Sunday, 17 February 2008

chat forumsmessage boards too much of



CHAT FORUMS/MESSAGE BOARDS: TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING? PART II

I've been hitting up the boards the past few weeks in order to get a

sense of what general themes/concepts I could glean from my on-line

surfing.

What I found surprising is the polar opposite issue which I discussed

in my last post: I've found the "oh my god I love/adore your wedding

dress/bridesmaid dress/ceremony decor/wedding theme, etc. etc. etc."

statements run rampant on the boards. So my question is: how do you

know when a poster is being honest?

And honestly, should you even care?

In a sense, I guess some brides are trying to get opinions and honest

feedback from hopefully impartial observers. Makes sense, I guess. But

is this really the place to get honest feedback?

One can argue that people are shielded by their anonymous screen

names, and people will speak freely. Sometimes, as Megan indicated in

her comment, TOO freely (Megan, I think that is so crass from the

poster who made that comment to you - amazingly classless).

However, for people who use these boards frequently, posters seem to

"get to know" others in the same thread. There's a constant

back-and-forth, and it seems that many of these women become on-line

friends--which sometimes translates into "meet and greets" for those

constant communicators -- whether it be at a neighborhood bar, or at

someone's home (I'll get to that in my next post). With that kind of

constant communication, I imagine it must be hard to do anything but

be overly encouraging.

I think that the "ooohs" and the "aahhhhs" on these boards are

frankly, a little bit tiresome. While I think it's great for brides to

get honest feedback (in a classy manner), it seems like the boards

have become more of a "pat on the back" type of forum than a place to

get real advice.

Maybe it's an unfair assessment, but I found that dose of sugary sweet

commentary to be a bit tedius.

There HAS to be a happy medium between obnoxious, in-your-face honesty

posts and overly congratulatory ones.


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