Controlling the Audience: Media and Money

It was 2AM on a Friday night. My house was dark and quiet, except for the light of my computer and the "click-click-click" of the keyboard as my fiance typed furiously. "Josh, let's go to bed now; I'm really tired," I sighed while moving a mountain of pillows off my bed. It had been a long day and I was doubting my ability to keep my eyes open any longer. Josh replied with a halfhearted "okay" and the typing ceased. He was reading and participating in an online message board (also known as a "forum") on the website SMN News, the place for "pure metal news". A forum is similar to a chat room, except it is more organized and much slower-moving; this allows users to put more thought into their posts. In fact, I often see posts in forums that could easily be classified as essays. Because forums permit longer, more thoughtful messages, many perceive forums as superior to the so-called sleazy chat rooms which now tend to be associated with gullible preteens and perverted pedophiles.

I began to nag: "Josh, turn off the computer. I'd really like to get to bed and I can't sleep with all the ambient light! Turn it off, now!"

"Okay, okay, just a second–let me finish reading this one post." Josh replied, irritated with my isistence. Wondering what in the world could be so interesting to read at this hour, I began to walk over to the desk where Josh was sitting. He scrolled down as he quickly scanned the text. As he continued scrolling, I saw something absolutely horrifying in someone's "signature" (a signature is something that is located below all of the posts of a specific person; it can contain text [often famous quotes] or pictures). Josh didn't even seem to notice the picture as he continued reading and scrolling down the page.

"Stop! Stop! What is that? Oh my gosh!" I exclaimed as I saw this very graphic and disturbing photo. I had heard of the self-immolation of Buddhist monks protesting of the unfair treatment of Buddhists in South Vietnam during the late 50s and early 60s, but I had never seen an actual picture of the incident (despite the fact that it is a very famous picture). The last place I expected to see it was in the signature of some anonymous person on a message board for fans of heavy metal music at 2:00 in the morning. Shocked and confused, I asked Josh why in the world someone would put such a picture in their signature. Equally confused (but not too shocked), Josh told me that some of the people on this message board were kind of weird and that they probably thought the picture was cool.

"Aren't there any rules for the forum? Like a terms of use page? You'd think they'd get in trouble for that; I can see that they aren't talking about Buddhist persecution in the 60s and it seems like they have the picture displayed just to shock people. " I responded.

Josh's response was surprising for me: "No, there isn't a terms of use page. It doesn't exist. There aren't really any rules except for don't piss off the administrators! Actually, I'm not even sure about that. I've never even seen them actually do anything other than post in the forums like everyone else." With that, and a few minutes of reading about Thích Quảng Đức (the monk in the picture) on Wikipedia we were off to bed.

A couple of years ago, I used to frequent the forums of GameFAQs and to this day I still visit the forums of Etsy. Both of these websites have a set of rules (formally called "terms of use" or "TOU") for the forums that are enforced by administrators or "mods" (short for moderator). Mods are like forum police; they are people who are present in the forums and have the power to enforce the rules laid out for the forums. They can delete posts, delete entire topics, suspend your account so that you can no longer post, and in some cases, completely ban individuals from using the forums. The rules they enforce vary from many to few to absolutely none. But, why do they have such variance? What are they trying to accomplish by having "terms of use"? Does there actually need to be such control in internet forums? Who and what exactly are they trying to control?

First, I'd like to discuss the strictest of these three websites: GameFAQs. GameFAQs is a site where you can find "video game cheats, reviews, FAQs, message boards, and more". It was started by Jeff Veasey who goes by the username "CJayC" in the forums. GameFAQs has the longest list of forum rules I have ever seen in my life. Offensive material, vulgar language or substitutes for such, posting languages other than English (this is seen as "disruptive" with the English-dominated forums), "flaming" (clearly insulting another user), "trolling" (deliberately trying to annoy or offend other users), illegal activity, advertising, off-topic postings, disruptive behavior, plot spoilers, "flooding" (flooding a certain message board with disruptive topics or posts), impersonation, harassment, and stalking are not allowed. These rules are enforced by mods who are often trusted users that volunteer to police the forums.

Each forum on GameFAQs represents a different topic or theme. Within each forum are topics created by the users of that forum. And within the topic, there are posts (comments on the topic and what the topic-creator began the topic by saying). This type of organization is fairly standard and is seen across almost all sites containing forums. On GameFAQs, there is a forum entitled "Current Events" (affectionately known as "CE" by those who visit that forum). This is ironic considering the fact this particular forum is a social forum and practically every topic within the forum breaks the off-topic postings rule mentioned in the TOU. However, this is permitted and topics not related to current events are not deleted or "locked" (when a topic is closed so that no other users can post within the topic).

CE's audience/participants mainly consist of young adults (90% male) in high school and college (the average age for those who visit GameFAQs is 23). All of them share a common interest in video games. Practically all of them are American and the ethnic makeup of those on CE is similar to that of UC Davis. CE is a place of extremes and randomness; topics tend to be either crass, thoughtful, or just plain weird. On a recent visit to CE, I saw these topics: "What's a good book I should read?", "I just peed in my sister's tea", "I'm a socialist", "Would you do Michelle Obama?", and "Hey guys my left arm keeps twitching". There were literally thousands more, but I felt that this selection best captured the arbitrariness, borderline vulgarity, and quirkiness of CE. With such themes not only apparent in CE, but in all of the GameFAQs forums, it seems Jeff Veasey created the TOU in order to maintain peace and order as effectively as possible in the forums without inhibiting lively discussion.

But, I'm absolutely positive that there is more to the GameFAQs TOU than this. GameFAQs is a extremely popular website; literally millions of people visit GameFAQs each month (and around 40% of them visit the message boards). In 2003, GameFAQs was sold to CNET Networks for over 2 million dollars. Why was GameFAQs worth so much? Because it allowed whoever owned the site to make a huge amount of money by allowing companies to pay to advertise on GameFAQs.

Advertising is a significant part of GameFAQs; practically every page one visits contains and advertisement on it. Without these advertisements, CNET would not be able to make money off of GameFAQs. In order to maintain the popularity of GameFAQs (and keep the advertisers advertising), the TOU exists. Without the TOU, the small amount of peace and order that the forums currently have would likely be lost. And if this peace and order were lost, people who visit GameFAQs my find it unpleasant to visit and instead visit a different website. This would decrease the popularity of GameFAQs and thus decrease the value of the site to advertisers, which directly translates into less money for CNET. Also, if the aforementioned peace and order were lost, especially offensive material would likely become more prevalent on the site (as it is in the rule-less SMN News). This may deter companies from advertising on GameFAQs for fear of being associated with offensive material (and thus loosing business from being associated with such material).

The bottom line for GameFAQs' TOU: it's all about money. GameFAQs does what it can in order to maximize profits from advertisers. Control in the forums is integral to making money. The TOU is specifically made to maintain GameFAQs' traffic while keeping the offensive content from reaching very high levels. This ensures that companies will continue to pay big bucks in order to advertise on GameFAQs.

This explanation also applies to Etsy. Etsy is a website devoted to "buying and selling all things handmade". People can join the site and create their own shops where they can sell goods that they make by hand. By joining the site, others can buy from these sellers. In fact, most people are both buyers and sellers. There are forums on Etsy that are similar in form to those of GameFAQs, but the content is vastly different.

The average age of those who participate in the Etsy forums is 34. Almost all of these people are female and have children. Many of them are artists/crafters, and those who aren't are, at the very least, interested in arts and crafts. Ergo, many of the topics present in the Etsy forums concern art, family, and successfully running a shop on Etsy. The rules of Etsy are called the "Dos and Don'ts", which is noticeably less formal than the "Terms of Use" of GameFAQs. This reduced formality is present in the list of rules. The rules are displayed in a short, simple, bulleted list. The Dos and Don'ts encourage respect for others as well as staying on-topic; they discourage flaming, "calling out" (saying negative things about a someone [usually their business practices] and revealing the username of that person), discussing the details of any transaction, using an alternate account to post in the forums, and posting private information about others. One of the most noticeable features of this list is that there is no rule on vulgar language or offensive material. However, there does not need to be such a rule for two reasons: 1) those who use the Etsy forums tend to not post particularly offensive material and vulgarity is fairly sparse and 2) "the staff reserves the right to lock any topic for any reason, including preemptively locking a topic that has the potential for getting out of control". The latter reason can encompass practically anything because nearly everything has at least the potential for "getting out of control". However, Etsy mods (which are paid employees of Etsy that have a variety of duties outside of policing the forums) rarely utilize the aforementioned right and topics tend to be locked only when users are in a virtual screaming match.

Unlike GameFAQs, companies cannot pay to advertise on Etsy. Instead of making money via advertisers, Etsy makes its money via the sellers who run their shops on Etsy. For each item listed and each item sold there is a fee (20 cents for each item listed and 3.5% of every sale). There is no need to keep offensive content to a minimum in order to avoid scaring off potential advertisers. Also, only about 1% of those registered on Etsy actually visit the forums. Needless to say, that is an extremely small amount of people. For Etsy, maintaining peace and order in the forums is not a top priority–it doesn't need to be. If the forums become particularly nasty and people leave Etsy as a result, it will not affect Etsy's profits significantly. Thus, Etsy does the bare minimum to maintain peace and order in the forums simply because they don't actually need to do more. Etsy's audience is fairly docile and if people do choose to leave because of the content of the forums, it won't affect Etsy's profits very much. Once again, the crux of the rules is money and the maintenance of Etsy's profits.

Just like GameFAQs and Etsy, money is behind the absence of rules in the SMN News forums. SMN News is a site dedicated to the dark, intense, and almost always offensive genre of rock music known as "metal". SMN News' audience consists of those who enjoy metal ("metalheads") and (according to Josh, who visits the site on a daily basis) is mostly composed of males from the ages of 18 to 35. Discussion in the forums tends to remain on the topic of metal and that related to metal (e.g. playing guitar, members of bands that play metal, etc.). The majority of those who participate in the SMN News forums are fans of the metal subgenre known as "death metal". Death metal is particularly intense, extremely fast, very abrasive, and offensive by definition.

Unsurprisingly, offensive material is rampant on the SMN News forums. Pictures of really severe wounds, sexually explicit pictures of women, gore, and even burning monks are quite frequently displayed in the signatures of those who visit the SMN News forums. But, the companies (almost always individual bands and record labels within the metal genre) who advertise on SMN News do not seem to mind such offensive material. This is because offensive material is conducive to metal itself–especially the most popular subgenre of metal on SMN News: death metal. Incredibly crass content does not hurt the profits SMN News, but actually helps it by ensuring that the audience consists of "genuine" metalheads and those who will actually purchase the music being advertised (which has offensive content and tends to fall into the death metal category).

GameFAQs, Etsy, and SMN News are all media that are very deeply intertwined with making money. They do so in different ways and thus have very different rules for their respective forums. But, these rules (or the lack thereof) are not for the greater good; they are tools for maximizing financial gain, as are their respective audiences.

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