There’s a lot of things that can interfere with the lovely commute that you sometimes have to take while driving, whether that is from work, school, or home. Sure, there are people who probably learned to drive with a clown car in a circus or inexplicably lose their driving aptitude at the first drop of rain, but one of the things that slows your pace is “gaper’s block”. You’ve seen it – it’s the curious yet unsuprising phenomenon of people stopping their Crackberry texting or hip hop head bopping to turn and look at an accident that happened on the road. Sure, the curiosity only lasts a second, but multiply that by tons of cars and you’re looking at sitting in a parking lot coming home.
Forums, in my extensive experience, have their own version of gaper’s block, and that’s in what I’d affectionately refer to as “/popcorn” or “drama” threads. Most common in MMOs, the threads normally start out with some notion/accusation/opinion about someone else that the thread starter knows. First, second, and third hand accounts of certain events are related, blown out of proportion, and put through a blender. Directly involved parties fight harder than two women rolling on the ground over the last purse in a sale at Bloomingdale’s, while bystanders and onlookers throw in witty commentary with the occasional laugh – all the while as lurkers and readers wander by, boosting the thread view count into the thousands.
Even though as an experienced moderator and administrator of forums this might seem like a pain in the ass, I actually find it convenient. For example, most of the people who do gape past and who are normally aggressive enough to shout out their computer screens about idiocy are easily corraled, put into one place so they can be watched and dealt with. There’s also the draw that a good drama thread has to highlight or reinforce your forum policies, whether that is to wave the banstick around or encourage Darwinistic forum community shenanigans. And let’s not forget the fact that just because you moderate and uphold rules publicly doesn’t mean you can turn around and get some entertainment or laughter privately at the insanity that is the Internet.
Sometimes I wish that we didn’t have forum gaper’s block, that people would realize that what happens in a game or on a forum is really just not that important enough to defend or attack in the grand scheme of things. That being said, if there weren’t these threads, forum moderators wouldn’t have anything to /facepalm to each other over, and forum denizens might turn their attentions to yet another attention-grabbing activity that is a pain to moderate. The way I see it, my commute around the Internet slows down almost none if there’s a forum thread needing popcorn, so drama threads, keep it coming. Entertainment sometimes has to be found in the most unexpected places.