Metropol

Not writing this to belabor the point about the decision to block non UK folks from Pres Cafe, it is what it is.

That being said, it does give me a twinge of sadness...For reasons that I myself cannot comprehend as a 11 year old New Yorker in the mid 2000s, I began checking in on TVForum, and consistently began following all the way through whatever that second place was, and then to PresCafe. Visiting these pres forums almost became a bit of muscle memory of daily life, like when you find yourself tuning a radio dial by hand or absentmindedly typing Google into Google. While I was mostly a lurker, I osmotically learned about the pips and Big Moira and Eurovision et al (even getting a random Puffin's Plaice shout out in 2006), all that muscle memory giving me background into a cultural world very much beyond my frame of reference, but one I still felt compelled to dive into, for reasons that still escape me. I think in some ways my interest was more about the comfort of this odd routine, like walking by a neighbor day after day, rather than sustained investment in the actual subject matter?

I'm 31 now. The internet I knew used to feel like such a place of possibility and niche connection, but now paywalls and firewalls are popping up more and more, and every day I feel my world getting just a little bit smaller. All's to say, it's just a forum, this smaller world will continue to spin, I can follow pres news in other ways. But I can't help but feel a twinge of loss, of confronting the sudden end of a random, certainly irrational twenty year habit that I don't really think I've really ever confronted as a habit until right now.

I am not sure the changing Internet is the cause, since other forums are still alive and well. TVF didn't close for no reason, and the trends that led to its closure are increasing.

I'm not entirely surprised by the move made by Pres Cafe to lock people outside of the UK to visit their forum. It is a slight annoyance to me, as in many cases I often have a US VPN on to combat the fact that Twitter still doesn't have an actual valid age verification method, and I've had muscle memory moments where I click pres.cafe and been prompted with the CloudFlare blocked screen.

Though I worry if with laws like the OSA, they were pressured to stick to the UK than to try and target other countries, who may be enacting similar laws.

Not surprising, but ideally it sounds like it was out of their hands. There will always be a place to discuss TV presentation outside of Pres Cafe, but it does seem increasingly likely that this will dwindle in years to come.

I do hope they remove the "Your posts are being moderated" on my account though. It's been long enough.

The French tv threads have been dead since the block of international users. It was nice to discuss with other English speakers about the weird and wonderful world of French television.

So it's back to Lenodal to read about French presentation.