A Post-Message Board World

I'll admit that I've wasted too much of my leisure time during the 2000s on message boards. Wasted too much of my non-leisure time too, certainly. One could even say the timeline overlapping the Bush Administration was The Golden Age of the Message Board, and not just because of my posting! Now, this age is over - done like Joaquin Phoenix's rap career (and did it ever start?). Welcome to The Post-Message Board World.


I enjoyed Voice Over boards, sure: but also Hockey, News, Architecture, Philosophy boards...even David Foster Wallace boards (they were terrific!). Still, they all had similar qualities. Visiting a message board was like going to a mall - it didn't matter what city or country you were in, the food court and the shoe stores all feel the same. In the Message Board World, one was likely to encounter:

1.) Discussion dominated by a clique of 20 hardcore everyday posters.
2.) A "conventional wisdom" built by the ceaseless chatter of this clique, and driven by a creepy devotion to the handful of Alpha Dogs on the board.
3.) Repetition of the same ideas and statements ad nauseam.
4.) Repetition of the same newbie questions and newbie driven controversies.
5.) Lack of constructive or preventive forum moderation or conversely rash over-moderation.
6.) The clique mentality leading to meet-ups and other events.

The new Post-Message Board World of Twitter, Facebook, et al (and how they have revitalized blogging) is so much more filled with possibilities. The new model is continually designed to avoid the Message Board model, which was kind of 19th Century Society meets late 20th century technology. The Post-Message Board World is 21st Century technology for 21st century thought and speech.

Our social media experiences are no longer dominated by trolls, newbies, alpha dogs, or cliques. It is more of an accurate, flexible, and creative construct of our personalities. Our likes and re-tweets can say a lot about us if we let them. We also don't have to suffer fools as much as we used to. There are many more morons on the prowl in the Post-Message Board World - but they are part of ignorable static. That was hardly the case in the message board past. Do we need meet-ups when the new model provides amazing access and info regarding real events? We are our own moderators, and with great freedom comes great responsibility. We are on our own now. It's up to us to set our profiles and security settings wisely. It's up to us to follow the links and suggestions and make our online lives as rich as possible.

Go forth and live it, folks.