Is Anyone Here Also A Member Of All That Chat?

[ghostlight2]

Banned you, too, PJ?

[ljay889]

BWW is by FAR the bitchier site - and the more juvenile.

More juvenile? Absolutely. But bitchier? Really?

[ljay889]

dOuBlE pOsT. oOps. YeS, iM tYpInG lIkE tHis On PurPoSe 2 bE ImMaTuRe.

[WhizzerMarvin TrinaJasonMendel]

I guess it's how you define "bitchier." If you mean nastier than ATC wins hands down. That site is like 100 After Eights. Know-it-all sour pusses ready to jump down your throat.

BWW is bitchy like a watered down version of Datalounge- it's "pointless bitchery." It's bitchy, but fun and entertaining, like the bitchiness from Mean Girls. It may be catty, but rarely is it genuinely nasty, save for some of the trolls.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

It may be catty, but rarely is it genuinely nasty, save for some of the trolls.

Nicely put, Whizzer.

[ljay889]

Whizzer summed it up PERFECTLY.

[WhizzerMarvin TrinaJasonMendel]

:)

Honestly I find most people here to be very nice, and many have wonderful insights to add.

[junkyard]

both sites are full of "wannabe" theatre insiders......most of whom are really students and/or interns. BWW is more interesting to read because of some of the
'bizzare" postings.

[artscallion]

ATC is made up almost entirely of #5s from Musto's list of worst Broadway posters.

(5) The ones who respond to a long, involved comment by smugly pointing out the error buried in it.

"It's Nina Arianda's second nomination." "Rumple was actually a bomb, not a medium hit." "Only one 't' in Billy Elliot." "Soundtrack???? It's called a cast album!!!!!"



You can spend too much time composing a well thought out, 10 paragraph argument on why Grey Gardens was not exploitative of the Beales. And the first response will be, "the Walter Kerr is on 48th, not 49th. And it's Ebersole, not Ebersol. Then the entire rest of the thread will turn into a debate over whether or not Walter Kerr deserved to have a theatre named after him.

And I'd bet that a thread has been created on ATC talking about this thread and how childish we are on BWW. Of course it'll also be deleted soon.

[Jane2]

I purposely used the word soundtrack each time, just to rattle ATC's rickety bones.

[dramamama611]

I stop by there once or twice a week. I don't know why. I hate the format(even switching it leaves a lot to be desired.) But I really don't think, attitude wise, they are any better or worse than here.

I DON'T see any comraderie or joy, just the desire to be relevant.


Once in a while, people seem to address others in a personal way, and that always suprises me.

[ghostlight2]

"BWW is bitchy like a watered down version of Datalounge- it's "pointless bitchery." It's bitchy, but fun and entertaining,"

I guess it depends of what your idea of "fun and entertaining" is. Pointless bitchery doesn't fit the bill for me.

"I DON'T see any comraderie or joy, just the desire to be relevant."

WHAT? A board created to discuss Broadway that manages to stay relevant to that? Where's the endless threads making smarmy comments about the play COCK, using a 12 year-old's sense of humor, while never once actually discussing the play? The threads mocking other threads and posters?

There's plenty of banter and comraderie on ATC, it's just not the point of the board. I personally appreciate that. I suppose it all comes down what you want in a message board. I don't come to theater message boards for entertainment, I come to get information about and discuss theater - and I prefer my bitchery to have a point.

" Once in a while, people seem to address others in a personal way, and that always suprises me"

Not only do many of them know each other and sometimes work together, they have an official Tony party and Christmas party almost every year.

"And I'd bet that a thread has been created on ATC talking about this thread and how childish we are on BWW."

Nope. They have better things to talk about - like theater. Unlike BWW, which, when ATC was shut down because they'd been hacked, had a joyous nasty thread about ATC's difficulties.

[ljay889]

^ If you hate this board so much, why do you continue to post here?

[LizzieCurry]

I posted on ATC about 12 years ago and then got banned after a couple of those. I re-registered but lost interest. It's amusing reading at times.

[ghostlight2]

"If you hate this board so much, why do you continue to post here?"

I haven't said hate this board, ljay889. I am pointing out what I perceive to be some of its flaws that make it harder to discuss the real reason most of us are here - theater. Remember when you had that troll relentlessly stalking you here and making up threads about you? Sucked, right? Wouldn't have happened on ATC.

I love theater. I love talking about theater. Many people here are wonderful treasure troves of information, but some others are here are just here for fun, trying to see who can be funnier, make the most outrageous sock puppets or out-insult each other. That can be disruptive. BWW is currently, imo, out of balance.




BWW's "ATC is shut down" thread

[Kad]

"both sites are full of "wannabe" theatre insiders......most of whom are really students and/or interns"

Some of those "wannabes" actually ARE.

[Patti LuPone FANatic]

As far as theatre chat boards are concerned, is it pretty much Broadway World and atc? There seems to be a certain degree of rivalry between the two boards. To use a silly comparison, perhaps BWW is Coca Cola and ATC is Pepsi? (i.e. Coca Cola seems to be more popular and has greater market share in many areas. I just finished reading a book at the company.) Fire away. from RC in Austin, Texas

[dramamama611]

I'd compare it more to the Yankees v Red Sox rivalry. Boston FANS care a heck of a lot more about the rivalry than do the Yankee's Fans.

[broadwaydevil]

So who's Boston in this case?

[WhizzerMarvin TrinaJasonMendel]

ghostlight- You wrongly assume that we only come here to talk about theater. The Main Board surely has that purpose, but I visit the Off-Topic Board just as much to check up on movie reviews, tv shows, political threads, personal threads. BWW has a lot more to offer than theater, even if that was the primary purpose for its creation.

You say you don't come here for entertainment, but to discuss theater. Do those two things have to be mutually exclusive?

[ghostlight2]

"ghostlight- You wrongly assume that we only come here to talk about theater."

Whizzer - you wrongly assume I assume anything. I said that I come here only to talk about theatre.

It is obvious there is more to BroadwayWorld than theater, and I am glad that the off topic board exists. I just wish people would actually keep the Off Topic stuff OFF the Main board.

"You say you don't come here for entertainment, but to discuss theater. Do those two things have to be mutually exclusive?"

Absolutely not. What I said was that I felt it was "out of balance". It can be hard to separate the wheat from the chaff here. Imo, it is one of the reasons that there are more theater professionals on ATC than there are here.

"So who's Boston in this case?"

BWW, of course. ATC seldom says anything about BWW or its posters.

[themysteriousgrowl]

I've never been a member there. I do check it daily, though I usually can't muster up the energy to spend more than 5 or 10 minutes looking at things because, as others have pointed out, its interface is so user-unfriendly. Also, I tend to gravitate toward forums that allow posters to have avatars. It makes the whole experience a lot less sterile and impersonal.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

ATC seldom says anything about BWW or its posters.

But that has much to do with the way it's styled as anything else, right. Talking about BWW would be off-topic and (and please correct me if I'm wrong) veering off topic on anything is pretty much a no-no there, right?

I don't care who posts where, but one board is enough for me and I prefer this one. Sure, there's ugliness and sure, I contribute at times, but I'm long past the days when I'm just gonna troll to troll. Even when I disagree with people fervently on here, I like to think that it mostly remains civil, and if I have crossed a line, I do try to make amends for it. But that doesn't mean that I always think I cross a line and that doesn't think that I, as a member of this community for like seven years (Yes, I had an original account called "Kringas" that was shut down, and it's no big secret. I'm not unmasking anything about me that the vast majority of longtime posters don't already know. That's why sometimes people will call me Kringas on here and confuse others by it. I also have a dog called Kringas so you can see just how deep this rabbit hole is) don't have some say on how we operate on this board. And I know many other posters feel the same way. If we're to be a community, we get to decide upon community standards (unless, of course, they conflict with moderator rules and/or whims, but that's really another discussion).

The vast majority of people I may have scuffled with here know it's not personal, and I've spent a lot of time in PMs with people that I have may have had difficulty with, trying to come to an understanding. I'd never try to claim that I'm all sweetness and light all the time, but being all sweetness and light all the time isn't any more valid that being downright nasty all the time. And let's face it, very few posters are downright nasty all the time. I can think of very few that fit that bill, and certainly no one who posted on this thread thus farwould be included on that list.

But you know, this is its own community, and we do seem to be given some leeway in how we want that community to flourish. And for every nasty comment that might not be warranted, there's a nose out of joint in overreaction to something innocuous. Sure, people can be a dick when they point out there's already a thread about something when someone posts a dupe, but let's not pretend that sometimes people who get it pointed out to them nicely that that's another thread. And if someone has a problem with me now, or thinks I'm being disingenuous in what I say about this subject, I invite you to have a discussion with me about it. Again, I'm not saying I have zero problems with anyone on here, but I don't think I'm just indiscrimiately nasty to people on princople. And often times, when I do come off too nasty and the person calls it to my attention, I realize how I sound and DO try to step back a bit and come back from a different angle. As much as I like to complain (and I like to complain about a lot of things, and I don't think that makes me unusual here, or even in the world at large) I do like to come here, to interact with the smart people. To laugh with the funny people. To gape at the crazy people.

I keep coming back the the main board I like to dicuss theatre. I keep coming back to the OT board because I like disccuing other things. And I have learned a lot from many posters here and I've had my opinions swayed on more than one occasion about something because of a persuiavise arugkment from one of this board's many intelligent posters. And no, we don't all have to agree on everything, but I'd never expect that. But if you A) Can't make any positive contributions to a discussion and/or just try to be detrimental (we all know what time that happens) B) If you make no effort to make your comments easily understood (by using correct words/spelling/etc) (and those posters are myriad) or C) Can not let anything GO (someting even I can be guilty of at times, but it's one of the many thing about myself that I'm constantly working on), please don't expect me to just magically have all sorts of respect for you. And like everything, there are exceptions to rules, and I also KNOW that just because this is how I feel doesn't mean every single other person feels this way, so I happily invite discussion about what someone might think is incorrect about anything I've said here.

If the board isn't what you want it to be, and you find others don't want it to be that way either, perhaps this just isn't the forum for you. That's not to anyone in particular, that's a general comment.

But the things that get me really all het up on here (racism, sexism, homophobia, etc) are the same things that get me het up in real life. And you can bet that as soon as I'd tell a poster here what why I thought what they said was inappropriate (and I give a wide berth to inappropriate) I'd say the same to that person in real life. I know that there are discussions about "people are just like they are on here as they are in real life"/"No, who you are on the board is NOT who you are in real life") but I think that BWW's Phyllis Rogers Stone and Bradley [surname redacted] are pretty close to being the same person, and I think most of the friends I've made here that have become real world friends would agree.

So, like everything else, this is just my own two cents.

[Patti LuPone FANatic]

All I can say is: "wow." from RC in Austin, Texas

[Plum]

ATC can get bitchy as all hell, but it's this site that drove me to abandon it for months for the sake of my sanity. You get higher highs here, camaraderie-wise, thanks to the looser modding policy, the persistence of threads, and the existence of the OT board, but you also get lower lows. Or at least I did - BWW and its community meant a ton to me a few years ago, but it also got truly upsetting, whereas with ATC I can kind of dip my toe in and dip it out again. I've read some amazingly informative threads in both sites, and I think in the end it's pretty cool there are enough Broadway fanatics around to support two lively forums that fancy themselves rivals. :)

[jv92]

I read All That Chat because sometimes it's a bit informative, and sometimes the posters have some interesting things to contribute. Note the word sometimes. I don't post. I joined for a little while, but found BWW a much more pleasant environment to discuss the theater.

I find the whole thing too controlling, far too fussy and old, and yes, very difficult to navigate through. Time to change the layout, Ann. In defense of some ATC posters, at least a bunch of them like Sondheim, therefore they're not ALL as bad as After Eight.