A new alternate living forum: "Away From The Grain"
da teacha
Regular
I know we have way too many forums as it is, and they need to be scaled back, but this is an idea for a forum I've always pressed for, and think could be extremely successful given the types of members Totse attracts (or used to).
Alternate living is simply following any kind of lifestyle which isn't akin to the mainstream view of wake up; work a standard job; have a limited time for some standard entertinments; sleep; repeat.
Some examples being (taken from Wikipedia):
However also, and perhaps more intererestingly, I'd like such a forum to expand into areas such as:
These kind of topics, as it stands, are split up amongst various forums, and thus it's impossible for any communitiy to thrive. If you put posters who follow, or would like to follow some kind of alternate lifestyle together in one forum, I'm convinced that many fascinating ideas and (plans for) projects could emerge.
Anybdoy agree/disagree? If so, why? And what other ideas could be included?
Alternate living is simply following any kind of lifestyle which isn't akin to the mainstream view of wake up; work a standard job; have a limited time for some standard entertinments; sleep; repeat.
Some examples being (taken from Wikipedia):
- Living in unusual communities, such as communes, intentional communities or ecovillages
- Lifestyle travellers, hippies, housetruckers, New Age travellers
- Vegetarianism or veganism
- Non-typical sexual lifestyle, such as BDSM, swinging, or polyamory
- Alternative spiritual practices
However also, and perhaps more intererestingly, I'd like such a forum to expand into areas such as:
- Breaking free/rebelling from the standard lifestyle
- Exploring the 'underground' of cities
- Preparing for apocalyptic scenarios
- Building new communities (i.e. Totse island projects)
- Discussion on micronations
- Living with drug addiction
These kind of topics, as it stands, are split up amongst various forums, and thus it's impossible for any communitiy to thrive. If you put posters who follow, or would like to follow some kind of alternate lifestyle together in one forum, I'm convinced that many fascinating ideas and (plans for) projects could emerge.
Anybdoy agree/disagree? If so, why? And what other ideas could be included?
Comments
The Great Outdoors/Bad Ideas
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Politics: Left, Right, and Center
TGO has a totally different emphasis, and doesn't incorporate even half, of what I'm proposing.
The emphasis on TGO is simply on good natured, ecological, outside shit. The name of the forum and description doesn't really encourage discussion on anything else.
TGO has never really been THAT successful, and incorporating it into a forum like I listed above would increase the scope of discussion, audience and make it more successful.
That's only 1 slight topic which I mentioned above, which is overshadowed by both the forum title and the rest of the stuff in the description.
The forum screams nature-loving hippy stuff, which is going to turn away a huge amount of potential posters.
Look at the success of threads which contain topics such as Totse island, Apocalyptic scenarios and urban exploration. If put in one forum, discussion really could thrive and build a unique community.
I'm not too sure why you're opposing yourself to a forum what could encompass a fascinating array of subjects and potentially be a great asset to this place?
Away From The Grain
For when mainstream life just isn't satisfying enough. Here is a community devoted to discussion on subjects such as counterculture, lifestyle travelling, the urban underground, non-standard sexual lifestyles, journies into the wild, surviving the apocalypse, creating new communities and anything else which goes against the grain.
Many of those functions already exist spread out through the forums including Reinvent Yourself, S&A, BI, and BLTC to and extent.
I like the idea. Perhaps it could work out with the &T island idea, but I dunno. It does concentrate these topics, but is technically unecessary imo.
I'm not completely against the idea of another section, but we already have a lot that don't get much traffic, so right now adding another one doesn't seem to be necessary.
It's difficult for any real discussion on these topics to take off though, because they're overshadowed by the more 'normal' posts in the respective forums. If you bring the slightly fringe issues from every forum, and throw it all into big melting pot, where the forum's most interesting members (i.e. not the kidiots who have no life) could hang around. It could make for some extremely interesting posts where things can be learnt.
I know we have a lot of forums which don't generate a lot of traffic. That's exactly why we need to merge forums, and create forums which encompass a lot of content in one.
Upon creation of this forum, The Great Outdoors, Traveller's Travails and Science of the Damned could quite possibly be culled.
As it stands, nothing can really take off, because there's too man
At the moment, posters with interests in alternate ways of living are split up between the different forums, and huge levels of converstaion can't really take off because not everybody visits every forum.
I'd say the most important thing is having a good description of the forum that would attract people from the 3 forums you mentioned.
I don't think the nature of The Great Outdoors and Noah's Ark fits into what you consider "Away from the Grain." I like the idea of a forum all about the study of biology, ecology, and about the experiences of the outdoors. If one were to merge such things, might we out take all of the subforums in Nature and bunch them together under the heading "Nature"? I do agree agree Clean Tech and Green Plant would fit under your heading quite well though.
Lol at corporate mergers and at the dichotomy of this forum's ideology.
I definitely agree. I was never an avid follower of the nature forums, but I did pop in on occasion and find some interesting shit. It just seems at the moment like nothing's really taking place though.
Could merge all the nature forums, and place them under 'science' as Green Planet. Then create 'Against The Grain' in society.
Imo it would create 2 far more successful forums.
Pretty much agree with everything here tbh.
We may not many deviants around here, but there's defiinitely a few who could get the ball rolling and drag the dreamers out into discussion. The 'what if' and 'Totse island' threads would definitely get a stream of users coming in; hopefully they'll check out the other threads whilst they're there and stick around.
Sounds good as it would condense a lot of the threads and traffic.
Aside from the hypothetical nature of the proposition, I believe da teacha has aims of condensing forums via an exodus of posts to said condensed forums and removal of the obsolete forums to funnel traffic better.
Not too sure if you've read the thread, but if you did, you'd see that this is the exact point.
At the moment there's a tonne of shitty forums which are way too specific, and need grouping together to get the cogs turning again. A forum like this would be a start to the process; TGO, TT and SOTD, as well as little parts of other forums would be grouped together.
Because whenever I have contributed anything here, there's never been much of a response. The forum's spread soooooooooo thin, and it's impossible for shit to get moving like how it did back in the day.
It's stupid trying to keep things here the exact same as before, because we have a fraction of the userbase. When Totse first was on the scene, there were far less forums. Besides, Totse in its latter day was a failure, and trying to preserve that would be idiocy.
As for lazy posters; the emphasis of this place has changed. It seems to be more like a social networking site as opposed to a place to exchange knowledge now. There's no new blood; just the same old clique lingering around in their own piss.
If we want to get this place moving, we need progressive changes which will encourage getting the cogs turning. As it stands, nobody seems to want to lead this place forward into being a successful community; only pleasing the regular old userbase. I'm sorry, but pleasing most of these idiots will run this place into the ground.
My posts are by and large pretty decent, they always have been. I have many things to contibute here, but when I look around, I just think to myself "what the fuck am I doing here?". If I'm thinking this, then surely many other decent posters are too. I mean where the fuck are the decent posters of the old?
There are many different elements to Totse: the scientists, the adventurers, the entertainers, the hackers, the drama queens, the social scientists, the conspiricists, etc.
The adventurers and those with an eye to do things differently in life, unfortunately are a minority here compared to the dramafags. We should be encouraging these types of posters to come on board, and as it stands, they aren't going to be attracted by a few half hearted, unsuccessful forums scattered around the board.
The idea here seems to be condensation, not elimination. But too condensed, like Erorr said, is not good due to the masses of information all at once.