> But nobody around here knows me. They don't know that I'm 18, a 2nd-year college student, a forensics competitor, a webmaster, a poet, a music fan, or a meticulously safe driver. I'm just some faceless entity, "uselessness," #4922863, if you will, for a random number no better describes me than that shallow and rather stupid word.

I think you're flat wrong about that, at least with respect to the people that read the forum regularly. I knew some of what you list, but not all. With the hard fast facts concerning your life, nobody knows those things until you tell them; with a few exceptions, this is also true of real life. But you may underestimate how much of your personality comes through your posts. I know I feel that I know you pretty well as an individual. I am familiar with what you think and how you feel about a variety of things, I know what sorts of things that evoke your response, and I know how you express yourself in writing. I'm not saying I know everything about you, nor even that I know as much as I would if I were to hang around you in person. But you're not a number to me, nor to anyone else that's been paying attention.

> It's generally accepted that cliques are bad.

Depends on how the term is used. I think a lot of us have used the term differently and so miscommunicated about that. I generally think of "clique" as a group of friends with a tendency to discriminate and ostracize, which I do not like. There's a fine line difference between that and a group of friends that simply enjoy each other's company and do not find as much to relate to with others. This latter is not a bad thing; it's perfectly natural, it happens at RinkWorks, and I freely admit that I'm a part of that. Everybody is, really. The former I would hope is minimal here.