Sam & I had a brief talk about his take on message boards this morning.
Samuel McKewon @swmckewonOWH
I've watched message boards swing wildly over the last 24/48 hours from frustration to happiness to questioning to all those things at once.
knapplc @knapplc
@swmckewonOWH This shouldn't be a surprise. Message boards are comprised of many, many disparate individuals, not one homogeneous hive mind.
knapplc @knapplc
@swmckewonOWH Each individual expresses their take. Depending on when you look, certain opinions may appear to dominate. It's an illusion.
Samuel McKewon @swmckewonOWH
@knapplc The hive mind can get going pretty fast on a message board, Really fast. Social media, too. They are not bastions of individualism.
I get what Sam is saying here, but I also think there's a bit of "they" going on. I have no idea how much time Sam spends perusing message boards, but if he's not touching base, reading conversations every day, it's easy to lose sight of the individual opinions. It's like watching an ant hill. It's difficult to see individualism in a chaotic environment, especially from above. And while I believe Sam and his contemporaries check in on message boards, there's what? Five or six reasonably active message boards specifically about the Huskers, there's Facebook, Twitter... and that's not to mention the radio spots these guys do, and occasionally they actually have to write an article or two.
Because they just don't have the bandwidth to focus on these boards and get to know the individuals, I think there's some loss of the nuances of each person's take on all things Husker.
Or maybe it's me - I spend way too much time here, so I see the facets of opinion pretty easily.
Anyway. Sam's right that boards can pretty easily gain momentum. We saw it with Tresselmania last week, and there are myriad other examples. In that respect, message boards aren't largely different than society as a whole.
