Honestly, this’ll probably be out of scope for this thread (feel free to move it or whatever), but we need to be real about the online community situation.
I understand @Rena 's long-running frustrations. Putting in work on here for non-vk topics is futile, since most folks on here are largely interested in vk (as was MH.) The kicker is the forum’s name is literally “Jrock One”. I don’t know the solution, or if there is even a need for one as bands have their own places for engagement. Most of us are too old to put energy into building communities, so I’m thankful enough that places like this still exist.
TikTok, Twitter X, Discord, much to some older folk’s chagrin, is where to be right now for any sort of large-scale discourse. (Yeah, you have Facebook and stuff like Whatsapp for non-burgers, but as a burger I’m not as informed on where the youth are there.)
J-rock on Reddit is just not going to be relevant. You have more members on fringe political subreddits than J-rock-related ones.
this part used to be bizarre to me, since VK is the easiest niche to ignore - we literally don’t ever spill outside - but ever since I’ve got some more non-asian fandom examples of people who are better kept away forever, I just resort to keeping some opinion-makers from here on my permanent ignore list never engaging them, and that did wonders.
it’s censored in my region for example, as are all major VPN apps surprisingly with the exception of russian-built ones, which makes me assume they’re stuffed with spyware, and I’m not risking that for some casual kikiing about kawaii yaoi husbando metal
the out of control imbecilization of twitter for other subjects over past year+ has been quite impressive, too, which helps with not missing it.
I think it’s pretty dead. Other than using the app/SNS integration for scrobbles; I don’t see much discourse in the comment sections. Also, with streaming services doing year-in-review, that kind of defeats the need for last.fm anyway (for most folks.)
last.fm’s shoutbox was kinda The Place for the most fabulous character tropes that are compiled in my ignored ppl list here… sad if the website as a whole is no longer of interest for them.
Its partially a joke.
Partially I mean it.
I think it came with a certain tiredness i feel about VK.
You see, whenever i come in here, the main thing i see here is “but VK, and VK here and VK there”
It’s cool you guys love VK and its not about me taking this from anybody.
But i think some of you hail VK as something that is bigger than what it is and also forget to see its flaws.
In the end we are a echo chamber to a certain amount, so take me as that one critical voice, that just shows you the things you dont want to see or you would prefer to ignore.
Feel free to say “fuck metalcore” to me whenever i say “fuck VK”, if you want it to be fair.
and this too. We Staff members have no idea either on how to change it. So i just keep doing what i am doing.
Post nonVK bands i like and follow or whatever i come across and once in a while make an interview. Andi just take what i get, i am glad about anyone who did read my interviews.
I disagree here, Vk fans do spill over nowadays. Vk fans are one of the reasons, why that shitty Finn McKenty video happened too. Because of fans constantly annoying the dude in his discord server, till finally made that shitty video.
Also i am sure, @CAT5 could have some interesting intake on the Jrock and VK topic.
We really don’t know what to do. What @Rena is saying isn’t a new topic, because I was in that same boat over a decade ago. I tried for quite some time to spread awareness of stuff outside our usual affair. It was mostly ignored. Eventually, I gave up. Maybe I reached a few people, but I really didn’t move the needle.
It’s a catch-22. You won’t have people discussing a band if there are no fans. But if there are no fans, then there’s no one to discuss the band! And I don’t want to paint the line as strictly being visual vs non-visual, because that same catch-22 is reflected within the scene itself. We all identify as visual kei fans, but beyond Dir en grey and the GazettE what we enjoy is so fragmented that there’s really not a lot of common ground. And there’s not a lot of willingness to out and explore other things and potentially be displeased with what we find.
And this isn’t an opinion. This is straight fact. Take a look at the top 5 artist threads by number of responses.
Five of the top ten most popular topics of all time are Dir en grey related. One is the GazettE. One is DEVILOOF. One is DIMLIM. One is TLRS. And DIMLIM finna get booted with the REITA thread in short order, which reinforces my point.
This is why I hesitated to bring up the topic, but ultimately did. I don’t want to hijack REITA’s death to push another agenda, but this is also the best time to connect the dots and express myself.
It’s simply not sustainable for us to focus most of our effort on just two bands. And it’s not a situation that the staff can fix by waving a magic wand. If we could, we would have done it already. It’s going to have to be a community initiative. We’ll have to make an effort to discuss the topics we wanna see while also indulging others in theirs.
And that might just mean expanding our borders to consider bands we normally don’t, visual or not. Because we’ve been doing the alternative for the last fourteen years, and this is the crossroads we’re at.
There’s not really anything that I can offer outside of what’s already been said. @colorfuljinsei summed the issue up pretty nicely.
I spent the better part of 15 years trying to spread the gospel of non-vk Jrock and Japanese music as a whole, and while I did reach and effect a few select individuals, in retrospect, I think it was largely a fool’s errand.
It’s likely worse nowadays because online communities are so fragmented and the online landscape has increasingly enabled narcissism of all kinds…thus music discovery is far easier to do solo than having to rely on any communities.
I wonder how much really is not expanding one’s borders and how much just not saying anything in threads.
For me it’s a mixture of both for example.
I’ve always been good of knowing (on a sensed level) before listening which bands I like. In like 80 - 90 % of the cases it’s perfectly what I expected from looking at pics, styles whatever. Also seeing who comments, whom that band gets compared to often helps me knowing before listening.
I do try out more than is obvious though. I’m just not someone who’s posting much but that’s not just here that’s on Twitter, Insta and whatever place else I may be or have been to.
I wonder, if there’re more people like this.
I also recognized that people don’t seem to be too interested on the one hand (because there’s barely any reaction to news threads) but don’t know much about activity on the other hand (while with the first part I thought in the past they already knew about the news from Twitter or other SNS I too often came across posts like “I didn’t think they were active anymore” for several bands that had been active most of the time which just were proof to me these people didn’t look at these band’s SNS at all otherwise they would have known).
I don’t know why this is so but I guess time is one factor. There’s just a limited amount of how long people can check SNS, can hang around here, varying much depending on everyone’s own circumstances.
In the end when it comes to what I do listen to and what not it’s just a matter of my personal taste and with even my time being limited (I guess I do have more than lots of other people) I don’t try out everything when I’m pretty sure I might think that band will be okay but very likely not peak my interest enough. I do know what I like and with becoming older I have settled for certain things that I do prefer listening to.
this feels a morbid or bragging to say - i swear i don’t mean it like this - but each time someone passes and i post up like ten of their songs on my IG stories as my way of showing respect, every time i get multiple people from far outside vkei messaging me saying they checked out the band from the samples they heard, or that they wanted to see what was special when so many people were affected by their passing
I mean there’s so obviously the potential there for interest, it’s the reason i try to never go without mentioning bands by name whenever i get to talk about my music - and i’ve seen people hear vkei for the first time and enjoy it enough to look into bands later on their own
This is just a forum specifically for 25-35 years’ people; i don’t think we gotta conflate our free time for forum posting shrinking with vkei dying (#r3ssurectvkei)
I mean ngl who really uses forums anymore lol, we’re a weird sample set
This a fair understandable point to bring up. I feel like the trade off events you guys host help with the spread of other types of Japanese music. It’s honestly because of trade off I decided to branch out more. Most jap music for me was vkei for a long time until I joined trade off. I get excited to learn about new other music that is outside of vkei. Sometimes don’t have the time to discover new things but the trade off helps with that for me I feel. The times I do have time to discover then I’ll sometimes dable in the unknown. Hope more others could join in on trade off. It’s interesting to hear something new and also different perspectives of other people’s musical interests and how others react to your own. I believe you guys have done your best in regards to this topic. Thank you for your efforts
Im one of those that like to search for new music by himself so I can’t say much about that.
From what Cat and Zeus have been saying I guess we need way more and more people that can be motivated enough to spread awareness about all kinds of bands in the j-rock sphere (and beyond?).
Also more people to create artists thread and comment in them.
I think I will start writing more reviews about the things that I listen to. I already try to give an nod when I enjoy something here, but writing something meatier won’t do any harm
but i am still newbie in comparison of your great taste master 
