Linkin Park Fans? (Also: Poetry)

Ever since I saw the Linkin Park show at the State Fair last Tuesday, I've been on this massive Linkin Park kick. Watching interviews, looking up pictures, listening to their music. Just watching them goof off.

(Part of this may or may not be influenced by the fact that Chester Bennington took his shirt off halfway through the show and hot damn he has a good body. I had a huge crush on him as a teenager. That crush is BACK, baby. Unf.)

My problem is that the Linkin Park fandom has hardly any online presence these days. What happened? I joined the Linkin Park Underground in 2005 because I'd been wanting to for a couple years already and just hadn't had the money. Back then, the LPU was ALIVE, man. I made so many great friends there--including my husband. We were ACTIVE. We thirsted for more online media to consume--videos, pictures, interviews, just any interaction.

And all that's gone.

I go on Tumblr now and all I can find of them is photos from their recent concerts, along with the occasional song lyric or person rambling about how much they love the band. And that's cool. But I follow people whose band fandoms--bandoms, if you will--are chock full of videos and gifs of the band members outside the context of just their music. Just being human beings, goofing off, talking about their experiences.

Where the hell is the Linkin Park fandom on that?

Look, I KNOW those boys are idiots. I know they are. You watch literally any LPTV episode and you can't go thirty seconds without them goofing around and acting like dumbasses. I can't watch any video of them without going, "These guys are such dumbasses."

I miss the online presence of Linkin Park fans, I really do. I miss the friends I made and the endless media to consume. Now it's like no one really cares to spread their love online. And I KNOW the band is still popular.

Anyway, the point of this rant is twofold: One, I want more Linkin Park stuff to enjoy online. Two, my inner teenage fangirl is back and I have no regrets at all.

***

On a totally different note, I miss having people I could talk to about poetry.

And not just, "Oh, I love this poetry, I think this one line here is really good."

I mean, sit down and pick apart a poem, have fifteen-minute conversations about a four-line stanza, talk about all the different techniques of rhyme and rhythm and sound and repetition and metaphor, just pick it apart and fall in love with it together. I don't have that anymore.

I also really miss sharing my own poetry here on Mibba. I miss posting new work, and I miss getting feedback. But some of the publishers I want to submit to won't accept work that's been posted elsewhere, even to sites like this, so I'm holding off.

I just miss having a sense of community with people around poetry.

So I guess both those subjects are kind of the same after all, huh?