From time to time I reveal different aspects of the flavor of web traffic to this site.

Having had the opportunity to track many different aspects of our traffic over the past 2 years has been most illuminating.

One of the most interesting aspects of our web traffic is the break-down between members & lurkers.

Our lurker population is often 10 to 20 times as large as our member community. What's interesting is the type of traffic each group is composed of.

What's obvious is that our member community, especially our active member community is decidedly left in political attitude. What's not so obvious is the fundamentally conservative nature of our vast sea of lurkers. Because I get to see specific web traffic information, I can deduce this conservative stance from the preponderance of traffic from domains which are host to conservative organizations.

It struck me as kinda funny, (in a dead-serious way), that the political right seems to be paying close attention to the ministrations of the left.

As humans we are pack animals, & natural voyeurs of course. But it is somewhat unusual to see such conservative attention lavished upon such a liberal (seeming) website.

This suggests to me that we are seeing an evolution of the way people arrive at their affiliations. The Internet & globalism are slowly dissolving the geographic stranglehold on attitudes worldwide. After only a decade of meaningful web discourse, a strange sort of blending is taking place never before seen in human civilization. The fundamental aspects of human life as described by Diamond & others are changing. Cut lose from their foundations, ideas themselves are growing and changing... transforming the cultures they infect in insidious & fundamental ways.

Predicting the outcome of this thought experiment is all but impossible. But what seems certain is that this petri-dish of ideas will produce a rash of unpredictable changes which greatly affect the future.

As geographic tribes give way to "thought" tribes, what are the benefits & consequences of this process?

Could be good... could be bad... probably both.

Certain to be interesting.

Most people don't like to post or speak within a group where the apparent majority is opposed to them. I'm an outlier in that I find it to be great fun...

This is amplified in an internet forum because you only SEE the people that post or talk.

Aaron Wrote:
It struck me as kinda funny, (in a dead-serious way), that the political right seems to be paying close attention to the ministrations of the left.

As humans we are pack animals, & natural voyeurs of course. But it is somewhat unusual to see such conservative attention lavished upon such a liberal (seeming) website.

That's one possible view of things...or it could also be that the lurkers are interested in PO but since the group is so left, they decide to only read & not get caught up in an internet argument (which is why they remain lurkers). I would be interested to see how many are "long time" lurkers (over a year).

Other than that I agree with everything you said...and YES, this experiment should prove most interesting.

I'm a member on a "left" Canadian political board and I am amazed at how often our conversations wind up in editors columns and on talk shows (political in nature of course).

The woman who married my father works in a government ministers office and she says they comb through oppinion boards becuase they get a more accurate picture of what people are thinking than you can get in polls now-a-days.

It also helps them keep ahead of political hot potatoes.

Interesting but scary as this means that the majority of the people here are AGENTS!!!

Should I/we shut up so they cannot peak into our minds or should I/we press on hoping to enlighten their minds and maybe their hearts?

It seems that these folks are generally ok with a war for resources and the subsequent loss of life et al.
Will they feel the same when they lose their loved ones or if/when the war is on their own soil?

Shame as it sometimes seem that is exactly what will have to occur before their heart transmutates from stone to flesh yet we as a species do not seem to have the luxury of waiting to see.

I hope that those that are lurking here realize that this site is a deep source of information and analysis on PO that few other sites provide. The DRUM is also very good.

I consider myself conservative.

Some of the political "new" left ideals just flat annoy me (global warming hysteria, the general push for anything defeatist, diversity as an ends to a mean/multiculturalism).

I do sympathize with the "old" left ideals though (strong unions, protecting the little guy, regulating out of control corporations/trust busting)

I think in general peak oil is neither "left" or "right".

Interesting comment about the geographic tribes vs. the "thought" tribes. I'm a progressive type of person, so I 'click' with someone who professes similar views on this forum, no matter where they live, which could be on the other side of the Planet from me. However, I'm not just in cyber-space, I occupy geographic space too, and a lot of my fellow tribespeople are very conservative. So at times I feel as if I'm living two lives; one the realist, the doomer, and the other is the business-as-usual, I've-given-up-trying-to-convince-you life.

So this is one personal consequence of the geographic vs. the 'thought' tribe. It will be interesting and maybe scary to see how it plays out on a macro scale, which it will have to do when the truth can no longer be glossed over.

Regards,

L.

Peak oil will impact all of us, regardless of political leanings, but my perception is that this board has become a lot more left-leaning over the past couple of years.

As a result, I tend to come here to read news, but I don't post as much as I used to. There just aren't as many discussions that I have anything to contribute to.

Once the 9/11 conspiracy machine got spun up, this place became a lot less interesting to me. I suspect this is true for many of the more conservative readers. Of course, the end result is that this site becomes more and more left leaning as the conservative voices become observers.

Aaron,

could you possible provide us with a geographical break down of the traffic? The most interesting would be of course the traffic from countries which do not belong to the "western" field - North Korea( this would be an interesting one), China (! - i did not find any chinese PO Forum as I was searching for it), Russia is perhaps interesting, and Gulf countries of course, and non-Gulf Opec.

So, do you deem this to be confidential, or is it possible if you provide us with some percent numbers of traffic from these countries.

Hi Aaron. Interesting info but I'm a bit puzzled. Can dig you for a bit more data?

Figuring out the political leanings of our lurkers is going to be a bit difficult from domain info - seeing as I would see most of them logging on either from home (in which case, even if it's a fixed IP I can't see how you figure out who they vote for) - or in quiet times at the office.

So if your info has been gathered from the latter group (people at work - fixed IP's and organisation/company names) - are they really all from the CIA & the Freedom Foundation?? In which case they haven't either got the sense to work through anon. proxies (which makes them too stooopid to be a threat to the rest of us) or they really are bored at work (in which case, same outcome).

As an 'Orrible Green Anarchic Leftie I would of course be proud of all the attention but I need hard data before I'm 100% convinced )

JPL

Oh yea, and if anyone wants to see what the European version of neo-cons - with regards to Peak Oil - are up to, check this one out (shudder):

http://www.bnp.org.uk/candidates2005/ma ... manf13.htm



(If you don't believe in Peak Oil, we'll nutt you...)

Peakoil.com could subscribe to

http://www.big-boards.com/board/650/
http://www.big-boards.com/

this tracks stats and gives a breakdown of growth, visits by country, unique visits, membership growth etc etc

Maybe conservatives want to know what is going on in the world as much as anybody else. They can't get this information from the WSJ or other spoon fed sources so they come here. They don't contribute because they aren't here to contribute. thye are here to get informed.

While no one wants to lose someone close to them in war, it is also true that a large number of those you would place in this category are in fact proud when their children choose a military career.

If my daughter chooses to enlist or pursue a commission, I would be very proud of her decision. And while it is a dangerous occupation, twenty-somethings routinely risk their lives doing much more pointless activities.

I look back on the times I free-climbed rock faces for instance.. and I think, "why in the world am I still alive." But, its just what young people do.