In this sentence, “a message board” could be replaced with almost any other thing that people enjoy.
If real life offered you so much satisfaction as to make you happy, you would not feel the need to resort to cheesecake.
If real life offered you so much satisfaction as to make you happy, you would not feel the need to resort to petting cats.
Yes, if you enjoy X, and you’re feeling unhappy, you might indulge in X to feel better. But you don’t have to be unhappy to eat cheesecake or to pet cats or to interact with a message board. I’d guess that happy people would be likely to look for other happy things.
I pretty much only post here while I’m at work. While I’m not at work I have better things to do - numerous hobbies and activities that I find more fulfilling than posting here, so I do those things instead. But during slow moments at work? I’m happy to grace you people with my wonderful wit and personality.
I wouldn’t say posting to this message board increases my happiness. I guess it is a temporary distraction from the dull ache in my head and gnawing anxiety about doing the same thing with my life for the next 25 years till I’m too old to enjoy anything other than shitting in a diaper.
There are happy people on message boards; there are unhappy people on message boards.
I would wager that folks on boards like the Dope are possibly, on average, a smidgen less happy than most folks because real-life social interaction tends to raise spirits a bit more than virtual stuff and folks with Doper-style inclinations may tend to overthink things. That’s just a tendency, though. Many Dopers are much happier than average; some are likely unhappier than average. Further, the average Doper is probably a bit happier with the Dope than they would be without, for obvious reasons.
While I’m not an overly happy person, this board serves largely as an outlet for me to pontificate at length on topics that interest me and virtually no one else, so it certainly makes my friends and coworkers happy to not have to listen to me railing on about why Mars mission concepts are flawed or how Casablanca is a cynical movie about a long con that would make Jim Thompson weep.
I’ve said it you before, but interested in your ideas, would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
I don’t think of myself as a generally happy person, and part of my motive in posting is definitely to pontificate. But besides posting about my favorite sports team, the only place I DO post is the SD, because I am a curious person and I like learning new things, or contributing to discussions about things that interest me.
If I’m being honest, I gave up a lot of my IRL friends because I’ve got you miserable bastards.
Seriously though, I’m 48. I’m not interested in building a new circle of friends. I’m happy with the small handful I got, and social media. A SO would be nice, but I can’t seem to find motivation to remedy that.
I can imagine that those who spend all their time pissing in the urine river of the average comments section are unhappy. But we have a community here. Posts make me laugh, and I also learn things. (Like the existence of a Star Trek blog I’m listening to.)
We’re happier than the average bear, I mean message board.
When I posted this poll, forty percent of respondents were currently taking medication for a mental health issue. Another 27% had taken them in the past.
Well, there you go: Only 32.56% of the respondents to that poll were presumably unhappy. 39.53% were getting the help they needed to be happy, and 27.91% were presumably completely cured (and therefore happy)!
I would say that message boards are a way for people to express their id without many social repurcussions. I don’t know that it’s possible to draw a conclusion from that to their real life. For me, I’m generally happy. I have a beautiful wife, great kids who are smart, handsome and young enough to still love me, I own my own home (well, except about 60 grand worth of it. ) have three cars, a dog, a cat and a turtle-all of which give me some pleasure. I live in a place known for its hiking, fishing and outdoor activities along with beautiful sunsets over the mountains and mist that fills the valleys. I watch eagles and otters from my work window. I’m involved in a church where they are happy to see me and I lead a scout group that seems to like me tolerably. My work sucks sometimes, but that’s the way of things. It’s not all roses, I am diagnosed with anxiety and I have suffered from depression, but that’s mostly under control. I have many more good days than bad days of late and Advent is coming up, and I’m generally universally happy then. Mostly though, I think that I’m pretty normal and on the ‘happier’ end of the spectrum.
So, you start out with your conclusion…people on this message board aren’t happy. From there, you attempt to explain why they must be so unhappy and how that’s re-enforced by them not being able to talk about their happiness because it will be spoiled by the other, obviously unhappy people.
That’s actually really funny, and such a convoluted theory really, really makes me feel happy…or, at least, to laugh out loud with a few extra snorts here and there as I re-read your OP.
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) have three cars, a dog, a cat and a turtle-all of which give me some pleasure. I live in a place known for its hiking, fishing and outdoor activities along with beautiful sunsets over the mountains and mist that fills the valleys. I watch eagles and otters from my work window. I’m involved in a church where they are happy to see me and I lead a scout group that seems to like me tolerably. My work sucks sometimes, but that’s the way of things. It’s not all roses, I am diagnosed with anxiety and I have suffered from depression, but that’s mostly under control. I have many more good days than bad days of late and Advent is coming up, and I’m generally universally happy then. Mostly though, I think that I’m pretty normal and on the ‘happier’ end of the spectrum.