What’s going on?
Oh, there you are! It’s been a while since Ant Lib Online went *pop!* following a few years in digital limbo. After taking time out from the relentless updates following the Adam Ant revival of 2010-11, the website hung on until – like all old bangers – the back-end finally went and it got covered up in the garage, quietly rusting offline1.
Unless you ‘don’t do social media’ (really don’t blame you there, to be fair), Ant Lib revived its Twitter (now X), Facebook and YouTube accounts as ‘Ant Lib 25’ to celebrate twenty-five years since our launch on 23rd October 1998 and to reconnect with members. New Instagram, Threads and Bluesky channels soon followed, with regular content reaching up to 5-10,000 Adam & the Ants fans globally, many of which are new to Ant Lib *Hello there!*2.
See a Nation on its knees
Up until 2024 there really wasn’t a plan for Ant Lib as such, just some loose ends to address – namely the Warriors DVD box release3 (finally completed and shipped out to pre-orders last year), and the Anthropology fan book project that’s been on ice so long its making Adam’s 21st century release schedule look comparably prolific. As an independent fan organisation built on democratic principles, our future was put in the hands of our followers via a revived Ant Lib Survey 2024 – and this has assisted with the prioritisation of project ideas and will drive output for the next couple of years.
While social media has helped us raise awareness in order to build our online presence back up to 2015 levels, building on rented land is never a sustainable long-term strategy – as any of our beloved tech bro oligarchs could pull a channel with no notice or indeed any rationale other than that they just can. It has therefore become obvious over the past year that our Ant Lib Online hub needed revival to facilitate and enable progress in any future projects.
It’s become obvious over the past year that our Ant Lib Online hub needed revival to facilitate and enable progress in any future projects…
Try this for sighs
Nobody should have that power to destroy fan cultures, and instead of bellyaching over what has become of the www since the height of Ant Lib activity, now is the time to stand up against the grifty link economy of misinformation, rage bait and uninspiring AI generated slop that is now dominating and crushing fan communities – because websites like ours made way by rolling over into oblivion.
The answer? If one is not offering solutions, one is part of the problem; and a new Ant Lib Online is the first step in that direction – maybe not claiming to be “Here to save everybody”4 – but hopefully providing an outpost for Adam & the Ants fans to contribute and be part of an alternative to the extreme concentration of cultural control that is killing independent creativity. An online Antzine for a future age.
Don’t say you love me (oh no)
If you made it this far down the page, thank you! However, there’s a long way to go and instead of relaunching in a flurry of whoops, whistles, coconuts and perfection, the new Ant Lib Online is very much a work in progress. Consider the current homepage as a mood board of ideas inspired by the responses from last year’s Ant Lib Survey; the Archive the start of a repository of classic Ant Lib interviews (going back to the very beginning) and starting point for future articles; the new Events calendar as a social hub promoting the spirit of the live Ant experience, and of course Membership5 will eventually open up more perks for being part of a (re)new(ed) Antpeople’s movement.
Ant Lib might be in its 28th year6 but we’re still very much young at heart, so consider this just the beginning. Every Ant fan regardless of age, background or ideology has something to bring to the table, and now is the time for us all to unite in building a legacy before it’s too late.
Pre-register your interest as a friend of Ant Lib today if you want to see and/or contribute to an Ant-idote to the seemingly never-ending doomscrolling and enshittification.
AM4SP!
- …and occasionally being pillaged without consent for profit, but that’s another story for another time. ↩︎
- This has been the best upshot of the return. It is genuinely humbling meeting all the new fans that have joined or rejoined the scene since we’ve been away ♥ ↩︎
- Not available to buy. Pre-register as a member for chance to get hold of it. ↩︎
- Ant Lib never used this tagline, we might have bordered on the pretentious at times but never had delusions of grandeur, yep another story…yadda yadda. ↩︎
- Lifetime subscriber from yesteryear? Let us know when you pre-register! ↩︎
- Yes, albeit with a decade long hiatus. Yes you guessed it, another etc… ↩︎
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