IRC Addiction Kills The Scene!
Imagine this: You log on at IRC, /join an international scene channel like #coders or a local scene channel like #coders.ger in the expectation of meeting some of your scene friends and scene gods, exchanging news and discussing scene-related opinions, and getting to know new sceners who you did not have contact with yet.
And what actually happens?
You meet the same guys you met yesterday. At first you might ask them for news, but later you will give up as there won't be any news anyway most of the time. How can there be something new when the so-called sceners spend all their days and nights on IRC instead of coding, pixeling, composing, working on their diskmags or at least show some activity on, for instance, web-pages?
If you ask a more known scener, you will most likely get an answer like: "Still working on our demo/intro/slideshow/blablabla for the XXXXXX party, about which I told you two weeks ago." And maybe: "There is some major bug, but I am going to find it." And perhaps the guy, if he is sensible enough, will even say: "I have only X days to go and spend all the time on IRC instead on coding!" And an even more reasonable guy will leave IRC immediately and resume working. The others will either say: "But sheeeesh, don't tell this anyone, will you? I do not want to lose my good opinion in the scene!" Or maybe: "And please do not publish this in your diskmag. I was already quite upset with what you wrote in the previous issue about me, though it was correct, namely that I have not done anything!"
They only want the good news about them to be published, but when there is no activity, there is no good news. And when there is no good news, there is no news worth to be published. And when there is no news worth to be published, no news will be published. And when no news will be published, it seems as if there is no news. And if there is no news - well, then it seems as if the scene is dead, huh?
But the scene is not dead! There are loads of able people on the IRC who feel that they belong to the scene and want to support it. However, they are supporting it in the wrong way when they only chat about nonsense topics like many people on #coders, for example, or, even worse, on #coders.ger do.
Show some real activity! Code, do gfx, do music! Release something! Be active! Found groups! Swap! Write articles for disk magazines!
IRC is a great thing and a very good and maybe even the best way for the scene to communicate, for many people are logged on at the same time and it is real-time. But when sceners become addicted to IRC and start becoming lazy at the real points in the demoscene, IRC has failed its purpose.
The more active sceners, on the other hand, are often those who work on their projects all day, every night, and hardly or never log on IRC, maybe because they have no or only limited Internet access. And yet, they have a problem: lack of communication. If you neither meet a certain person on IRC nor are in contact with him/her, you will not learn about his/her very latest progress and projects. So these interesting pieces of news get lost, unless the person posts them to an online scene ressource or sends them to a diskmag.
Conclusion: Work on your scene productions, but also keep contact with other sceners. Then you are really active. Then you are a real scener. ONLY then you really contribute to keeping the scene alive...
- adok^hugi