Further to that Reso, the “pile on” that some people are complaining about is just a by-product of message boards and social media in general. You have hundreds (if not thousands) of people with something to say and while not everyone will respond to everything, when a position that is agreed or disagreed with by a high majority of people is posted, the effects mimick a “pile on” as you get a minority posting a less held position and a majority posting a response to that.
It happens both positively and negatively. When the Flames win, do we need a hundred posters saying the equivalent of “yay”? No, but it happens. When the Flames score, we get a pile of posts that all say the same thing (“wooo” or the name of the player with an exclamation point), do we need it? No. When someone posts good news, we get a whole lot of “congrats” or when it’s bad news, a whole lot of “Sorry.” The perception of a pile on has more to do with the function of a message board and less to do with groupthink or pack mentality. If someone posts an opinion that 19/20 people disagree with, they shouldn’t be shocked or upset when they get 19 people disagreeing with them. It’s just the way the nature of message boards.
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