State of the forum

[CleverCowboy]

Originally Posted by Marshal Davout

If we could find 25 members to pay $1 per month; we would have Scruffy's kind support covered ! Or even 13 member's at $2 per month ! Like Dante's Idea a Subscription fee for full member's ( can I call him Dante ? ; I apologize if i am taking License ! )

When we were collecting money for a gift for Alizee's newborn daughter Maggy three or so years ago, the logistics of a collection from members all over the world was difficult, to put it mildly. In the end, only a handful of members participated. I feel the same will apply in this situation. If there was confidence that the "Donate" button at the top menu still works, anybody can donate whatever they want and whenever they want.

Edit:

Originally Posted by Magnetic Lili

New Alizee fans will appear for a long time, but we cannot fool ourselves that this will be a significant influx. Ali will be getting older, and there is no sign of resuming her musical career, so even if someone new appears, his "enthusiasm" may quickly fade.

However, this does not change the fact that Alizee America is a forum that every new fan of hers comes to. The only place that is not a Facebook group that is "still fighting".

There are numerous fan sites for entertainers that have retired or passed away. Even if Alizee never sings a song again, we can still dedicate this site to what she has done. You are correct that there won't be a rush of people joining, but if we get one or two new active members a month, that actually is pretty good.

[Noppo555]

It would be sad to see the forum and all its content go, there's been so many threads and comments that date back to over 10 years ago — that's crazy to me and, in a way, a joy to see (and read) what people were thinking and talking about back then. In that context, I think this is a historic forum, and it's amazing that it's been running for over 10 years. It's understandable that there's little reason to keep the forum running, since there's nothing relevant to talk about and there hasn't been for a couple of years.

Another commendable thing (other than the amount of years the forum has been running for) is that Mr. Scruffy alone has been paying for the costs of keeping the forum online. I really didn't know, but I guess we all feel at least a little thankful for what Mr. Scruffy has been doing.

Anyhow, I agree with Mr. CleverCowboy.

If the website is going to remain up, then there should be changes — at the least, the landing page should be re-worked and the forum should be updated to a newer version of vBulletin. The website and forum, as they are, are uninviting and archaic; their look doesn't help with attracting new visitors.

Not sure how expensive the migration to a newer forum version could be, nor how expensive a new landing page could go for, but I doubt people would want to help for no gain at all, since the website overall is mostly dead and there's nothing to talk about anymore.

[CleverCowboy]

Originally Posted by Noppo555

It would be sad to see the forum and all its content go, there's been so many threads and comments that date back to over 10 years ago — that's crazy to me and, in a way, a joy to see (and read) what people were thinking and talking about back then.

Exactly. The history here in this forum is great and would be a shame to just disappear. The stories of people meeting Alizee and the lengthy discussions about pretty much every aspect of her life. If anything, this forum brings back the nostalgia of days gone by.

Fifteen or sixteen years ago, I was doing some research on World of Warcraft. My son was in his mid-teens and was totally immersed in the game. I used to play Age of Empires, Battlefield and Call of Duty with him, but WoW just seemed too complex and time consuming. He asked me to learn about it and play it with him. So I got on a forum all about it. Somebody posted about a night elf character who danced like this beautiful French singer and had a link. Curious, I press it and it was the JEAM video. I was blown away and wondered, who is this girl? I Googled her and read everything I could about her and watched all her videos. Back then, there wasn't much. Later, I ended up here on AAm and lurked for a long time before I joined.

This was my experience which is just an example of how somebody would end up here. How many times has this been repeated in the past, or some variation of it? Probably a lot. Probably still happens. We just don't know who sees her and moves on or who gets bit by the Lili bug.

[Marshal Davout]

Originally Posted by Noppo555

It would be sad to see the forum and all its content go, there's been so many threads and comments that date back to over 10 years ago — that's crazy to me and, in a way, a joy to see (and read) what people were thinking and talking about back then.

In that context, I think this is a historic forum, and it's amazing that it's been running for over 10 years. It's understandable that there's little reason to keep the forum running, since there's nothing relevant to talk about and there hasn't been for a couple of years.

Another commendable thing (other than the amount of years the forum has been running for) is that Mr. Scruffy alone has been paying for the costs of keeping the forum online. I really didn't know, but I guess we all feel at least a little thankful for what Mr. Scruffy has been doing.

______________
Anyhow, I agree with Mr. CleverCowboy.

If the website is going to remain up, then there should be changes — at the least, the landing page should be re-worked and the forum should be updated to a newer version of vBulletin. The website and forum, as they are, are uninviting and archaic; their look doesn't help with attracting new visitors.

Not sure how expensive the migration to a newer forum version could be, nor how expensive a new landing page could go for, but I doubt people would want to help for no gain at all, since the website overall is mostly dead.

Yes ! I agree with Noppo and Clever; the website must be preserved, because it is a work of Art !
Alizee was an astounding Girl, and is an astounding Woman and the website is a Testament to that ! I will see if I can come up with some Donation money to preserve it.
Just as many of Alizee's performances belong in the Louvre; so this website deserves to live in History ! and now I better sign off before people say Marshal is going nuts ! Ha !

[Paulina]

Sucks to hear the forum may be going away. I haven’t posted anything in over 10 years but I do still lurk here from time to time to see if anything has changed. One of the things I miss most on this site was the video section that used to be on the front page. There was a time when TV interviews were getting released on this site moments after airing. I think the most exciting time here was in 2007 - 2008 when Alizée’s 3rd album Psychédélices was being released. I’m typing from my phone so I may come back to this post a bit later and edit it to type a better response. For the past years I kept saying to my friends that I wish forums would make a comeback and yet here I am not even participating in the forums! ����♀️

[Scruffydog777]

Originally Posted by Paulina

Sucks to hear the forum may be going away. I haven’t posted anything in over 10 years but I do still lurk here from time to time to see if anything has changed. One of the things I miss most on this site was the video section that used to be on the front page. There was a time when TV interviews were getting released on this site moments after airing. I think the most exciting time here was in 2007 - 2008 when Alizée’s 3rd album Psychédélices was being released. I’m typing from my phone so I may come back to this post a bit later and edit it to type a better response. For the past years I kept saying to my friends that I wish forums would make a comeback and yet here I am not even participating in the forums! ����♀️

That was a great video section and one of the best things about it was the translations it offered, but as participation by members dropped off, the forum had to cut costs and the easiest way to do that was reducing bandwidth which meant letting go of the video section. Maybe if the Alizée Forum did that, they'd still be around.

New fans keep coming along, but mostly drawn by the old stuff. We're all happy to see her doing well with the dance school and getting these cosmetic and fashion deals, not to mention an occasional gig such as in Poland but the thing this forum needs to draw members who want to either watch or participate in discussions of what's going on is something new from her in the way of song, her own songs and hopefully dancing to go with it, but it looks highly unlikely that will happen.

[Paulina]

Originally Posted by Scruffydog777

That was a great video section and one of the best things about it was the translations it offered, but as participation by members dropped off, the forum had to cut costs and the easiest way to do that was reducing bandwidth which meant letting go of the video section. Maybe if the Alizée Forum did that, they'd still be around.

New fans keep coming along, but mostly drawn by the old stuff. We're all happy to see her doing well with the dance school and getting these cosmetic and fashion deals, not to mention an occasional gig such as in Poland but the thing this forum needs to draw members who want to either watch or participate in discussions of what's going on is something new from her in the way of song, her own songs and hopefully dancing to go with it, but it looks highly unlikely that will happen.

I think another reason why people just aren’t staying on the forum is because a lot of people are using phones as their main mode of internet communication. Unfortunately less people today spend time in front of a desktop or laptop when browsing the internet and are more likely to use their phones instead. When it comes to niche interests less people are visiting forums and more people are visiting Reddit, discord, twitter and Facebook because of their phone friendly user layout. I hate it so much but this is sadly the state of today’s internet discussion outlets. What makes individual forums great is that the communities are smaller and there’s a chance to actually get to know users and their personalities. Twitter, Reddit and Facebook are just so vast and the number of users is way too big to actually get to know users on a one on one basis.

Quite a few of the forums I visited and frequented over a decade ago have moved their servers over to discord. I can’t say I’m a fan of discord. I’ve never been into chat rooms which is basically what discord is. If you want to find information or a comment someone made that had some good content attached to it, good luck because that simply doesn’t exist with discord. While reddit is great for finding answers to a question you may have asked on google, I wouldn’t say it’s great for community and getting to know users. There’s a lot of censorship on Reddit as well. Nobody likes trolls or people creating flamewars but Reddit takes things a bit too far with the banhammer. Twitter is like a large Petco aquarium tank filled with tons of feeder mice all shouting into the void. No meaningful discussion is likely to take place due to so many trolls and bots and you have a limit of what you can actually type unless you’re paying Elon’s monthly fee for a premium account. Lastly, on Facebook you can have groups but these groups are subject to spammers with “witch doctors” from Nigeria asking everyone to send them money on Telegram along with fake widow or widowed profiles “wanting to get to know you better.” Reporting these users also risks your group getting removed. And probably one of the worst aspects, due to Facebook’s strict algorithm to seek out “harmful content” users can find themselves being temporarily banned for saying something as innocuous as “That workout really beat my ass.”

While it’s great Alizée’s early works such as Moi Lolita and J’en ai Marre are still attracting new listeners, I wish they would stick around and give her other stuff a chance too. Her albums 5 and Blonde were a lot of fun!

As for Alizée herself, I think she has obtained her dream and I am happy for her for that. From the days of Moi Lolita, she even said in interviews that her dream was to teach children to dance and become a dance teacher which is what she did. She has a family now and even lets us see the bits of joy she is experiencing on a daily basis as a mother on instagram.

I’ll be honest, a forum like this existing today is a rarity. And I really don’t know how it can compete for attention spans and focus of today’s phone user base especially younger users (Gen-Z, Gen-Alpha). Most internet users today have short attention spans and don’t want to actually read or discuss anything on a deeper level. If your posts aren’t less than five sentences the users will just close their tab and move on to the next shortly gratifying piece of entertainment.

I remember there was a user named RMJ and another user who got Alizée tattooed on his back with butterfly wings who were big forum contributors, especially RMJ with his photography. Any idea what happened to both of them?

[Scruffydog777]

The guy with the image of Alizee with butterfly wings tattooed on his back went by the name Roman. He was from California. I met up with him and RMJ in Paris when the concert at the Rex was cancelled. Roman seemed to drift away after that. RMJ was probably one of the most hard core fans, at least in terms of how many times he was able to see her.

I went to a few Les Enfoires shows that RMJ also attended. The advantage of having those shows in the winter was many people had large bags with them to carry their winter clothing which they'd shed once they got inside. This allowed RMJ to conceal a rather large camera with which he'd get some great photos' during the shows. In fact, I think Wikipedia used one of his photos' on their Alizée page.

RMJ was around for several more years. He had his own web page that is still out there but it looks like the last post was in 2017. (https://www.alizeeart.com/). He was active on FB too for a while but I doubt if he still is.

[Paulina]

Originally Posted by Scruffydog777

The guy with the image of Alizee with butterfly wings tattooed on his back went by the name Roman. He was from California. I met up with him and RMJ in Paris when the concert at the Rex was cancelled. Roman seemed to drift away after that. RMJ was probably one of the most hard core fans, at least in terms of how many times he was able to see her.

I went to a few Les Enfoires shows that RMJ also attended. The advantage of having those shows in the winter was many people had large bags with them to carry their winter clothing which they'd shed once they got inside. This allowed RMJ to conceal a rather large camera with which he'd get some great photos' during the shows. In fact, I think Wikipedia used one of his photos' on their Alizée page.

RMJ was around for several more years. He had his own web page that is still out there but it looks like the last post was in 2017. (https://www.alizeeart.com/). He was active on FB too for a while but I doubt if he still is.

I remember on the other Alizée Forum RMJ once said If Alizée no longer existed he would stop existing as well. I hope nothing bad happened to him. It’s kind of strange he stopped updating at 2017 considering he followed almost everything Alizée did. I now remember Roman, I think I shot him a message on MySpace years ago asking if he was still involved with the Alizée fandom and he said that he was moving on. There was a female German user on the other Alizée forum who had her own site like RMJ. I can’t remember her name but she seemed pretty up to date on news concerning Alizée TV appearances and etc.

[CleverCowboy]

Originally Posted by Paulina

There was a female German user on the other Alizée forum who had her own site like RMJ. I can’t remember her name but she seemed pretty up to date on news concerning Alizée TV appearances and etc.

That would be Jenny, I believe. I sent her a PM back in 2019 or around there asking her if she can share her library of videos she took while at Les Enfoires (she did).

Back then, she still was a fan of Alizee and loved her even though she had been inactive on this forum for a while prior. She got married and had kids and they became her priority.

I suspect that similar things happen to most fans of anybody, not just Alizee.