I used to be a regular at the AVSIM forums and I can most certainly attest to the fact that the people that hang out there are not your ordinary kind of forum goers.
Like in most game forums they also bitch about the most trivial of things and passionately nitpick every detail of their game of choice. Opinions are blatantly stated, opposing sides are formed, and fights do break out as they would anywhere.
The difference is that they are also a very mature and sentimental lot.
Opinions are commonly stated in a politically correct, eloquently worded, purely agumentative manner that borders on academic. Vulgarities and purile jabs are uncommon, impulsive behavior is taboo. When flamewars do erupt, they are more likely to ultimately resolve their issues in the end ("kiss and makeup") than resort to a brooding troll-like isolation ("shutup and die") that brews a cocktail of hate for later use.
Praise and counter-praise run rampant after a successful mod or commercial release. They'll write odes of spasmic joy at the initial release of a great product, and save criticism for later so as not to spoil the moment. This often extends to personal, real-life events, sending prompt congratulations on getting married, having a baby, getting your Pilot's License, etc. And as you may have seen in the linked forum postings, publicly announced dissapointments in life are met with copius amounts of that rarest of forum virtues, empathy.
It is in the AVSIM forums where I once found out that there is an actual human being behind the words and the alias. Is is also rather unfortunate, that for some reason this epitome of a strong forum community exists within the boundaries of a relatively obscure computer hobby.
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