aven
fragment b : the common threads
I communicated with people on the message boards as well as kept
up on posts past and current. As a result, I was able to
find enough information to understand what sorts of similarities
and differences exist in the community. Some
were fairly surprising and others were expected.
I tried to gauge how emotional each respondent was based on their
answers to my questions. While I'm not necessarily qualified
to make such a distinction, I'd say it's fairly obvious that each
person's emotional stock is very different. What may be,
perhaps, more telling is how each person thinks of AVEN. A
little under half consider AVEN to be one of their emotional outlets
whereas the others generally go to family members if anyone at
all.
To its members, it seems that AVEN is mostly a supplement to their
physical, "real life". Many members look at AVEN as an escape from
a general reality with frequent innuendos and pick-up lines. Newer
members, however, seem to view AVEN as more of a place for support
than a leisure activity. The
two most popular forums on the AVEN site are Welcome Area and Off-A ,
so it isn't a surprise that people generally treat the community
in one of these two ways.
While a member's purpose
for using the board may be fairly straightforward, I spoke with
no archetypes in the forums. Everyone seems
to be a unique human being where the only major similarities could
be found politics, pet ownership, and sexual identification. |
