Do you find lurve ridiculously compelling or meaningless?

Neither. It’s a nice indicator of when I say something people agree with. Nothing more, nothing less.

No, I find the discussion compelling. My lurve score is meaningless to me, but it does feel good when someone gives me a GA. It’s nice to know someone appreciated you.

Ridiculously meaningless.

Both.

Lurve’s not a competition. But I’m winning.
Except I’m not

But for me, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s a nice indicator of how other people seem to feel, though.

If lurve is so meaningless to so many then why are there so many postings on Fluther about it?

For me it was quite exciting in the beginning. After 10K I pretty much stopped paying attention. As I get closer to 20K I find my interest revived. Everything after that I would guess is anticlimactic.

Lurve is my drug!

I find lurve to be ridiculously over-analyzed. It is what it is, get over it people. I don’t understand this constant obsession with analyzing what lurve is, or what value it has.

Lurve is crack.

Ridiculously compelling when I’m getting a lot; meaningless when I’m having an “off” day.

I think people throw it around so much that it loses it’s true meaning.Lurve should just be between you and 7,627 others! and that’s it ;)

Lurve is so addicting, I want some lurve.

@jeffgoldblumsprivatefacilities- Absolutely! I don’t think anything here has been as over-analyzed as lurve.

@Alleycat8782 I just gave you some. Doesn’t it feel wonderful? I can’t wait until I can evolve away from this sort of thinking.

In all seriousness, lurve seems to be an incentive that I’m guessing keeps more people on the site than without it. People respond to incentives and attaboys, no matter how inconsequential.

@cockswain I was the person to give you the lurve for lurve is crack. I literally lol. Seeing that I was able to recieve some lurve made my entire day.

I find lurve mildly compelling while still trying to discover the mystique of its true appeal.

My wife, jealoustome, told me she found that the webmasters keep track of cookies on your computer to prevent “lurve fraud.” Otherwise I could create 50 accounts and lurve myself to the heavens. As a result we’ve decided never to give each other lurve for fear of getting kicked off for rules that aren’t entirely clear. So they take it seriously. Maybe they are brilliant and lurve is part of someone’s thesis.

@cockswain Believing that lurve is an incentive is like thinking that money is a thing. Both are mere metaphors. However, to answer your question, lurve is neither ridiculously compelling nor meaningless.

Lurve means that someone read your comment and liked it. It means you were not writing just to yourself. It means that someone else got something of value to them from it. That’s a pretty significant thing in my book. Much more significant than counting lurve.

It isn’t lurve that is compelling. It’s the idea that you can do something that other people appreciate. That is very compelling to many of us. To see this as play is to entirely miss the point. To see this as a game is to not look past the surface. There is much of value here, and that is ridiculously compelling, but I don’t think it is accessible to people who only look at the pretty balls.

@wundayatta Amen to that!

I feel like @dpworkin. I find love really compelling now because I’m less than 600 lurve away from 10k. I imagine that once I’ve reached 10k, I won’t be so fascinated by lurve.

I find I’m more compelled to review my lurve score considering I’m just over 100 points under 10k. I thought I might have been able to reach 10k on Feb. 24th (My flutherversary) which would have kicked ass. But I really just pay attention as a way of seeing if my answers have been helpful or well received.

Meaningless, yet entertaining.

A small addendum: today I saw an ugly, bigoted, Nazi-flavored post, rather ill-written, that garnered four Great Answers. Lurve is certainly no metric of value or excellence. I get a lot of lurve for nasty one-liners which I later regret; and many, many times I carefully answer correctly in an area that is really part of my expertise, and in a helpful way, and it’s as if I hadn’t spoken. Just sayin’.

@dpworkin Are you referring to the posts under the “Which nation is a greatest threat to our freedom” question? I completely agree with you. But hey, Sarah Palin has 1.5 million facebook followers too. Lurve measures how much people agree with your point of view.

I like your snipes, they frequently make me laugh.

They are not my proudest moments.

@dpworkin

I’m sure, but you have to admit they satisfy a want.

They relieve a momentary irritation, at some cost.

I gotta agree that lurve is Crack.
I want to be above all that, but the fact is I am probably a lurve whore.

My husband slept on the couch for a week after he beat me to 10,000.~

I find Lurve to be a great way to gauge how useful more anwsers or question are to other people.

I get frustrated too when I put a lot of thought in to a well-crafted answer on a point I am knowledgeable about and get no response, then toss off a one-liner and get a gazillion. I’ve started to bite back some of the sharper retorts although I do still appreciate a witty exchange.

Lurve is a battlefield, indeed

I’m mercurial in my feelings about lurve. Some days I could really use the attaboy, other days it doesn’t matter as much to me. So perhaps, for me, it’s more about my interpretation of needs.

@gemiwing Attaboy!

@cockswain it has nothing to do with a cookie on your computer. otherwise, every time you cleared your browser’s cache, etc., you’d be in the clear.

When I get more GA for congratulating someone at a lurve party or for making an offhand comment over a carefully thought out answers I realize that I have no idea what lurve represents to a collective. I am starting to think that it mostly represents longevity and consistency of participation.

@cockswain Also, if that’s your wife in your fluther, you’re losing the competition… :D

@eponymoushipster : That sounds so ominous it made me sweat.

@dverhey My wife is very clever and a worthy adversary, but less obsessed than me. Eventually I’ll prevail.

@liminal I think there is something to what you say. When I started a new account soon after I hit 20K, I found that people would argue with me more, and I think I didn’t get as much lurve as when I was my former identity. However, I’m not sure about the last one, since it seems like lurve is becoming a more precious commodity these days.

We say lurve acts as an indicator of how well people like an answer, but perhaps not. I can’t tell you how many times people have written to me to say they really appreciated my answer, yet my answer has zero lurve. I think it’s crap shoot, really.

I have a theory. It’s not bunnies.

It is easier to give lurve to a one-liner than it is to respond to it. Let’s face it, giving out lurve is an impulsive action and so is tossing out a one-liner. However, someone is going to want to take time to respond to a well thought out, well written answers. I know when I see a well written answer, I’d much rather respond in kind than just toss off some lurve and move along. I try to do both, however. :)

Yes.

@KatawaGrey hehehe…..lurve for saying toss off