some future cruise, but probably won't ever make it.
I've noticed, too that things have been pretty cruise-centric since I signed up back in November. I will admit that I rolled my eyes when I saw the first JCCC3 tread go up the day after JCCC2. As others have mentioned, I don't think it's a good idea to split the party, as it were. I think this would go further to cement the gap that has been noted between Sea Monkeys and those of us who can't afford or attend the cruise. I don't want to outright hide the cruise threads, but tags or sub-forums of some sort would be helpful. I loved reading about some of experiences on the cruise and finding links to videos and audio of all the fun I couldn't be a part of in first person. It made me really, really want to figure out a way to make it on some future cruise. It also made me buy a bunch of music I wouldn't have otherwise. . . .
Anyway, some sort of technical solution would be welcome. But until that happens, I think other posts are right; we just need to start more interesting, non-cruise-related threads.
Regarding the forum-management discussion: I've gotten JoCo and Scarface on board with making some changes around here to make this a nicer place for ALL monkeys. I'll make a post about it in the next 24 hours. Stay tuned; I want your input!
Excellent, nice to see JoCo getting involved. Don't be a stranger Jonathan; I think all forum folks can agree that occasional interaction with you and/or your main henchman would liven things up around here.
Welcome-ish, @maletero! I'm more or less in your camp here: I'm not currently planning on attending any cruises, so even though there's a lot of cruise talk that's kinda just noise to me, it's also fun to hear all the enthusiasm about it, and I'd kinda miss it if it went away entirely.
(Also, funny to see @Himself on the forums -- it's been a while...)
Comments
I know of two, @Angelastic and @Sus - but there might be more.
PS: One of the "famous" persons on the cruise turned out to be a smoker, but I don't know who because it's a secret and I feel left out. Therefore I'm cynical.
I know of a guy from Germany who was on the cruise, who I'd been hoping to meet but didn't, since he was also at the Amsterdam show and at the WWDC I was at but I did not meet him at either. We're going to deliberately avoid each other whenever we're at the same event from now on.
I was there when @mrgoldenbrown claims he discovered the secret, but my fangirl goggles prevented me from seeing it. (If you know how strongly my fangirl goggles respond to the various performers, this could be a clue.)
@Covenant also missed the JoCo Day 2011 video.
And we missed him.
I was idly wondering this morning whether the cruise discussion would be better served as its own forum, or whether that would just set up the appearance of some kind of have/have not split.
There's already a bit of ad hoc self-segregation as cruise-related (and unrelated) discussions migrate from the forums to facebook groups.
@villicious Apparently I'm not Vanilla-savvy enough to avoid having three drafts of this post eaten by the forum software
@JoAnn_in_VA Welcome back -- it's really good to see you!
I have to agree that the cruise discussions feel a little exclusive to those of us who aren't cruise-crazy (was it @robgonzo who had similar sentiments sometime back?). Still, I don't know of a way to fork off the cruise discussions (or even tell the cruise discussions to fork off), being both generally unfamiliar with the forum software and generally unambitious.
It seems to me like a bit of a cultural shift -- the people on the forums who are generally most enthusiastic right now are Sea Monkeys, and the things that are out there to be enthusiastic about are largely cruise-related too.
(Even in the Old Days there was a bit of a dichotomy between people who lived places where JoCo was touring and people who didn't... I don't think it was quite so bad back then, but then back then I was in the overclass.)
It'd be nice to be able to hide threads that are categorized as Cruise, as we used to be able to do in the old forums. But if we actually sequester cruise talk somewhere else, or move them to a different forum, or something, we'll basically just lose a lot of traffic here, and frankly, a lot of people won't have much reason to check back here without the cruise, just as traffic here dipped quite a bit before the first cruise was announced. (Basically I agree with @mtgordon here.)
I don't know, I don't know what to do.
Actually I sorta know what to do -- if we want to have non-cruise discussion, if we want all those fun things that we used to do pre-cruise, we should just kick some of these off again. Let's have more games, let's have more discussions, let's do things that newer forum members, particularly ones who joined for the cruise, didn't have a chance to participate in, way back when.
The other thing I can do is shut up and stop cluttering up Cov's welcome-back thread
We *also* need to foster more discussion on non-cruise topics, which I've been terrible at, sorry.
Welcome back, @Covenant, @JoAnn_in_VA! I've missed you. Please think about sticking around—I'll see about prioritising a solution for your community woes.
I think @bry is right and that a cultural shift has happened, although I remember seeing it before the cruises started - at some point pre-cruise I think there was almost a week without any posts.
I'd love to see the posts in the non-cruise threads rival the number in the cruise threads - I just think its tougher when there isn't something specific for a group of us to be excited about.... (and I appear to be ending on that not-very-helpful-but-hopeful note)
That's true. I remember thinking at one point (and commenting, somewhere on these forums) that Twitter had killed this place. Many of the old regulars (I'm looking at you, Covenant!) had taken their lively discussion to Twitter or elsewhere. So I guess in that sense, we can thank the cruise folks for at least discussing something here!
And now look what's happening.... Covenant wanders back into the room after a long absence, and now even HE is talking about the cruise! (Yes, that was me getting bitchy and whiney about Covenant gettting bitchy and whiney about the bitchy and whiney thread).
Although I'm not usually an active participant in the forums, I do like to come in and check on the discussions, and occasionally write a brief note. I'll add my voice, as one who really wants to go on some future cruise, but probably won't ever make it.
I've noticed, too that things have been pretty cruise-centric since I signed up back in November. I will admit that I rolled my eyes when I saw the first JCCC3 tread go up the day after JCCC2. As others have mentioned, I don't think it's a good idea to split the party, as it were. I think this would go further to cement the gap that has been noted between Sea Monkeys and those of us who can't afford or attend the cruise. I don't want to outright hide the cruise threads, but tags or sub-forums of some sort would be helpful. I loved reading about some of experiences on the cruise and finding links to videos and audio of all the fun I couldn't be a part of in first person. It made me really, really want to figure out a way to make it on some future cruise. It also made me buy a bunch of music I wouldn't have otherwise. . . .
Anyway, some sort of technical solution would be welcome. But until that happens, I think other posts are right; we just need to start more interesting, non-cruise-related threads.
Whether we are Monkeys or Sea Monkeys we're all simians who love JoCo and I hope we can work this out!
Also: Please, please fix the search engine!
Welcome-ish, @maletero! I'm more or less in your camp here: I'm not currently planning on attending any cruises, so even though there's a lot of cruise talk that's kinda just noise to me, it's also fun to hear all the enthusiasm about it, and I'd kinda miss it if it went away entirely.
(Also, funny to see @Himself on the forums -- it's been a while...)
Look forward to seeing your thoughts, @chicazul