Board out of our minds - Ben McCormick Feb 2004

Message boards are addictive. I am currently addicted to five at the moment, with another few in the ‘borderline addiction’ or ‘pending’ category.

Without realising it, you are sucked into a virtual society, cosseted by the seemingly friendly welcome and like-minded views. But there’s a Stepford Wives feel about it. You can imagine your new ‘community’ grinning inanely as they lure you in to their little world. And it is a little world. There’s all sorts of people out there tapping away furiously at their keyboards on any subject you’d care to mention.

It’s all ages too. Anyone. Kids to grandparents, they’re all there. Or rather, they’re not all there, and I’m becoming like them. You just can’t help getting involved.

I suppose it’s like going to a new school, but without the immediate pressure. You make ‘friends’ relatively quickly if you’re quite confident, but if you’re not, it doesn’t matter. You can just hang back and wait – test the water, so to speak.

And you get to choose your very own name. Yes, no longer do you have to put up with what you were given by your parents, you can now assume control over your own web identity. Names range from the obvious, i.e., your real name, through amalgams of first and surnames, names and numbers, plain old nicknames, and the sign of a true message board junkie, the made up name.

Where else can you see chickenbomb taking StipeTripe to task? In what other scenario would you find StreetBum rubbing shoulders with the Big_Fat_Buffalo? Is there another place in which manwithoddshapedballs brushes swords with internationaldoughnut?

The greatest thing about message boards is that, not only can you call yourself what you like, you can write whatever you like. This is also the worst thing about message boards, for it has ushered in the phenomenon of the ‘keyboard hero’.

Keyboard heroes are the equivalent of the little kid at school who had hard mates. That is to say, they are invariably mouthy little shits who have absolutely no fear of being taken to task. Their ‘hard mates’ in this case are the anonymity the message board affords any user. The image I have of them is hacker-wannabes without the technical know-how, pale, unattractive and teenage.

There are keyboard heroes on two of the message boards I frequent. Predictably, these are football message boards – the most prevalent variety. One of the boards is plagued by a ‘fan’ of Chelsea called, inventively, ‘Seachel’. He has worked out a way of racking up user names, i.e. Seachel 1-1,000,000, and continually posts moronic and inflammatory posts. Sometimes he can be funny, but he is invariably mindless. Granted, he succeeds in his aim of ‘winding up’ those who frequent the board, but it is low-level stuff. Guaranteed, it pisses the common-or-garden posters off, but none of his inane postings stand up to the scrutiny of more developed users, who tend to just ignore his posts. What irks me about him is that when he is wound up, he reverts to type, so to speak, and becomes an unsophisticated thug.

The other football board I visit has its fair share of cyber-Conans as well, although they really mean it. They have in the past referred to ‘mild’ racist chanting, organised football violence and the righteousness of the British National Party. They are despised and shunned by the regular users, yet they insist on posting their dubious views on the web. It gives them a voice, I suppose. The ultimate pluralistic society in action.

But then, isn’t that the attraction? You get your own little bit of cyberspace to yourself. You become published. Others, possibly tens of people, read what you have written. Maybe you get a reaction. Perhaps you provoke thought, response, hatred, love. You might even ‘meet’ the partner of your dreams. It’s no surprise that there’s a good deal of flirting goes on.

And there’s no danger. You have the safety net of anonymity. Nobody really knows who you are unless you tell them. The ultimate fantasy role-play, wherein you act out a life as yourself and how you wish you were, without actually having to back it up with any factual evidence. Perhaps that’s the attraction, why they’re so addictive.

Although I’ve no evidence, I suspect very few people who post on message boards actually meet in real life. It wouldn’t so much as shatter the illusion as annihilate it. And what of those who do meet via these media? Do they persevere with their web-personas? Do they abbreviate oft-used phrases like “in my opinion” and “to be quite honest”? Do they say LOL instead of actually laughing?

At least with FriendsReunited you actually used to know these people.