Thursday Oct 21, 2010

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Everytime I try and be social on this site, It's an abysmal failure. So I'm thinking of just killing the profile. The amount of feedback here will likely influence my choice significantly.
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rickroyal:
A failure in what way? Lack of response? Lack of a particular type of response? Encountering disagreeable people?

I was fairly active on this site in '03/'04 when the membership was about a tenth of what it currently is. I met some interesting people and had some interesting conversations. With only a few exceptions, though, none of my interactions with members during that time period progressed beyond witticisms posted on each others journals (which is lovely, of course, but certainly quite a ways from being social). I noticed that others were being far more social on the site than I was, but I had no idea what allowed others to interact in a way of which I was incapable.

It wasn't until several years later that I met in person one of the people whom I'd known on the site during that period. Her thoughts on the social nature of the site were illuminating. During that period, she hadn't had a job and was able to be on the site constantly; she participated in journals, boards, and chat. It appeared that many of the more social people were in the same boat (either lots of free time or a job that allowed them to surf the site with working, which lead to lots of time on the site). I never quite had the time to devote to being quite that social on the site.

She mentioned that many people felt uncomfortable interacting with people who didn't have a face picture on their profile and that appeared to be very true. When I experimented with a face picture, the responses I got to all sorts of things were much more interesting. But I eventually went back to no such picture and the social level went back to where it was before.

Also it appears that the more successfully social people on the site were attending events in real life, which, at the time, I had no desire to do.

I don't know how the site's changed in the last seven years. The social person I knew left the site in '06, so her thoughts applied mostly to the time I was very active and slightly after. And her opinions were, of course, only the opinions and observations of one person.

I've often wondered if I could've used this site to have had more fun in the past. Probably.

*shrug*

Just some somewhat random thoughts on the subject.
heartbaker:
Awww don't leave

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