I've been looking at the Blog view of the IotDs for about 5 months now and lurking around the forums themselves for about a month. A couple of weeks ago I went ahead and joined for one main reason: This place looks like a FUN place to spend my time (especially at work...shh!
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What pulled me in (aside from wanting to contribute to the IofD posts) is the fact that there are so many varities of topics and threads on this forum. Most forums I frequent are geared towards something specific. Here, anything and everything goes.
To add to that, I really liked reading the posts. I liked the mixture of really smart posts and cute posts and funny posts... Half the time its the really simple "AOL" type posts that are the most enjoyable and humorous for me to read. A prime example: this thread itself. HB did the first post, presented in all its splendor et al. The very next post was nothing but "lol". That cracked me up.
See, I'm all for intellegent discussion. I enjoy intellegent discussion but I also like to laugh at silly stuff, too. Intellegent discussion doesn't always give way to humor and when it does it's usually dry, chuckle, in-the-know kind of humor. Not to say that's bad, it's just not the same as belly-laugh kind of humor. I like to laugh loud and hard. It's good for you, besides.
I'll grant y'all, I'm quite new here. I haven't read all of the threads in all of the forums all the way through so I really can't say I know what anyone means when they talk about how it used to be. But the way it sounds to me is that before, this forum was much like a group of professors standing in a little huddle in Prim And Proper University and speaking in a hushed polite murmur. In contrast, the way it seems to me now is this forum is more like a university Common Building, where people come in and out, hang out for a while, talk about important things or spread urban legends and gossip. That's what I like about this place, that Commons feel it has to it. It made me feel comfortable.