I’m So Out Of Touch

I’m not going to rant about how the scene has gone crap, how the community has turned sour and how everything seems a little less gripping nowadays, because everyone does that and to me it’s a little sad, it makes you think, it’s a group of bloody sites, why do we care? What I am going to say is how I feel the scene really is at it’s current state, for me, a returner/newbie, although in all truth it may feature some of the points I made above rather centrally so expect me to severely contradict myself on all points made above…

I’ve been out of sort of being in the scene inner circle (I liked to think I was in it, but I never really was – refer to bottom of article) for a while now and I’m suitably confused. I mean I’m so out of touch with the scene, the people and the frikkin in-ter-net! I don’t even know what the fuck ‘\o/’ stands for. I mean what the fuck is that? When did that come along and steal the glory of the English language. Which twat decided they should donate whole bleeding topics to that unimaginable unclear symbol so mere mortals, ala me, can’t understand. I know I could use the old internet dictionary thingy, but why should I have too. Whats with ‘tbh’ as well. Tbh this tbh that, who in there right mind actually says ‘to be honest’ that much. And ‘banter’, that annoys me. It seems like some kind of pitiful excuse to insult someone then say ‘lol! It’s only banter’. And again, who says that in real life? Public school boys who deserve a slap, that’s who. Anyhow I’ll stop groaning about peoples terrible use of text (by the way mods of every FM site out there, when telling someone off for using text don’t say ‘txt’ as you’ll find that a form of text as you are meaninglessly shortening the word, therefore contradicting yourselves, fools) and get back to the real point, which is yet to be defined.

I’m sure lots of scenesters will be with me when I say this; do you ever get the feeling your ignored. Now please, I don’t mean in your personal life so don’t start posting about ‘your deep emotional abyss’ or how you’ve written some poem about being raped by numerous family members and slitting your wrists – to the bone, hardcore! There are places you can go, like Trisha. No I mean us people who don’t spark controversy like Fantastic or Rob, or who aren’t wildly respected like Mike or Smiggs, we just do what we do. I’m not a big cheese, I’m not a force to be reckoned with, and I don’t have the endless enthusiastic feeling I’m sure Rob gets about the scene, but here is one tip to people if they actually want to make it on the scene; you can do it two ways, be a prick or be amazing. That is the sad truth of it; the scene is ruled by these two types of people, and however hard you try, it seems you have to be either one of them to get recognition. There are people on the scene who are rude, crude and openly insult people on a daily basis yet are well respected despite there failings (refer to this thread), and there are some people, like Mike (T_Side) who have a huge talent with words some of us couldn’t hope to have.

People are underrated in every corner of the scene, whether you be a graphics staff member at Throw-In who is constantly classed as underrated to the point there overrated, or whether you be a runner of a little known blog, like the former It’s A Winner or the current BlogFM or From The Side Line (which both, well Blog FM – although FTSL is still strong – show you can have a great site without on hosting, albeit not a huge resource one obviously). It is rare that the solid yet unspectacular workers of the scene get noticed, who, despite there failings always try there best and perform well, producing work that is comfortably readable and mostly enjoyable. And those section of people may be, like I once was, be a bit pissed off. Some sites encourage finding new sites, most notably FGN and the FM Portal, and will always plug them if they think they are at least acceptable, to keep there community run in an all ‘kum-ba-yar, praise the people’ kinda of way (which all is good, although everyone also likes it when the scene people get nasty; admit it). I used to run a small and equally unpretentious FM site, which went largely unnoticed by all (despite my newbie style of advertise; post everywhere, pray for hits) except for by a few scene friends, and, as the hits dried up so did my inspiration, so in most cases despite people saying ‘hits don’t matter’ must realise they do to a huge extent to most new people on the scene – as you can see I hate using the terrible word n**b – and to a large amount of veterans of FM, because nothing can make you want to write more than knowing your site has experienced a huge surge of popularity, and people want to read it.

So there you have it, to some up this rant (I hate that word too, let’s call it ‘a mixed up jumble of unnecessary words’), there is no summary. I think I’ve made my point clear enough, next time you’re browsing the scene, laughing at the ridicule Fantastic has made of some poor geeky 11 year old called Trevor, or admiring the work of the great, good and feared of the scene, think of the little guys.