Ethnography Results – Week 4

This week also revealed similar results, but there are always interesting testimonials and discussions that reveal quite a bit about the people in the atheism category.  Yet again, the commenting has sort of gone to the way side for now.  I will still use it as a means to interact with the members of Reddit, but I am still unsure as to when this will happen.  If it seems appropriate, I will add something to the community.

Commenting and Posting
As stated above in the introduction, comments and posting will be discussed as they are used.  Until that time, I might just remove this category or just note that there have been no updates.

The Atheism Category
So, the big discussion that I found was a husband who had told his wife he was an atheist, again, and it didn’t work out very well.  Apparently he has had this conversation with her about three months prior and it had gone just as poorly.  But he didn’t bring it up this time.  He had been using her iPad to read an atheist blog, and she ended up finding the site when she picked it up and asked what he was reading.  He explained that it was part of his enlightenment that was very important to him.  She was really upset though.  He made the post for Reddit so he could get some guidance on what to do since he was afraid he might lose his wife over this.

He actually ended up getting some great advice (and not so great advice too) that sort of helped him through his time of need.  However, she threatened divorce multiple times.  He has not explained the ultimate outcome, but hopefully he lets everyone know how it all worked out.  I imagine they are trying to work things out unless he explains otherwise.  There have been no updates from him in about 4 days.

Wrap-up and Plans for Next Week
As I said last week, I would like to use these kinds of stories to get a better understanding of the atheist’s view on religion and religious people.  While it is unfair for religious people to assume atheists are terrible individuals, it is just as unfair for atheists to assume the same for religious people.  I hope to gain a better understanding of what goes into people resulting to these stereotypes and how people might be able to act differently to curb these views.

Also, in an effort to bring the studies of all group members together into one cohesive study, we have decided to begin comparing the general activity of the most prominent posters in each of our categories.  We want to find out if members of a certain category are more prone to posting in that category, or if they post in others as well.  And if they do post in others, to what frequency do they post.