Over the winter months I visited and took part in many message boards. I noticed something I call a "social yardstick". To understand it, dial back to the 1970's, if you can. Anyone remember how popular Sonny & Cher were? Cher was part Cherokee. Suddenly, it became the "in" thing to have American indian blood in your background. It seemed everyone I conversed with would somehow work into the conversation how much indian they were, real or imagined. Had PC's and the internet existed then, most threads would, no doubt, follow suit.
Many boards are mostly U K and E U members. On those boards, to be a socially accepted, you must bash the USA at every opportunity. And it does not work both ways. How dare Americans refer to europe as "eurotrash". Trust me. I know.
My favorite board mirrors the time quite well. It is made up all ages, people from the UK, Australia, canada, USA and a few european countries. About half seemed to be teens and early twenties.
The younger set at times, dominate the board bragging to each other how gay they are and how much negro blood they have, thanks to Obama's sudden rise to fame. Gay negro posters rank right up there on top. The spelling and language skills of these youngsters range from totally incoherent to decodeable if you have time.
Older Americans and euro's like to brag about how race-tolerant they are. And euro's all know exactly how Americans should behave and govern.
The most disturbing mainly U K thing, is animal worship. That's what I call it. People in the UK put animals on a pedestle, to be adored and "worshipped". These people can really put on a show of insanely intense anger, even claiming physical sickness at the death of any animal. Most claim to be vegans.
Message boards are an interesting tool to gauge the direction of our world, or see how lost we really are. I would be extremely interested to see how these boards would react if our next president was a young, popular Polish Jew.
