Cyber Culture And Its Societies, by Arto Salojarvi & Stiliyana Petrova

Cyber culture and its societies

“The Internet is a communication tool used the world over where people can come together to bitch about movies and share pornography with one another”. (Smith, 2001).

Introduction

Over the past ten-fifteen years the Internet has evolved from being a mystic, intangible sphere surrounding us to being an everyday tool, if not a necessity, necessity in terms of social. In the early days the Internet was mostly a source of information and a place for people to create a free website on Angelfire or Yahoo to tell the world what their favourite bands is or to share cooking recipes. 

Today the developments in technology such as the introduction of smartphones with Internet, social media applications and the creation of Web 2.0 have brought forward a new way of social interaction in the form of Facebook, Twitter, forums and even virtual reality through online gaming or sites such as SecondLife. The developments in modern communication technology have greatly contributed to globalization, allowing a new trend of a worldwide ‘online culture’ to emerge.  The Internet today is a place for people to connect and share ideas with their friends as well as people they have never met, regardless of their physical location. When logging on to the online world, people create a virtual self-image, or an ‘avatar’, that they use to connect with each other and create a worldwide culture with many subcultures and societies of like-minded people, based on interests and ideologies.

A culture online

The traditional definition of a ‘culture’ is often considered to be somewhere along the lines of “Learned behavior of people, which includes their belief systems and languages, their social relationships, their institutions and organizations, and their material goods — food, clothing, art, buildings, tools, and machines.” (Giroux, n.d.). Wikipedia defines a cyberculture as “the culture that has emereged, or is emerging, from the use of computer networks for communication, entertainment and business” (Wikipedia.org, n.d.). The two seem to differ from each other quite a lot. A traditional ‘culture’ is developed among a group of people, often bound by the same geographic region or a common language, and people are raised to be a part of the society, to live according to a certain set of values and beliefs. An online culture, on the other hand, can consist of people from all over the world regardless of their physical location, and is usually built around a common interest or a belief. In a way, instead of being born or adapting to an already existing culture, people create online societies around their own interests or ideology, creating the culture as they go along. 

Cybercultures can manifest themselves in as many formats as there are of ways of communicating online. A cyber culture or a society can be built around aspects such as social networks, online games, forums, bulletin boards or chat. The list goes on.  The element of actual physical human interaction has been entirely removed from the equation.  The different platforms for communication present us with different options in terms of interaction. Social networking sites are often used to connect with people you actually know – or would like to meet – in real life. On the other side, in the case of online gaming people will join a game and develop relationships with other players, people who they have never met. This will in effect lead to a micro society being formed around a common interest. 

On the Internet nobody knows you’re a cat (Me 2.0)

If we look at the types of societies or communities that exist online, we can differentiate them into two categories. The first are the social networking sites such as Facebook where people create a digital version of themselves, complete with a profile picture, birth day, relationship status and hometown. The second is the more anonymous part of the Internet, where people communicate from behind avatars – be it a nickname on a message board or a gnome warlock with a silly moustache in World of Warcraft.

 On the Internet people can be pretty much whoever and whatever they want to be. We are no longer bound to our physical location – or physical appearance for that matter – when we create digital versions of ourselves. The interesting thing about these digital beings is that people often only focus on certain things about themselves, or tell flat out lies. 

 Especially in open social networking sites people tend to create a slightly ‘polished’ version of themselves; someone funny, interesting and attractive. In real life they may be none of these things, but in the safety of hiding behind internet anonymity can bring out the best, the worst, and the delusional self in people. 

Social networking  sites and online profiles have made it very easy to lie to ourselves and to the people within the online community. “No one in the pre-digital cloud era had the mental capacity to lie to him- or herself in the way we routinely are able to now. The limitations of organic human memory and calculation used to put a cap on the intricacies of self-delusion”(Lanier, 2010, p. 96). This is no longer the case; because people store all their information (delusional or not) on their online profiles, within their online society they become the persona they have created.  These lies can be very subtle, a bit of photo editing to make yourself look a little skinnier, or just flat lying through your teeth to all the world about how brilliant you are. This phenomenon only exists in the virtual world; people try to augment themselves to be something they may not be in order to gain acceptance and respect from the group of their peers within their cyber society. 

I put on my robe and wizard’s hat…

When it comes to online communities, the platform chosen for the interaction to take place often dictates the behaviour of people taking part in the communication. In general, the more involved the people become in the interaction, the stronger the relationship between the members of the community will be. If we look at the MMORPG World of Warcraft, for example, the main society will be based within virtual world of the gaming environment. The game is split into several different servers, and each server will contain a community of players whose characters will interact with each other and form relationships. These characters can then form guilds, where the same group of people can chat or adventure together.  WoW is a game based on teamwork, and the platform offers a lot of options for the people taking part in the game, and gets people involved with each other. 

The community formed through the gaming activities is a strong and lively one.

However, the game is also based on interaction between the avatars of anonymous Internet strangers. This mask of anonymity can at times bring out the worst in people. Sometimes a group of people will band together for a purpose opposite of the intention of the game developers and set out to ruin the gaming experience for the others, just because they can. The creation of guilds in the game, or the forming of groups on any given online communication platform can also promote pack behaviour and formation of ‘in-groups’ that hold themselves in a higher regard than the rest of the community. Lanier writes “There are recognizable stages in the degradation of anonymous, fragmentary communication. If no pack has emerged, then individuals start to fight. This is what happens all the time in online settings. A later stage appears once a pecking order is established. Then the members of the pack become sweet and supportive of one another, even as they goad one another into ever more intense hatred of non-members”. Lanier, 2010, p. 63) 

The level of moderation on the given platform often determines people’s behaviour within the community. In an environment with little to no moderation people sometimes tend to let their inner pseudonymous troll run wild and wreak havoc within the community, whereas heavily moderated forums will often be more civil and a more nurturing environment for the community to grow.

Will you be my friend?

It could also be argued that online communities blur the line between ‘friends’ and ‘acquaintances’. Take Facebook, for example. According to their own statistics, the most popular social networking site in the world has over 800 million users, and each user on average has 130 friends. We’ll call them ‘friends’ just for the sake of argument, and because Facebook has chosen to name your contacts in such a way. Social networking has allowed us to broadcast our lives and thoughts to hundreds of people on a daily basis. But how many people would we actually want to tell these things if you had to do it through conventional means? How many people would call their classmates or employer to tell what they had for breakfast, or email them to share a cat video off Youtube? The answer is not very many. Social networking, in short, has made it extremely easy to be an attention … hog.

But the thing is, this kind of behaviour is becoming increasingly expected of us. Having an online presence is important for example when looking for a job, because many employers now search for your Facebook profile to get an idea of the real person behind the CV. This ‘real person’ in turn will be the polished alter ego of the candidate, and a vicious cycle of lies is ready to commence. 

Also, a new phenomenon brought forward by the social networks is ‘collecting friends’ in order to gain a sense of popularity. Some psychologists say that social networking sites are an especially fertile ground for narcissists to self-regulate via social connections. This happens for two main reasons. Firstly, narcissists thrive and function well in the context of superficial “friendships” with people they may not even know, in a “sound-byte” driven communication. (Buffardi, Cambell, 2008, p. 3). Rather than having actual friends, people’s “friendship circles” are a series of social contacts, and some people take the number of contacts as a sign of adoration and popularity. 

Secondly, social networking sites are a highly controlled environment.  This comes back to the user’s ability to completely control their own self-image online. Owners have complete power over self-presentation on Web pages, unlike most other social contexts. In particular, one can use personal Web pages to select attractive photographs of oneself or write self-descriptions that are self-promoting. Past research shows that narcissists, for example, are boastful and eager to talk about themselves, gain esteem from public glory, are prevalent on realitytelevision, and enjoy looking at themselves on videotape and in the mirror (Buffardi, Cambell, 2008, p.3)

Another study shows that people are actually also being judged by their number of social contacts online. In research published last year in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, college students viewed Facebook profiles that were identical except for the number of friends--either 102, 302, 502, 702, or 902, and rated the target's social attractiveness (without paying special attention to friend quantity). The number with the best results: 302. Appeal dropped off above and below that. (Hutson, 2009). Too few friends on Facebook will make the user look like a social outcast, whereas having 900 friends will make the user look like an attention hog who has connected with everyone they have ever met, or not even met in person. 

SecondLife

 

So far we have covered mostly text-based digital presence of people. However, there are also virtual worlds that allow people to interact through the use of avatars in a realistic 3D environment. SecondLife is probably the most popular of these virtual world platforms today. This environment allows people to interact with others from around the world who also choose to immerse themselves in a virtual reality. The user, once again, will be able to create an avatar and choose his own appearance. This avatar is now a real virtual being operating in a virtual world, much in the same way the person controlling the avatar would behave in the real life world. Unlike on social networking sites and the rampant narcissism running through the platforms, Second Life revolves around interacting with other people and forming connections with others, rather than blatant self-promotion and narcissism.

The human interaction factor also determines the way in which people behave in this virtual world. People will create an elaborate virtual alter ego and to an extent transfer themselves into a digital format. The fact that each character is actually a representation of a real person somewhere, despite the Internet anonymity factor people treat each other much like they would in real life. Participants in Second Life (a virtual online world) are generally not quite as mean to one another as are people posting comments to Slashdot (a popular technology news site) or engaging in edit wars on Wikipedia, even though all allow pseudonyms. The difference might be that on Second Life the pseudonymous personality itself is highly valuable and requires a lot of work to create.(Lanier, 2010 p. 63)

Last words

The WWW is infinite space to explore and share information. Since people are the once in control of it, it can be said that we can judge about ourselves, according to the way we maintain and utilize the Internet. In the article it is been shown the ups and downs, the bright sides and the points of improvement, and from here on we can conclude that the Internet is as part of us. There is nothing wrong with having a second life online, to socialize or make guilds in WOW. It is all about the attitude one has towards its usage. Because cyber society is part of the real life societies, will the ability to learn using different tool in this case - web platform.

Nowadays there are many people and organizations who want to have overall control of the information, and as a consequence we see how filtering and surveillance are rising before our eyes. If we have more friendly behavior and trust in each other, we can alter our concerns from whether is dangerous or not to use advanced technology and Internet, to feelings of adore and amaze how unlimited opportunities are out there for us to benefit from the existence of WWW. We should be more courageous in order to be able to use our full potential.  The greater contribution will lead us to expansion of our imagination and collaboration will teach us to have trust in each others.

It is a matter of time until people begin to be more active online. The trend is here, the actions are about to follow. Gaming, socializing, gaining knowledge, entertaining, all these are today’s main purposes to enter the cyber world and yet they are the very foundation of tomorrow cyber society. When one is not afraid of failure, knowing that namely after faults come the great solutions, only than one will release its potential and will embrace the challenges that the future will offer.

Sources:

Buffardi, L. Campbell, K. 2008 Narcissism and Social Networking Web Sites, published 3.7.2008 on Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, retreived 10.10.2011 fromhttp://www.swaraunib.com/indra/Sistem%20informasi/TPB/Narcissism%20and%20Social.pdf

Facebook, n.d. Statistics Retreived 11.10.2011 from https://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

Giroux, A. n.d.  Culture, beauty & art, retrieved 10.10.2011 from http://www.alexandragiroux.net/culture-beauty-and-art/

Hutson, M.2009 Facebook Friends: Too Many, Too Few? Published 20.01.2009 on Psychology Today, retrieved on 09.10.2011 from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/psyched/200901/facebook-friends-too-many-too-few

Lanier, J. 2010 You Are Not A Gadget  - A Manifesto, Penguin Group, London, England

Smith, K, 2011 Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (film), Miramax Pictures

Wikipedia.org n.d. Cyberculture, retrieved 10.11.2011 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberculture