the lounge is a big comedy club. i think it will always be clique-y. a certain style of comedy either suits you, or it doesn't. i think it always be this way. this is why we don't all agree on which comedy shows are funny.
as for the future of the lounge, that's really yet to be seen but i don't think it will be that harmful. i'd predict that the majority of those who participate in the lounge currently joined bluelight for a reason other than that. i for one, didn't really pay attention to the lounge. then i started overseeing it and because i had to read many of the threads, i began to find it enjoyable for my own reasons. it's very unusual for someone to join bluelight strictly to lurk the lounge and stay that way. i maybe wrong. i look at the roster of people that are active in the lounge daily and like i said, it's almost always the same people.
also, because it's private you never know. it might bring about a certain aura of people wanting to join the cool kids table. it can have the opposite effect but i don't predict that to be the case. like i said to max, we'll also raise this amongst staff and try to find a way to make people aware of our exclusive comedy club. we should really revisit this to see if traffic drops in say, 1,2,3 months time and then make an assessment on whether or not we need to seriously start considering finding ways to boost traffic.
stayfaded, the lounge doesn't bring much traffic to the site. it could have easily been scrapped along time ago and i don't think it would have made much of a difference. everyone is trying to find a solution on staff. if you take a sample from staff and compare it to a sample of overall bluelight members vs a sample of human beings irl you'd find that opinions differ in all cases. some will be strongly for, some will be strongly against, some will think this, some will think that. one thing that isn't happening, is getting rid of the lounge or neglecting it and letting it die a slow death. whether you believe that or not is up to you.