maybe that's because that's our culture here in Brazil, most of us are always informal, we call EVERYONE by their 1st name, from our siblings and best friends to old people we've never seen before and the most important people in the country
Most of the US is basically the same way, although I know in parts of the south things are still pretty formal. I think it's just custom for most of us to be fairly informal in RL most of the time, so we carry that over to the message boards.
~Anna
