Continuing Donna Haraway’s concepts of a cybertype, Lisa Nakamura examines how race, ethnicity, and identity have been reshaped through cyberspace.  Haraway is quoted that she does not “know of any time in history when there was greater need for political unity to confront effectively the dominations of ‘race’, ‘gender’, ‘sexuality’, and ‘class’. “

                Nakamura states that the Internet is a part of a complexity of multimedia globalization.  Western civilization, as referenced in an advertisement in the New York Times, has moved inside media.  We have substituted direct contact with people and nature for replicated versions on TV that are sponsored by major corporations.  This has spread globally and now has severe effects on cultural diversity.  The Internet produces a mental retraining that all cultures are alike.  Thus, it kills cultural diversity.

                Does the Internet create a monoculture?

                Chapter 2 asks if it is truthful to say no one can tell what race you are on the Internet.  Ideally, the Internet does not discriminate.  Even though we are hidden in cyberspace, race does show up in the language users employ.  Being a student of Stony Brook’s MA TESOL program, I have observed how those from countries such as South Korea and China use the English language.  But even if these internet users aren’t a second language learner, there are characteristics that are present within rhetoric that can shape one’s identity.

                Have you seen MTV’s show Catfish?  To explain the show, ‘lovers’ meet on chartrooms or Facebook and never get to talk to this person on the phone or see the person because of various excuses.  Sometimes, actually oftentimes, many people are duped on their once thought ‘lover’s’ identity.  Instead of being a female, they are male.  Instead of being a model, they are an overweight hermit (though that sounds funny, it’s the truth of the matter on the show).  So, people make assumptions about who they are speaking to on the Internet.  How do these imposters do it?  How do they convince the other party that they are who they claim to be?  In order to do this, they must manipulate their own language.  They must get inside the head of how they want to be perceived.  They would never reveal how they would normally get across their language.  Language identifies us.  Additionally, not only is language a way to dupe, but images as well.  Users get a hold of a whole different avatar to reel in their ‘bait’. 

                Another note that fascinated me is the default whiteness.  If one does not claim a race, they are then considered white.  There is much talk about identity tourism which is travel opportunities within cyberspace.  Thus, reconstituting what is travel.  One of the dangers of this type of travel is that it reduces nonwhite identity positions to a mask to hide behind.  One of the reasons nonwhite identities want to claim no race at all, which in turn defaults them as white, is simply stereotyping.  These identities want to be free from such assumptions.  With light to LambdaMOO, it is absurd to ask everyone to comply with real life standards.  It’s fantasy.  The diversification of roles opens up a thought-provoking detachment of race from the body and essentially questioning race as a category. 

                Why is race a choice in these fantasy games? If choosing a different race than one’s own, what are the negative elements one can face?  What other reasons do people choose a different identity aside from dodging stereotypes?  Do people do it to attract other identities in cyberspace (think Catfish)?