Newbies seem to like it fine here, and it seems the old timers are the ones who are, well...bored.

My response? Find new horizons. I'd be bored shitless too if I'd been coming to the one and only same same same chat forums for years. God, I can't even stand going to them more often than a couple times a week.

IMO, there is a terrible, cynical malaise in all the arts communities I am active in. Everyone seems bored, that there is nothing new under the sun to be tried, as though we all must accept this postmodern twilight as the only possible reality for the rest of our sorry ass lives.

My response to those of you who are clearly bored at Mudcat is this: turn off your computer for the rest of the summer. Go to Vegas for show tunes, or Paris for torch singers, or Truth or Consequences for the pow wow, Toronto for the music festivals. Listen to some music you usually never listen to. Do non-music related interesting things.

You'll come back refreshed, and more in tune with the newcomers. It all goes in cycles in internet forums. I find the problems are usually with veteran/long timers getting bored and burned out, not the newcomers who like things just fine.

The political BS is really of a pretty high caliber in Mudcat for a chat forum. Really. And if people don't challenge one another's points of view, you never learn new things, to see things from a different vantage point, etc. The political BS does get nasty, but so too can the music and other non-music BS threads. Remember the nastiness the prayer threads used to cause? No different in intensity or tone than the political stuff.

There will always be people who blame the politically inclined or the religiously inclined for the perceived "decline in civility" arguments. I don't think it is either. I think the old timers just like having it their way too much. I agree with Bobert (sorry Jeri, I know you are well intentioned, but...) about the "been there done that" posting of old timers of links to old threads. I've rarely found much of value in any of the discussion threads (though there are a few exceptions). I find it more helpful to just refresh the thread in question and tell people about it. Too often, providing the link really does seem to let the air out of the sails of the conversation because it isn't in context.