Hondonian Culture

[The NZA]

 

Previously, id wanted to do a thread about other sites that referenced/pointed to us, or anything about our community not actually featured here on our pages. I still havent tossed much together, but in that vein, i thought id post the interview about us conducted by new member Undercover Blonde for a journalism class, about a creative endeavor. its mostly about us, anyway, so here's what i answered:

 

Where did Hondosbar.com come from?

 

Hondo is a great John Wayne movie. Hondo's Bar took from that, in that it was used in a book called Preacher that really stuck with me when i read it in college, really great graphic novel.

given that a lot of our original crowd (irish/UK) came over from a community that was about that very book, it just fit, when i took over the board years ago.

 

Does it have anything to do with what you went to school for?

 

Eh, yes and no? i graduated with a BA in philosophy, and when i helped create the board in its original inception, i lead a philosophy forum within it to continue learning/sharing ideas. the community that built around this was its own thing, but much of the concept came from myself & friends (still on there) drinking and staying up all night bullshitting about philosophy, politics, movies, music etc. we just wanted to spread the conversation further & wider.

 

Do you feel it takes creativity to run the site and come up with fresh ideas?

 

I do, but less so. when it was smaller/more local, id have to work and make a lot more threads/topics to inspire conversation & debate. i still do this, anytime anything comes up in pop culture or otherwise - the more controversial, the better - but having an international community these days means by the time i get to creating a topic, its likely already there, and has several pages of talk going. its great.

 

What makes your site different than all the other sites out there?

 

as a forum, not a tremendous amount; there was a period around the turn of the millenia that forums became fashionable, and even taco bell's site for some reason had one. for one, we decided to not have a "theme", so as to be open to virtually any topic, which has really worked out, as far as bringing a really diverse crowd in.

 

Another angle is our rules, or basic lack of. We try to keep a strong policy against censorship, and our members & moderators tend to really enjoy the freedom of exercising their views and not have them restricted because of various social/cultural taboos. This also means that, at times, members have to have thick skin, but by and large, i think this approach has fostered some really great & mature discussions. i still learn a lot.

 

the result is that it went beyond being a simple discussion forum and became a community at some point. many sites might have inside jokes & build a sub-culture, but by the time we've had more than one successful international meetups, i believe we've hit a milestone.

 

Do you see it as a creative outlet or as a source of revenue?

 

Definitely a creative outlet, as i dont really profit from it. Since the board basically went public in '03 or so, we've accepted member donations to go towards server/maintenance fees, but on a good year, that means breaking even. My personal decision to not allow advertisements on the board has pretty much guaranteed this.

 

 

Do you plan to turn it into a source of revenue?

 

Eh, im all for promoting our member's works, and have created a links page to do so, as well as freely inviting members to advertise their goods & services on the site as they please.

If i am to directly profit from this venture, it'll more likely be in the form of opening a physical location years from now, an idea we've been throwing around.

 

Do you feel the first amendment is important to what you do?

 

Definitely, but i dont often point to american government as the model for our community and its rights - the spirit is close, in a classical liberal sense, but somedays its more akin to the wild west. I do not believe in moderating with a heavy hand, and again, my community seems to largely value this.

 

however, notions like the freedom of speech, as well as religion, very much carry over - we've our previously mentioned policy on censorship, and concerning faith, although much of the community defaults as skeptics/agnostics, we've created a forum for the religious to celebrate their ideals, and debate (often, but not always civil) is encouraged in politics, sceince, etc.

 

How do you feel about censorship?

 

It's the absolute last resort, and to some extent, the antithesis of what we stand for. I ban spammers (often they're advertising scripts more than people) as per our registration agreement, but the last example i can think of where something was censored was when a member posted sexual pictures of an underage girl, and that was done in my stead by one of our moderators in the interest of not getting more federal attention that desired, natch.

 

I basically took over the board & reshaped it when the previous admin was censoring a longtime member for personal reasons, and much of the community threatened to leave as result. If i were to do the same, id expect no less, and understandably - why put energy & love into connecting with people & making friends in a venue that doesnt even care enough to let you express your views? I'd not want to take any part in that, either.

 

What does “being creative” mean to you?

 

A lot of people feel originality is the crux of creativity, but I dont tend to agree. From a writing perspective, it can be argued that no story or idea at this point is wholly original, but that's a poor perspective.

 

Take jazz; you can cover one of Miles Davis' most famous pieces, "So What", and break out into a trumpet solo of your own at any point that works and call the piece your own. You're building on something that was already there, sure, but what modern art isnt derivative?

 

I loved The Matrix, but it really meshed Chow Yun Fat "Gun Fu", pop existentialism, and a few graphic novels with nihilist black leather. But id not seen that combination before, and the result, to me, was something both original and creative.

 

Who or what are your inspirations?

 

Following the earlier response, again, Garth Ennis' Preacher was clearly part of my original vision: an online bar/discussion arena right out of the wild west - the real one, less so the romanticized one - where people could parley as they please.

 

Looking back, the inspiration for how i was to lead this idea came largely from some of my favorite utilitarian readings in college, John Stuart Mill, John Locke, and a few others who emphasized the importance of personal liberty over bending to trends and social whims.

 

Where do you see hondos in the next three years?

 

We've grown almost exponentially in the last 3, and this coming november, we have an international convention planned with members coming in from australia and all parts of the US so far. Id certainly like to see this as an annual/bi-annual thing, if possible. Nothing beats breaking the six degrees of separation.

 

Past that, we'll likely advertise more via t-shirts and other social networking sites, as well as any other grassroots efforts that present themselves. And again, though still a pipe dream, we're constantly looking at options/venues for a physical location one day.

 

im not big on that kind of thing & kinda think it wanky if it was about me, but being about our community seemed a lot cooler, anyway. I know it didnt reference enough hot costners or dick & fart jokes to give a more accurate portrayl, but hey, you've gotta get 'em in the door first or you'll never get them underwater.

 

[Signal08]

thats awesome man, except, why doesnt he just say analingus?

 

Definately culture here, and I'd say widespread. The 300,000 post milestone kinda kissed across the many different happenings on and off of this site as well. Hot Costners, dick, rude and nudie pics isnt the core of Hondos either. The newbies are thrusted with it... otherwise its everything else that makes this place a happening place.

[The NZA]

yeah, i dont know that that word was in lexicon when 2T made the image, but it woulda flowed better.

 

i didn't wanna be too general, but i didnt wanna say, prattle on about the fact that we have enough pretty grrls to almost make a calendar and hey, you should see our dark rituals etc. anyway, according to wiki, if i can get a few other places to cite/discuss us, we can get our page back, which i think would be fun.

[Signal08]

... about the fact that we have enough pretty grrls to almost make a calendar ...

 

 

So uhm, Hondo shirts this wave, and calendars next?

 

So, how do we push our link onto others? As in other sites, ads, ... is there a way to get us in stumble upon or get google to link us when someone searches certain key words? There has to be a way to plug us fairly effortlessly.

[The NZA]

well, our host does a fair job, i mean youll notice we often have dozens of guests and i think a number are google/etc bots. we could go about submitting our finer threads to stubmle, digg, del.ico, etc. we set up posts on myspace & facebook and the like, dont know that ever worked out for us and ive no idea how twitter could be used to our advantage.

[Signal08]

Hmm, well if we all facebook and myspace bulletin board our site, I am sure that a quarter of the members on each page would at least check it out, if a quarter of them stuck around, that would be a huge influx. Do you know what Wiki requires on actual numbers? I would have thought more than 100k posts and over a hundred registered members would have been enough. To get onto stumble upon, sadly I think the taboo and racey and odd stuff would be what gets us noticed the most.

[Jumbie]

OK, going from most important to least:

 

-You misspelled 'science'.

 

-having a first amendment discussion next to a censorship discussion seemed repetitive, especially after dealing eith the issue under 'lack of rules.'

 

-Not sure we want to get much bigger. I mean, I Love the idea of new people comign in all the time. We get lots of great people that join up, serve a tour of duty and then move on (Def, 2track, Jont...) So we need a Boogie or an ASC to drop in an let in some new direction.

 

But I don't see the need to go out and actively recruit right now. We seem to be getting new people at a good rate, both from people we know off line and people dropping in at random of the nets.

 

The danger for me is we get to the point where we become a bit more anonymous and impersonal.

 

(I'm not really sweating it at the moment, but it's my take on the advertising hondo's idea. I still like the idea of putting our web address on hundred dollar bills (or was it fifties?) and the t-shirts though.

[Signal08]

I can understand Jumbies perspective. If we get 300 active members, keeping up on any topic, let alone on whos who would be impossible. I dont think it would hurt to gain another handful of active members though.

[alive she cried]

OK, going from most important to least:

 

-You misspelled 'science'.

 

-having a first amendment discussion next to a censorship discussion seemed repetitive, especially after dealing eith the issue under 'lack of rules.'

 

-Not sure we want to get much bigger. I mean, I Love the idea of new people comign in all the time. We get lots of great people that join up, serve a tour of duty and then move on (Def, 2track, Jont...) So we need a Boogie or an ASC to drop in an let in some new direction.

 

But I don't see the need to go out and actively recruit right now. We seem to be getting new people at a good rate, both from people we know off line and people dropping in at random of the nets.

 

The danger for me is we get to the point where we become a bit more anonymous and impersonal.

 

(I'm not really sweating it at the moment, but it's my take on the advertising hondo's idea. I still like the idea of putting our web address on hundred dollar bills (or was it fifties?) and the t-shirts though.

 

I totally agree with Jumbie here, and have stated a such before. We don't need all these extra people, just randomers stumbling by hondo's is fine.

[the division of joy]

I agree with ASC says.. Its like a bar, people stumble in and out all the time. Putting us on stumble and del.i.cious etc can only add to this appeal but i swear to god, if we twitter ourselves, i'm gone.

[The NZA]

...is that all it'd take? heh.

 

yeah, yeah, we all dig the smalltown feel, just always looking to keep strangers wandering in. i mean, for every 5-10 that register, one stays and posts, and of those, how often do we get someone awesome enough to be a regular? i love it when that happens.

[Jumbie]

If we were to get a hundred new members tomorrow because we bought a superbowl ad, we'd still eventually fall back down to a small number. Most people have other things to do in life besides hang around here.

 

So I guess what I'm saying is we can do site advertising and if we DO end up overloading on membership, all we'd have to do was stop promoting, sit back and things would hit a comfortable level again after a little bit.

 

So, whatever happens, it's correctable.

 

(And if we ever fins that we've become too big we could put Archangel in charge for 3 weeks. THat oughtta drop our membership numbers back to manageable right quick.)

[SpunkyMonkey]

you misspelled Cunnilingus.

 

unless it was somehow on purpose.

[Reverend Jax]

you misspelled Cunnilingus.

 

unless it was somehow on purpose.

Yeah, that graphic was made by 2track, and 2track can do no wrong, ergo, it must not be misspelled on the banner, but actually misspelled in all dictionaries.

[HypnotizinChikns]

If we were to get a hundred new members tomorrow because we bought a superbowl ad, we'd still eventually fall back down to a small number. Most people have other things to do in life besides hang around here.

 

 

Like what??

 

 

Hey I stumbled in this crap hole and I still can't find the little handle thing that makes it flush so that I too can have one of those "life" things I keep hearing so much about.