When deciding which internet forum to join I thought it would be fun to join a facebook group and begin writing on the wall to get involved. While this isnt techinically a website devoted to fans of a show, movie, or network, it is certainly a public forum. I was unsure which group to join, knowing that there are so many I was less worried about which group to add to my list of groups, but rather focused on joining a group that I could make a scene in.
After scanning several groups I joined "Mainers who hate Massholes," a group started by High school students in Maine about how much they hate not only people from Massachusetts, but specifically students at UMass. This seemed like the perfect group to get involved in, and I was unsure at first how much of an impact I could make.
Two weeks later, a group that had only 84 members when I joined had 200, and the wall posts went from somewhere in the 90s to over 1,000. I now feel like I know every single student in most Maine high schools, and they certainly know me by name.
What started as me and several of my friends bashing Maine and its lack of sports teams turned into a flood of obscenties and personal attacks. When we had run out of things to say about Maine the wall posts became more and more personal. Everything was up for grabs, your facebook picture, your ethnicity based on your last name, your girlfriend if you were unfortunate enough to have her in your picture....anything.
The group, mainly dominated by males, became the breeding ground for all kinds of testosterone driven rants. People I had never met before were sending me their addresses and phone numbers demanding that I come and see them in "Hennebunk" or other unrecognizable Maine towns. Facebook pictures turned from school pictures into people flexing and looking as hard as possible.
I began friending people who would take my side in arguments, and they would defend me at all costs. Several of my friends had risen from new members to most hated members in a matter of two or three days. It got to the point where one of us would be constantly refreshing the web site to keep up with all of the posts.
After several days I had forgotten why I had joined the group in the first place, something that had begun as an attempt to defend Massachusetts and my college from High schoolers in Maine had turned into something completely different. While the wall posts I sent were too obscene for this classroom blog- the responses I received were much more than anything I had sent out. Which only fueled the fire, and let to profanities and word combinations that had never before been used.
After two or three weeks, my roomates and I left the group. We left a final note thanking everyone who had supported us and damming anyone who hadn't to hell. I took final shots at several of my favorite targets, said my goodbyes and reluctantly clicked the "leave this group" link.
I learned a lot from joining this forum- I had no idea how much impact I could have on a single internet source. I raised the membership of the group two hundred people, and contributed to amass over a thousand wall posts in a matter of ten days. Something I would have never expected in the beginning of this assignment.
If you are interested in seeing what I had to say (I warn you, it is not for those who blush easily) You can find the group on facebook. "Mainers hate Massholes."
1 comment:
Ah, Owen. You took the against-the-grain route. You can see this often as Yankees fans infiltrate Red Sox blogs and vice versa. There was a time when the Amherst Forum on MassLive.com was overrun by Drudge Report regulars. That is a long story. Ask me to tell it to you sometime.
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