The boards IS a hivemind... sort of...

First off its only sort of a hivemind. Also I posted this in gameplay as im going to be using mostly gameplay examples to explain. Now onto the main point.

The boards is a hivemind only in popularity base. You can shout "different people are different" all you want but there are a select few things that are important to note.

The "Hivemind" is really many separate hiveminds, so not a hivemind at all. What it is though is a large majority of people agree on posts not generally affected by the post itself. And there are several reasons.

1. The rules of the boards: Hate , dislike ADCs, like memes. These are generally shared with a large populous of the boards, it doesnt mean that the things relating are fully true, just that they follow the same thread.

This can cause issues like upvoting and downvoting based on thread titles and not even reading the post, this can cause a large amount of inconsistency and also perpetuating the hivemind beleif.

2. Not all the hiveminds are present at once: People say that "Well Ori was balanced a month ago and all of a sudden people hate her" This is because the people that hate her were just quiet right then, or just didnt feel like discussing about it. For instance, I personally HATE laning against an Ori, but if there are 0 posts pertaining it on the boards i wont talk about it on the boards, ill talk about things pertaining to what is popular there. NOW if Ori becomes a talking point, the hivemind becomes active and a large group of people who were quite all start talking about it. This is what i mean about visual hivemind, and why popular opinions change quickly.

If its popular opinion games are long, everyone who thinks games are long will agree with eachother and downvote people who think games are the right length. This causes the boards to seem like everyone wants longer games, where in actuality it may only be a small portion, this is with an exception but ill get to that later.

3. Upvote Farming: These people dont voice their ACTUAL opinions and just post things that will get upvoted, this causes an even larger beleif in the hivemind, when in reality these same people 2 or 3 months later will COMPLETELY post conflicting posts.

4. Riot themselves: Riot listens to whats popular, and this causes whats popular to become a reality which in turn can change or activate other "hiveminds"

5. The Exception: There is 1 exception to the Hivemind; the populars. These are your Miras, Malicious Metals, Rubicks, Ralanrs, etc. These people have such a large following that no matter what they say, wether they agree or disagree with what is being said they get upvotes. And well they deserve them since usually the people who became popular did so by making long, thought-out threads, that flow by logic rather than just plain rage/upset. They explain WHY. At the same time these are the ONLY people ALLOWED to disagree with the current hivemind because 9/10 what they say is still true, or at least explained.

Now Im not gonna say wether the "hivemind" is a good or bad thing. However i am tired of seeing "the boards has diverse people" as a reaction to someone claiming Hivemind when they are still sort of right, people DO think differently, but with how upvoting works, and when people decide to post, this causes a popular opinion, which becomes the ONLY opinion for a while in the majority of the boards. So while "The Hivemind doesnt exist" Isnt 100% true, it still is different than the boards being 1 loud voice.