Why Is This Community Thriving?
In my three previous posts, I have floated around the question of “Why is this community still alive and thriving to this day?” And over the course of these papers and putting some thought into the question I have the best answer I could ever think of. The answer simply put is that Star Wars is a never-ending plethora of content that will never go away. The evidence I have to back this up is what Disney is currently doing with the Star Wars universe. There are currently eleven different Star Wars TV shows and movies that are currently in development according to Herb Scribner, a writer for Deseret News. To name a few of those projects, there is Ahsoka, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars: The Bad Batch.
What Do Community Members Get Out of This Community?
Members get a few things out of being a part of this community, but I am going to focus on the one that I think is the most important. Humor! I believe humor is one of the best things that community members get out of their involvement. For his privacy I am going to give him an alternate name, “Hector” says that “I can’t imagine falling into water with a helmet and armor on. I think I’d freak out and drown even though I was on a swim team for 10 years.” (See image below)
Another example of this is when the official 501’st Legion account posted a picture (see image below) of a previous Star Wars Celebration in Anaheim and a community member commented “Fantastic! And everyone is wearing a mask. Commendable!”
How Members Benefit from Other Members
In Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch we learn in chapter 4 “Typographical Tone of Voice” that tones we use can either pique the interest of people or bore you to death. On page 115 she explains how all caps do cause a sense of urgency and a tone of screaming instead of just talking. As shown in the example of the previous paragraph, conversations between community members are very important to keep each other at the highest interest level. A new post is made about every few hours but comments to those posts are made at different times throughout the 24-hour day. I bring this up because this is one of the main way’s members will stay engaged in the community and keep the community alive. They converse with each other and bring new topics of discussion on a constant daily basis, day in and day out. The reason that the community decides to meet mainly on Facebook is unknown to me but if I were to guess why I would say that they originally met here before anywhere else and just stayed here. Or since at one point Facebook was the most famous social media site, members and users of the site flooded to it and a good portion of them were Star Wars fans and ended up finding this community!
