(04-23-2015, 12:20 PM)Aya Wrote: Dasair, I think you're entirely correct. What people are mis-attributing to popularity is actually just recognizability on the forum. The idea that there's some division, some difference between how those who are recognized from the forum find and conduct RP, and those who are new or less recognized, is just plain wrong. There's an entire portfolio of myth and projection that gets repeated over and over again about this very topic: my suggestion is just realizing that everyone you interact with in this community is just like you, faces many of the same struggles and has many of the same concerns and desires in terms of finding and enjoying RP.
I honestly think it's somewhat more variable than this; I can't say it's always exactly the same, (that there is no difference between a new person and an established one) but that's entirely due to exposure.
I am stupidly verbose, so TLDR: 'Popular' people on the forums have had more chances to make an impression to someone who might be interested in RPing with them than new folk. This can be good or bad, but this is what they have that the newer people don't.
--
Here's the butt-long version:
Basically, the 'popular' people have had more of a chance to 'make an impression' than the new people do, and that's completely a given by how anyone might consider someone else 'popular' in the first place. I say 'more of a chance' because people looking to RP can go to a 'popular' person's profile, look through their posts to see their opinions on various things, find more about their characters, go to their flushed out character wikis, and so on. Whereas with the new person, someone can't always do that so well; they've got limited sources to look to in order to decide if they want to get together with this person or not, and jumping in with some complete stranger with very limited.. anything to go off about them, can be intimidating.
I think it often might boil down to someone being able to get a better idea of a person / someone's characters since they are around and reacted to, and those are the 'advantages' that a 'popular' person might have.
On the other hand, you have the new person, who hasn't been around so long, they make a connection thread or two, but might only get a few bites. Since... either it jived with people or it didn't, but a lot of threads seem kind of hit or miss that way. Like what Max said, the views often greatly outnumber the replies on those threads. What the new person doesn't have is the 'forums exposure' that allows someone else to get a feel for them / their character, however vaguely, and potentially find something in common with them that maybe wasn't there in the connections thread. Maybe it's a character quirk they bring up somewhere, or maybe it's an OOC post about how they are influenced by certain authors. Maybe it's how they come off as a person or a writer, or their ideas about a particular sort of magic; there are endless possibilities. But every post someone makes might be 'the one' that opens up communication, and once that happens, then the chance for wanting to RP with a person can change too.
In all, I think, that yeah; everyone has a similar potential to get RP. That the RPC and IG situations are not at all the same, and shouldn't be based on each other blindly, because they're different things. And even then, the inverse might be true, that someone looks up to someone else and gets intimidated, and it stops them from contacting a person.
The thing that 'popular' people have that 'new' people don't on the RPC specifically is that they're recognizable. But that they're recognizable, that people have some small sense about them beyond 'Hi, my name is Dasair and I'm new', and that every post they've made had the potential to spark an interest and the courage for someone to have asked them about RP, is basically what they have that new people don't. So no, I don't think it's entirely even between them; however, the more a person puts themselves out there, and the more people get to know you, the more it might turn the tables a bit. It's definitely not the only way, and I'm in no ways claiming that this is always the case for every person; there are plenty of options to find RP that don't involve posting all over the forums, and a lot of it is luck; in terms of who sees what post, or who runs into your character IG. But that is a way, if there's someone who wants to be active on the forums anyhow, it might get them more recognized to just post in things when they want to.
The 'popularity' thing can be a boon or a vice, it's just one more thing for people to go on, in terms of figuring out who to try and RP with.
