Ok, folks, the Man Boobz Forum is now REALLY up, and on a platform that I think will be better than the one I originally chose. It’s got more options (for me and for you all), looks a bit sleeker, and doesn’t force your gender into a box! Go here! Register! Post!
If you registered and/or posted on the original forum, up briefly earlier today, sorry! There’s no way to transfer your registration or comments over to the new forum , so you’ll have to register again. Again, I apologize for the inconvenience but I think the benefits of the new platform will more than make up for it.
Thanks Ami, for advice and help in setting up the new forum. And thanks, Sarah, for seeding the old forum with some great topics. I’m going to transfer those posts over myself.
BREAKING NEWS: Because of the gender issue and other issues people have raised with proboards, I will be moving the forum to another platform, probably phpBB. Just give me a few hours! I’ve locked the proboards forum down in the meantime. Post below with any thoughts and/or advice.
You asked for it – well, a majority of those who took the poll did. You got it! The Man Boobz Forum is open for business. Right here, right now.
I hope the discussions here on the blog will remain long and spirited and sprawly, but now you guys have a place to go to discuss, well, whatever you want to discuss, actually (within the limits of the forum’s comments policy, which you should all read). Raise you own issues, link to Man Booby stuff, link to off-topic stuff, link to your own blog, talk about books, talk about Magyck the Gendering cards, plan get-togethers, you name it. One bit of warning: I’m going to try to keep discussions on the forum a little more civilized than they tend to be here on the blog; this means I will be more stringent about the commenting rules and much quicker to ban offenders, temporarily or permanently.
I encourage everyone who regularly comments here (and who wants to post on the forum) to register there using the same nickname you use here. Also, please post a comment here after I approve you (just to verify that it’s really you behind both accounts). If you’re a regular commenter here and you’re interested in being a moderator of the forum, let me know.
Note on gender: Not everyone here identifies themselves as male or female. Unfortunately, proboards requires you to check either “male” or “female” when registering. The good news, for those who don’t fit the gender binary or who simply don’t want people to know what gender they are, is that you don’t have to display your gender in your profile or posts. (Go to your profile, and click “modify profile” and you’ll find a way to “hide” your gender as well as other ways to customize your profile.)
Post any feedback you have about the forum here or on the forum itself.
Given that the comments section of this blog continues filling up and spilling over I thought I’d revisit the notion of a Man Boobz forum, as a kind of supplement to the comments on posts here. Let me know what you think by voting in the poll over there to your right, and by commenting below. [NOTE: The poll vanished from the sidebar for a bit but is back up now.]
The pros, as I see them: A forum would make it easier for you all to introduce topics or non-topics of your own, to do things like plan Man Boobz get-togethers, to pimp your own blogs and other projects (like Ami’s magnificent cards). The cons: it might draw energy and focus away from comments here.
I really like the dynamic we’ve got going in the comments here – the mixture of serious and not-so-serious, on-topic and off – and don’t want to screw that up. (I also think the Weekend Open Threads are working out pretty well and will keep them going.) But I’m sort of thinking we can pull this off.
I’ve already got a forum set up on proboards; all I need to do is click a button to make it public.
What say you all?
PS: There’s an obscure lesbian folk song reference hidden in this post. (Not so obscure, I guess, if you’re into lesbian folk songs.) Whoever can identify it first wins an Internet.
Hey Torontoites! Some Man Boobzers are organizing a little get-together for this upcoming weekend. Check the comments here for details as they become available, and post a note if you’re interested. Or check in directly with Ami Angelwings on her blog.
Meanwhile the joint Pervocracy-Man Boobz Boston meetup is happening this Friday (the 17th) at 6:00 PM at the Prudential Center. More details here; check in with Holly ([email protected]) if you’re planning to go.
And if you’re somewhere else and want to organize a get-together, post your location below. I’m going to organize a Chicago get together, probably the weekend after next. And it looks like we’ve got enough people in the Bay Area and in Madison/Milwaukee; anyone want to organize a get-together in either place? (Or have you Bay Area folks already started organizing?) Some DC people have already had a little get together.So let’s do this!!!11!!
Should we start up some actual meetup.com groups? Or it is easier to do it informally here and by email?
Last night, many hundreds of comments into what would become Man Boobz’ first 900-plus comment thread, an idea arose: a Man Boobz meetup! Specifically, a Boston-area MB meetup, since a lot of MB commenters seem to live around there. Holly – the awesome lady behind the excellent blog The Pervocracy – stepped up to organize the thing.
And thus was born the first of what quite possibly could be many Man Boobz/Pervocracy meetups, tentatively scheduled for 6pm on Friday, June 17th at the Prudential Center Food Court in Boston. If you’re in the area and want to attend, post a comment below and/or get in touch with Holly directly. (Email her at [email protected].) I’ll post about it again before it happens, so if there are any changes in the details you all will know about it.
Also: for those Man Boobzers who live in and around Chicago, I’ll be organizing a meetup here too, probably within the next couple of weeks. If you’re in the area and want to attend, post below! I’ll do my best to accommodate everyone’s schedules, find places for people to crash, and so on.
There’s also talk about a Toronto meetup.
If anyone else reading this blog wants to get a meetup going in your area, post below! There are Man Boobzers all over the map. Let’s make this happen.
I am really happy to see this sort of thing happening, and honored, really, that so many of you all have found a little online home on this blog. And I want to do whatever I can to facilitate this. I’m still considering the possibility of a Man Boobz forum, though I’m not quite sure that the peculiar dynamics that propel so many of the discussions here into sprawling hundreds-of-posts-long threads would work as well on a forum. People here seem fairly evenly divided on the idea. So I’m holding off on that, at least for now, but if there’s enough demand for it I can set up a forum pretty much instantly. Post your thoughts below!
Also: I know a lot of you are broke (as am I), but if you have a few bucks to spare I’d like to once again plug the Man Boobz store., which has awesome “We Hunted the Mammoth” and other t-shirts and assorted products, designed by the awesome JohnnyKaje, who also designed the main Man Boobz banners. (Shaenon also contributed a lovely drawing of an evil cupcake.)
And finally: If you want to help Man Boobz take over the internets, promote the fuck out of the posts here with the little “share” buttons. Links bring traffic, and traffic brings more regular readers and commenters into the Man Boobz fold. Heh heh.
And finally finally, keep sending along suggestions for posts. Quite a few of my recent posts have been inspired by links people sent me. (If you send along a suggestion, and you’d like me to credit you in the posts, let me know; I’ve been assuming people would prefer anonymity.)
So comments kind of blew up this past week – hello, 673-comment thread! In one of the recent giant threads Holly suggested that maybe it’s time for Man Boobz to start its own forum, or set up some kind of real-time chatroom or IRC channel. I’m thinking she may be right, but I’m not sure the best way to proceed.
Here, as I see it, are the best options:
Regular Friday and Saturday night “open threads,” plus “open threads” during the week when it makes sense – say, when a thread gets really really long and/or people start chanting “open thread! Open thread!” in the comments. (That could be the batsignal, as it were, for me to post an open thread.)
An actual forum. It looks as though setting up a free forum through something like Invision or proboards or some other free forum host would be pretty easy – though I’d love to hear from people with experience doing this before I proceed. Would you guys be interested in this? What would be the best host to go with? Would it make more sense to host the forum myself? (If so, I would definitely need help.) I sort of love the idea of a forum, but I wouldn’t want it to siphon off too much energy from comments on the blog itself. I’m torn, and any thoughts/advice you guys have would be greatly appreciated.
I’m thinking at the moment that the best idea would be to start with open threads and see how they work before setting up a forum. But if enough of you want a forum that might be the way to go.
As for the other ideas from Holly – a chatroom or IRC channel – I have to admit I have no idea what would be the best option here, assuming there are enough of you interested in this to make it work. I’ve got plenty of experience as a forum-user but I’ve never used IRC or really participated in more than a tiny bit of chat. Not sure what the best options are for a real-time chatroom, or for IRC, so … advice, please!
In any case, I’m psyched about the possibilities here and want to do whatever will best facilitate conversation amongst you guys. And if any of you want to volunteer your time and/or experience, let me know!
Fast forward to about 13 minutes in, and start watching. All seems lost for the intrepid neanderthal hunting party, but wait! Could it be? Is it? It is!!!
My second guest post has gone up on Feministe. In it, I introduce the Feministe audience to a Man Boobz classic: the “we hunted the mammoth to feed you” quote, in all of its original glory. (By the way, t-shirts are still available, and they’re pretty snazzy!)
Is this an entire website dedicated to poor reading comprehension? I don’t think one of you understood the writing. You’re all hopping mad about your own misinterpretations. …
In this case, the content of the piece inspires so much emotion in some readers that they literally can’t understand it. The same would be true if the topic were about gun ownership or a dozen other topics. As emotion increases, reading comprehension decreases. This would be true of anyone, but regular readers of the Dilbert blog are pretty far along the bell curve toward rational thought, and relatively immune to emotional distortion. …
You’re angry, but I’ll bet every one of you agrees with me.
Wow. Just, wow. How narcissistic and delusional do you have to be to even type out that last bit, much less post it on the internet for all to see?
I wonder if Scott Adams would agree with the “we hunted the mammoth to feed you” guy? I’m sort of thinking that he just might.
Just a note: For the rest of the week — through Sunday — I’ll be guest blogging on Feministe. My first post there is a slightly reworked version of my recent Scott Adams post here. (I also posted something introducing myself to the Feministe crowd.) I’ll post pointers here every time I post something there. Just so you know, comments there are a lot more heavily moderated than comments here.
I’m also going to be posting here too, of course, though my posts may be a little on the short side.
