A dead five weeks on RockSquawk's busiest forum.
RockSquawk. Oh, what a wasteland.
Go ahead, survey the landscape. Endless forums, nearly each one abandoned. The time between posts is as frightening as a town with no people. A visitor is left to wonder– “what on earth happened here?” The few who remain are a hardscrabble lot. They make an occasional post, which not surprisingly, all seem to be inside jokes. For kicks, one will comically “squat” in a vacant subforum to see if they can get away with it. They do.
Our own little Detroit. Call it the “Blight of Albuquerque Music.”
“Wait, wait, wait– what the hell is RockSquawk?” Ahh, good question. Rocksquawk is an Albuquerque band cemetary.
Actually, RockSquawk is a forum for Albuquerque music that is hosted by the Alibi. I don’t know exact dates or names– nor am I a reporter– so I’m going from memory on some of this stuff. It was started up by Dandee Fleming and Jim Phillips (both members of Lousy Robot) in early, early 2003, maybe even 2002. Over the next several years or so it grew modestly and then they sold it off to the Alibi. Again, not sure on the date but it could be in the 2005-2007 range. I don’t know if it had peaked before or after the sale– and I’m not implying that it was the Alibi’s fault– but they were definitely left holding the bag. The space is just dead.
The question is, “why is it dead?” or, if you’re feeling spunky, “Who killed it?”
Here are the “suspects”:
Social Networking Sites
This is an easy answer just because of the timing, though RockSquawk’s rise comes with Friendster and MySpace but the decline falls more or less in line with Facebook. Did people leave for SNSs? Maybe, but only because an internet forum is different than a personal or even band SNS page. A forum is based around threads— one topic is addressed and many different registered users respond. The forum format, and RockSquawk, isn’t designed to do what bands want to be done, namely, promote their band. Forums provide much more equal footing between fan and band.
Infamous Albuquerque Apathy
People love to say that, “nothing ever happens in Albuquerque…. I’m moving to _______” and then insert hip city of the time period: Chicago, New York, Portland, Austin. Much less happens here, sure, but there’s always something going on. This is the kind of town in which you have to make your own party but nothing is ever stopping you.
Concerning RockSquawk, its true, some notable bands were so hip (or thought they were) that they refused to join. Others knew from the start that it wasn’t for them. Writing about music isn’t easy. For musicians who grew up in times before you had to have a “web presence,” a forum or even a webpage was incredibly foreign and unnecessary.
Yet in 2011, if you’re a new band, its pretty obvious that you do NOT get a forum on RockSquawk. Why? Well, its like arriving at a party and the only people there are 7 or so scraggly looking dudes (and one token woman) and they are either:
a) really, really, REALLY happy to see you, or…
b) sizing you up to see if you’re tough enough to hang
In both cases, you’re searching for the door.
And both are probably true. Users of RockSquawk want it to be a lively place but they also don’t know how to deal with strangers. It can be so provincial on RockSquawk that its not hard for a newcomer to feel out of the loop and even belittled really quick.
The Alibi
After acquiring RockSquawk, maybe the Alibi didn’t put any resources, time, or people into it? It’s hard to say. The forums are clearly prominent enough on their website. Maybe it is geared towards musicians and not enough towards fans of music? One thing is certain, they didn’t change anything because RockSquawk looks almost identical to what it was like in the first years of its existence. It hasn’t evolved in any way. Maybe this goes back to the apathy thing.
I’d hate anyone to blame the Alibi, really, though they can be part of the solution…. (see below).
Terrorists!
Its possible, don’t rule it out. The Tea-Party isn’t.
All of the above (minus terrorists…) are probably partly true but here’s the real answer, if you’re asking me….
RockSquawk Didn’t Match Reality!
What happened online in RockSquawk’s “virtual” world didn’t match what was going on in the venues, practice spaces, and recording studios.
A band that could consistently draw 100 people to their show (and that’s a lot out here….) would have no one on their forum. No one, zilch. Meanwhile, nonstop chatter would take place in a band forum with no draw to speak of.
If you took a snapshot to see which bands had a forum, it didn’t reflect reality either. “Dead” bands kept their forums up while “alive” bands with a decent future had no forum at all. I could start up a band called “The Mud Buttlers,” get a subforum and post away with several different user names making myself a little world. It looks like something is going on. No band, one real person talking nonsense.
As crazy as it sounds, people did this! Many users had multiple accounts in order to spice things up and some even argued with themselves in an attempt to prove they were two different people. Who was who was a mystery except for the big time insiders. One time I actually had a fairly heated exchange with someone on RockSquawk and it turns out it was one of my bandmates using a fake account. He was just screwing with me. “Oh, its just people having fun, relax.” Well, its also one of the reasons why the place is now a wasteland.
In short, RockSquawk lacked sincerity. Forums work when people are authentically involved and what happens online matches what happens in reality.
Meanwhile, real bands were playing real shows to real audiences. They just weren’t on Rocksquawk.
So what is do be done? “Nothing! Who cares? Its just some silly virtual space.”
I argue it does matter. Blight is real, even if its on a virtual space. It says something about Albuquerque music in the same way that burned out buildings say something about Detroit. Abandoned spaces say, “nothing is happening, nobody cares, there is nothing of worth here.” It looks worse than no space at all. Vacant and boarded up spaces makes people think “stay out, get away as fast as possible.” Rocksquawk is a ghost town and it looks TERRIBLE right now. Its embarrassing. They need to tear it down and slowly rebuild.
We need a renewal effort.
It would help if RockSquawk had a “mayor.” While there are some figurehead mayors such as super-users “black,” “foodstamps,” and “RacerX,” the Alibi owns the place. Maybe they already have a plan but I doubt it. Like “abandonware,” they’re probably going to just let it die off and not develop it any more. It probably costs little or nothing to host, after all it has no traffic, and the infrastructure is already up.
But it does cost something– the emptiness of the place hurts Albuquerque music.
My friends at the Q-Staff Theater always talk about the importance of controlling your performance space. If you set up a room and if it holds 100 people and 10 come to the show, it feels dead. However, if you set up the same place for 10— where ten is “sold out”— you have a wonderful show. Empty space eats up energy. Apparently in virtual spaces, empty space eats up energy too. The only differences is that online, the space is not physical but the time/space between participation points, the time between posts.
I propose that RockSquawk dramatically shrink. There are currently a staggering 90 subforums! Nearly all of them are abandoned. Go down to three: “General Chatter,” “Musicians Wanted,” and “Gear Swap.” These are the only three with any consistent activity anyway. Interestingly, they are the ones that match reality the best. Musicians need to find each other, gear needs to be traded, and people need to talk about music.
So what becomes of all the posts that are part of the other 87 more or less dead forums? Give the subforum moderators (if they still exist) 30 days to take the data and then delete it all. There’s a record of all this stuff on the Wayback Machine if you really want to see what happened. The truth of the matter is there’s almost no content worth saving. Looking at people’s old posts, it saddens me– lots of hopes and dreams and then nothing. The silence of long gaps in time is truly a sad note.
Yes, Rocksquawk is our Detroit and I recommend that The Alibi do what they did with Detroit— renew it through shrinkage!
[Tell me what you think. Especially you, "Alibi" as you're the only ones who can do something about it.]
Hey!
It’s black, not Black.
Thank you .
And it is now corrected, I apologize, Mr. black. You have my vote for Mayor of RockSquawk.
I can only assume you have yet to figure out what an incredibly bitter asshole Mr. black is!
ha ha ha Black you ole nigger you. I can get on any site I want it’s just not worth the effort. Not long ago I proved I could even get on cocksquat again but it’s just not as fun as it used to be is it?
Do you really think I”m crazy? Maybe I am, but in truth I’m a sweet guy. A bit narcissistic maybe, but nothing too out of hand. All in good fun mate!
Uh, thanks, I guess. I mean, I’m sort of from the Marx school of thought (Groucho, that is) with the whole, I don’t want to be a member of any club that will have me. It was both flattering and somewhat perplexing to see myself called a super-user/figurehead mayor. I always felt like an outsider at RS. It was the first (and still one of two) forums I post in, much less check on any regular basis. I didn’t really know any of the bands when I started posting there and in fact had taken myself out of the “scene” for 4-5 years before getting back in. RS seemed fairly clique-ish and there were a shitload of school kids posting and tons of weak band of many genres. Yet they all seemed to hafve a boldness and confidance in their on-line presence. Again, having never been on a forum before, it wasn’t until I sought out these bands and people did I realize there was this whole ‘split personality’ deal with who people and bands were in person, vs. online. I’ve always tried to be more or less the same person online that I am in person. Although I never checked to see if I was doing it right, I began to post.
I have been grateful that RS exists for mainly selfish reasons. A chance to hype my band as well as continue to be a loud-mouth-know-it-all to a different group other than day job co-workers, bandmates and friends. I’ve also had the chance to interact and sometimes meet folks I might not have in my daily life. That includes cool music enthusiasts, hot chicks and some of the biggest, clueless jerks I could imagine. I also met many musicians and bands that I considered much better than me, and was heartbroken many times at how indifferent the scene was to them. RockSquawk or not.
And now, I am doing the same thing here on your bloggety type deal. And again, I have never done anything like this before and have no idea if I’m breaching some innerweb protocol. Regardless, thanks for taking the time to care enough about our city and the arts enough to create what you have going on here. And thanks for letting me go off here on an all too familiar, caffinated, day-job-time-wasing rant.
Fuck yeah.
Amazingly, Vertigo Venus has been very gracious towards the Alibi regarding this issue. They probably see that this shitty rag might still be useful to them despite the animosity so they’ve chosen to roll with the punches.
As for cocksquat, if you guys actually insist on keeping this leaky boat afloat, you might want to convert it to an “invite only” forum. This would make it a lot harder for me to breach the barrier, which I’ve already proven isn’t too hard to do. The last time I did it was under the name “Vomit Bath” and I have to say it was quite amusing. I was toyed with briefly until I was banned for revealing that Elevator’s baby was actually mine. From there, it was dead silent for a few days, the cockrock crew obviously devastated. Someone posted one of those tumbleweed pictures and it was taken down immediately out of fear that it would validate the effect I had and only encourage me further (when will these idiots realize I don’t NEED any encouragement and the way they’ve FINALLY resorted to cutting off communication makes no difference to me whatsoever?) So it’s quite obvious I can get back on whenever I feel like bothering to do so, but another advantage to the “invite only idea” would be that younguns and newbes would feel like they were joining a special, exclusive club and would be that much more likely to participate. Meeting them in person for the invite would also improve the “real world” connection…of course, since it was my idea, it cannot be used. All ideas that come from me must be shunned. Sorry about that folks!
At least there’s some of you cool enough to appreciate what a good troll can bring to the table. It’s so funny that the uptight ones have prevailed, effectively killing their own source of amusement, leaving themselves once again with a boring posting board. The Alibi has this very same problem. They used to have an array of differing opinions which often provoked stimulating interactions, but they’ve since weeded them out and are now left with a virtual ghost town. LOL Sad!
black….*shakes head*…..this is just embarrassing.
Rocksquawk used to be kinda fun. People would get pretty riled up when I was on there. They claimed to hate me but they just couldn’t stop reading my posts! I guess they loved to hate me.
The biggest problem with cocksquat is that it’s populated by a handful of whiney weenies, many of whom are bitter old farts who hate the world because they couldn’t get their musical act together. They loved shitting on each other and REALLY loved shitting on the trolls that came along….but here’s the problem – they’re so incredibly uptight they just couldn’t handle criticism or anyone doing anything different. They loved to hate, but they hated so much that they killed their own source of amusement. And now they wonder why the place is so dead now. Quite amusing in its own right!
Rich
OK, here’s what I honestly think….
When the 2010 Best of Burque issue came out, the Alibi mistakenly published a note from the music editor online that congratulated the band Vertigo Venus for winning virtually all the music categories. Apparently put off by their, she “congratulated” the band and stated that the Alibi will “retire” Vertigo Venus. But the paper itself, the hard copy, didn’t show VV winning a single category. To anyone paying attention, it became quite clear that the Alibi deliberately altered the results of their polls. Why they did this wasn’t clear. Did they really hate Vertigo Venus or just the fact that they had an enthusiastic fan base willing to take the time to vote in their little poll? Did they think printing the real results would somehow make them look bad? If that’s the case, it’s more than a little ironic that they ended up making themselves look infinitely worse with this fiasco.
This year they deleted those music categories altogether, presumably out of embarrassment. The fact that the music editor never got fired leads me to believe others (like editor Laura Marrich) were complicit as well. Almost as bad, the cocksquat crew all jumped on the bandwagon to crap on VV, quite obviously (and pathetically) out of jealousy. They hated the fact that VV had a loyal, outspoken fanbase, that VV was willing to speak out for and defend itself while at the same time claiming the BOB poll was a load of crap that meant nothing. They also mocked VVs positive enthusiasm and potential to actually make a living as musicians, thus proving themselves to be the negative assholes they always seemed to be.
From what I can tell from checking in every other month or so, things went downhill steadily from there. The cockrockers knew in their black little hearts that they were really just a bunch of dicks and the Alibi, sponsor and owner of CS, had lost all credibility and sense of integrity to anyone who actually cared.
In light of all this….hey, do what you want, try to revive the place, but it looks to me like there’s been way too much damage done (let alone too many whiny uptight weenies still around). I don’t see how the place can hope to recover. Start over.
Why the shunning of Vertigo Venus from the Alibi? I don’t know what stake they would have in it? This is a sincere question. Is there anything that was written about it (obviously outside of the Alibi) that I could read?
I’m sure Vertigo Venus just wants it behind them so I won’t try to interview them but I’m curious about this…
Check out “Chris Cannon speaks out about The Alibi”, currently on page 5 of Rocksquawk’s General Chatter archive.
I used to get a lot of letters published in the print edition of The Alibi and then I was online on their website for a while. They started to get really uptight there and I got kicked off. I also wanted to write for the Alibi but they refused to work with me. So they kinda turned me into a troll and I found that to be much more amusing than the other stuff I was doing there. They’re the only site I’ve ever trolled and yes, I was resentful and I’ve been mean at times but they totally deserve it.
I don’t see why VV wouldn’t talk to you about this. They’re a really nice, positive bunch of people. They could talk to you anonymously, that way no one would know who said what.
And to answer your question, I think they were just put off that VV won all of their music polls and I guess they thought it made their rag look stupid. Beyond that, I haven’t a clue. But as you can see from the thread, they got busted by their own stupid mistake. And the shitty treatment they got from the cocksquawk community is on display as well.
Just went back and skimmed some of it again for my amusement. I can’t believe the bullshit those Alibi assholes shoveled, especially that fat cunt Marissa. Can’t publish the results because of “90-way ties”? What bullshit. Publish the results, tie or not. And these jealous asshole wannabe musicians on CS, calling VV whiners and claiming they’re too cool to care about the BOB when all their venomous posts clearly show otherwise. That’s why I enjoyed trolling these dicks so much. They so totally deserved it. There’s some good history in there with me too if you feel like digging it up. Funny stuff.
and I forgot the comment after her bullshit screed calling her a “class act”….”act” being the operative word here…What is with these people the way they piled on the hatred (EXTREME hatred! Webmonkey! Holiday! and of course, black) and refused to acknowledge the plain truth of the matter? What a bunch of weenies. They absolutely deserved to get shit on.
I know they’ve all seen what I’ve written by now (I made sure of that). I’m just amazed that they’ve actually learned to STFU and let me do my thing. It took them forever to learn that.
btw SLIV, I like your writing! Keep it up!!!
( aka – debaser, automatic for the penis, movement of jah penis, etc., now known simply as “he who must not be named”)
Long live RockSquawk and Mayor black!
So SLIV, just curious, did you ever follow up on this? It would be interesting to know what you found out. Of course, if you talked to the Alibi that would just lie to you. What else could they do? If they had any integrity they would’ve admitted what they did and apologized for it long ago. I guess their strategy was best for them. Like Bush Jr.’s administration would do, they just ignored the problem til it got forgotten. More or less!
Well, there’s nothing that I personally can do. I check in with RockSquawk every now and then, but not as a cop or a reporter– as a person who plays music in Albuquerque. I want to see it become a lively, interesting place. That’s all.
Someone in the RS thread who works for the Alibi did agree that there is definitely an issue there. Some folks think it is just the ebb and flow of the internet (something gets popular, then loses its audience). I just think the lack of activity looks bad for all of us. I respect the history there but that’s all there is, history, and I’m also interested in the present.
I’m probably naive to what it involves but it shouldn’t take four months to make some changes. (providing they DO want to do something about it). Let’s see if anything happens!
Well, good luck!