The Facebook message reads, “Change your FB picture to a cartoon from your childhood. The goal is not to see a human face on FB until Monday (Dec 6th) Join the fight against child abuse & copy and paste to your status!” This is a working example of a recent attempt at community involvement in cyberspace. How real, trustworthy, and important is community interaction online and what is the future of its political arena? Virtual communities do not just encourage interaction, they need interactions to survive. Furthermore, if the people of the community aspire to flourish instead of simply enduring, they will need sustainable and ethical leadership.
The new virtual worlds of today and tomorrow now have reference materials to guide them. Historical style guides documents that were formally unavailable, such as Julian Dibbles writings on A Rape in Cyberspace. Online communities need to be aware of such documentation in order to dissect and prevent the cacophony of governmental difficulties that Lamdamoo suffered in its formative years. However, even with this information as a guide, the attempts at positive proactive communities online are no longer as simple as the attempts Lamdamoo brought forth with its fledgling “1000 and more residents of that surreal, magic-infested mansion.”[1] In their infantile stages, they were trying to map out the guidelines of “the community so many of them already believed they were.”[2] Today we are still trying to map the future of the online populace. However, the evolution of online communities since Lamdamoo is now mimicking its real world community counterparts and becoming an amalgamation of business, personal, and political cement, in which no one element can do without the other. No longer are there simple recreational online escapes where people covertly drop in on occasion. Everything is tied into the matrix and it is sentient of our needs to be pulled from every direction. The new community system knows our three-second attention span and captures us with brief advertising and micro blogging. It allows us to skim through the events of our extended network in the similar manner that a person might glance over the church bulletin board in an effort to capture a daily portrait of the events and ideas that might be missing in our lives. People eternally gaze now on their online community. Like a neighborhood watch, people calculate now in real time the events that occurred, are occurring and will occur, typically participating for boredom’s sake.
The plight for online communities to see themselves as real is not difficult. Descartes states, “I am thinking therefore I exist”[3] The essence of all online communities is in the statements that its users are making. Facebook, for example, is a collaboration of thoughts written down by the masses, with no actual human body needed to reflect the inner mechanisms of human thought. In creating thought albeit recorded, its presence becomes real. Therefore, these communities do exist; even in their most primitive form as basic writing tablets for human thought. The virtual community does not need physical matter to exist or exude spirit. Descartes states, “I thereby conclude that I was a substance whose whole essence or nature resides only in thinking, and which, in order to exist, has no need of place and is not dependent on any material thing.”[4] Lamdamoo found its non-physical beginnings in this text environment. Today it is not just the new features such as pictures and video that make many new social site communities different from Lamdamoo, it is that their rudimentary dimensions live in strong symbiosis with the rest of the world and this is what keeps these communities alive and vibrant. Lamdamoo never attains this realm, since they are largely a proprietary environment relatively unscathed by the progress that has brought forceful social interactions, business advertisements, participation mongering, and narcissistic coddling to the new communities. The people are no longer interested in sitting fireside in the Lamdamoo living room, they now move like armies of ants through town squares and virtual cities. This means people are interconnected and becoming codependent with everyone and everything. Communities are creating an online biosphere and beginning to let the internet live up to its moniker World Wide Web. It is only now that online communities can see their interconnectedness. No longer is this web a tangle of dot com sites, it is now the vicarious instrument for our communities thoughts.
People are as real in virtual communities as they are in real life. With this, they bring the complexities of human nature and pose the question, how trustworthy are the people we mingle with and how safe are the online neighborhoods in which people travel? Similar to real life it is impossible to truly know everyone in our network, yet people we barely know are capable of reaching out and offering assistance in attempts to help others in our virtual communities. Unfortunately, as J. Dibbles’ article, A Rape in Cyber Space shows us, users like Mr. Bungle will rape and pillage online and see it as “purely a sequence of events with no consequence on my RL existence."[5] Unfortunately, many other users online share this similar attitude of mayhem for the sake of mayhem. Griefers in Second Life, for example, attacked the Second Life headquarters of presidential candidate John Edwards in 2007. This group of griefers vandalized his domain simply because they could. The distaste for his politics was not the issue. It is because they are able to perform the task like adolescent street crime. The guise of anonymity on line is the new ski mask. The need to protect and warn members about threats in a community shows not only the need for community involvement, but helps solidify the actual reality and presence of online communities.
J. Dibell and the “Griefers” of Second Life have shown us there is always a certain group of people who have sinister plots to undermine the greater positive community at large. How important is the concept of trustworthiness in an online community? It is very important once people realize the overlaps that occur between online and the real world. For example, the aforementioned Facebook heading about child abuse awareness is an attempt to better the lives of real children. This viral campaign has been a huge success over the recent weekend with more than 150,000 likes in only a couple of days. It was thought to be the brainchild of the very trust-worthy National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC). Unfortunately, the NSPCC has nothing to do with the origination of the campaign. They state, “Although the NSPCC did not originate the childhood cartoon Face Book campaign, we welcome the attention it has brought to the work we do.”[6] However, If they did not start the campaign than who did? The campaign is becoming a mystery, one that leads to some very unsavory people, pedophiles. Pedophiles are believed to be behind the campaign in an attempt to use the cartoons to single out children. Much like Dibell’s A Rape in Cyberspace, no one seems to know who to go after and how to stop perverse events like this from becoming pervasive. Dibell’s story dealt with one perpetrator turning out to be several “university students for the most part.”[7] They were hard to detect and hard to prevent, since all they had to do to wreak more havoc as Dibell states is “go to the minor hassle of acquiring a new Internet account.”[8] The anonymity of the internet is masking new perpetrators in ways the real world cannot. These are not simple crimes that can be tracked to an IP address. This is something that went global in a matter of days, the LA Times states, “nearly every of the 20 most actively searched terms on Google were to do with ‘old cartoons’ on Saturday morning.”[9] This is serious, yet who in the world would attempt to elevate this to a police action and how could they? For this particular case, the only place to look to for answers is Facebook a virtual company expected to act as the wizards of Lamdamoo. Not surprisingly, Facebook’s initial retort to the situation is somewhat similar to the wizards who stated, “For now on they were purely technicians.”[10] Facebook similarly exposed their concern in short, letting people know that they really do not want to get involved in situations like this and would prefer to leave us to our own to self govern the mundane. Facebook feels this sort of activity is not a real threat (similar to the non-threat of A Rape in Cyberspace). However, this is a company whose founder inadvertently takes the role of a mock President to an online nation and because of this, he is under constant scrutiny. Albeit his true talents are noted in the technical fields, people are starting to notice his almost Asperger’s Syndrome like devotional qualities he applies to unethical business practices. Thus, people will eventually start to contemplate the part they play in a community that may be lead by a person with less than stellar values. Renee Descartes states, “As far as morals are concerned, it is necessary sometime to follow opinions, which one knows to be very unsure.”[11] Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg may just be innovating a new moral landscape. Zuckerberg states, “Facebook has always tried to push the limit.”[12] Either way people now have to come to terms with the changing and the meshing of virtual and real worlds. Zuckerberg states “And at times that means stretching people and getting them to be comfortable with things they aren’t yet comfortable with. A lot of this is just social norms catching up with what technology is capable of.”[13]
This is not to say that people do not have a choice in the future of their online communities. Nor that Facebook is not utilizing its leadership and social power for good. On the contrary, they have done online blitzes for several positive causes including breast cancer awareness even though it was through a risqué ad campaign that made the breast cancer charities leery of its intent. However, in the end, they appreciated the support. As these sort of sensationalized events begin to occur more frequently online, the communities in which they happen must now avoid the pitfalls of Lamdamoo. They must begin to form more solid governance in order to take stands; whether they want to or not. It is not only inevitable, but also imperative in order to guide a community in the direction the people wish to travel. This will mean having to create a political atmosphere. This will then entail people taking stances on positions; although they may not want too. In doing so, this may or may not hurt websites such as Facebook. For example, imagine if Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg stated he supported everyone’s right to go on to Face Book and single out people; be they pedophiles or not. His rationale perhaps being the marketing software utilized by Facebook singles out people by age, gender, and interest anyways; so what is wrong with pedophiles being clever and doing the same? How strong would the backlash be? How many people, if any, would drop their Facebook accounts based on the immoral politics of their online president? Perhaps the same amount that would denounce U.S. citizenship based on President Bill Clinton’s immoral actions—not many. While that example is extreme, realistically a schism can occur amongst the online communities once political footings become stronger and aspirations are more transparent. As they often do in real life, upheavals and discord will ensue from the same similar tough topics seen in the real world. People will want to know the opinions of their online leaders on every subject from pro-choice to capital punishment. As Lamdamoo found out, online communities can no longer sit idly by and wait for the community to govern its self; people have to take action. In addition, the leadership of companies such as Facebook can no longer use their power to subversively promote their own personal agendas or they will soon see their elitist and minimalistic approach to leadership fall to the mercy of the mob. It all goes back to symbiosis and every one will need to give and take, in order for these communities to work.
Renee Descartes states, “because our senses sometimes deceive us, I decided to suppose that nothing was such as they lead us to imagine it to be.”[14] These new online communities do tend to deceive the senses and they are not the utopias people wish them to be. They face real world problems as old as the ones formed in the diversity spectrum of the Athenians and Visigoths. The power struggles and the ethical dilemmas are all still ever present and the leadership directions amongst the varied communities like Facebook, Second Life and World of War Craft are constantly still clamoring for stability, improvement, and perhaps even superiority. These and similar communities are currently in strong standing. The futures and the evolution of virtual communities will arrive from effective and trustworthy leadership and their ability to give the people what they want. This takes time to create, not all of Rome was built in a day. Online communities and their leadership are still at their precipice. Nevertheless, if leadership should forget the lessons of the past and act as unflawed moguls or dictators, the people will always be there to remind them; nothing is irreplaceable and that if Rome was capable of falling, so are they.
Bibliography
"Facebook Cartoon Profile Pic: Real or Fake ? C.H.R.I.S Children Have Rights In Society | C.H.R.I.S Children Have Rights In Society." Welcome to C.H.R.I.S | C.H.R.I.S Children Have Rights In Society. Web. 15 Dec. 2010. <http://www.chris-uk.org/facebook-cartoon-profile-pic-real-or-fake>.
Julian Dibbell, “A Rape in Cyberspace,” in Julian Dibbel, My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1998), 11-30. [20pp.]
René Descartes, Discourse on the Method (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 28-29. [2pp.]
Thomson, Clive. "Brave New World of Digital Intimacy." 07 Sept. 2008. Web. <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/magazine/07awareness-t.html>.
[1] Julian Dibbell, “A Rape in Cyberspace,” in Julian Dibbel, My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1998), 11-30. [20pp.]
[2] Julian Dibbell, “A Rape in Cyberspace,” in Julian Dibbel,
[3] René Descartes, Discourse on the Method (Oxford Oxford University
[4] René Descartes, Discourse on the Method
[5] Julian Dibbell, “A Rape in Cyberspace,” in Julian Dibbel.
[6] Facebook Cartoon Profile Pic: Real or Fake ? C.H.R.I.S Children Have Rights In Society <http://www.chris-uk.org/facebook-cartoon-profile-pic-real-or-fake>.
[7] Julian Dibbell, “A Rape in Cyberspace,” in Julian Dibbel
[8] Julian Dibbell, “A Rape in Cyberspace,” in Julian Dibbel
[9] Facebook Cartoon Profile Pic: Real or Fake ? C.H.R.I.S Children Have Rights In Society <http://www.chris-uk.org/facebook-cartoon-profile-pic-real-or-fake>.
[10] Julian Dibbell, “A Rape in Cyberspace,” in Julian Dibbel
[11] René Descartes, Discourse on the Method
[12] Thomson, Clive. "Brave New World of Digital Intimacy." 07 Sept. 2008. Web. <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/magazine/07awareness-t.html>.
[13] Thomson, Clive. "Brave New World of Digital Intimacy
[14] René Descartes, Discourse on the Method
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