How do you feel about your internet forum use?

[Narz]

Is it a distraction, dirty-habit you try to resist or a welcome way to connect with others, hear diverse opinions from across the 1st world, a little of both or something different?

 

[Birdjaguar]

A 17 year habit that distract, illuminates, and satisfies all at the same time.

 

[BenitoChavez]

This is really the only internet forum/social media thingy I frequent. It is mostly a way to pass the time when there isn't much else to do. And as sad as it may be, it happens to be one of my primary news sources.

 

[Ryika]

Addictive behavior that is probably bad for my mental health. I should really stop visiting forums, because it doesn't satisfy any basic need need of mine, and ultimately is not of any use for me in real life.

At least it's not social media I guess, which means that I'm discussing some interesting topics instead of constantly talking about myself. Well, except that right now I'm talking about myself, but that's different.

 

[bernie14]

This is really the only internet forum/social media thingy I frequent. It is mostly a way to pass the time when there isn't much else to do. And as sad as it may be, it happens to be one of my primary news sources.

me too. I started coming to CFC when I played then modded (civ4 and civ5 don’t even own civ6). after getting into several "discussions" in some LH threads, some mods suggested to take the discussions to OT. I am not a frequent poster and I don’t read everything. I don’t do other social media. I also find it rather therapeutic. I don’t have to do a job, be a dad or husband when I am here, so I can be rather "uncivilized". perhaps I come off as trollish but that does not really bother me much.

 

[MaryKB]

I'm rather new to internet forums ... I joined back in March when I was looking to interact with people socially, and Civilization was one of my main recreation activities and I found this community while googling questions about Rise and Fall. I also post at a Star Trek message board and a Women's Issues message board, and this is about 90% of my social interaction these days. I work from home so I don't speak to colleagues much, and I'm not really involved in anything in my community. My friends live in either Ontario or Georgia, and I haven't been on facebook for years (I don't handle toxicity very well), so I enjoy talking to people with shared interests. At first here I was mostly just in Civilization forums, but Valka convinced me to give Off Topic a try, and some people here are very pleasant to talk to (I have a difficult time staying out of certain threads, which I need to get better at, those types of arguments aren't good for my mental health)

 

[Kaitzilla]

Used this site for years before noticing it had an Off Topics forum.
One of the only places worth arguing on the internet.

Every once and a while there is a good link too.

**Minor Language Warning**

Spoiler :

https://waitbutwhy.com/2018/04/picking-career.html

Time. For most of us, a career (including ancillary career time, like time spent commuting and thinking about your work) will eat up somewhere between 50,000 and 150,000 hours. At the moment, a long human life runs at about 750,000 hours. When you subtract childhood (~175,000 hours) and the portion of your adult life you’ll spend sleeping, eating, exercising, and otherwise taking care of the human pet you live in, along with errands and general life upkeep (~325,000 hours), you’re left with 250,000 “meaningful adult hours.”
So a typical career will take up somewhere between 20% and 60% of your meaningful adult time—not something to be a cook about.

Impact. On top of your career being the way you spend much of your time and the means of support for the rest of your time, your career triples as your primary mode of impact-making. Every human life touches thousands of other lives in thousands of different ways, and all of those lives you alter then go on to touch thousands of lives of their own. We can’t test this, but I’m pretty sure that you can select any 80-year-old alive today, go back in time 80 years, find them as an infant, throw the infant in the trash, and then come back to the present day and find a countless number of things changed. All lives make a large impact on the world and on the future—but the kind of impact you end up making is largely within your control, depending on the values you live by and the places you direct your energy. Whatever shape your career path ends up taking, the world will be altered by it.

Quality of Life. Your career has a major effect on all the non-career hours as well. For those of us not already wealthy through past earnings, marriage, or inheritance, a career doubles as our means of support. The particulars of your career also often play a big role in determining where you live, how flexible your life is, the kinds of things you’re able to do in your free time, and sometimes even in who you end up marrying.
...
Identity. In our childhoods, people ask us about our career plans by asking us what we want to be when we grow up. When we grow up, we tell people about our careers by telling them what we are. We don’t say, “I practice law”—we say, “I am a lawyer.” This is probably an unhealthy way to think about careers, but the way many societies are right now, a person’s career quadruples as the person’s primary identity. Which is kind of a big thing.

Yes, it is true.
Nothing has a bigger life impact than how much money we earn per year.

There is countless anguish over this subject, especially with $1.5 trillion in student loans (that can never be shedded with bankruptcy) locking people into bad situations if they picked the wrong career/subject for themselves at 18-19 years old.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/21/the-student-loan-bubble.html

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Is it a distraction, dirty-habit you try to resist or a welcome way to connect with others, hear diverse opinions from across the 1st world, a little of both or something different?

Distraction? Yes.

Dirty habit? No. I consider it a positive habit.

Diverse opinions are one of the primary reasons I join discussion forums. The first forum I ever joined was one connected to an RPG gaming magazine, and due to some pretty vicious forum politics, I no longer belong there. But I made a few online friends, one of whom introduced me to my favorite webcomic (Fuzzy Knights) and another who introduced me to NaNoWriMo. A third person on that forum is responsible for my being here; I'd been asking for advice on Civ II, and he said, "Try CivFanatics."

So here I am. I spent a lot of time in the early years in the Civ forums, then eventually got curious about OT. I still read the Civ II forum, still love Test of Time, but most of my time here is in OT and A&E.

I have been active on many forums over the years, some of which are still around in some form or other, some no longer exist for various reasons, and though I have taken the occasional hiatus from CFC, it will probably always be my "internet home."

 

[Catharsis]

What I like about Internet forums is that you can right click on the page and choose 'Inspect Element', and then change the text in people's posts until their opinions are the correct ones. You can't do that in real life.

 

[Lexicus]

I dunno I sometimes think I use Facebook too much but then I'll be like "well being a meme god is pretty cool so screw the haters"

When banned from here my work productivity ticks up a little.

 

[Cutlass]

It's most of the contact I have with people.

 

[Sommerswerd]

I luvs me sum CFC pals

 

[Hygro]

I mean it's hard to answer that. There's no appropriate way to do the things I want without using the Internet. But staring at a computer, relaxing in a way, is draining in a way. I need to move to have energy to move. I get crusty if I don't. The more I move the better everything is, including my posts here.

I hate to defect on you "don't let big tech win" folks, I used to want to hold the line, but if I could be computing on the go, not hunched onto a scree, that would rule. It's not even about getting ahead, it's just about having a better body and more energy in the meantime.

 

[Moriarte]

It seems people are more open when hiding behind a monitor. I like that. Way I see it, some discussions wouldn’t go as far IRL, at least this “filter” allows us to bypass some of the things holding us back and be sincere more often with each other.

 

[Hygro]

It's really easy for two disagreeing people to feed off each others' conflict anxiety and end up sounding like a CNN "let's check in with our 16 person panel of regular American undecideds" debate.

 

[Commodore]

This site is my only connection to the outside world.

 

[brennan]

CFC is a better place to discuss things than anywhere else i've browsed. When I get bored I find it pretty easy to stay away. Although I do lurk a fair bit during the years when i'm not actively posting. It's good to test out ideas and see what people think. And responses are usually not as short-tempered here as elsewhere owing to the moderation. Usually.

 

[Live trash can]

It's good for fighting boredom, and I think it is a little better than that!

Forums and games like WOW, make outsiders' lives better.

 

[GoodEnoughForMe]

90% of my forum consumption is at work, so I feel great about it.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

It seems people are more open when hiding behind a monitor. I like that. Way I see it, some discussions wouldn’t go as far IRL, at least this “filter” allows us to bypass some of the things holding us back and be sincere more often with each other.

I have to agree. As mentioned before, I don't tell everything about myself here, but whatever I do say is the truth. One of the reasons I went online was because life had gotten to the point where my chronic illnesses and mobility issues had pretty much confined me to the house, and while my dad was an interesting person to talk to and we shared many common interests, it still wasn't the same as a give-and-take with people who were gamers, SF/F fans, and just plain other people to talk to. It seems to me that being deliberately untruthful tends to defeat the purpose of reaching out to people. We're here to share things with each other, to greater or lesser extents, depending on the topic and how we feel about it.

I've found people here I'm comfortable trusting with some personal things, and it's been a tremendous help to have someone willing to listen. Everyone needs people to listen to them when things get to the point that you have to talk about stuff to people who aren't there, physically in range to judge you. For example, the argument over my decision not to have children... it's annoying to be argued with here on that subject, but not a fraction as annoying as when my mother was standing in front of me arguing about it.