Friday, September 25, 2009

Week 9 2/2


The Cyber Utopia is bizarre in the regard that it doesn't exist because there are people that are a part of it. Even if everyone on the face of the earth just suddenly 'fell off' and all these websites that were once visited almost religiously by people suddenly are no longer being used, it would remain. Frozen in time like some sort of stasis. Yet unlike the traditional idea of a Utopia, it wouldn't crumble or decay. It'd stand as a legacy for all time.

That's the point I'm trying to make for internet communities. They generally don't form a community out of some cuddly go happy notion of 'hey look we have similar interests' it's usually out of sheer necessity. Similar to how real life townships begin. People 'need' something the site can provide so they all flock to it and perhaps in this regard, they feel the need to discuss whatever the site is about and hence form a community around it. Let's imagine for a moment that the internet is one gigantic dry-ass desert. A whole lot of nothin' for miles (bet that was easy to imagine! Gahahah) yet every once in awhile you come across an Oasis (a website that interests you, this analogy is horrible) and slowly more and more people flock to this Oasis and eventually buildings start to spring up and people start to build around this Oasis and communities form. It's more a form of tolerance than the lovey dovey idea of 'oh wow we're so alike wanna quickie?'

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