The sad state of PD

[buildersoftime]

An "Advanced Psychedelic Discussion" could be an interesting place, but IMO there would be quite a bit of pretension and potentially bad vibes to "non-advanced" users. I don't really think there is much benefit to this either, it's not as if all the "newbs" are posting in the scholarly threads. You could easily have an "advanced" thread that was surrounded by novice questions. Again, I know you are looking for a more directed target audience but those who are truly interested will still be exposed and it's unlikely that someone who cares little about the subject would come and weigh in.

^ I think you're missing an important point that people are actively dissuaded from getting involved in the PD community on account of the total crap that gets posted here. This is a place for a 15 year-old boy to discuss the difference between white fluff and needlepoint more than it is for a 45 year old critical thinker to ponder over the effects of psychedelics on society. I personally know an academic who's mega interested in the phenomenon of psychonautism but has no desire to connect to the forum. Why is this and how many others have we similarly lost?

I would love this to be a place where Nichols, Nutt, Carhart-Harris, Anne Shulgin and the Mannings got involved and all shared their unique insights. But can you imagine one of them trying to squeeze between a thread on how to trip at school without the teachers finding out and someone insisting that they're going to talke 5mg of 25i against advice because they've been smoking weed every day for 2 years and can handle their drugs?

And by the way, being enquiring, informed, curious, mature and articulate is not the same as being pretentious.

 

[spacejunk]

^ elitism.
Nothing more.
Be the fucking change.

 

[Roger&Me]

elitism is a good thing imho, its exactly what this forum needs

however i think some people need to remember that bluelight is a harm reduction site. this isnt just for experienced drug users to talk with each other about what they are getting high on these days, its a place for people to learn how to responsibly use drugs, and to understand how other peoples' experiences could possibly give them an idea on how to do things more safely

tbph the "harm reduction trumps all" philosophy is exactly what sucks about this site, and why discourse has fallen to such a pitiful level. its bullshit anyway, the HR rhetoric is just institutional self-preservation disguised as self-important wankery.

 

[spacejunk]

^So stop coming here then.
This attitude that Bluelight owes you something or "it was better in the olden days" is nostalgia bordering upon the delusional.
Try and improve what you see as the "problems" with bluelight as it stands, stop being a curmudgeon - or just spend your time doing something else.
Actively using a forum that you say "sucks" is what is really pathetic and sad.

Edit - I think the main "problem" bluelight faces is that some people don't know how to drop their "lounge act" when they post on the "real boards".

 

[Roger&Me]

^So stop coming here then.

i pretty much did lol, i basically only post in lounge now. and don't give me that "be the change" wankshit, i helped build this forum. you wouldn't even know, grasshopper

 

[Bob Loblaw]

I think the main "problem" bluelight faces is that some people don't know how to drop their "lounge act" when they post on the "real boards".

I think it's probably server costs.

 

[buildersoftime]

Spacejunk: The "if you don't like it you can fuck off" attitude has caused all the people who would make this place truly great to fuck off. It also contradicts strongly with your 'be the change' attitude. It's paradoxical to hold both views at the same time.

I think it's probably server costs.

Now this is something I know nothing about but surely sponsorship deals would be easier to make if the information this site contained was of a higher caliber?

 

[Psychonautical]

Yeah, I've noticed alot of greenlighters. joining thinking that they can "Be Heros"
and
Blatantly ask for Vendors through Private messages. Based upon them just liking a post you did.
Honestly, i think it's about time where like a line in the sand should get drawn and this forum becomes private.
Anyone with like 400+ posts, should be allowed to discuss in the psychedelic discussion.
Call it APD Advanced Psychedelic Discussion.

Make it so, that people, when they sign up to this website, actually have to establish themselves and their personalities to others in the other sections of this website.
By relating and actually appearing to be social outside of just innerweb doap fiends. If they cannot accomplish this, they can get banned. Then that way
Psychedelic discussion doesn't get filled with delusional 16 year olds.

I mean, honestly if MAPS.org considers us to be the guinea pigs of an entire class of compounds which they may never have a chance to test on humans.
Our trails that we do on ourselves, that we can actually elucidate using strong vocabulary, with a sense of direction. Are true research.
Let's begin to treat this place like the research facility it is.

 

[spacejunk]

Spacejunk: The "if you don't like it you can fuck off" attitude has caused all the people who would make this place truly great to fuck off. It also contradicts strongly with your 'be the change' attitude. It's paradoxical to hold both views at the same time

It's no contradiction at all. Why would people that don't want to stick around do so?
I've taken a few sabbaticals, and come back realising what an interesting social phenomena this site is.
I didnt start a thread called "The sad state of PD". I come here when I want to.
Contribute when I feel necessary.
Misquoting me doesn't help whatever convoluted argument you are trying to make, either. It makes you look overly emotional and sore.

Why do members of the bluelight crew keep repeating things like 'don't complain about it, change it' when this thread is in itself an attempt at change?

Possibly because of the way you're going about it?
Your grasp on the facts (such as the Advanced Drug Discussion name change) and your insistence that all tertiary education should be treated equally in matters of pharmacology and the like. I'm not convinced, so I'm discussing it with you.

You don't like my replies? I don't think yours are of such a high standard either.
Have you considered that you're asking too much of the Internet to provide such instant "lofty intellectual" gratification?


Bob: Fair point, not something i'd considered.

Roger: With all due respect...forget it. You're really great and I bow down before you and kiss your smelly white American toes.

As for the state of the forum, it's much more coherent, constructive and interesting than this thread.
It has its issues, but it's a cruel world. Fucking deal with it.

Or keep living in the past and moaning about the modern world. Easy.

 

[buildersoftime]

^ if that's directed at me, I'm not sure that at any point during this conversation I've compared Bluelight as it stands to Bluelight of the past. I'm not looking back I'm looking forward. And that's why I started this thread. I don't want to fuck off, I want PD to be better.

 

[spacejunk]

It was directed at Roger, sorry for not making that more clear.

 

[flat-line]

I would love this to be a place where Nichols, Nutt, Carhart-Harris, Anne Shulgin and the Mannings got involved and all shared their unique insights. But can you imagine one of them trying to squeeze between a thread on how to trip at school without the teachers finding out and someone insisting that they're going to talke 5mg of 25i against advice because they've been smoking weed every day for 2 years and can handle their drugs?

And by the way, being enquiring, informed, curious, mature and articulate is not the same as being pretentious.

That's just elitism and mental masturbation.

Why don't you just make a private forum and invite “ Nichols, Nutt, Carhart-Harris, Anne Shulgin and the Mannings” to a digital circle jerk. You could talk about how everyone in the circle is so enlightened and ways to make a perfect world though lofty thoughts.

Honestly, i think it's about time where like a line in the sand should get drawn and this forum becomes private.
Anyone with like 400+ posts, should be allowed to discuss in the psychedelic discussion.
Call it APD Advanced Psychedelic Discussion.

Many Bls don't want an acct with 400+ post counts. Many of us toss our accts after 100-200, many people on the internet these days don't want 10,000 posts linked to them especially when the post are about illegal or grey area subjects that attract big brother monitoring entities.

-400+ posts weeds out people that don't have or want to spend mass amounts of time on forums.
-400+ posts weeds out people who don't want 400+ posts
-If you post 400 thought out posts it could take years. If you go to the lounge and post “i fuk yur sister” “haa haa u suk” it takes a couple of weeks. Your just weeding out quality.

And what is the benchmark of “advanced” ? 4 dimensional pipe dream fantasy ? How I found god on LSD ? And who would monitor/judge and allow “advanced” or delete not “advanced” ?

Private forums are usually very lonely places that die due to lack of anything.

 

[Thanatos]

^ you are eliciting a violation of BLUA by implying that it's okay to have alt accounts just because you don't want your post count to rise.
Honestly, the influx of a massive amount of new members has led to the gradual downfall of the entire BL community for the last few years. So many 2021-present join date members post without ever having come into contact with the people that built this site from the ground up; without ever taking the time to explore the archives or search through the open threads to educate themselves before posting. The average intellect and science acumen has declined massively.

As a side note, the search function needs to be fixed. It hasn't worked properly in years.

 

[atara]

It just seems to me that the psychedelic experience is so fascinating.

Certainly!

It raises questions about the very nature of consciousness, the role of religion and worship in human evolution, neurology, personal development, philosophical arguments around perception, time, free will, etc.

The major problem with philosophical arguments in psychedelic drug forums isn't that people don't want to have them. It's that when they do appear, most of the people contributing don't have the necessary background in the "facts of the matter" in order to discuss the issues in a useful way.

The thing is, while we can guide discussion towards one topic or another, we can't simply raise the intellectual level of the board by making everyone smarter. Our primary goal is/has been to make PD accessible to as many people as possible, to ensure everyone who wants to learn how to use drugs safely can do so. In order to do this, PD must remain a welcoming environment even for people who may be uninformed, young, mentally or physically handicapped, or even somewhat reckless, so that these people can nonetheless receive the guidance they need, hopefully, to stay alive and well. We aren't willing to compromise the goal of public safety by "thinning the herd" of members whose contributions are merely stupid, as long as they don't put other users or the board at risk.

If you want a forum specifically devoted to drug science, we do have NPD, and if you want a forum devoted to philosophy, we have P&S. PD can't be all things to all people, so we do often tend to promote discussion of the practice of drug-taking specifically to the exclusion of more... abstract questions.

The fact that this forum is mainly a place to tell 14 year old kids that it wouldn't be a good idea to drop acid while their parents nip down to the shops is a great shame.

Someone has to.

The pharmacologist can talk about neurotoxity of 4-substituted amphetamines while the criminologist cares about the environment of prohibition causing a situation where relatively dangerous and legal drugs such as PCA are taken in preference to relatively safe and illegal drugs like MDMA. Both disciplines rely on concepts and theoretical analysis tools which aren't available to the non-specialist public. In the case of the pharmacologist it might be SAR while the criminologist may use the theory of criminal innovation.

Political issues [e.g. criminology] might be better suited to CE&P. I think the major reason we don't have any sort of advanced sociological discussion on bluelight is that the members haven't really demanded it by posting interesting topics thereabout. ADD had for a very long time focused on the direct effects of drugs on people, so when it was renamed we used the usual activity in that forum as a guide.

Also, I'm usually pretty cautious about discussion of interpersonal issues, as such discussions become heated very easily.

Regardless, we're usually pretty permissive about what can go in NPD, so long as it doesn't clearly belong in some other forum (often BDD).

you are eliciting a violation of BLUA by implying that it's okay to have alt accounts just because you don't want your post count to rise.

You can delete your account and make another, as long as you aren't doing so to prevent us from enforcing the rules. You aren't allowed to have two accounts at the same time.

 

[Thanatos]

Atara: would it be possible to make the creation of trip report threads 'warning' worthy and force these posts to be made either in the Big and Dandy/Small and Handy or the Trip Reports sub forum?
It seems at least half of the threads here are just trip reports from novice psychedelic users that arent contributing to harm reduction or the collective knowledge of the community.

I've noticed in the last few years that most new threads are of low substance and deter the users who can add advanced experiential or scientific discourse to PD. it's getting old.

 

[flat-line]

^ you are eliciting a violation of BLUA by implying that it's okay to have alt accounts just because you don't want your post count to rise.
Honestly, the influx of a massive amount of new members has led to the gradual downfall of the entire BL community for the last few years. So many 2021-present join date members post without ever having come into contact with the people that built this site from the ground up; without ever taking the time to explore the archives or search through the open threads to educate themselves before posting. The average intellect and science acumen has declined massively.

As a side note, the search function needs to be fixed. It hasn't worked properly in years.

I think everyone should be as anonymous as they can on the internet. It would not be hard for a big brother monitoring agency to obtain all members and ip address on any given forum.
On a forum about drugs/illegal activity it would not be hard to take that info then track the users and have them flagged for anything “suspicious” - visits to vendor sites, ups tracking sites, paypal, etc.

It would not be hard for them to have the complete average members internet browsing history years and years long. Every site, every email, etc.
Changing ips and accts help break up tracking records.

Not that I do any highly illegal activity but why invite a bunch of goons to monitor my online behavior ? Their is nothing good or positive that can come from that. Why make it easy. Why make yourself a target.

I would suspect the influx of a massive amount of new members is your normal internet forum traffic. Most forums get many new members and only a small percentage of them actually become active posters and contributors.
Many forums delete accounts after they do not get used for so long I think this is a good idea.

As someone else mentioned you can delete accounts on BL which helps keep space on the servers from filling up.

 

[electrodevo]

That's just elitism and mental masturbation.

Some "elitism" and "mental masturbation" of this sort is what is going to be needed in order to change the current paradigm of psychedelic drugs etc. in the public eye.

Many of us toss our accts after 100-200, many people on the internet these days don't want 10,000 posts linked to them especially when the post are about illegal or grey area subjects that attract big brother monitoring entities.

And then there's some of us who are not that paranoid.

True, the paranoia for many users is understandable. (See: how the war on drug effects society...)

Look, I'm too new to BL to moan about "the state of BL" and I don't mind newbie threads as much as some in this thread do. Not every thread or even that *many* threads have to be heavy and serious and sober and whatnot. You don't have to click on every thread after all. And everyone has to start somewhere.

But, to give an example, the marijuana legalization movement was *not* spearheaded by a bunch of 14 year olds trying to hide their dope usage from their mothers. It instead was brought about by many people, exploring many aspects... the medical benefits... the recognition that the punitive approach has failed big time (see: militarization of law enforcement, racial sentencing disparities, America's astonishingly high incarceration rate, etc.)... the fact that so many people -- adults, normal adults! -- consume it, don't abuse it, and don't instantly flip out and become zombie human flesh eaters or whatever the latest false media scare story is etc. It's a mild, controllable intoxicant. "Less harmful than alcohol", as you could say.

These topics have been thrown around the, for a lack of a better term, "elitist" world for a while. You don't get the CEO of a major insurance company to sign up for backing marijuana legalization laws if "elitist" people hadn't thought through the pros and cons, and if the general conclusion of many (not all, but many) in the "elitist" world is "WTF are we doing?"...

For the same reason, *anti-intellectualism* in regards to psychedelics is not a good idea either. Laws on psychedelics will not change much at all if all psychedelics are good for is getting teens "trashed". I disagree that post count=advanced and it may be difficult to find a place on Bluelight for this sort of thing... but at the very least, it is not elitist IMHO to try and think how psychedelics can responsibly fit in the world, and try and steer all the 14 year old kids trying to nip acid and hide it from their parents towards, er, a bit more responsible behavior.

 

[Grinders Kiefers]

I see the point about there being too many beginner questions/threads, but otherwise what is the problem? There still seems to be plenty of good discussion here, albeit there are now just a lot more people becoming interested in psychedelics. That may or may not be a good thing, but if we as a community can help educate and inform those who are unfamiliar with these substances, I view that to be a VERY good thing. There are, unfortunately, plenty of people who don't and will never bother researching the chemicals they ingest, so to even come on here to ask questions, even if they are "n00b" questions seems like a pretty good first step to me. I think whoever said that it's not necessarily a sad state of PD but a sad state of drug culture is absolutely right.

Maybe the moderators need to close/move/lock those threads which are redundant or invite hostile discussion, but Bluelight is still one of the less cluttered forums I browse on a regular basis. The community has grown immensely since I've first joined, but frankly I'm never too disappointed coming here to read up on drugs and other related topics.

 

[Folley]

Yeah, I've noticed alot of greenlighters. joining thinking that they can "Be Heros"
and
Blatantly ask for Vendors through Private messages. Based upon them just liking a post you did.
Honestly, i think it's about time where like a line in the sand should get drawn and this forum becomes private.
Anyone with like 400+ posts, should be allowed to discuss in the psychedelic discussion.
Call it APD Advanced Psychedelic Discussion.

Make it so, that people, when they sign up to this website, actually have to establish themselves and their personalities to others in the other sections of this website.
By relating and actually appearing to be social outside of just innerweb doap fiends. If they cannot accomplish this, they can get banned. Then that way
Psychedelic discussion doesn't get filled with delusional 16 year olds.

I mean, honestly if MAPS.org considers us to be the guinea pigs of an entire class of compounds which they may never have a chance to test on humans.
Our trails that we do on ourselves, that we can actually elucidate using strong vocabulary, with a sense of direction. Are true research.
Let's begin to treat this place like the research facility it is.

It would be an absolute tragedy and the death of Bluelight if this happened. The reason Bluelight is the NUMBER ONE DRUG SITE on the internet is the fact we open our doors to everyone, no matter who they are or what they know.


IMO the entire point of Bluelight is to provide knowledge to those in need. If you are unwilling to take the time out of your day to lend someone a hand, you should probably look for a different website.

Bluelight is extremely successful, more than anyone could have ever hoped. I don't exactly think it would be wise to alienate 80% of our audience so we can pander to an ideology that says "everyone here is stupid, we need to ban them".

Now this is something I know nothing about but surely sponsorship deals would be easier to make if the information this site contained was of a higher caliber?

Bluelight doesn't have outside advertising. The only projects that are displayed on the top of the screen are ones that Bluelight is working with directly. Not to mention I highly doubt sponsors would rather have a "smaller, smarter" audience over a "larger, dumber" one.

 

[spacejunk]

^ agree 100%