Rampant cliquiness on the Dope, is it real? Is there any danger from it?

I THINK the reference might be to what I said in post #8 in this thread…

You know, I never thought about it before, but this is exactly how I felt when I first came here!

Something felt “off” about trying to interact with this group of people who seemed hugely connected. But eventually, that just faded away.

To someone new, perhaps little old nobody me is considered one of the “connected” posters, and that’s just odd.

There was the ‘i’m a fucking moron’ clique for a while. It wasn’t very exclusive though.

I’m pleased to be with engineer_comp_geek, Voyager, AHunter3, and some Dopers who now have the right to punch my head (for forgetting them) in the More-Computery-Than-Average group, but I don’t think it forms a clique so much as a warning.

I’m in a more obscure group, the group of Dopers whose names are never mentioned in threads like these. Nobody expects me, or my recursion, or my meta-narrative… I’ll come in again.

I know! I’ve equally wondered the same thing… perhaps there are people who think I am part of a clique when I hardly know anyone here at all. Just boggles the mind, it does. :slight_smile:

And thank you elbows, you have truly made my day!!

Pith for the day.

Honey, if you have to ask if you are in the cool kids’ clique, then…well… :wink:

I’m not sure the atheists are a clique, as was suggested earlier. I’m one of the atheists who posts a lot in GD, and I recognize my ‘fellow travelers’, but I sometimes feel as though we are just running on parallel tracks–there is not a lot of interaction *among * the atheists, even when we are all joining in an argument against a common opponent. That makes it feel non-cliquish to me.

I openly admit to suffering from a clique-ey sort of browsing nature. I’m not trying to be dismissive of everybody else, especially since the people I consider in my clique don’t even know it.

Since the OP started this thread I shall use him as an example even if he doesn’t apply. In my mind (I’m not saying he shares these opinions) we share three “cliques”. The baseball clique, the Tolkien clique, and the gossip* clique.

Which means I am more inclined to open a thread titled My niece is getting married! if it was started by him rather than by someone who’s name I don’t recognize.

I also plead guilty to directing my attention more to those members I recognize more often, like the Mumpers, Boston dopers, SP’ers, and especially The Threadkillers. So a thread started by, um, Robot Arm will pique my curiosity more than one started by an unknown username.
Now, is this dangerous? I don’t think so, not for me at least. Because I have never gotten to the point of deliberately excluding anyone. A bad habit though? Possibly. Sometimes I just don’t get people though, it’s the same here as it is in real life though.

*AKA: busybodies & nuts for numbers as well as board stats.

I signed up around 2001 (although I didn’t wend my way into MMP territory until recently) and felt the same way for a while. When the board went P2P most of The Clique left in a huff and from what I see still wanders around the vast internets, whining about how much better SDMB was when they were there. :rolleyes:

If I’m in a clique, it’s the MMP/Pushing Daisies/MST3K/whatever I’m interested in clique.

Isn’t it funny how perceptions differ…I had the exact opposite experience. I usually avoid posting in the MMP because it seemed that everyone in there knew each other so well and had personal relationships that figured into their posts, leaving me scratching my head wondering about the backstory. I preferred the anonimity of posting elsewhere. I don’t usually pay attention to who is saying what when I’m reading a thread, so I assume others are the same…I don’t stop to look at each poster’s name and try to remember their personality quirks…it all just flows over me.

I thought I was being ignored at first as a newbie, but now that I’ve been here oh so many years, I realize that I just get ignored in general, mainly because I will often ask a question for clarification on some obscure detail while the thread is in the middle of a flow of comments about something else, and the OP and others just sweep on past me. Since this happens in real life as well, I no longer pout about it!

Interesting, I would agree completely and I tend to open your posts/Ops for similar reasons.

Jim

There’s a few of us in the Shooter’s group- myself, Bobotheoptimist, Johnny L.A., Crafter_Man, Silenus, Airman Doors, and a few of the others who can usually be relied on to show up in any thread about guns or shooting. I don’t know if I’d call ourselves a clique, though. A cliquing noise means your gun is either empty or has misfired, neither of which is a good thing. :wink:

Great example, I’ve noticed your group. Of course the scary part is it seems to overlaps into the beer group. :wink:

Dammit. :frowning:

Puppy cute or human cute?

I’m doable.

Throw me in with the people who said they’ve always avoided the MMP because it seems like such an “in” thing. Maybe I’ll try and squeeze my way in there next week…

Man, you’ve been here for ever.

I’m in the cats, MMP, cats, Buffy, cats, Feud games, cats, and um, oh yeah, cats cliques.

I often feel the same way.

Maybe we should start our own clique…those who fly under everyone else’s radar.

I would have pegged you as a dog person.

:smiley:

I agree. Having hung out with that circle once or twice (albiet from the other side) I’d say neither the atheists nor the theists are especially cliquey. However en masse there are several names from both sides of the debate that frequently occur. To me this would either be more of a “Beliefs” clique or a general GD clique. Often I feel more connected through interaction with those across the table than those I share common ground with.

Did someone call? (sorry, couldn’t resist)

I don’t think I’ve ever seen the dope as being cliquey, although I’ve definitely sensed that some people here know each other a lot better than I do (I’ve said on more than one occasion that I find it quite hard to remember people here, beyond their username) but cliquey? That would imply exclusive or unwelcoming and I don’t think it’s either. As others have said there may be groups of people that share common interests, but the only cliques I can think of are the MMPers (who, as cliques go, are very welcoming and friendly) and the Mafia crowd, who are more of a micro-community. Hell, for one week I WAS a MMPer, but I agree with others who said they found the backstory too long and the number of people too high to get my head around (so if any MMPers are wondering why I didn’t return you can rest assured it’s not because you weren’t welcoming).

As for the “no-one responded to my comment, I must be too much of a noob for people to take me seriously” I’ve never experienced that myself, nor seen it happening to others (i.e. there are people who joined in the last few months that I’ve seen actively discussing things).

I would say the dope compares very favourably to other boards I’ve used where real (unfriendly) cliques have existed.