I've been here over a year now, and I'm still trying to understand why our Chicago forum is so dead.

Every day, I see hundreds of Chicago/Illinois/Indiana people running throught the New Matches area of my home page. None of them ever posts in the forums. In my experience (which is limited, admittedly), they don't answer e-mails either.

Why would someone sign up on a site and then refuse to participate in what the site has to offer? This makes no sense to me.

I'm not in Chicago myself, but close enough that I regularly visit the Borders on Randolph Street, the big silver bean in Millennium Park, and the Alexander Calder "Flying Dragon" sculpture just north of the Art Institute on Michigan Avenue. When the weather is nice, I will often take a notebook and sit at one of the little round, green tables just to the east of the bean; I do some of my best writing there.

There are, what, 3 million people in the Chicago area? They say it's the third largest city in the country. OK, so why is it that our forum is so underpopulated?

I decided to do a little research on the postings here.

General Discussion has 451 pages of posts. The Chicago forum has 4 pages. OK, it's true that General has been around a little longer -- the oldest Chicago posts I can find are from Nov. 2006, and the General posts go back a few months before that. And granted, General is going to have much more of an overall appeal.

But this is a 112-1 ratio.

And a lot of the Chicago posts that DO exist are, well, a little disappointing, content-wise. Not that this doesn't happen elsewhere, too; but when you're dealing with such a small pool of posters and posts, to begin with, it would be nice if at least a few were about things other than "All the fine Chitown ladies should message me for fun" or who's going where to get drunk.

I signed up on JSH originally because I wanted to meet some local people. That never happened. What I found was that this is a great site for making new friends from New York and Canada and Texas and California and Washington and the U.K. and Florida and Utah and Alabama and lost of other far-away places.

But, despite the large number of local people who have signed up, none of them seem to be interested in participating in what JSH has to offer.

Every once in awhile, someone makes a post in the Chicago forum, and I think maybe things are going to pick up. But they never really do. There's a blip here and there, but then the forum goes back into hibernation.

I don't know, I would still like to find some locals to talk to. Not looking for anything other than friends -- a couple months ago, I got back together with the best girlfriend I ever had, so I'm not looking for relationships or dating, but it would be nice to be able to talk to someone from the area on this site.

There have been a few who posted briefly, awhile back, who seemed interesting, seemed like they might have something to say. But they post for a day or two, maybe a week, and then vanish from the forums. They're still around -- I see their pics still drifting through New Matches every day -- they just don't post anymore.

I guess maybe the forum life isn't for everybody.

And maybe someday, some new local people will sign up, who will actually want to get to know somebody....?

Or maybe not....

Yeah where is chicago? I have noticed this myself.

I post every now and then here, but with the rather off ratio of women to men posting here it can be quite discouraging. Don't get me wrong I'm all for meeting anyone, but I live in this little hole in the wall town called Joliet...we have bars and I don't drink much, waiting for spring. Though it would be nice for others to post here so that I know their active and what have you.

Well, when I signed up, I was hoping to meet someone local. But -- as you can see if you spend any time at all in this forum -- very few people post here, and it seems like the posts that do show up, are either about drinking (something going on at a bar) or are quickly steered into being about drinking.

Just seems like a waste of a perfectly good forum to me. But you can't force people to post....

I usually won't post my own topics, because I really have nothing to say. But if something interesting pops up, I'll reply.

Pretty much been busy with school and my business, but I'll try and post some more if it'll help you sleep at night ;)

And yes, Millennium Park rocks. I live next to it :D