Session 2

First of all, I’d like to apologize that this is late; you can’t comment if you can’t read it, so I’m sorry. I have chronic migraines, and while I usually have things under control, that was not the case this last week. I went to the hospital, had the thrilling adventure of morphine in the IV (it is not. nearly. as fun as they make it look on tv, if you wondered), and got some painkillers from the neurologist. This is the first time in a very long time I’ve had a headache this weak (mom actually asked “what’d you take?” in a totally supportive, loving, get more of it way, not a suspicious one, when we talked earlier today.), and I’m really quite glad; I have a lot of work to catch up on.

That being said, I found the readings pretty interesting. I agreed with a lot of what was said, and was frustrated by some of it, but interested in all, so that’s good. I also took notes this time while I read, and responded immediately, which I found to be a big help. Can’t believe I didn’t do it last session.
———————
Galston:
I see what Galston’s saying, but I also get the feeling he’s not been part of an online community before. I’m most likely biased by my feelings on the matter and my experiences, but I wonder about how he defines participation in a comm, and don’t really understand how anyone can participate, be an actual contributing member of a community and not feel some sort of attachment to the other people. You start talking about the one thing, sure, but then you talk about other things and you realize that all these people with the excellent taste are just like you and have things-insight, wisdom, support-to offer you if you let them. I really fail to see how you can talk with someone over a period of time and not develop some sort of feeling of propriety. I think that’s just me as a person, though. I adopt people fairly quickly into my view of ‘my people’ and then treat them that way. Which both raises the cost of exit, increases my interest in voice, and in my experience has fostered mutual obligation. I do think the authority issue has some wiggle room–I prefer authority to interfere little and keep things running smoothly, not mandate behavior expectations, so he might be right about that one. But seriously, how do you talk to people very often and not feel somewhat responsible for your behavior and the effect it may have on those other people?

It’s not entirely surprising to me that the second most popular activity is taking part in an online community, I mean, it’s fun and can easily take up your time without you noticing. Forums are particularly easy to get sucked into. Kansas/Terra Firma was like breathing there for a while in undergrad. And the thing about people with diseases is creepy true. One of the worst things about it is feeling like you’re alone, and online is just another support group/information access point. Personally, not the best experience with online migraine groups ever, mostly ’cause I’ve run the gamut with available treatments, so the ‘have you tried’ questions always seem to result in a ‘yeah, didn’t work, but thanks’ answers to me, and quite frankly that’s a little depressing. also, there’s no hierarchy to pain, but there’s also a difference between a bad headache and chronic migraines so the whole low barriers to entry deal is nice in that it encourages people to come and share and learn and grow, but can be frustrating because in a place where you’re supposed to feel all comfortable and normal, I still managed to feel uncomfortable and weird. but that was likely just the comm i joined, quite frankly. not the best experience ever, but one i’m glad i had at some point.

NPR:
Okay, you don’t joke about killing people unless you can give overwhelming visual, tonal, and whatever else you can think of cues that you’re not going to go homicidal. That’s just common sense. Like you don’t joke about bombs on planes while in the airport. And you especially don’t joke about killing kids for crying out loud. Or if you do, you can’t get upset when someone takes you seriously. Honestly, it’s a pain trying to convey tone via text–have you ever read a screenplay? dude, you have to get *into* it for it to be half as great as the movie. But I pretty much agree with Fogg on this one–the internet is new frontier, but people are still people. And if you’ve ever watched an argument devolve over time, you inevitably get to the Nazi point (this has a name that I can’t remember, the point in the argument where someone or something gets compared to the Nazis), which is always ridiculous and amazing, every time it happens. As to responsibility for someone else’s actions, I still pretty much believe my responsibility extends as far as my general interaction with the person in question. I’m generally not inclined to call the police when I’m experiencing something first-hand. Experiencing something virtually is not really going to make me more inclined to call, but I would have been compelled to respond in the same way other contact had been made–if we were emailing each other, I’d drop a line, if we had exchanged numbers, I would have called. I wouldn’t have wanted to be the person who knew a kid was going to be smothered and then not have done anything, but I don’t feel responsible beyond the realistic confines of previous contact.

LaRose:
My problem is that they seem to be treating online communication as some new thing, and while there are aspects that are new, communication is still communication. I get frustrated with the assumption that online ties are weaker than face to face ties. I fit into a slew of categories of people they tried to pin down, and sometimes their conclusions matched my experiences and sometimes they didn’t. I’m mobile, majorly depressed (i keep waiting for the DSM-IV to add ‘wicked’ to their descriptions. ‘no, she’s not majorly depressed, she’s wicked depressed.’ that sounds much less sad than ‘majorly,’ and also slightly less Bill and Ted), and an experienced internet user. I contact old friends and family (my cousin and i haven’t talked to each other this much in years) and have new support only available online (I’ve never actually met anyone else with chronic pain, but online other people are available. let’s face it, when you hurt, you’re not really in a social mood, so being online and talking to other people in a similar situation is an excellent balance between not expelling the effort required to be conventionally social and having the chance to talk to someone). There are a lot of things that go into being depressed, and pinning the results on one aspect like online activity seems a little ridiculous to me, and it always has.

Bubblegen:
It’s interesting, the idea that people are under the impression everything must be useful. That’s ridiculous and boring. And very, very practical. It reminds me of the standing argument my sister and I have over art. I say the urinal on the wall can be art, she wants to know where the plumbing is, and why you’d ever pay money to have that on the wall. Blogs, and all the attendant web stuff, is very much the urinal on the wall. Does there have to be an underlying motive to bloging? What about just writing? Isn’t that an end unto itself? The act of creating, of being able to share, I think is enough to justify participating in any sort of online environment. I understand that’s not exactly the only point of view; my sister didn’t interact with anyone else online except via email until about a year ago. There’s this kind of expectation that the internet will irrevocably change things in a bad way. Yeah, things will change, but since when is that new? I feel like people are looking to demonize the internet (blame it for depression, blame it for violence…my sister’s dissertation was on violence in the media and its affects on kids, so it’s a conversation we’ve had. frequently. but we’ve finally agreed that it happens with every new technology: tv, internet, video games, there’s a cycle and an urge to blame the new thing there.), and that gets annoying to me. the internet isn’t any better or worse than any other new form of communication. It’s just going to take some time to adapt to. And it can be done, ask the broadcast networks. so the idea that maybe the internet’s value is just in existing and providing a creative outlet for anyone with a voice is kind of nice. refreshing, even.

Surveillance:
I think Albrechtslund (man, I though my last name was rough; that’s a lot of consonants there in the middle.) makes a good point about participating in the surveillance. SNS aren’t all about the lurking, you’re also sharing info about yourself, on purpose. I think it makes an interesting link back to the previous article about usefulness. People, the nay-sayers, want to know why you’d bother, they want to know the point, why SNS are useful. And I’ll admit to having that issue with Facebook (there’s no conversation about anything, it’s just, like, waving to people across the street or down the hall. it’s still weird to me. But then, I suck at small-talk in RL, too, so why should it be any different online?). I’m not really sure there has to be a point beyond the immediate, keeping tabs on the people you know.

it does make me interested in finding out, though, what my feelings on a community with a specific purpose would be. for example, i’ve seen the commercials for weight watchers online, and they’re all about the support and online community and everything. I’ve never tried joining a comm with a goal per se…that could be interesting. I wonder if I’d still be all “the journey’s the thing” then.

Rosen sums it up pretty well. She covered a lot of material, but didn’t really make me think anything I hadn’t at least briefly considered before. But I really think she hit the nail on the head there at the end when she discussed the amount of research not yet done on the implications of the increasing role SNS play in our lives. It will be interesting to see how kids growing up with Club Penguin turn out…but at the same time, won’t the technology have evolved past that point by the time those questions could be reliably answered? Won’t there be something new for the next generation to latch onto?

Man, you really can’t communicate intent through lack of participation. If I had to tell one more cousin why I wasn’t on MySpace or Facebook more often over Christmas, I was going to start wearing a sign. And then the friends started in on Twitter. Which I finally broke down and joined, if you wondered. (although, really, I’m not online enough during the day, doing interesting things, to really justify that. but they’ve stopped nagging, at any rate.) So, at that point, I caved, and I check my facebook page a little more often. Because I really do love my family, and I want to know if David’s actually going to graduate this year and join the ranks of crazy-talented creative people who don’t have jobs doing what they paid to learn, if Kelsey chooses U of M or Washington in Seattle, and whether or not Michelle is pregnant again (kid you not, the family found out through myspace. dude. just–no.). And sure, I would discover these details approximately seven point two minutes after the first person was told (it’s just the way our family works. if you don’t want people to know, you shouldn’t tell anyone. ever.) anyway, but sometimes it’s nice to be on the inside track. So I see the point the people made about not existing if you don’t exist online, I just think it’s sad and a little bit annoying.

There was one line about smashing the MySpace servers that made my stomach clench. I’m about to divulge some information now that I find academically fascinating but also just a little bit socially disturbing. It involves the word “bandom.” Actually, it’s the fact that I can use the not-word in a sentence that I don’t like divulging, so there you go. I find the entire fan-community-culture thing that the internet has made so much easier completely fascinating. If I were going to study something, it’d probably be based in fandom. the whole kit and caboodle consistently entertains me, down to the somewhat weird love people have for their bands. (which is where bandom comes from. people who are fans, of bands, and share their love with each other.) Anyway, this whole longstanding community of …stuff got deleted one day by one member of the comm, and the uproar it caused! People were livid, they felt all violated, it was terrible. Because all the conversations they’d had over, three years? (i think. might have been longer) were just wiped away as if they never existed. There were all these debates about trust and violation and the spirit of the community. Just, shock and awe, in spades. Anyway, that was a while ago, and I found it a little disturbing, and I’m not even into bandom. So when she suggested bashing in the MySpace servers, I just had this mental image of all those users going ballistic; it wasn’t pretty. It might seem shallow and pointless to a lot of people, but those involved take their online identities very seriously.

The readings left me curious about communities with a specific goal in mind, so I decided to join a LiveJournal (where you can comment on comments!) comm that is a graphics contest every two weeks. You get pictures, make an icon, everybody votes, winner gets a banner and bragging rights. I’m not sure if my whole ‘it’s human decency!’ argument will hold any water once I’ve been doing it for a while. We’ll find out, I suppose.

Initial impression? It totally will. Because even after only being in the comm for under a week, I’ve looked back through the other weeks’ work, read other people’s comments and things, and I’m already recognizing names and some styles, and it makes me a little happier when I recognize work outside of the comm. I joined merlin_stills (The BBC already owns my soul, what’s another little slice of time? Seriously, though, Merlin on the BBC, check it out. Cheesy graphics, Merlin, Arthur, Morgana, and Gwen, before they were famous! Plus, bonus Giles in the form of Anthony Stewart Head (using what I think is his actual accent, ooh!) as King Uther. It’s delightful.), and yes, I sometimes read fanfiction; I’m apparently more inclined to stop and read someone’s work when I recognize their name from the comm, and more likely to comment. That’s kind of nice. We’ll see how I feel after the photoshopping and voting are done.

———

2/11/09: And we’re done with that round.  I did not win.  Some people are crazy-tallented.  It was a lot more solitary that I’m used to when I consider an online community.  There was a lot of time while photoshopping that I thought about the comm and the other voting people, but as for actual interaction? Not a lot goin’ on.  I believe it’s the way the thing is set up, as a competition with structured posting access–it’s less ‘let’s help each other get better on purpose’ and more ‘see what other people are doing and help yourself do better.’  Both are totally valid kinds of comms, but there just isn’t much time to get to know the other members so much.  I see where some of the authors are going with ‘is it a real community?’  I still say it is, but the lack of personal exhcanges does streach the definition.