What is the 'old' TalkBass?

[Bruiser Stone]

High pass filters and

 

[sawzalot]

Dunno, looks like I've been a member since 2007 and I still like it.

 

[JohnnyBottom]

I dont remember

 

[Bass4ThePublic]

Wasnt there, but I bet there was a TON of crate gear being bought and sold.

 

[Mildew Jones]

I started with The Bottom Line (TBL) in terms of online bass centric-ness, I don't recall what got me here...did this morph from TBL?
MJ

 

[VeryTallBassist]

People can still be jerks on here, but they take a little more effort to bury it in clean language and lofty general gesticulating into the ether instead of being direct.

Pfft...I gesticulate in your general direction.

 

[Low End Scum]

Pfft...I gesticulate in your general direction.

Now listen here you............exceptional individual......I will not be lampooned in this nondirect manner about something that is both nondescript and also vague!

 

[GretschWretch]

There was a guy who's username was "nobody" and there were endless plays on words using the word nobody. It was apparently hilarious.

It wasn't "apparently hilarious." It *was* hilarious. Real laugh-out-loud stuff, most of it. I miss nobody. I also miss Gorn Captain.

 

[silky smoove]

I joined in 2004 and back then people were already talking about missing the "old Talkbass" and how things had changed. Here we are 20 years later and (to use an old cliche) the only constant has been change. I like change and tend to embrace it, so I'm good with the ways TB has evolved.

 

[iammr2]

The old Talkbass was a forum, more bassy. Today Talkbass IS social media, more of a Facebook experience.

 

[jnewmark]

2006 for me, and no complaints. I also don't mind the moderation; the more we respect each other's thoughts and opinions without being insulting, the better.

 

[AQUANOVA]

People use to rage quit back then…..I kind of miss that.

 

[pglaser01]

11 years for me. Still pretty much the same. I do feel that some of longer members tend to self police a little more.

I could be totally wrong, but I do see an uptick in asking questions of “can I do this?” and then arguing with responses being given.

 

[bassboysam]

Old Talkbass = a lot more Mark Hoppus hate.

Narrator: "Mark Hoppus has always been awesome"

and Fieldy hate

 

[staccatogrowl]

The current Talkbass is actually the old (man) Talkbass. That other Talkbass from the past was the young Talkbass.

 

[Low End Scum]

and Fieldy hate

I guess I hadn't noticed but your right! Instead of the latest "this genre/player/style is the death of music/the industry/gigging" being a subset of rock/metal its sorta swung the other way to those threads lamenting computers. I'm assuming it's cause the popular music right now that riles people up isn't typically rock/metal based music performed by a band.

 

[Matt O]

Take your hat off indoors.

And you’d better run your headlights if it’s raining.

I believe the true legacy KBD left us with is that we have time stamps on edits and you can no longer delete posts.

 

[GretschWretch]

My first thought was the old TalkBass was a bulletin board called “The Bottom Line” which started in 1993 by a college kid named Erik Habinga. It was all new - this internet thing and an amazing time. Jeff Berlin, Carol Kaye and Chuck Rainey posted quite often. There were organized collaborative cassette releases of bass players music, and endless discussion about - is an electric bass really just a guitar? There was one troll by the name of “fingers” who was chastising everyone for the forum just being a shopping site and not about bass playing. Was he wrong? I believe the term GAS started on that site.

Anyone else remember it?

Oh yes. On TBL I was "Dragon."

 

[groovaholic]

The really old “TalkBass” was The Bottom Line - I started reading and posting there in 1994.

Harmony Central was OK, but could be pretty noisy.

There was a Bass Gear Review Archive (bgra.net) that was useful & substantive.

IMO TalkBass combines the best of all of them.

The people complaining that they get suspended or banned for trolling or saying racist/sexist crap probably aren’t the people I want to hear from anyhow.

 

[Steven Ayres]

I started participating in online communities before the internet happened, and while the toys have changed the people factors have been more or less constant. Few communities have really learned from the failures that went before, and to its credit I think TB is one of them, having survived its wild-west period and matured into a focused, respectful and inclusive community even as the membership inevitably flows. The personalities change, but the culture is pretty consistent. Yes, the understanding that strong moderation in an online forum is as important as antibodies in an organic system is undeniably a vital factor, but having seen others come and go I think that there's something to the idea that bassists generally come from a different headspace than, say, Corvette enthusiasts or fashionistas, and not just in terms of what specifically interests us.

If there's less churn in the forums I have to think it's partly because they've grown into deep databases that many new members explore and learn from, so there's less to say. This is a loss in terms of social interaction, and we might benefit from exploring forum-level support for local or regional networking.