The Extraordinary Tourist
Discussion Retrospective.
Saturday, May 12, 2007
One of the oddities of internet forums is that discussions can be preserved long after the interest of the participants is over.
My partner and I met up with some online forum friends recently at a local restaurant. Most of them we've known for years but hadn't met in person until now. At this event I was reminded by two people about a forum discussion that I remember having but couldn't for the life of me remember the actual details of what I'd said.
However, it must have been profound and informative because three people recalled it and at least one had thought it interesting enough to copy the discussion and show it to people not involved with the forum. I still couldn't remember the exact details despite the subject being a pet topic of mine.
Afterwards I went home and looked up this discussion on the forum. It took a little bit of finding because it was buried in the archives. Turns out this was a discussion that took place nearly two years ago. No wonder I couldn't remember the details.
It's quite an interesting thing to do, looking at old discussions. Especially if they're about topics that really fire you up (as this one did for me). At the time I sounded really informed about the subject (which I was) but now, if you raised the same issue, I doubt I'd sound even half as informed.
Reading your discussions retrospectively, years later, is quite different from reading discussions in which you did not take part. There is a personal connection to the dialog. For me I wonder how did I get to be that knowledgeable? How could I be that fired up and make the connections I did?
Not only that, but to have someone still remember what I wrote nearly two years later with me having next to no idea what I said.
Most of the time discussions are lost. Forgotten. However the internet is a really big thing. I wonder how many discussions of mine could I find if I looked?Labels: discussion, forum, internet, retrospective
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