They also don't want to be scammed, It's common sense to choose a guy who's a paid member of the site over a shady non-gold who's asking for payment

Liability wrote In my opinion, people think that the Gold members are more trusted because they "invested" into the site. It just makes them feel better that they can go with a gold member than a normal member due to the fact that they could get scammed. Even though no one is charging.

I couldn't agree more with this, well said

Depends what your looking for and what section your looking in, for example in the CoD section a gold member post is more likely to contain something more interesting, where as a non gold user the thread is more likely to contain 'can i haz tenf'

I agree bud, I think it the colour name and it just stand out more than the original name colour.