Upon reading William Gibson's novel "Pattern Recognition", I noticed that the main character Cayce's life is sort-of divided into two different "realms". The first is reality, or better put her life outside in the city meeting people, working, discussing trends, etc. The second, and the one that caught my interest, is her life and interaction on the forum, Fetish:Footage:Forum, which almost ends up being another world for Cayce and the other major posters.

The forum itself simply deals in what is called "footage", essentially what seems to be porn videos of various forms and makes, but from the way that Cayce and other regular posters interact on the forum its more than just a fetish gallery. Praise, arguments, friends, foes....the forum is a gathering place for more than just fetishists (so it seems...its not like Cayce is continually obsessed with that stuff in the novel).

When I think about the forum though, I tend to compare it to the forums that I have seen, read, and participated in...of which there are many. Some have been for clubs and educational purposes, while others were for games and still others for random chat. There are definitely similarities to the F:F:F (not in topic mind). When something big comes up, the posts really do go "flying" (47). I have yet to see a forum without some sort of Off Topic section as well. And of course, the ever-popular flame wars...much like the ones between Parkaboy and Mama Anarchia.

Interacting with forums might seem just like having conversations with people in real life, and it is true that the only physical differences are time delay and typing instead of speaking. However, one thing I notice a lot of the time is that forums tend to bring out the extremes in people. For some reason (and not totally unexpected), people tend to speak their minds more...oppose and argue with others to a greater degree...create topics that just keep going and going and going and never stop unless someone stops posting...(generally the flame wars, and most of the ones I've seen never really get resolved....they just die). So, perhaps the forum is not an ideal direct parallel to real life conversation...but it does tend to bring out the best and worst in people that one wouldn't see normally.

If there's one thing I've learned, its to not get too involved in random forum...because it is sooo easy to spend half a lifetime in them (kinda like Cayce is here).