Message Board Personalities
I like to compare message boards to school classrooms in the fact that they consist of groups of people that differ from each other but all have one common purpose. In a classroom of say thirty students you will always have about four or five individuals that stand out from the rest in terms of their personalities or their role within the classroom. The same is true for the adult webmaster message boards. Almost every board within the adult webmaster community will have a small group of members who stand out from the rest for a variety of reasons. It is important that you can recognize these members and what their role is because they can positively or negatively affect your business. Let’s examine the various “board personalities” that exist.
The Board Whore - This individual is someone that has a lot of time on his or her hands. They will be the person who has like 10,000 posts and who posts on holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving. They can be found posting messages at all hours day and night. The majority of their posts are really not related to business at all but more philosophical or silly to be blunt. They may or may not conduct too much business themselves since they seem to have all the time in the world to post threads and messages to their favorite boards. One mistake that newbies can make when they first join a message board is to befriend the local board whore with the belief that this is a keen networking strategy. Just because the board whore is well known among the message board patrons does not necessarily mean that they are some bigwig within the industry. The guys that you want to get in with do not usually have time to post 40 messages per day about what they ate for dinner the night before.
Spam Artist - This person is the individual who will jump on any chance to blatantly spam their product or service. Most board members would get banned for this type of behavior, but the “spam artist” is usually quite clever and creative and can usually pull off their spam with not too much uproar. How do they do this? Most spammers are drive-by spammers, which means that they register for a message board, post one big spam and then they won’t go back to that board till the dust settles, and then it will be only to spam again. The spam artist, on the other hand, contributes regularly to discussions and seems quite helpful to newbies. This is the disguise that they use so that when they do let loose with their spam, the other members will not be as offended by their behavior. While their actions when it comes to spamming can be shady, these people can be worthwhile contributors to a board and sometimes a useful source for information.
The Tease - The tease is the female on the board that tries to woo the hearts of her fellow male board members. She will write seductive messages, post naked pictures and basically flirt non-stop with other patrons. Once she gets a male member under her thumb, she will start asking for favors like design help, traffic tips, etc. or she will try to push the hard sale for whatever product or service that she is peddling. The number of guys that fall for the ploy of “the tease” is uncanny. I have even been witness to a whole board fall under the spell of a certain tease who would post pictures of a hot blond claiming it was she. After she successfully launched her service, we later found out that she was actually a male posing as a female to get more business. Beware of the tease. She will flirt like crazy with you, boost your ego, and even get you horny, but business wise there is probably very little that she can help you out with.
The Guy with Multiple Personality Disorder - Like the board whore, this person has a lot of time on their hands. The guy with Multiple Personality Disorder or MPD is someone who will post messages under a wide variety of usernames. Their reason behind doing this is not exactly clear to me, but I have a feeling it is mostly an attention grabber. This person is pretty much harmless but I would be careful when entering into any sort of business transaction with someone who has time to engage in such pointless activities.
The Ass - Most boards like classrooms have one or two bad apples amongst their group. I like to call these people the “Asses” of the board. Their known for their angry and offensive replies to other peoples posts, causing fights between board members, and basically for never having anything positive to say. The best way to spare yourself from the sting of “the ass” is to avoid them at all costs. Once you become a heckling target for the ass then you might as well pack up and leave if you do not have the wits to beat them at their own game.
The Clown - Last but not least, we have the class clown. This individual enjoys making a joke out of pretty much everything. They are rarely, if ever, serious and they will have something silly to say in every thread that they post in whether it is business related or not. The unusual thing about the clown is that they can be highly respected members of a board. They are often good people to befriend if you would like to do some networking because their contact list is most likely extensive and full of key industry members.
Remember these are just generalization based on personal observations of several of our industries popular message boards. If your business relies on networking then it is important to always display yourself in a professional manner, but this doesnt mean you cant have some friendly fun at the same time.
