Miscellaneously: why we'll never have a message board/online community (spoiler alert: because they all suck)

I've never actually been approached with the question of whether or not we'd ever have a message board or proper online community (probably because there's like only five of you anyway) but I've seen it posed to other sites from time to time. Most of them usually start message boards after at least some while when they think they've gained a readership high enough, but a few remain holdouts. Given my career goals (which potentially makes me out to be a public figure eventually) it's something I've put a lot of thought into, and I've come to the conclusion, even if for example this very blog were to get a readership into the six figures...yeah, ain't ever gonna happen, bub.

There's one specific reason why: online communities are fucking horrible.

It's all rather explained succinctly in what's more or less officially called (and I'm serious in that this is what people call it, it's not my invention, so apologies for the language) The Internet Fuckwad Theory. I don't even know if Randall Munroe and xckd invented it (and BTW I think both of those things are tremendously overrated) but that's what popularized it. 

Either way, my point being is, message boards seem to be a terrible idea, unless you need technical help on something and then you can register on a board specific for that, fix your issue and then move the fuck on as fast as you goddamned can. 

I remember, for example, registering on the message boards hosted by Orson Scott Card (yeah, I know, but we'll get to that too) because it seemed like a great community for people who want to be sci-fi writers.

Yeah, no. No.

Lots of infighting, lots of sniping and bitching across other users, and particularly lots of holier-than-thou assholes. And that's even way before OSC revealed himself to be an insufferable massive homophobe who literally thinks people on the non-heteronormaltive side of the LGBTQ+ spectrum shouldn't have any rights to speak of.

I'm using that as a particular example for two specific reasons: 1.) it seemed like a great, innocuous community where new users would be welcomed with open arms and lots of discussion sharply focused on a specific interest and 2.) yeah, Internet Fuckwad Theory. Believe me, it was in full force all right.

I'm not really even sure, other than what's more or less already explained in that Know Your Meme link (which has the original xkcd comic in it as well). Just...I guess it's a combination of the anonymity and...just something about the online environment specifically. It turns people into sanctimonious pricks who insist on being annoying, and the lines between which parties are right and wrong become blurred because now everybody's just trolling and being an ass to each other. And I already mentioned in my big Disney Channel Live-Action Universe post back in March (of 2016) how much of high school I pissed away on web communities devoted entirely to whether or not Star Trek or Star Wars is better, and oh yeah, lots of Internet Fuckward Theory in force there, too.

And yeah, I'll admit. I'm particular vulnerable to Internet Fuckward Theory myself.

I've been banned from...let's see now...probably a dozen or so message boards? For whatever reason I just don't get along with people in online communities. And you know what? I'll just have to fucking live with that, even as our world becomes more digitized. I seem to behave pretty ok on other forms of social media - Twitter, Instagram, even fucking Facebook - and since message boards, well, let's all be real here folks, they tend to be waaaaay down on the social media hierarchy - like, the stereotype of the D&D crew in the school basement-down on the social hierarchy - so, yeah, I'm pretty damn sure I can ultimately live with that.

And that is why I will never make a message board.