Internet Firestarters

One of the trends which has appeared throughout the development of internet tools and media is a tendency for a certain type of internet user to log on to any kind of interactive site or program – whether it is a chat-room, a social networking device, a file-sharing program or a video-broadcasting site – and either intentionally start an argument, or consciously say something offensive in the hopes of starting an argument.

Perhaps the cover of anonymity has brought out the worst in us, but might there not be another explanation behind this kind of behavior. No doubt the promise of a hidden identity plays into this at a very obvious level, but anonymity does not entirely explain the impulse to incite a confrontation. Nor is this phenomenon so confined to certain spaces that it can simply be passed of as an anomaly of sorts. To a certain degree, so many of us have been guilty of playing up certain opinions we hold in situations where we know that these opinions are not welcome.

So why is it that people do this? Perhaps I’m missing the mark, but one can perhaps posit the idea that the internet has become the new grounds of expression for the new generation’s pent up violence, as well as other emotions which fail to find their realization elsewhere. Perhaps parallel to this apparent need to shock is the youth’s tendency to exhibit the most minute and personal details of their lives in a public manner; the internet is now providing them with a playground through which some sense of communication can be established, at whatever cost, where is has been lost elsewhere.

Where avant-garde art and literature used to be the bourgeoisie’s means of expression in the previous century, the internet now provides a way for people to express both themselves and their subversive aspects, in a much more mass-oriented manner. In that sense, the internet is in a way the canvas of the century, providing a massive reflection of some of the inner workings of society and culture in an unprecedented way.

Virtual Identity Critique

My friend Menna initially began her blog as part of her requirement for a Mass Communication course, but what’s interesting about it is that Menna seems to have focused it almost entirely on issues regarding the current socio-political situation in Cairo, and her own feelings about the issues relating to that. Rather than simply reporting on random events, Menna has taken a broad topic that is very dear to her, and chosen to address it in accordance with her own feelings and opinions. As such, it’s at once an academic project as well as a projection of a personal virtual identity, in that it incorporates her own skills as a reporter along with her own feelings and predilictions.

Within the blog, she addresses issues such as political awareness and H1N1 in Egypt, but rather than simple giving a flat report of events and information regarding these issues, Menna reflects upon them with her own particular brand of awareness and her own critique of these events based on an outlook which is implied throughout the blog, and as such denoted without being explicitly written out, so to speak.

Thus, rather than simply being concerned with representing herself without discretion, and rather than putting forth a one-dimensional blog by way of fulfilling a requirement, Menna manages to couple both her own agency and exigency with a project in which she was given a certain degree of freedom within the pretexts that were set forth for her, and within that she managed to portray her own interests professionally without compromising her own views on the issues at hand.

On “A World I Don’t Inhabit: Disquiet and Identity in Second Life and Facebook.”

In the article “A World I Don’t Inhabit: Disquiet and Identity in Second Life and Facebook” by Stuart Boon and Christine Sinclair, the issue of virtual identity is discussed on two larger levels, or with reards to two aspects of it; the personal implications of creating and partaking in a virtual idnetity sphere, and the implications of using virtual identity programs, in particular Facebook and SecondLife in an educational setting. In a sense, a large part of the issue at hand is the notion of self-projection through a virtual identity. On the one hand the creation of a virtual identity allows one to interact with others in a sphere which on the one hand, overlaps with “real life” and on the other exists in its very own set of terms and values. Thus, the article seems to suggest that there is much at stake with regards to creating this virtual identity, perhaps more than many of us virtual identity creators are willing to admit to.

On the one hand, the article seems to suggest that there is an inevitable degree of artifice involved in creating a virtual identity, and it is not difficult to see where this idea comes from. In creating a virtual identity, one is consciously filtering that which he/she wants to proejct about oneself, and the creation of this identity is a very controlled experience based on various presuppositions and predefined notions of the way they want to be seen. On the one hand, this may be helpful in terms of social/professional prosperity, but on the other hand, this can be quite deceptive, and as such anxieties arise with regards to the extent of the discrepancy present between the “real” character and his/her online representation.

Moreover, the article goes into some of the issues which social networks raise in a professional/educational setting. In many cases, a virtual identity is created and aimed with a certain group of people in mind, usually friends, and the transferral of this virtual identity from a social to a professional setting can be seen as and impingement of one’s privacy, and moreover can be detrimental to one’s prospects.

However, what the article does not seem to go into depth in is the way in which what one perceives of a person through their virtual identity can oftentimes begin to define the way they see that person in real life, rather than the other way round, and sometimes that image trumps the reality.

Perhaps it has become a bit of a cliche, but the number of issues which social networking raises makes it a breeding ground for discussion, and I feel it’s worth mentioning to at least draw attention to some of our practices with regards to the use of social networking, and in particular Facebook. Specifically, I want to adress a trend which seems to have developed on the vast platform that is Facebook, and the way it has affected people’s behavior. That is, Facebook has become, more and more, not simply a means to remain in contact with others, but a means to exhibit oneself and lifestyle in front of the whole world; so to speak. That is, rather than simply sharing photos, one might safelt posit that the new frenzy of posting one’s photos on the internet is not simply out of a desire to share the photos with those to whom the photos are directly concerned, but to display the photos to everyone, in certain cases, with the desire to draw some kind of reaction from outsiders.

The same applies to status updates and notes, where it becomes not simply a means of expressing a certain thought or message, but of showcasing certain sympathies, dispositions, traits or events which a certain person feels might enhance a certain view of them held by others or a certain image of said person’s lifestyle and tendencies. As such, one might say that Facebook as in fact brought out the exhibitionist within us, and this in turn has taken its effect on social situations which theoretically exist outside of Facebook; that is, it is not uncommon, particularly amongst the female subscribers of Facebook, sometimes of the younger (early to mid-teen) age group to carry around a camera specifically for the purpose of taking pictures to post on facebook.

Moreover, as a whole phenomenon, this trend has resulted in another strange tendency; that is the fact that in many cases our judgments of people are often based, at least partially, on what appears on their Facebook profile. More and more, social networking is leaving the realm of the internet and impinging on our offline lives in new and unpredictable ways. Disregarding the privacy issues which arise out of this, and the highly problematic nature of those; there is a different issue at hand here, and that is the digitalisation of the human persona, if one can so name it, and in many cases the reduction of human character to the few (hundred) words and pictures which appear when someone accesses their Facebook profile. Moreover, even hostility between two people has resorted to finding its expression on Facebook, through the removal of friends and the limitations of what one might see on a profile, and kinships can be built on the basis of a discussion occurring on Facebook or what one sees of the other on his/her profile.

Digital Dimensions

It recently occurred to me that the internet doesn’t just serve as a tool for communication or entertainment and the such. Rather, the internet has taken up a whole new facet of our lives, and perhaps changed us as people; more specifically, it has given us freedoms which surpass the spatial limits required to achieve other kinds of freedom. And while this may be self evident; the internet has allowed us to freely become people in ways which were not available to us otherwise. Beneath the apparent mask of anonymity and the shelter of our computer screens, one is free not simply to express oneself, but essentially to explore oneself in new ways.

Think of it this way; on the one hand we have an individual who is locked in a room or house and has no way out and no source of entertainment other than perhaps a finite number of books, and on the other we have a similar situation, only this person own an internet-access device. The limitless possibilities which have been allowed to the latter thus becomes staggering. It’s not simply the question of internet allowing one to communicate; as much as the internet has made the world smaller, it has also, conversely, made the world infinitely bigger, if only for the sheer multitude of media and information and so forth which make their way onto the internet daily.

Thus, with no other connection to the outside world, the internet alone has provided a gateway to the world. However, the nature of the internet itself poses the question of whether the internet is a gateway to the world, or whether it is in fact its own world; or rather, due to its sheer multiplicity, its own universe. Given the variety of identities one can freely develop on the internet, as well as the activities which one can take part in which essentially do not exist in a particular space but which, in another sense, occupy a space of their own, what may have initially been developed as a medium has become in itself an entity, prone to its own fluid and ephemeral rules and a sense of elusiveness, both in terms of its materiality, so to speak, as well as in terms of the fixedness of character one encounters online.

Capitalizing on the Internet

In the article “Capitalizing on the Internet: Social Contact, Civic Engagement, and Sense of Community” by AnabelQuan y Haase and Barry Wellman, the issue of internet’s effect on society and in particular the way people interact socially before and after the advent of internet. The hypothetical question here is whether or not internet connectivity has increased the different forms of social capitalization, from the most basic forms of social contact to the building of online social communities and even civil societies. However, the answer to this question is not a simple one. On the one hand there have been those who have claimed that the internet has brought on yet another form of social alienation reinforcing the effects of the industrial revolution in a more advances stage, whereas many others see the rise of the internet as a way of widening social contact in its different forms and providing accessibility to social relations where they were previously difficult.

Furthermore, the authors comment that the internet has virtually had no major effect on reshaping the community involved in civic engagement, but has simply provided them with a new outlet by which they can express their concerns as well as carry their action; however the group of people involved in this action has remained largely the same. However, the same cannot necessarily be said for the remainder of society; that is while issues of civic engagement may have remained pretty much the same, the internet has reshaped and reconfigured society in new and vastly different ways since its early days when this article was written. Moreover, as an ever-evolving sphere of interaction in itself, the ways in which internet can and has affected society is inherently ever in flux, making the project of studying society under the internet a very tentative one at this stage. One can only begin to fathom the lengths to which internet and technology will shape society in the future.

Blogging

The age of the internet has provided us with a lot, whether its the ease and versatility of email, or the growing advent of social networking, but perhaps one of the most notable ways that the internet has revolutionized the written word is through blogging. Blogging, in its most basic sense, seems to epitomize the idea of the zero ground in terms of a democratic form of expression; however, along with this comes a problem: who reads the blogs which are posted online, and how does one ascertain that their voice will be heard in the midst of the masses of blogs which are being posted every day.

Perhaps the problem with blogging and the internet in general is that it opens up a virtually limitless space which is not subject to editing or censorship or, in general, any of the rules associated with the world of publication. And while there certainly are ways of publicizing one’s works online and making a blog known and accessible to a wider public, this seems to reinstate a preexisting hierarchy, only rather than it being similar to the publishing/editorial hierarchy wherein issues of authorship and standing within the academic field come into play, it seems to be a largely commercial one, based on who can draw the most attention to your blog.

Furthermore, outside of the realm of publicized blogging, there still appears to be a sense of arbitrariness to the blogs that one stumbles upon on a regular basis. Once again, the lack of organization is as problematic as it is advantageous; problematic because on the one hand there doesn’t appear to be any discrepancies/distinctions between one blog and another, and advantageous because for those very reasons one has a certain freedom and motivation to be heard that does not exist elsewhere. In all likelihood, like the rest of the internet, the world of blogging has as yet to reach new stages, and its complexity and diversity, as well as probably its sense of organization is yet to be developed; but one might clearly foresee a future wherein the issues surrounding blogging and other forms of internet rhetoric might be eventually eradicated in favor of a more systematic arrangement of thoughts and blogs.