After all, here we have a place where people can be completely anonymous and be judged merely on the quality of their words and ideas yet maintain the social aspect that there is an actual person sitting somewhere else in the world listening to what s/he has to say. Non-synchronous communication methods such as newsgroups don't really give any indication that there is an actual person writing the words that are being read. Synchronous communications, however, give live feedback, proving that there is actually a person there and raising the whole situation to a social level.