teenage wildlife forum
From Anarchopedia
The Teenage Wildlife Forum (known as 'Conversation Piece' or simply 'TW' by regular users) is an interactive message board for the David Bowie fan site, 'Teenage Wildlife'. It has existed in various guises since the late 1990s and has retained its present layout since 2000. The owner of the site, Evan Torrie, has largely abandoned updating news and information pages, making the forum the only section of the site that receives daily updates. The lax restrictions of the forum and the length of its existence have attracted some of the most terrifying message board personae to have ever surfed the web. In fact, one user has stated that "99.9% of posts [at the forum] are either from slackers with a flimsy grip on sanity and an even flimsier grip on reality, looking for kindred spirits to share in their psychoses, or they're from egomaniacs wanting someone to slap them on the back and tell them what splendid fellows they are..."
Contents |
[edit] Significance of the Teenage Wildlife site
Established in October 1994, Teenage Wildlife is one of the largest and oldest music communities on the internet.
Commencing life as The David Bowie File, the site began mainly as an experiment in Web content development (interfacing a search engine to data on the Web), and as a convenient repository for David Bowie lyrics.
In August 1996, the site was renamed Teenage Wildlife (after a song on Bowie's Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)) and moved to a new commercial hosting service shortly thereafter. Around this time, a birthday card project was undertaken, coinciding with Bowie's 50th birthday on January 8, 1997. A large format version of the online card was printed and sent to Bowie, and then used in a multimedia presentation at the entrance to his concert on January 9, 1997 at Madison Square Garden.
A decisive turn in Teenage Wildlife's history occurred during Bowie's 1997 Earthling (album) tour when a set of tour pages was added, one per concert, with the ability for users to add comments about each show, register as concertgoers and buy/sell or trade tickets. This proved immensely popular, and became well known to Bowie's band, as they stated that they would often log on the next day to see what the audience thought of the previous night's show.
In 1998, the average number of visitors per day was around 1500-2000, with nearly 10,000 page views per day.
Teenage Wildlife hit one million visitors on August 1 1998 and ran a celebration drawing. Bowie himself donated a gift of one year's subscription to BowieNet, and Teenage Wildlife added over $350 in prizes for the winners.
In January 27, 2000, a new version of the Teenage Wildlife forum was established. This was a replacement for the old venerable message board software that had never progressed beyond it's 1996 (2.0A2) release. On creation of the new fora, Evan Torrie announced "We know that while the old message board had a cadre of devoted users who enjoyed the nearly constant spamming and arguments fueled by anonymous posters, it's also a fact that a much larger number of people were turned off and never bothered to post again." The new fora was named "Conversation Piece" to emphasise a new approach that was to "hopefully improve the quality of discussion (including arguments)". Today, the new forum remains as one of the earliest surviving examples of Wwwthreads forums (now UBB threaded forums).
In 2002, Teenage Wildlife and a quote from one of the forum regulars appeared on the cover of Nicholas Pegg's The Complete David Bowie, widely regarded as the 'bible' among Bowie fans. Likewise, David Buckley's Strange Fascination - a substantial (and frequently updated) biography on David Bowie - gives considerable praise to the site as "an invaluable source of information" and names members.
Teenage Wildlife was nominated for best fan site at the Yahoo! Internet Music Awards held in New York City in June 2000.
In 2006, the number of hits at Teenage Wildlife has reached over 7.5 million whilst the forum maintains over 12,500 registered users and has attracted almost half a million public messages since 2000.
[edit] The Different Fora
At present the message board contains seven different fora that act as a means of enabling users to find relevant information more easily. These are:
- Coffee Shop – A general discussion forum. Topics usually include music discussion (non-Bowie), television, cinema, politics, pictures of one's pets, poster introductions, photographs of the forum's users, and sex.
- Views and Questions – Formerly News, Views and Questions. This is the forum usually awash with new users discussing Bowie's music, including ranking Bowie's albums in order of preference, asking the meaning behind that Bowie joke in the Simpsons, asking how to access the easter eggs on Bowie dvds, and other competitions pitching Bowie's various songs/eras/hairstyles against each other. Of the forum's 7000-or-so existing threads, it is estimated that at least 3,500 of them were spent on the 'Alphabet Survivor' series.
- The News Today – After the cessation of regular News updates on the main site, this forum was designed to replace its functions. Topics usually include newest photographs of Bowie walking his dog and EMI anniversary editions that anyone with half a brain wouldn't dare touch.
- Interpretation – A forum where fans attempt to interpret Bowie's lyrics.
- I Was An Artiste – A chance for fans to write their own fiction and share their artwork. The material posted often deals with such deep and serious matters as teenage angst, possible suicide over the taking away of one's Bowie CDs by one's parents, possible suicide over other people at school calling Bowie "gay," and Labyrinth.
- Site Feedback – Where users air their opinions over the fora's facilities and their degree of moderation. The diverse walks of life and posting styles that visit the site, however, mean that consensus is rarely achieved. The forum is regularly (and successfully) used as the final outpost of the site's older posters.
- Quotes Database – A highly-popular reference-only section that compiles quotations about Bowie from other musicians/celebrities and vice versa.
In addition, there's a section of the message board called 'Collector's Corner. While this section features the occasional rare Bowie item for sale, it is usually used for absurd injokes about the suspected nature of collectors as a whole.
[edit] Hierarchies and Poster Titles
The number of posts a user makes dictates their own title within the social hierarchy of the board. The titles are as follows:
- absolute beginner (0-5 posts)
- mortal with potential (5-20)
- grinning soul (20-70)
- wild eyed peoploid (70-200)
- kook (200-400)
- electric tomato (400-700)
- crash course raver (700-1100)
- cracked actor (1100-1600)
- stardust savant (1600-2500)
- acolyte (2500-5000)
- -custom title-(5000+)
Users with more than 5000 are allowed to adopt their own personal title to create their unique identity, provided it is based on a Bowie lyric. Other non-Bowie titles have been suggested among newer posters, such as 'I'm sad' and 'I need a life desperately'.
[edit] Forum Vernacular
Throughout the existence of Teenage Wildlife, users have developed a common vernacular. Some vocabulary that might be foreign to new users include:
- "Bozo" - Derives from the name of an add-on script (known as a "bozo filter") that provides the choice of ignoring certain users. The term "Bozo" is frequently used as an adjective, noun, and verb. Examples: "I have Bozoed (username) for the 15th time."
- "Daddy" - David Bowie. This is a tongue-in-cheek allusion to the fans' affection for him. Many new users have commented on it being a disturbing thing to call someone other than their biological fathers - an accusation that many veteran users are glad to admit is true.
- "Laby Girl" - A somewhat derogatory label given to any user, male or female, who has admitted an extreme appreciation for Labyrinth (film). While not an actual insult, it can be a hard label to shake off.
- "Tubgirl" - Certain veteran users have linked pictures to an offensive picture of a woman in a bathtub so often that she has become something of a celebrity on the fora.
- "Wankerworld" - A disparaging term for users of the copy cat fan site, Bowie Wonderworld.
- "Alter Ego" - The site allows the creation of multiple usernames, something that many posters have taken advantage of, and that has become one of the landmarks of the community. The alter egoes often consist of fake celebrities, historical characters, or entirely new characters meant to delude others into thinking they are "real," with the eventual aim of stirring up controversy or dispute. Another popular pursuit is creating replicas of original poster's usernames, along with employing their user icon, thus "posing" as that poster: this is usually meant to mock or insult the copied poster, to the widespread amusement of others. The proliferation of alter egoes has led some to (facetiously?) speculate that of the active posters, only 10-15 are "actual" users, and the rest are just a panoply of alter egoes. This mindset causes almost every newbie who joins the site to be suspected of being an alter ego, and a newbie must weather that suspicion as part of the TW hazing in order to become a respected poster.
[edit] Free Speech
Some of the most heated debates in the fora have occurred over the issue of free speech and what constitutes acceptable posting behaviour. While most posters are willing to accept diversity of opinion by different users, a minority have used the tactics of 'trolling' or have posted deliberately to excess in attempts to disrupt free discourse among law-abiding users.
[edit] TW's Reputation
Due to the laxity of restrictions on what can be posted, a laissez-faire moderation approach to any non-pornographic content, and the ritual hazing of newbies, the TW fora have acquired a reputation as the "meanest" and most abusive David Bowie messageboard on the net. Sometimes people who exhibit bellicose behavior on other Bowie boards are told to "take that attitude to The TW Forum buddy." TW posters do, in fact, often compete as to who can post the most offensive content, and the site has even drawn David Bowie's unfavorable attention for some of its posts. TW regulars, however, insist that the site is meant to be irreverent and tongue-in-cheek, and that it is to be lauded as a singular instance of a musician-devoted site that skewers the pedestal of celebrity (it is a frequent joke that all TWers "hate David Bowie"). The hazing of newbies likewise insures that only the most tenacious or unusual posters stay around for long, contributing to the board's unique incendiary culture. However, the site boasts many long-time posters, and despite the hatred of David Bowie, forum regulars often meet up at Bowie concerts or at Bowie-related events.
[edit] External links
| This article is based on a GNU FDL Wikipedia article: Teenage wildlife forum | WP |
