Into the Forums: And the Temple of Doom

My journey into the forums have been very fun and I have learned a lot about different things such as comics, tv, movies, books, etc.  I went back and looked to see what kind of comments I received to my post about what books to read.  I did not get as many responses as I wanted but I still got six responses.  All of the responses I received were very helpful and gave me some of their favorite book series and stated the positives and negatives about it.  I also had a few people just insert links to different lists of books.  Overall I am really pleased how helpful people were and willing to take the time to help me out. 

I am curious to why people are so helpful in the forums.  I do believe people can be helpful and just want to help others out of the kindness of their hearts but I am wondering if there is more to it.  Today social media seems to be about two things, one communicating and being art of a community.  Secondly it is about expressing one’s self, their life, their opinions, etc.  The online community does make some challenges in really getting to know other people.  This may be a reason behind the desire to share opinions, interests, likes, etc. with those online.  It helps give you a personality and an online presence that other people may relate to.  So I just am curious if there is also a motive behind their responses to share with others their options and likes and dislikes of books they have read. 

Another thing I noticed was that many people in the forums seemed to be more liberal then conservative.  In certain political threads many people did not speak well of republicans and spoke highly of Obama.  I wonder why most of the people on this site are liberal.  Is it based on the average age (guessing it is between 16-30) or the topics of the site. 

This week I posted a comment to get a little more negative responses.  I posted in a threaded discussion about one of the reviewers on the site and how annoying their voice is.  I posted a comment saying, “His voice is like nails on a chalkboard.  I do not even understand why he is popular on this site.  They should just get rid of him.”  We will see next week how the responses go.