Ethnography Results – Week 3

I kind saw a lot of the same things as last time.  I want to go more in depth in tracking down user’s posting habits, but this will require a lot more time than I gave myself for this week.  I have found a few interesting people I can track though.  I did some commenting as well, but I might have to give it some time before seeing any reactions.  There is a good chance I won’t get any results from those.  I will update this post accordingly.

Commenting and Posting
As I said I left a few comments here and there.  The ratings of comments and posts add up to a user’s total karma.  This karma can then be spent in a store I think.  I will look into this.  I didn’t really feel that inspired this week, so I didn’t leave many comments.  I don’t want to force anything.  My novelty account only posts in quotes from movies and stuff.  I tend to do this on facebook from time to time, so this is not too difficult of a task for me.  I have doubts it will get any reactions though.  These can be blatantly off-topic and users don’t always care for this kind of stuff.  It really depends.

I am essentially still trying to find a good way to incorporate commenting into the research.  Posting my own topics is something I only plan on doing if it seems worth it.  It would seem like kind of a waste if it wasn’t significantly entertaining.  If I think of a great idea, then I plan on making a post.

The Atheism Category
The user who was discussing their struggle with becoming an atheist does definitely post in many other categories.  Like I said in the introduction, I plan on sorting through their other comments and posts to see what their activity was before posting about this.  I would also like to see what their behavior has been since posting that.

How one user felt after his departure from Christianity.

Going through the atheism category can become tiresome at times.  I still find it interesting to monitor the behavior here, but the vast majority of posts are the same thing over and over.  They are either funny pictures designed to cut the knees off of religion, or quick anecdotes just saying how stupid religion is.  I just get irritated with the notion that all these people want to do is take shots at religion.  They almost seem desperate to undermine any and all competing points of view as reassurance that their philosophy is in fact sound.  I don’t mean to sound like I am ranting.  This is one thing I was afraid would happen.  I’m kind of being judgmental too.  Oh well.  I’ll try to tone down on this in the following weeks.  Moving on.

But amongst all the dreg, I always find at least a few interesting posts of people’s testimonials.  This time I found two.

The first was about a priest who lost his faith 10 years ago, but is still preaching at his church.  He likes the comfort of the environment and his friends there, and he is afraid to come out to everyone and break it off.  This was a post where people were prompted to ask him anything.  Obviously the biggest question is what caused him to lose his faith.  So far, there have been no responses from him.  Unfortunately, the longer he waits to reveal himself, the more painful it will be for everyone.  The church is comprised of 1500 worshippers, so that’s a lot of people who will feel completely betrayed.  I completely understand his not wanting to come clean though.  I am interested to see if he comes back to say anything else.  If he does, this will be part of next week’s results.

The other post was about someone who had a good friendship with a coworker, but religion ended up destroying it.  The person posting is an atheist, and the coworker is a Christian.  She noticed the poster turning down a lady’s offer to hear the word of Christ who was handing out flyers.  When she questioned him, she found out he was an atheist.  This led to the standard discussion of each person’s view, and she immediately became cold to him and very unfriendly.

Now this last case is the kind of thing I would like to see more of in the atheism category.  I would love to see more posts that are this thought provoking and full of depth.  In this case, the coworker is way out of line.  While I might be a Christian, I am not a robot.  As the poster later said, she is being a complete slave to her religious views.  She is being cold to him in an effort to defend her image of what an atheist is instead of seeing him as another person.  That’s terrible.  There is no reason why they still can’t be good friends, and that is the main point of the poster.

Wrap-up and Plans for Next Week
I ended up writing quite a bit, but there were some great topics to discuss.  I still feel like I am trying to find a clear direction for my portion of the reddit study, but I think these discussions I had might have helped.  While some of the posts are just taking short jabs at religion, others clearly have something to say about how religion and other views tie into society itself.  These are fantastic.

I don’t believe I knowingly surround myself with atheists, especially being at Texas A&M.  So, I think I would like to investigate how others view religion from the outside and how competing religious views affect society.  I can refine this a bit more for next week’s update.  I will also monitor posting trends as well, but I think I can get better results by finding the more thought provoking posts like the ones I found this week.