My first experience with an on-line community was the 'Downs, long before I knew Facebook existed or I cared about any of those types of sites. It's interesting that when Facebook kind of became the on-line community thing, I switched to that, and de-activated the account I had on myspace (I saw no point in having both of them, I am sorry if anyone on here does
). But through all that, it's been the 'Downs where I've stayed. Despite anything that's happened, sometimes busy sometimes just need a bit of different', the other forums I've gone to, the 'Downs has been the place.
The reasons to not have an off-tolkien forum where we could talk about things considered as 'idle chat' is understandable, but there are advantages and disadvantages. Of course we have the ability to PM whatever we want to, but I don't come here to talk about politics, or the best restaurants, or what's going on in the world. Like others have said, that's probably the advantage of Facebook, not to chat with the people I see regularly, but to chat with people I have met here, or elsewhere.
With that being said the 'Downs was the first, and always will be the first...occassionally I need a break from whatever I'm doing here, but the great thing about this place is it doesn't seem like a chore. Don't really know how else to put it, but I don't ever feel like the 'Downs is a waste of time. I can post in whatever threads, and get involved in whatever I want to here. Even if I get asked to do something it never feels like I'm being "dragged" into something I didn't want to do in the first place.
And Facebook...that just gets oh sooo tedious. I have piles and piles of apps, and games, and requests, gathered up over the months...and all these updates. You can't say "no" without getting 3 or more requests for the same thing, and it is just a pain to go through and delete everything. Not only that but, I made the mistake of having all the notifications sent to my e-mail, and then I'd have to go and delete the plethora of facebook messages just saying "so and so commented on your post." I probably spent about 5 years of my life deleting (and then deleting a second time) all the messages from facebook. Luckily, I finally dropped the lazy and requested nothing get sent to my e-mail. But still, that place just gets tedious, you can't say "no" (if I get another "Join my Mafia" request I will take a bite out of my laptop).
All that above, well I don't have to worry about any of it on the Barrowdowns.
