It actually used to be really entertaining and interesting, ILM. It had some seriously smart people, some real characters, weirdos. Lots of flare ups, really acrimonious fights that went on for pages and pages and days and days.
It did go the poptimist path though, that became the dominant value-set, although a few hold outs for undergroundism or whatever would still be in the mix. But you know, poptimism was a good adversary to have - in terms of putting over strongly a completely different view of the present (i.e. the 2000s) than the one I would adhere to. You could get nihilatory sparks off sparring with it.
You also had some people who appeared in both message boards, here and at ILM. Tim Finney was quite active here for a while but his enduring home was ILM and he still pops up there every so often i think. I posted a little bit on ILM now and then but felt a bit self-conscious there.
Way more than here, they seemed to be obsessed with music journalism and magazines (e.g. the endless, still going, thousand-page long by now thread Pitchfork Is Dumb). It could get very meta and inside-baseball. Which is fairly interesting if you're a music journalist but for most normal people, not so much.
