Crowds

An active night in The Palms last night. 16 people at one point, and a steady 10-12 all night. (6 is more like what we usually have.)

I find that there's an upper limit to chat room "effectiveness." When there's more than 25 people in a room, one ro two things generally happens: 1) The public chat dies away, replaced by a stream of hellos, goodbyes, and welcome backs, or 2) The conversation becomes more or less impossible to follow as multiple conversational threads spring up and people are often replying to things said minutes previously.

A lot of factors go into what happens, of course. Some people clam up in crowds. Others seem to overcompensate and feel a need to fill every possible conversational void with something.

I'm of two minds about whether having a popular room is a good thing, or not. There are times when a crowd makes for a very fun, lively night -- there are others when a crowd makes simply for frustration and irritation. It's very different for the people running the room than for the regular participants. I'm thinking about a lot of things that the guests obviously aren't.

The other issue with crowds has to do with the fact that I think of #Enchanted_Plams as largely (but not totally) a scening channel. Large crows often make good scenes harder to pull off, both for the participants and for those interested in watching/appreciating it. This is because while etiquette generally dictates that people be quiet during a scene, it's difficult and not necessarily fair to expect 15 people not involved to say absolutely nothing for 20, 30, even 60 minutes, possibly.

But crowds can be fun . . . often when there is a crowd there will be some great conversations, a lot of laughs and occaisionally, multiple good scenes going on simulataneously.

Well, it's Friday night . . .Happy Weekend! Time to head in and see if any of My girls are about. Sometimes just Me and the three of them is all the "crowd" I ever want.