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Acne Forums- Need Of The Hour |
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As a long time acne sufferer in my youth, I often felt
the need for relevant information and advice regarding acne. However,
those were the days before the advent of the internet, and more often
than not, I found myself poring over health magazines, leaflets of new
anti acne medicine and discussions with friends. While browsing through
various websites however, I chanced upon a link that led to an online
acne forum. Now this is a revolutionary development that I sorely wish I
had in those days! An acne forum of any sort, even if only offline,
would have helped me deal with not just the physical symptoms of acne,
but also with the fear and embarrassment that acne brought on. So, I
delved into the acne forum with relish to see what developments had
taken place in the acne field.
The adventure left me with mixed results. On the one hand,
there was an impressive growth in the amount of information available in the
acne forum to give even a casual reader all the hard facts about acne. For
instance, one of the acne forums I visited busted some of the acne myths that we all grew
up with. This particular forum for instance once and for all set to rest
the age old belief that acne was a result of poor facial hygiene. The
acne forum did not do so through didactic arguments. Instead, the acne
forum was characterized by relevant scientific facts, clear explanations
and a lot of concrete, real life examples. Another thing that I found in
the acne forum was that a majority of the participants were far better
informed than in my time. Thanks to the forum, they were well equipped
with the knowledge and the means to deal with their acne related issues.
But some of the other aspects of the acne forums set me thinking. In one of
these acne forums for instance, I found a participant giving out all
kinds of conflicting information. Some of the information he doled out
was right. But some of it contradicted the right information.
Ultimately, anyone going through this acne forum would be more confused
than informed. I also found that these forums had become a sort of
hanging ground for the depressed, the embarrassed and the plain ill
informed. These people, rather than concentrating on getting the
required knowledge and advice to deal with their acne problems, became a
source of fear and embarrassment for all the others. Not only were they
paranoid about their own problems, they were spreading all kinds of
negative information about acne in general and cooking up conspiracy
theories to scare of the others as well.
All things considered, I concluded that while such forums were important to
spread information about acne, they could also scare people by including a few lumpen
elements. I’m pretty sure the technology exists to weed out such
undesirables and hope that can be done sooner than later for the greater
common good of all acne forums.
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