average mario Posted:

I think the problem is this: Most of the rest of the forums are actually parodies of people, not forums. A subset of the population with a set of traits is picked, and those traits are magnified and distorted. A forum is then picked that may be a parody of a real life forum frequented by said people and named accordingly.

This is simply a parody of a forum. There isn’t a real clear definition of who would hang out at howstuffworks.com, and even if there was, those people definately would not hang out at howstuffbreaks.com – so we’re left wondering who would actually frequent howstuffbreaks.com and how to pigeonhole and distort them.

A certain amount of versimilitude and therefore lulz comes from actually knowing the subject matter and the sorts of people that hang out in a particular forum. It’s for this reason that a lot of submissions fall flat and that the funny submissions get down-voted by the unwashed.

I’m both looking forward to and dreading Something Lawful because of this. IANAL, but I am a Law Geek of sorts, and it always gets sand in my woman's genitals when people demonstrate an ignorance of basic high school civics or when they don’t know the difference between civil and criminal cases.

On second thought, this is some fertile territory. We could parody both the legal ignoramuses, and people like me, the legal pedants. Also actual lawyers, although it should be noted that actual lawyers are few and far between on these sorts of forums. Most lawyers are too busy to bother with this sort of bull**** or they’d rather not share their knowledge for free or legally/ethically/professionally they are not allowed to give specific legal advice to strangers. When a lawyer does post to a forum thread you’ll often see disclaimers that their post does NOT constitute legal advice, nor should the reader consider themselves a client in any way. It’s a basic CYA practice to avoid liability. (See? I **AM** a Law Geek.)

OK, since I’m just typing out loud here, the thought occurs to me that for certain types of forums we need some basic research to improve submission quality. Not to the point of expertise, but enough to understand the people we are parodying and their areas of interest and mastery. For example, I don’t think we need much more info than I provided concerning Something Lawful*, and I’m sure that someone will have the requisite erudition for whatever esoteric forums come along in Forumbuildr.

Lastly, I wonder if any of this matters. Forumbuildr is for creating scenery and set dressing, more or less. While I love movies that pay a lot of attention to such details (Brazil comes to mind), it’s not something absolutely necessary for the enjoyment of a movie necessarily. And we’re not talking movies here. Hell, we’re not even talking about a puppet show. Furthermore, if any of you have ever worked Art Dept. in the movie business, you know how much stuff just gets faked and how often **** that looks shoddy absolutely works for the camera. (Plus, you can always fix it in post Log in to see images! )

Beyond our own enjoyment of creating material for Forumwarz, do most players really pay much attention to the actual content of the forums? Half the time I’m playing, all those details that someone sweated over are just so much wallpaper.

But maybe I’m overthinking this.

*If any additional info is needed for Forumbuildr purposes, feel free to ask and I’ll do my best. That’s bumuming Something Lawful ever gets voted in.