So I have got into the whole mylot “revolution” recently and I have to admit that I was very enthusiastic about it at first, the idea of being paid real money for my every contribution to the conversation without the traditional constraints of research-derived accuracy, relevance and general good taste that go with being paid for one’s words. It seemed like the perfect format for the avid blogger and internet junkie, to quietly make a bit of side cash while participating in a global conversation- and it is up to a point, there’s the rub as the bard would have it, it’s only up to a point, then it breaks down, and the problem is human nature, human nature is avaricious, human nature is spiteful and petty, human nature is myopic and xenophobic, in short human nature is bad for interpersonal relationships.

Anyone who has taken a cursory glance at the average internet forum can recognise straight away the obvious advantages and of course the disadvantages of the anonymity of these soap-boxes. One feels free to indulge one’s wildest fantasies, to put forward one’s most crackpot theories, to argue passionately against something which one agrees with wholeheartedly in reality or to argue in favour of something which one avoids vocalising in polite company. Accountability is crucial- when one is given time and space to formulate one’s arguments, then one is free to stretch oneself creatively and intellectually but the added bonus of anonymity releases the shackles of social convention. Furthermore geographical diversity is facilitated by the international ubiquity of the internet- in short, I can argue metaphysics with an Aussie while I simultaneously argue the weakness of Dan Brown’s prose with an American and the virtues of space travel with a Brazilian, I can basically get global input and global information at any hour of the day, I just have to choose a peak time for a given zone although the US remains king when it comes to peak use.

Now the previous paragraph may appear to have been unstinting cheerful, but this review is about mylot and not about normal forums, what gets me about this is that the idea of a forum is the transmission of knowledge, arguing, agreeing or disagreeing but in general conversing and interacting with others. People have questions, other people have answers, it we all have a grand time deciding amongst ourselves whose answers are the best or most convincing (or even the most interesting/ingenious) but with mylot this is not the case. Now I have not followed it from the beginning, so I cannot claim to have insight on how it has evolved (or indeed if it has evolved) but in it’s present form it is extremely infuriating and it promises only to get worse.

The inherent problem with mylot is (in my opinion) the uneasy cohabitation of those who use it primarily for leisure purposes and those who are using it only for the quick buck that it promises. Those in the first group come in many forms (and let’s face it no one is going to get rich off the back of mylot except perhaps the owners and some scammers who manage to get personal details etc. from other users) and I would include myself in this group, with about 50 posts up averaging 20-30 words I have made the princely sum of $1.70, and I have read of a woman who considers herself a success story making $40 a month although she does not mention how many hours she invests in this.

The second group then, well these are generally people from less affluent countries who often have a very low standard of English and create threads which are designed to be polemic or with mass appeal in order to persuade many people to read them and to comment back, thus increasing the money they earn from the website. That would be all very well if they all had something to say, but the problem is that it is a rare occurrence which leads to repetitive posts, similar topics being started by different users sometimes running simultaneously (something which the moderators are obviously unable to cope with given the sheer volume of postings) and many threads being plagued with short meaningless cover-all replies like ‘I agree with the previous post and with the topic’ which are obviously just pasted into thread after thread just to increase a user’s profile and ingratiate themselves (or so they hope) with others.

So then what is the future for mylot, well it can either be much more tightly controlled than it is at the moment (indeed it seems that responsible users are expected to fulfil the roles of moderators, signalling when users plagiarise from their fellows rather than the mods themselves) with abuses strictly dealt with and repeat offenders banned quickly or it can be allowed to drift in the general direction it is going with the vast majority of topics being about mylot itself (and specifically money issues and service complaints) and other internet money opportunities. Wasn’t there a time when discussion groups were just about information, friendship, shared interests that cross borders and not just a chance to advertise websites that sell natural beef jerky in bulk or the business opp. you have which just requires that people send you their personal details, credit card number, physical description, eating habits etc. etc.

At the end of the day, I suppose you get out of mylot a reflection of what you put in, you could spend hours every day slavishly posting and making new topics- and make a small but not inconsiderable amount of money. Or you could use it as a kind of testing ground, a sounding board for some blogging ideas, I would in fact imagine that the website owners make money to a great extent because companies could se it as free product placing and market research since the people who do the posting are actually following trends and creating catchy topics according to this, and the topics that get a lot of posts obviously represent hot topics- so who knows, perhaps there is a bright future for it even if it is along the lines of  “Who’s is yours the favourite actors of Hollywood?”