Why ?

Today I am going to be talking about how members of my internet community wholesome memes are benefiting from participating and being a member. And also how the community overall is benefiting from the commitment of members.

Making connections

Members are gaining an emotional connection to the website because it is constantly giving them serotonin by either making them laugh or giving them the chance to interact with other members. This makes the user feel like they are a part of something and makes them feel like they have a type of relationship with other users, like online friends. User temporary _charge589 says “The only thing that kisses me is my dog. I don’t have a girlfriend. But my dog is totally worth it”. Then user LenoreRagamuffin says back “sounds great to me! Kisses are kisses”! I think this shows that the users care about each other’s feelings by commenting and agreeing with the other person.

The community benefiting

The community overall is benefiting from users posting and interacting on their forum because it is giving them exposure and followers. The new followers keep their site going with new posts which generate more comments from users. So my community is still alive and functioning from the followers and the users who post memes daily. Without their followers and members who post they wouldn't have a forum of wholesome memes.

Why are they drawn to the website

In my personal opinion I think that people are drawn to the website on Reddit because it gives them an outlet to express their emotions in the form of a meme. I also think that being a member means to them that they personally get to interact and have virtual friends. To someone who is even depressed this is extremely valid and something that could keep a person going emotionally. I think it gives the user a sense of belonging and importance because of the connections they are making with users. People are generally choosing Reddit over other wholesome meme websites because of the ability the user has to just scroll and comment. In the article “why do we love memes” the author says “And a lot of the appeal of memes is in tapping into sometimes-obscure cultural references that need a good background knowledge to make any sense at all.” I would say that this is true because cultural references are a big part of the meme community. Also another reason why we could be drawn to this online community is the informal writing. In the book Because Internet the author states “ Just make an announcement post about a new job or a new baby. It’s not that edited, formal writing has disappeared online”. And I agree that online it is mostly informal because that is how people like to generally interact.

Overall now you can see why users want to be a part of the forum on reddit wholesome memes. The connections and sense of belonging like I mentioned is a primary reason.