It's just like gambling - there are the small wins that keep you going but the reason you keep coming back is the larger wins. Of course most of the time there is no real winning involved, just consumption of resources. In this case: time.

What am I talking about? BE of course. What keeps us coming back? It looks like some are never away so can you really call it coming back? The “small wins” are the times when you can genuinely help someone out, but nothing beats the excitement of logging in to see a thread title that implies that we’ve “got one” – one of those poor unfortunate souls that everyone knows has no chance of legally getting to the US but they refuse to believe it, or other similar pig-headed stupidity, and that’s when you’ve hit the jackpot. Even if you don’t participate, just catching up with the multiple pages of posts that have accumulated while you’ve been off-line can make your day.

I realise that there may be people on here who are addicted to BE; although I don’t post often I am frequently there reading through stuff to see if I missed anything good. I have tried to cut down the time I spend on here but it’s tough when you think you might miss some good entertainment. Now I’m at the point where I’m never here after office hours, and rarely on the weekend, but of course, now my work could suffer from all the catching up I have to do and I’ll have to come to terms with the fact that there are some things I’ll just have to miss, unless…

Are there enough people in this situation to start a support network to help out with this? Perhaps someone could sacrifice themselves for the sake of others - to monitor the threads and email everyone else when something looks like it might be kicking off? Does anyone have any advice on what helps them? I wonder if there’s any way a keyword email notification system could be put in place?



(I think this must be the longest post I have ever made by quite a significant margin so I'll be very put out if nobody responds. Hang on, maybe that could even cure my slight addiction - in that case, nobody reply, see if I care).

Just didn't want you to be "put out".
I, like you, am not on here very often, but get a real giggle out of some of the banter between those that have time to never log off, at least that is the way it seems.

I haven't had a thread about me for at least a week

Ok ..but do they know your up the gut ....

This is a pathetic post.....

LOL - only kidding... but I'm addicted and just had to respond with something con(de) structive

And of course, everyone had to wait until after office hours to reply. I'm going to try to limit looking on here today to just 3 or 4 times, but as I'm working from home today there will probably be other distractions so it might not be too hard.

With 3 times as many posts as me in only a few months how is that possible?

I'm totally addicted! my OH says its like having a teenager in the house as I'm always on the computer...

Mind you if they put some decent TV shows on....I'd be here a lot less....(honest)...

I have better things to do than hang out here all day. I don't let that stop me though...

If you only knew my true post count.....