Is emailing doing anything about anything?

Bill wants me to blog about how there's a disturbing subsection of the email population who seem to think that joining into an email "discussion" with an impassioned "me too!" is actually doing something.

Witness this exchange on our neighborhood association email list. A woman writes in saying that there will be a hearing on downtown, and specifically on whether Wal-Mart should be allowed to build a store downtown. Her goal is to get people to go to the hearing. Now that makes sense. You're sending out an email to urge others to do something. But then the recipients begin writing back, "oh, I know. I hate Wal-Mart!" "I hate Wal-Mart too!" "I'd like to echo that remark!"

And that's where it begins to make Bill crazy. Not a single one of these people indicates in anyway that they're actually going to do anything about Wal-Mart, that they're actually going to go to the hearing. They just want to "register" their opposition.

So he asks me to blog about it-- which raises a more frightening question for me: is blogging really more of the same?