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Forum Anthropology and Forum Ambassadors
Qingu
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I just thought of a really interesting Penny Arcade Forum Experiment/Collaborative Project!
We should go to all the forums of the internet, read through their advice column, and collect the most interesting "Advice/Help" section question and answers.
It would be like Dear Abby, except way cooler! Also, cooler than Savage Love! Actually, now that I think about it, it's kind of like "Post Secret."
We could even study study how the demographics of the forum influence the kind of advice asked for/given. I think it's weird how different the problems and situations are on different forums, having seen Penny Arcade, Christian Guitar, Islam Forum, and the Yahoo Answers Advice forums. Some of them are really personal, because it's kind of anonymous. It's like looking at anthropology reports from different countries or like ethnic tribes.
It's also interesting to see what kind of people become the best "advice-givers" in each forum. You could do interviews with them, because they actually probably hold a lot of power over their communities. And I wonder how many of them are "mods"—people who literally hold political power in the given forum.
It's also interesting to see what common "categories of topics" pop up in all these completely different forum communities. I see a lot of car advice, a lot of relationship and sexual advice; on the religious forums there was a lot of xenophobia and self-doubt advice ("How do you feel about gay people?" / "I'm having a lot of doubts about my religion, how do I keep the faith" were both common questions). Also: whether or not certain people are forbidden from giving advice on advice forums (Non-Muslims aren't allowed to give any advice on the Islam forum, though I remember non-Christians could give limited advice on the Christian forum, and the other ones I've looked at seem to be open, except to extremely unpopular or abusive people).
We should look at weird subculture communities too, like Stormfront (white power forum), Scorehero (the Guitar Hero forum), this weird super-evangelical Christian forum I heard of a while ago, political website forums ... I mean, we should really look at any forum that's popular enough to have an advice column. There can't be that many; we could maybe list them all and send ambassadors to each forum, asking for contributions from the Advice column regulars.
And hey, if this actually turns into a project, we could even exchange advice-givers across forums! Across cultures! We could spread copies of this thread throughout all the internet's forums! My friends! This could stop the culture wars! This could lead to world peace!
WHAT SAY YOU?
(edit: or is this weird? I realized I probably should just post this in PA's own advice forum instead of here (edit 2: and holy shit, it looks like I totally forgot to copy and paste it into my "home base"—sorry, Advice forum people, if this is totally out of place!). But then I realized that I know you people on this forum a lot better than the people on our Advice column, and I almost feel like it would be an invasion of their privacy to ask them for this stuff. In addition, v. high. What say you?)
We should go to all the forums of the internet, read through their advice column, and collect the most interesting "Advice/Help" section question and answers.
It would be like Dear Abby, except way cooler! Also, cooler than Savage Love! Actually, now that I think about it, it's kind of like "Post Secret."
We could even study study how the demographics of the forum influence the kind of advice asked for/given. I think it's weird how different the problems and situations are on different forums, having seen Penny Arcade, Christian Guitar, Islam Forum, and the Yahoo Answers Advice forums. Some of them are really personal, because it's kind of anonymous. It's like looking at anthropology reports from different countries or like ethnic tribes.
It's also interesting to see what kind of people become the best "advice-givers" in each forum. You could do interviews with them, because they actually probably hold a lot of power over their communities. And I wonder how many of them are "mods"—people who literally hold political power in the given forum.
It's also interesting to see what common "categories of topics" pop up in all these completely different forum communities. I see a lot of car advice, a lot of relationship and sexual advice; on the religious forums there was a lot of xenophobia and self-doubt advice ("How do you feel about gay people?" / "I'm having a lot of doubts about my religion, how do I keep the faith" were both common questions). Also: whether or not certain people are forbidden from giving advice on advice forums (Non-Muslims aren't allowed to give any advice on the Islam forum, though I remember non-Christians could give limited advice on the Christian forum, and the other ones I've looked at seem to be open, except to extremely unpopular or abusive people).
We should look at weird subculture communities too, like Stormfront (white power forum), Scorehero (the Guitar Hero forum), this weird super-evangelical Christian forum I heard of a while ago, political website forums ... I mean, we should really look at any forum that's popular enough to have an advice column. There can't be that many; we could maybe list them all and send ambassadors to each forum, asking for contributions from the Advice column regulars.
And hey, if this actually turns into a project, we could even exchange advice-givers across forums! Across cultures! We could spread copies of this thread throughout all the internet's forums! My friends! This could stop the culture wars! This could lead to world peace!
WHAT SAY YOU?
(edit: or is this weird? I realized I probably should just post this in PA's own advice forum instead of here (edit 2: and holy shit, it looks like I totally forgot to copy and paste it into my "home base"—sorry, Advice forum people, if this is totally out of place!). But then I realized that I know you people on this forum a lot better than the people on our Advice column, and I almost feel like it would be an invasion of their privacy to ask them for this stuff. In addition, v. high. What say you?)
Qingu on
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