seen on tumblr :

 

 

By the next time Coldplay released an album, the message board was all but dead. Until detached from coldplay.com and left to the weeds of spam, it had still been a popular and growing community, but the people running the band’s website decided it had to go.

 

Doing this week and collecting other people’s stories about the board I have been thinking back to the community that we had a lot. The question Lauren posed about whether the same kind of community could exist anymore especially struck me. My first impulse was to answer ‘no’, or at least that a new one couldn’t now form.

 

When thinking about this, I came back to a paragraph from an excellent piece that Katherine St Asaph wrote in response to Amanda Palmer’s Kickstarter success:

 

 

There’s so much emphasis these days on cultivating fanbases, giving them cute nicknames and shoutouts and TEAM SOLIDARITY or whatnot, and none of this is at all new (oh boy, is it ever not new) but the deliberate emphasis on it these days, I feel, is doing more harm than it is good. It gives you roving packs of stans who will attack writers about even the most fucking trivial perceived slights, sure, and it enables them. But it also, I feel, makes people even less apt to explore and discover new music than they were before.

 

That is what I think the crucial difference was. Coldplay made very little attempt to cultivate a community from their message board, not least because a lot of the means of doing so didn’t exist yet. The secret gig that I talked about was a stunning gesture partly because it was so rare for them to interact with us. There was no constant drip-feed of news and competitions to keep posts coming, very few recordings of concerts to obsess over and no one pleading with the band for retweets.

 

In the long periods between releases or news, we would talk about other things and other bands, and people generally would take the time to listen to them. I made quite a few musical discoveries through board mix CD exchanges. As a model, it encouraged friendships to form because there was nothing else to get out of it other than talking to other people. Among long-time members there was a sense that, if we had a group identity, it was as CPMBers first and foremost and Coldplay fans second.

 

The positive side for the band was that they didn’t have to put much effort in to make sure that people would still be around once they wanted more of us to buy their records. On the other hand, if you’re following a band on twitter and go off them, it’s pretty easy to just unfollow. But if you’re still using a message board to talk to a big group of your good friends and none of you like the band any more, why go to the effort of moving on just because the board is branded with the band’s name? And if threads start coming up about their terrible new album or the stupid things that their singer says, and people who haven’t been on the board for nearly as long and don’t know much about them are supporting the band, well, it’s tempting to go in there and set them straight.

 

In the dying days of the Coldplay board there were an increasing number of spammers and trolls (the proper kind), but those problems were ones that could easily have been dealt with by an active admin. The backlash against X&Y and the number of long-time members who would regularly insult the band’s new music and actions was a more difficult problem. Though no one ever officially said so, I still think that it was the level of cynicism and negativity and the terrible impression that it was giving to newcomers that led to the plug being pulled. I always tried my best to stay positive, but as one of the secret gig invitees who didn’t like X&Y, and organiser of the album poll that it lost out in, I still feel some guilt over the whole thing.

link

seen on tumblr : :lol:

 

after a concert

 

everyone else: They were so good live werent they? Very very good show, shame about all the screaming, could barely hear them! But they are so amazing, im so happy I got to see them live!

 

Me: WE WERE IN THE SAME ROOM! THEY WERE BREATHING THE SAME AIR AS ME, DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS!?!?!?!? THEIR AIR IS INSIDE ME, WE ARE CONNECTED! WE SHOULD WE BE MARRIED! AND DID YOU SEE THEIR CLOTHES?!?! THEY'RE SO PRETTY I WANT TO DIE, GOD SAVE MY SOUL SOMEBODY HOLD ME! THEY ARE SO PERFECT I DONT KNOW WHAT TO DO AND DID YOU HEAR THEM SING THAT SONG AND THEIR VOICES WERE JUST SO PERFECT AND THEN THEY GOT CHANGED AND I THOUGHT THAT WAS THE END OF MY LIFE COS THEY ARE JUST SO PRETTY AND PERFECT AND MY WHOLE BRAIN IS CRYING, I CANT BREATH I DONT WANT TO GO HOME. AND THEY LIKE WAVED AT OUR AREA, SO I THINK THEY SAW ME AND NO THEY KNOW I EXIST WE CAN GET MARRIED!!! IT SHOULD BE IN THE SPRING BECAUSE THEN IT WONT BE TOO HOT OR COLD AND WE CAN TALK ABOUT THIS DAY AS THE DAY WE MET AND FELL IN LOVE, BECAUSE THEY KNOOOOOOOOOWWWW MEEEEE! THIS IS THE BEST AND WORST MOMENT OF MY LIFE, DONT MAKE ME GO. NOTHING WILL EVER BEAT THIS DAY, THE REST OF MY LIFE WILL BE A DISAPPOINTMENT AFTER THIS JUST KILL ME NOW AND LET ME DIE HAPPY!!!!11111!!!!!1!!!!!1

 

:laugh3::laugh3:

Having my own little Coldplay party in my office today watching this:

 

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RC0ChGctls4]Coldplay Live at Glastonbury 2011 Full - YouTube[/ame]

Jason Regler ‏@Jayreg1969

Omg :) Sweden ;) wow :) many of the crew are admiring the views :)

 

He just doesn't stop, doesn't he ? :lol::lol:

Jason Regler ‏@Jayreg1969

you caught my Eye in Copenhagen :) Behind where i was working !!! who were you :) are you out there !!! I gave you set list :)

 

OMG!! JASON!! :lol::lol:

 

What happened to t he thread for Jason's tweets? I can't even find it...

Jason Regler ‏@Jayreg1969

I was sled be a female how does she get meet band :) i said marry me :) sweden your a beautiful place :) I want live here :)

 

:laugh3::laugh3:

What happened to t he thread for Jason's tweets? I can't even find it...

 

http://www.coldplaying.com/forum/showthread.php?t=93450

Jason Regler ‏@Jayreg1969

I was sled be a female how does she get meet band :) i said marry me :) sweden your a beautiful place :) I want live here :)

 

:laugh3::laugh3:

 

:laugh3:

OMG how creepy :laugh3::laugh3::laugh3:

haha, he was being such a hound dog earlier!:lol:

This is so beautiful and inspirational.

 

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMi2xqsREZ8]Us Against The World (Interlude) - Original - YouTube[/ame]

My ticket for the Coldplay concert I'm going to this Sunday has the number 42 somewhere on it :awesome:

:D

My english teacher saw Coldplay in 2003. He's pretty cool. :P

seen on tumblr : :lol:

 

after a concert

 

everyone else: They were so good live werent they? Very very good show, shame about all the screaming, could barely hear them! But they are so amazing, im so happy I got to see them live!

 

Me: WE WERE IN THE SAME ROOM! THEY WERE BREATHING THE SAME AIR AS ME, DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS!?!?!?!? THEIR AIR IS INSIDE ME, WE ARE CONNECTED! WE SHOULD WE BE MARRIED! AND DID YOU SEE THEIR CLOTHES?!?! THEY'RE SO PRETTY I WANT TO DIE, GOD SAVE MY SOUL SOMEBODY HOLD ME! THEY ARE SO PERFECT I DONT KNOW WHAT TO DO AND DID YOU HEAR THEM SING THAT SONG AND THEIR VOICES WERE JUST SO PERFECT AND THEN THEY GOT CHANGED AND I THOUGHT THAT WAS THE END OF MY LIFE COS THEY ARE JUST SO PRETTY AND PERFECT AND MY WHOLE BRAIN IS CRYING, I CANT BREATH I DONT WANT TO GO HOME. AND THEY LIKE WAVED AT OUR AREA, SO I THINK THEY SAW ME AND NO THEY KNOW I EXIST WE CAN GET MARRIED!!! IT SHOULD BE IN THE SPRING BECAUSE THEN IT WONT BE TOO HOT OR COLD AND WE CAN TALK ABOUT THIS DAY AS THE DAY WE MET AND FELL IN LOVE, BECAUSE THEY KNOOOOOOOOOWWWW MEEEEE! THIS IS THE BEST AND WORST MOMENT OF MY LIFE, DONT MAKE ME GO. NOTHING WILL EVER BEAT THIS DAY, THE REST OF MY LIFE WILL BE A DISAPPOINTMENT AFTER THIS JUST KILL ME NOW AND LET ME DIE HAPPY!!!!11111!!!!!1!!!!!1

 

Lawl, that's great! xDD

I like DLIBYH. That's my random thought. :wacko:

Just a random question.. Can anyone hear what Chris saying just before he starts Clocks in Copenhagen?:freak:

 

[ame=

]

[/ame]

I think it was What news from Winterfell

^ It sounds a bit like that..But what does that means?

It's something Game of Thrones related.

Cool..Thanks.

That Moving to Mars live performance is just breathtaking :heart:

Somebody should hold up a sign to the boys when they're on the b stage. It should say, "Swallowed In The Sea" or "Life In Technicolor ii" :D

Somebody should hold up a sign to the boys when they're on the b stage. It should say, "Swallowed In The Sea" or "Life In Technicolor ii" :D

 

Or "Dear Jonny: Here's TracieMorgan's Address!!"??? :wink3:

 

But seriously it would be amazing to hear SITS live again...and Politik!

Somebody should hold up a sign to the boys when they're on the b stage. It should say, "Swallowed In The Sea" or "Life In Technicolor ii" :D

 

:wacky: I'd LOVE to hear both! I never have! :dazzled:

 

Or "Dear Jonny: Here's TracieMorgan's Address!!"??? :wink3:

 

But seriously it would be amazing to hear SITS live again...and Politik!

 

:laugh3::laugh3::laugh3: True... Well, at least Politik's was played for ages... But SITS and LITII deserve to be played for more than a single tour! :heart: