One of the problems with being a blogger is that where a relatively normal person would have an idle thought and then dismiss it as trivial or irrelevant to the more substantial questions of life, the universe, and where the next meal is going to come from, a blogger would pick and poke at the thought like some hitherto unexplored sore tooth, seeing how far one can probe before pain happens.

I was, not too long ago, talking (via IRC, as my actual Real Life social life has dwindled to nonexistence) to a player of World of Warcraft who lamented the much-heard lament about the WoW community and its general unpleasantness. This is, by no means, a particularly new complaint or revelation, but it struck a certain note of familiarity from other sources, which once again brings me to a tangent: it is invaluable, I feel, for a member of any fandom to diversify, to broaden his or her interests, such that a sense of perspective is gained and one realizes that there truly is nothing new.

The word which brought me pause was "community". What made a community? Sociologists and those in related fields would probably have an answer for that, but I would not know where to start researching, and in any case this is a blog entry, not an academic paper. I hold myself to the utmost standards in spelling and punctuation, but calls for citations, because I have been online for too long and am thus incapable of functioning as a normal human being, rearrange themselves in my head as "SAUCE PLZ".

I thus reason, without any logical basis whatsoever, that a community in this sense consists of a group of people who recognize themselves via at least one (if not more) distinct identifier, whether geographical, idealogical, or (most commonly on the Internet) by their hobbies and interests.

This is a blog, and my job is to point out the stunningly obvious. It fills the wordcount, you understand.

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