It can be very difficult to find intelligent online conversation. The quality of online conversation depends upon the intelligence of the people you are talking to. Some people believe that finding online conversation that is stimulating and interesting is as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. After all, there are so many people online at any given time that finding someone to talk to with a reasonably high IQ is not the most challenging thing in the world.
Intelligent conversation online can be found on many message boards where smart people congregate virtually. For instance, message boards that focus on physics, chemistry, aerospace engineering, 19th century French literature, chess, and theoretical math are definitely a good bet for finding intelligent conversation online. On the other hand, message boards dedicated to mud wrestling, reality television, cheesy poofs, lint, conspiracy theories, and pyramid schemes are probably not going to be bastions of brilliant online conversation.
Social networking sites can be great for encouraging erudite conversation online. Of course, that is only true if your friends and online connections happen to be smarter than the average bear. If your virtual friends are made up of people who believe Hee Haw should never have been canceled, then you probably are not going to have great online conversations. However, most people are about as intelligent as their friends are, so if your friends believe that Obama was born in Kenya or that the economy collapsed due to over regulation, then you probably believe those things too, and therefore, to you the conversation amongst your friends must seem like a Mensa meeting.
