Previously.TV - TWOP's bastard spawn

[laurenj]

Dec 1, 2018 21:21:06 GMT -4 Neurochick said:

Oct 26, 2018 18:57:31 GMT -4 Smilla said:

Every time I see this thread kicked to the top, I pray it's the death rattle. Go away, Previously. Your day is done.

In a way I think that's sad. Some people still want to be anonymous on the Internet, some people aren't into social media and some people don't have Instagram/Twitter.

Agreed. I enjoy the big, anonymous boards for inanity like tv shows. With so many posters, it's easier to sustain a discussion about a show.

FWIW, fellow posters, I meant that I think Previously.TV specifically is "over," not necessarily the world of the message board (ahem, like the one we have here.)

Yeah, I understood what you meant, but don't understand why you feel that site is over, or want it to be. It's got plenty of traffic and it's easy enough to just not visit a site if you don't personally like it.

[laurenj]

Dec 4, 2018 14:38:08 GMT -4 @highondegrassi said:

Dec 4, 2018 13:53:50 GMT -4 laurenj said:

Agreed. I enjoy the big, anonymous boards for inanity like tv shows. With so many posters, it's easier to sustain a discussion about a show.

Yeah, I understood what you meant, but don't understand why you feel that site is over, or want it to be. It's got plenty of traffic and it's easy enough to just not visit a site if you don't personally like it.

Speaking for myself, since I very rarely visit Previously my negative feelings towards it have more to do with what the site represents than the site itself, that being the culture of so-called snark that its predecessor TWOP exemplified. Snark has proven to be nothing more than an excuse for cyberbullying and indulging in unhealthy superstrong emotions connected to a TV show or personality. Within the web-world they live, the moderators of TWOP and Previously gave themselves license to be rude and dismissive of anyone who questioned their "authority" and "humor." Granted, there was a lot of funny and entertaining snark back in the day, but even the best of it could bring out the worst in us. If Previously has evolved from that crap, more power to it, but judging from this thread, it sounds like a lot of the old snarky handles bullies are still at it and consider it a safe place to go about engaging in their obsessive lunacy.

Yeah, it does seem like TwoP and its moderators have had a uniquely lasting emotional impact on a lot of people. I remember it being so for me at the time, but it doesn't register anymore with so much of the internet being a cesspool of really terrible people (Reddit, comments under any article, etc.)

I don't think I watch the kind of shows that attract any kind of crazy following so I have missed out on any of Twop's bad element coming to the new site. There are absolutely still annoying people, obsessive detail-oriented nuts, and such, but that's the case anywhere on the internet.

There is one thing that I would LOVE for them to fix, which is pinning spoiler threads. They have no problem pinning announcement threads, FAQ threads, why not pin the spoiler threads so people don't accidentally click on them when using the "next unread topic" feature?

[Babycakes]

TWoP was my first message board, all the way back in the late 90s, early 2000s. I was a Buffy superfan and lurked for a long time before I ever joined. The Mods were swift and vicious, and bannings were capricious and almost always handed out with cutting and vicious commentary. Sometimes people would rejoin with a new name just to give them one last piece of their minds. The smallest infraction was handled with a surplus of snark. I'm not sure why they were on such a power trip, but it was extremely off putting. After Buffy ended I migrated to Fametracker which was less constraining, and had a diverse collection of pop culture topics. Then that flamed out, and I've been here and on ONTD ever since.

I rarely go to Previously anymore, maybe 1-2 times a week. I only visit about 3 threads, but the one I mainly visit is on The View. It is super annoying to read and not because of the posters. The mod pops in every few posts to remind people to stay on topic! Don't discuss personal politics! Don't discuss John McCain! No Trump talk! Only respond to the topics discussed on the show! No comments about the audience reactions! Cripes, can't people just commiserate about how awful the show is? Do they really think they're getting a bunch of Red State posters/views/advertiser dollars?

[celerydunk]

I've posted this before, but I always hated how unfriendly the site was to non-native speakers. I was a huge Amazing Race fan early on. People would come on from other countries to post about their encounters with the racers and end up banned because their grammar wasn't perfect. Racers themselves would join and there was such a clear bias towards certain ones. Several moderators had no shame about playing favorites.

Several of the mods and admins were on serious power trips and I hope they never regain that level of success just because they needed to be knocked off their pedestals.

[roseland]

Yes. It has bugged me that Linda Holmes (Miss Alli) has parlayed her TWoP success into a decent paying job. She was a horrible moderator. We got her for a year on The West Wing boards after Deborah left and she was impossible and we had been pretty well trained by Deborah.

[madangela]

TWOP moderators were all over the place. Some were power-mad jerks and then other ones like Keckler were fantastic. I mostly hung out on the SemiHomemade board, which Keckler moderated, and she was gentle about keeping things on track. It was fun.

[laurenj]

Dec 15, 2018 22:23:17 GMT -4 roseland said:

Yes. It has bugged me that Linda Holmes (Miss Alli) has parlayed her TWoP success into a decent paying job. She was a horrible moderator. We got her for a year on The West Wing boards after Deborah left and she was impossible and we had been pretty well trained by Deborah.

To be fair though, her job is writing and commentary, which was her strong suit. Had she never gotten involved in moderating the forums (where I agree, she was terrible), she would be remembered for some pretty good writing. The same could be said for quite a few of the old-school TWoP recappers, including the founders.

Shack's AI recaps were what brought me to TWoP to begin with, but his moderating was...short-tempered, to say the least.

The downturn in the site for me was when they had moderators who were assholes AND terrible writers, like Jacob. There was no upside there.

As far as Previously TV goes, I honestly don't even notice the moderators. It doesn't seem to have the same "us vs them" vibe of the moderators on one side and posters on the other. It seems more like just people blathering on about tv amongst themselves until something goes off the rails and a mod comes in to move the topic along. Most of the time, I welcome it because some people are just a dog with a bone regarding some trivial detail that really doesn't require so much back and forth.

Although I do find their "no preview talk in the Survivor episode thread" rule deeply stupid. The preview is IN the show, the last 5 minutes are a preview and the booted contestant's final words. If some purist elects not to watch those last 5 minutes lest they be "spoiled" by a preview specifically cut together by the show to avoid spoiling, that should be on them. This is the one area where the moderating presence is obvious to me and it seems ridiculous.

[Ladybug]

Linda Holmes is one of the biggest success stories to come out of TWOP. Hosting an NPR podcast (Pop Culture Happy Hour), writing for NPR, and she's just published a novel. I used to read her TAR recaps and thought she was really judgy, and definitely had favorites. Those recaps were so big back in the day, and they even had finale parties where the contestants would show up!

The only people I can think of who started out on TWOP and have gone on to big success like Holmes is the Fug Girls. Anyone else parlay it into a career that I'm not thinking of?

[tabby]

Feb 10, 2006 17:47:02 GMT -4 Ladybug said:

The only people I can think of who started out on TWOP and have gone on to big success like Holmes is the Fug Girls. Anyone else parlay it into a career that I'm not thinking of?

Pamie's doing pretty well for herself. She's not a household name, but she's published several books, and seems to have a decent career in Hollywood.

She and Stee got divorced a while back, which is sad, but she's remarried and has at least one kid now.

[laurenj]

Dec 19, 2018 11:02:23 GMT -4 Ladybug said:

Linda Holmes is one of the biggest success stories to come out of TWOP. Hosting an NPR podcast (Pop Culture Happy Hour), writing for NPR, and she's just published a novel. I used to read her TAR recaps and thought she was really judgy, and definitely had favorites. Those recaps were so big back in the day, and they even had finale parties where the contestants would show up!

The only people I can think of who started out on TWOP and have gone on to big success like Holmes is the Fug Girls. Anyone else parlay it into a career that I'm not thinking of?

I don't really know any of the recapper's actual names, so I'm not sure. I only know Miss Alli's because her legend loomed so large over the site. She was like the Kate Gosselin of TWoP, nobody really liked her, but she certainly had everyone talking about her.

She was judgy and at times, a bit oversensitive about certain topics, and her favoritism bled into her recaps, but I did think she was a talented writer. I remember reading the stuff about the finale parties, didn't she always make a drunken fool of herself at those?