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Amicable

Idle Thumbs Hiatus

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Given that none of them have had digits cut off, they are keeping up the thumbs front too.

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Good bye guys, it's been swell. Thirteen years ago my first post was about cancelling my Psychonauts pre-order, apparently. I can't remember saying or thinking any of the things I wrote back then.

 

I guess I'll notice if the Thumbs make a comeback at some point, but it's been pretty clear that the community isn't going to survive the Thumbs leaving, so I'm going to stop checking the site. Have a good one.

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1 hour ago, brkl said:

Good bye guys, it's been swell. Thirteen years ago my first post was about cancelling my Psychonauts pre-order, apparently. I can't remember saying or thinking any of the things I wrote back then.

 

I guess I'll notice if the Thumbs make a comeback at some point, but it's been pretty clear that the community isn't going to survive the Thumbs leaving, so I'm going to stop checking the site. Have a good one.

Bye

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On Fri Oct 05 2018 at 9:47 AM, Henke said:

They've really been putting the "Idle" in Idle Thumbs recently!

 

"Idle Thumbs" is what they do when their thimbs are idle. Their thumbs haven't been idle for several months. 

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17 hours ago, Dosed said:

Yeah, it has been pretty quiet around here recently.

 

Yeah I was surprised by how much the forum-activity dried up when the pods stopped coming. I figured forumites would hang around this place regardless, but I guess it is in large part the episodes that keeps people coming back here. I still usually swing by at least once per day on my daily stroll through the internet.

 

Of course, I'm relatively new here so I couldn't really say what's normal for this place. Elders, have there been droughts like this before? 

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Yeah, this is what happened back when the site didn’t have any new articles and when the first podcast stopped. The community survived through that, just smaller and quieter. It’ll eventually become noisy if/when the Thumbs get back together. But don’t feel like you *have* to hang out here in the meantime. You can always come back later. Or just hang out in the slack, which is still pretty active.

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Wow, this is weird. I visit Idle Thumbs daily, just like Henke, it's simply part of my internet routine. But, I will admit, I rarely post. Only when I have something interesting to say, I guess. But I'd hate for this community to fall apart.

 

You know what might be the actual thing that killed it, in the end? Not the hiatus of the podcasts, but the end of Ben's FPS-a-thon adventure. DAMMIT BEN

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And I am THIS close to 10,000 posts. Could've gotten there easily in another three, four years.

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22 minutes ago, Roderick said:

Wow, this is weird. I visit Idle Thumbs daily, just like Henke, it's simply part of my internet routine. But, I will admit, I rarely post. Only when I have something interesting to say, I guess. But I'd hate for this community to fall apart.

 

This also describes me. But even before the current hiatus I felt like the forums were slowing and most of the active community had moved to Slack (which sadly isn't a viable option for me). I'll keep a silent vigil just in case.

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I still check in here too but yeah I think Slack has pulled away a decent amount of activity from here. Even when IIT was still going I feel like the activity level in the forums was lower than it had been in the past.

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6 hours ago, Roderick said:

You know what might be the actual thing that killed it, in the end? Not the hiatus of the podcasts, but the end of Ben's FPS-a-thon adventure. DAMMIT BEN

 

Sorry! Hmmm, I did just get Shadow Warrior 2 free on gog...

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I still check the forums regularly. (Have been since late 2013.) Haven't posted much since I'm often too busy to do so, but I enjoy reading what y'all have to say. 

 

Actually had something in mind I wanted to write-up for the "In the Valley of Gods" thread based on the limited info about the game that's out there (mostly the written description on its Steam page). Y'all are right that forum activity seems to have dropped a lot since the main podcasts went on what's now looking like it may be a permanent hiatus, but I imagine folks will post in that thread whenever new info about the game comes out. (My guess would be we'll see a new trailer sometime in 2019 with a release date, or maybe no set release date if they want to take more time with it/have it come out in 2020 or beyond.)

 

I'll still check-in and try to post when I have time. Though yeah I'll understand if no one responds/no discussion takes place since it does seem the main podcasts were what kept a lot of people regularly checking in.

 

If the casting of pods from the Thumbs proper (Idle Thumbs, Idle Book Club, Important If True) has indeed completely ceased: thanks for all them great pods y'all. I'll definitely be relistening to old episodes. Hope y'all are doing well/having a blast.

 

 

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11 hours ago, SecretAsianMan said:

 

This also describes me. But even before the current hiatus I felt like the forums were slowing and most of the active community had moved to Slack (which sadly isn't a viable option for me). I'll keep a silent vigil just in case.

Same here. Still have it bookmarked. Still browse the latest posts almost every day. It was nice to meet so many great people over the years and post so many dumb things. And getting to experience all those wonderful LucasArts games that the Thumbs introduced me to will always be a treasured memory.

 

Not a big fan of Slack and the direction the forums went when that became the predominant format for this community but hey, things change and uh, life finds a way I guess. I'll see you all around.

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I'm a little sad that forum culture in general has been completely gobbled up and replaced by on one side social media - which are inherently more fleeting and less concentrated in terms of discussions - and on the other side private chatrooms like Slack, Discord and Whatsapp. Which, you know, are fine, I use them every day for smaller groups... but they can't replace that feeling of being part of a bigger community, where you're opened up to new ideas and influences.

 

When I started with THE INTERNET, somewhere around 1999, it was all about forums. I met some of my closest friends today back then, on a goddamn Pokémon forum, where the first thing I posted was on the important subject of whether Tracy was a good replacement for Brock. After that, fora were always the main thing on the internet for me, with a big part reserved for Adventuregamers, which lead me straight to Idle Thumbs after a while.

 

Then social media came along in a big way, and, I've had this thought before, it has changed the whole internet in a way that I'm not really comfortable with anymore. It's a different thing now. (And I sometimes feel most of the internet is now lorded over by supremely strange people and/or bots trying to steer us in one way or the other, be it commercially or politically.) Social media aren't nearly as good as fora. It's furthered the bizarre state of things that from second to second, you can be engaged with materials that make you feel wildly different things. So one moment you're raging at some president, the next you're laughing at a cat vid, only to resume raging against climate change. All of it equally sincere. All of it completely schizophrenic.

 

But I digress.

 

I honestly never imagined this place could die off (and I'm still reeling that it would, resisting that it will! This all feels so dreadfully like saying goodbye, but why should we, just because the subject is broached?). I'm also a little weirded out that it happened right under my nose, without even noticing it. Since I don't follow all the topics, it went unnoticed that there wasn't any activity elsewhere too.

 

Fuck the internet.

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I agree.  Part of the reason I never got into the Idle Thumbs Slack (apart from the fact that it's extremely inconvenient for me) is that I don't like the neverending stream of consciousness conversation.  Here on the forums my disorganized thoughts are at least placed into a somewhat appropriate category and I have a window of more than 5 seconds to say something.  I never feel like I'm butting into a conversation by posting in a forum, but I feel like I'm doing that all the time in Slack.

 

If this really is the end (this is what, the third end?) then I'll be sad but I don't have a lot of extra time these days anyway.  I'll always cherish the time I've had and the people I've met.  Thanks for everything folks.

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I think slack is way more to blame to be honest, as far as I can tell the forums activity downturn happened when the offsite channels opened up.

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To argue in favor of the Slack, I feel like i've made more friends and gotten to know more people through the slack than I did through the forums. I love the forums here & I love reading what everyone posts every day. We've done a pretty good job of splitting the slack out so that conversations are divided into categories in our creation of channels, to avoid the whiplash of topic change, and you can focus on what's interesting/important to you and not have to read channels that don't apply. It's a really nice place that is strictly a fan community. I like that it's a little more divorced from the creators of idle thumbs as you can speak openly without worrying about hurting one of the Thumbs' feelings about things that don't work for you, etc. The forums are great, and I continue to read regularly with occasional posts, but when i need a hit of a community that i can talk to and get feedback from or hear someone's opinions on something, the slack is where i go.

 

The forums are great for mid to long form response and thoughts and the slack is great for exchanges that help you develop those thoughts in the first place. I think they both have a place. Slack was the replacement for IRC because IRC was unapproachable for many people (including me.) There are people who are active posters over in the slack that were only ever really lurkers here, and i find a lot of value in the lowered barrier of entry of the slack.

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There are pros and cons of both. I like the immediacy of the slack and the way that conversations can spring up voluntarily, but it's also a venue with very little memory (both in the sense that the archives only go back a handful of days and that any remotely noteworthy piece of news gets posted at least three or four times). There is also a strong shitposting aesthetic there that I find a little tedious. On the other hand, I like the permanency of the forum and the opportunity to think through what I'm saying before I say it (and edit it after the fact, if I get a better perspective on things), but the pacing is so slow that it doesn't foster conversation as well, especially with a smaller population of users. I'd been making an effort this past year to post in the Anime thread, since that's where most of my free time with media goes these days, but it was just me replying to my own posts for months on end, with Rodi and Coods occasionally interjecting, and that got me down.

 

Of course, the most important issue is that the past couple of years have been full of depression and unemployment for me, as I've struggled to change careers and get over a protracted breakup, and I just don't play games anymore, except for the couple of months where I was playing The Witcher 3 obsessively (years after everyone else). With the shift in my priorities generating less content in my life, the forums tends to come last after my podcast (which is still going somehow), my blog (which is not, since I've started a new job), my graduate work, and the slack. It's a bummer but it's not exactly a surprise. I miss y'all, though, even the ones who don't talk or log on anymore.

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To clarify, I'm not trying to put down Slack or the people who frequent it.  There is 100% the merit that jenna and gorm mentioned.  It's just not my style, at least not in that large of a group setting.  Although I do admit that if my workplace allowed it I would probably hang out in the Slack all the time and get nothing done so it's probably better this way.

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I never got into the Slack because, goddammit, I don't want yet another thing to follow or to ping me all day. Chats are exhausting because they never stop updating themselves - I like the non-immediacy and slow pace of a forum, which, every time you visit it, feels like a solidified place.

 

Having said that, OF COURSE I understand why the Slack is brilliant. The lower barrier of entry surely goes doubly for Idle Thumbs, where the level of discourse is often so high that I fret about saying something too vapid to even merit a post. Then again, that's what I love about the place. It challenges me to up my game.

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Yeah, I'm not knocking the slack, just saying that 1) it's not for me and 2) it's cannibalised a large amount of the chitchat from this place.

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