RIP to WATMM Discussion thread

well, shit.

  On 1/29/2025 at 8:56 PM, dr lopez said:

There is no credible reason beyond simple hubris for Joyrex NOT to pass this active and beloved site on to a new caretaker, individual or collective or otherwise.

I will contribute significant money to keep it going. I can't guarantee time or take ownership though, someone else is gonna have to take the reins. changes and improvements can be made. there's no reason for this to die.

we've all taken the piss out of WATMM over the years for fun, but underneath it all there is genuine community and shared history. as others have pointed out, this place's value and significance increases as we continue down the path of both general and internet-specific enshittification.

  On 1/29/2025 at 5:44 PM, J3FF3R00 said:

I guess our future is on Reddit now? I don’t know. 

never, Reddit should be destroyed along with Twitter, Facebook et al.

  On 1/29/2025 at 6:35 PM, Alcofribas said:

who among you is brave enough to face raw reality without the buffer of Alco posts?

the fear of this possibility is motivation number one here, to be clear.

archives should be distributed to the current userbase at the very least, sad for years of post history to just go away in a flash because one guy is over it

papa arrived and he's taking his belt off

  On 1/29/2025 at 6:59 PM, Ski Nell said:

you know what could save Watmm?

a new BOC album. Now.

New BOC album out June 4th!

Legit made me sad. I've never been a big playa here, nor a consistent presence, but I've been here on a handful of accounts (including one megacunt account that was banned lol) since 2008 or something (and I was banned from xilty before that, also lol), and I was on some of the spinoff forums dating from feuds i hardly even remember. A good half of my life. I learnt most of what I know about dadtronica from here over the years

Fuck me the internet these days is dogshit, it's nice to have somewhere where the people are (by and large) actual verifiable and somewhat-functioning adult humans, and not the endless Dead Internet of bots and/or autist tweenagers. The other (non-music) forums I frequented years ago are long dead, this is all that remains for me.

gonna play Aphex Twin and jazzbands tonite and tip my glass to Joyrex in honour of his retirement

It was nice interacting with you all and I’ll genuinely miss this place. I lurked for about ten years before I signed up in 2014. I really enjoyed this site. More than everything else. 

  On 1/30/2025 at 3:08 AM, Walter Ostanek said:

gonna play Aphex Twin and jazzbands tonite and tip my glass to Joyrex in honour of his retirement

Didn't know about the gheysecks twin autocorrect until now lol

agree with sentiments in the thread that watmm had a unique and good vibe

for my part i will say that i appreciate you folks. mostly

it can be hard finding people who resonate and music is something that can draw those who do, so i've found the forum to be a pleasant international culture of resonant folks, with good content

anyway boss i get it and thanks. nice work

can someone give joyrex a cool mill, please

  On 1/30/2025 at 2:37 AM, usagi said:

I will contribute significant money to keep it going. I can't guarantee time or take ownership though, someone else is gonna have to take the reins. changes and improvements can be made. there's no reason for this to die.

same. if the mods/whoever gets some brains together hmu on DM or whatever. i ain't got no skills but i have some time and some money.

IDM is the dad rock of electronic music.  We're becoming old farts, the big 4 aren't releasing much nowadays as they are turning into old farts themselves.  It was bound to happen 

Thank you Papa Joyrex for hosting WATMM through the years! 

See ya on artists' subreddits! 

  On 1/29/2025 at 6:56 PM, cern said:

Is it true that the new WATMM Paywall system for New members made it less attractive maybe? 

I Belive so..

a subreddit named post-watmm (or similar) would receive traffic from people searching for watmm, and also solve the paywall issue, likely resulting in more use. 

i probably joined here when I was a 17 year old high schooler who loved aphex. (not sure if my account joined date reflects this) I'm 37 now lmao. Can that be right? Has this been going that long?

I'm really going to miss this site. I may look like a relatively new member, but this is probably my 3rd or 4th account (teehee ) and been mostly lurking the past 20 or so years. That's more than half my life!!

It honestly carried me through most of my formative years in discovering music. I think the people here have excellent taste in music, and I discovered so much amazing new (and old) music through this forum. Cannot state how much of an impact this community has had on my engagement, knowledge and enjoyment of music. I've also enjoyed the cheeky shitposting too. 

It's a very outside-the-box forum, and will definitely leave a huge void in my ability to find and discover new music. The algorithms these days absolutely cannot compare to some other likeminded human who's done the legwork and found an absolute hidden gem that they then personally recommend. The "themed genre" topics will be sorely missed, as will the general and new/upcoming music discussion. Y'all have been quite helpful. 

I still have copies of various WATMM Compilation albums over the years, including the quite banger Christmas themed ones! Even a few physical copies of albums that have spawned from this forum. There are some seriously talented musicians here. 

Overall, this site has been just be a rock-solid constant no matter whatever the fuck is happening in the world. There's a sense of reliability and community here that will be irreplaceable. 

Thank you Joyrex, and thank you to everyone for making this such a cool, vibey place to experience. 

All the best for however life goes for you all~ 

I’m going to be selling all my burgers as NFTs. Each burger will come with a certificate of authenticity. Once WATMM goes down, these will become rare vintage burgers and will likely quadruple in value. Act fast because once WATMM goes these burger will be lost forever.

  On 1/30/2025 at 4:26 AM, barbu said:

 

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hey at least I agree we should archive the site or something...

just transfer the hosting and the domain to some willing soul. how hard could that be

My god, the world didn't need to lose one more Unquestionably Good Thing.

I must have started lurking here from near the beginning. I was a refugee from the idm@hyperreal.org list from the mid/late 90s where RDJ would occasionally show up to shitpost about Orbital or whatever.

WATMM is one of the few places left on the internet of genuine community and connection, resisting the slide into dilution by bots and attention-seekers, or just slow death through feeling too impersonal for it to be more than "content".

I discovered so much life-enrichening music here, and it always felt good to drop into threads with genuine humans talking to each about stuff they care about, whether trivial or profound, with wit and humor. There are individuals here who materially improved my life.

You did something that matters @Joyrex - thank you.

-----

Okay, now, it is absolutely unacceptable for everyone to just go our separate ways.

There are options.

Best option is obviously somebody with the right wherewithal and fortitude convinces Joyrex to hand over the archives of inestimable value and creates a new forum, because this format is not broken. If that person is out there, they are a hero, but I'm not optimistic because I know how much of a pain in the ass it is run one of these things when Web 2.0 has moved on.

Reddit ain't it:

• Loses the magical combination of topical organization while maintaining cohesiveness. A single subreddit is a shitshow and lots of interconnected subreddits never feel like a "place"
• You either make it private and guarantee slow death, or make it public and guarantee it becomes another cesspool
• Many other reasons. We know this to be a bad idea.

Give Discord a chance:

• If you're not familiar with it, don't think of it as a single Reddit-style "platform" where you can't really create your own separate contained community (and no, sub-reddits aren't that). This would be a dedicated Discord server with its own internal organization and rules and that can be made discoverable only by its own invite link. You can build a cohesive community in a Discord server.
• It's kind of the only option that provides lots of organization capability. It's absolutely possible to replicate nearly all of WATMM's topic organization with channels.
• The server can be set up with channels that use a forum style of posting, rather than the live chat interface. I'd imagine our server being 99% such channels, matching WATMM's topics, including tags and such.
• It offers plenty of moderation tools that can be used to put community members in charge.

in the spirit of actually doing something I am quite tempted to just set up a server (and vow to kill it the moment if/when somebody spins up a forum with the archives). I did actually create a server just to make sure I wasn't crazy about the capabilities. But honestly the honor of creating WATDD (love that name @dcom) should go to one of the many, many folks here more deserving. It is not hard to do.

Caustic Window kickstarter 2014 brought me here with lots of fun discussions/reading threads over the years and met some amazing watmm at afx raves:)

I am extremely sad about this news. Why do the only good places on the internet have to go? Many posts on here have genuinely made me laugh out loud, I’ve discovered great new music, and most importantly, the people are, by and large, really nice. And really interesting!

  On 1/30/2025 at 5:10 AM, sherkaner said:

Best option is obviously somebody with the right wherewithal and fortitude convinces Joyrex to hand over the archives of inestimable value and creates a new forum, because this format is not broken. If that person is out there, they are a hero, but I'm not optimistic because I know how much of a pain in the ass it is run one of these things when Web 2.0 has moved on.

I think this is going to have to be a bunch of people working in concert, like an action committee.

the primary hurdle is convincing Dad. second biggest: funding, third: manpower/technical. second and third are manageable insofar as people invest the money, time and effort to keep things going for as long as they want to keep this alive. which, judging by the turnout in this thread, is a lot - certainly a lot more than I reckoned.

Discord is not really a replacement because of the instant communication aspect, which is not the same as the chill vibe of a forum where you can more easily control your level of engagement. also there already exist multiple WATMM-adjacent discords.