The members of any community, of course, are invested in it to varying degrees and ways. Some people clearly become deeply emotionally involved; in its worst form this can become the kind of meltdown requiring a cool-off, and at its best results in actual growth of the members involved.
Some seem to surf idly, others post in many forums and many threads - and in turn, some of those post little and others lots. Many clearly take the Dope off the box with them into Real Life and back again. Some seem to treat it like a game, whereas others are somber as the grave. Some people clearly just have way too much free time, and I’m afraid I may be one of them, but I’m too new to know yet.
Where do you fall? What’s the nature of your relationship with the SDMB?
I was torn between GD and MPSIMS with this, so I put it in IMHO as being the middle ground. Please advise if this was the wrong choice.
I spend much of my online time here, and would definitely miss the place (including many individual posters) if it were to go away. I might even wind up with one or two IRL friends from this place, which would be a first for me – and something I never imagined. Though I also never imagined remaining so involved with any one message board for over a year. I enjoy most of the personalities here, and happily spend way too much time in IMHO and MPSIMS (and sometimes CS). So in that regard, the SDMB means something to me and is part of my life.
However, I keep in mind that it is just a message board, and have never taken anything that happens here personally. I’ve been insulted and argued with, but I don’t believe in holding grudges IRL so I’d certainly never do so on a message board. Besides, sometimes arguing is fun. I also know that people are often different IRL than they are online (even when they’re being themselves online), so I can’t imagine ever thinking “wow, I really don’t like so-and-so” unless I’d met them. There are some Dopers I’d be more willing to meet than others, but no one I’d actively not want to meet. So far, anyway. I haven’t been tempted to use my “ignore” list yet, and can’t imagine ever doing so.
I’m no perfect poster, though: I can get frustrated in the face of what I perceive as ignorance and/or stupidity, and in light of that self-knowledge I carefully avoid Great Debates. I think I’ve peeked into GD just a handful of times in the past 18 months, and almost any post of mine that you’ll find there is in a thread that started in a different forum (and was posted while said thread was elsewhere). So there’s the potential for me to take this place more seriously than I should, and I’ve done so once or twice, but on the whole I’m quite pleased with my relationship to the SDMB (and with my relationship to my fellow Dopers).
I try not to take things too personally. There are, of course, others who take things way, way too personally – and thank God for them, and their incandescent meltdowns.
I do value this place – it’s a mine of useful information, and fascinating insights into the lives of others. It’s a bargain, at $14.95 a year.
And by the way, you remind me of a thread I wanted to start on how seriously people take the “fighting ignorance” thing. I take it fairly lightly, but others apparently don’t.
I like this place. It’s got a pretty good mix of people, and is moderated better than most boards, so it keeps the trash out.
As for how seriously I take it, it depends. I don’t take much of anything too seriously unless it involves life, death, or cruelty.
It’s a pretty good source of information, sometimes, once you get past the fluff and peek behind some inflated egos. I try to sift through the petty stuff, like name-hating, clothes-hating, fast food hating type posts, though sometimes I read to giggle and show my husband. I can’t help but laugh when people get their panties in a bunch over the tiniest things, and this is one of the best places to see it happen.
What’s that quote Stephen Hawking made on the Simpsons? “Sometimes the smartest of us can be the most childish.” Yeeeeah, that about covers it. It’s not always an insult.
My default SDMB behavior is “don’t take it serious,” ranging on a scale from sophomoric to sardonic but usually falling somewhere in the wry range. However, when the opportunity presents itself, I can vomit trivia with the glassy-eyed fervor of an autistic savant. And when the topic comes to passive-aggressive nice guys who can’t get any, I take it all very, very personally indeed.
I obviously spend way too much time here – but y’all are so much fun to BS with!
How personally do I take it? Not too. My persona here is pretty much in sync with my persona in real life, where I try to live by the golden rule. Thus, I try to remember that the other posters are actual people, and not just characters in an ongoing performance piece. In that sense, I take it seriously. However, I do know it’s easy to confuse person and persona, and I’ve done it with regard to others and have had others do it to me. For instance, the one time I’ve gotten pitted, it was about an off-hand comment I made about how something I wanted to do would have the potential to interfere with an obligation to a friend – I was taken to task for being a bad friend (though Iwas in fact saying that the obligation of course came first). Anyway, in that instance, I had someone ragging on me here, but was able to be clear about the fact that the person whose opinion mattered was my IRL friend, who thinks I’m a good person.
I’ve taken some of the suggestions about raising adolescents very seriously. They’ve been very helpful to me and my kids.
In fact, I have a few unsolvable issues brewing right now. If things crystallize well enough to articulate a question or two, I’ll start a thread or two soon.
SDMB is a great place to go if you are bored and have time to kill or alternately need to know how many packets of ramen it would take to fill a bathtub. Or just want to bitch loudly and longly about something that’s stuck in your craw (like, say, the evil that is Hayward, or your cat).
That being said…I don’t take it all that seriously. I mean, except for a few people I knew IRL before SDMB, nobody here is someone I really know or really impacts my life in any particular way.
To my mind, people on the internet tend to be characters more than actual people- they undoubtedly only show certain sides of themselves (for better or worse), rarely are part of your local in-life community, and may in fact be fat hairy Russian hamster-torturers rather than the charming Canadian lasses they pretend to be. You don’t know and you can’t ever really know unless you spend a significant amount of IRL time with them. I certainly wouldn’t consider anyone I didn’t have an IRL relationship of some sort as a friend, and can never get my head around how people can be “dating” a person who is simply text. It’s not a relationship- it’s a penpal-age. Hence other Dopers are more personas to me than people I think about, worry about, or spend time with. That’s what real-life friends are for.
I guess I could just sum it up by saying it would take me a good week or more to notice if the SDMB disappeared, and it’s not something I think about when I’m not actually looking at it.
Which reminds me, it’s probably high time I made some real life Doper buddies and haul my ass out to trivia night. If only to prove I’m not a fat hairy Russian hamster-torturer. :eek: I’ve got nothing against Russian hamsters, after all.
Probably too seriously (sigh!). I’m new here, and this is my only message board. I have found a number of people here whom I have learned to respect, and would like to be respected back by (sparkling prose, no?). I would love to have some of you ooh and ahh over my lucid liquid writing style or my spectacular argumentation, but it hasn’t happened yet.
I’ve been an on and off poster for about 5 years. I’ve been hitting this place longer however.
I don’t take this place very personal. I try to answer questions in GQ if I know I can answer them with a level of confidence. Ask me question on studio recording, old synths, mixing consoles, I’m all over it. A question on what the surface of the moon might look like under a black light,. well, I’ll leave that to someone else.
I try to inject some humour to threads from time to time. I’m not sure if I’m making anyone laugh. In fact, I’d happen a guess I might be pissing some people off. Eeegh. If so, I’ll find my name in the pit one day.
I always hit the pit first. I love rants and I love the follow up posts on a good rant. There’s a strange part of me that loves when someone makes a pit thread about “how I wish that damn dog next door would STFU” and there’s always some bleedy heart that comes in to inject that the dog might have been abused - or something damn silly like that. My pit threads have really brought those out in the past because I’m kind of an ass when I pit.
It’s kind of fun to see how peoples minds read into different things.
Next I’ll hit GQ. See if I can offer any real advice. Then see if anything looks interesting.
After that it’s IMHO and MPSIMS. Then CS and GD. Very rarely to I read the other forums.
I really value SDMB. I think it’s a great resource and wonderful entertainment. I’ve learned things, been pointed to great websites and information, and laughed very hard.
I’ve not found this place as personal as other forums I’ve been on. I’ve not made one off board friend here over the past 5 years. I’ve met a few people at a “dope-fest” once but I didn’t have contact with them outside of the SDMB after that. In fact most times I feel like no one remembers my name from day to day. That doesn’t really bother be. If it did I wouldn’t still be here after 5 years.
I enjoy most of the personalities here, and happily spend way too much time in IMHO and MPSIMS (and sometimes CS). So in that regard, the SDMB means something to me and is part of my life.
