Highlights from blog posts (made more difficult by the fact that I can’t copy/paste from Digication, please bear with my paraphrasing):
Allison posted that online communication seems to be far less interactive today than it was in 1998, when Donath published her article on Internet ethos and deception–more like a billboard, less of a community.
Aneela discussed the disturbing aspects of online deception and the examples in Catfish (both the movie and the tv show). She also got me to watch, finally, the movie Catfish, which was a highly rewarding experience beyond what I’ve heard about it from others (as basically an indictment of social networking where one cannot trust others to be real). She also wrote: “For some it is a chance to not be judged based on their race, religion or income the way they would when meeting someone face to face, Instead it is an opportunity to be welcomed based on thoughts and creativity, even though people construct images of how a person looks in their head anyway. It is also true that many people just want to get their voice out and engage in discussions without intentionally deceiving anyone.” I will say a bit more about Catfish below.
Bryan wrote: “Although the channel of expression has changed overtime, the idea of self-expression in a digital space has only become a proven fact. More particularly, social interaction has been now completed in a digital way not just through an analog or perhaps linear fashion.” This relates back to how remediations of the letter, the book, the journal, etc. and even the movie have turned what might have once been one-way signals into exploding networks (a Twitter or Facebook post hitting anywhere from 1 to 5000 receivers at once).
Maria questioned Donath’s desire to improve social cues in online communication: “My thought when I read this was, why would anyone want social cues—they are limiting and dictated by presupposition. Yes, systems are possible that can track participants’ behavior, but why would one want to track such information? When talking about a virtual life, the thing that makes it the most appealing (to me) is the interplay (emphasis on play) of many imaginations simultaneously in the virtual world.”
Michael shared a story of his youthful (and extensive) involvement in online communities, in which he managed to convince a listener that he lived in Anarctica. What this story showed me was how Internet deception is partial and fragmentary, in many cases, and reminds me of Haraway and her cyborg commitment to partiality and irony. That seemed clear in Mike’s example, as he did not set out thinking: tonight I’m going to deceive someone on the Internet. He decided to not share his location with a group, and when someone questioned him about the one item that he fabricated –his location–he decided to play that role instead of correct the “error.”
Deborah read boyd’s “Writing Oneself Into Being” and compared the features of Facebook to the features that boyd discussed in her review of teens’ use of MySpace. In particular, she pointed out the increased visibility of friends’ presence on Facebook profiles as a feature that makes teens (and others) more aware of audience; also, she discussed the sophisticated privacy features of Facebook and how these can allow teens to filter for audience in a way that MySpace did not encourage (although they still often ignore these features).
Libby researched the LambdaMoo and provided us with a great screenshot of the textual interface that Julian Dibbell would have been seeing during the days of “A Rape in Cyberspace.” She also pointed out insightfully that Bungle’s case is a case of identity tourism, although it has less to do with race and more to do with gender. (However, I’d point out that some of the victims described in the story were raced avatars. One of them was of “interdeterminate gender” but was also described as a Haitian trickster.)
Ryn took us back to the fandom communities of tumblr and provided examples of race whitewashing in fanart, even when the characters being featured are clearly raced in the original work. She provided as evidence several screenshots and quotes, including the example of a participant who was shocked by the racing of the character of Rue in The Hunger Games (even though the character in the book was described as dark-skinned). This person had imagined an “innocent blonde” Rue, not “some black girl.” The association of whiteness with innocence was striking.
Anne took another careful look at boyd’s “Writing Oneself Into Being” and noted with interest that the youth studied by boyd did not veer very far from their offline selves, seeming to express a wish to simply “be” online rather than construct a persona. She also noted that Nakamura seems to think this is pretty impossible to do. She also noted that Twitter seems more likely to encourage unstable personas because of the brevity of the forum, even more so than MySpace.
Scott reviewed “A Rape in Cyberspace” with reflection on how great a disappointment LambdaMoo must have been to those who initially regarded it as a safe haven or utopia from the limitations of the real world, and compared the current state of the Internet to 5th-century Athens, where a cacophony of unqualified voices led to the collapse of democracy there. He stated that Internet communities are more imaginary than real.
Going back briefly to Catfish–without issuing too many spoilers if you haven’t seen it–(and I do recommend it as required viewing for anyone studying social media, and I waited far too long to see it myself)–what moved me most about it was that yes, this woman might have been a pathological liar if you diagnosed her, but she was also clearly a gifted artist who felt she was in danger of completely losing her voice in the world, and what comes through is her utter soaring desperation to make herself seen by someone else who “mattered,” someone who was living the kind of life that she had once dreamed of having. The tenderness with which she and her family is outed in the film tells me that the filmmakers did, actually, see her spirit. Others disagree, as I can see from angry comments on the IMDB website (they think that the filmmakers mocked her, called her crazy, etc.). I would be interested in what others here think of it. I also am thinking of Vince’s final speech of the movie, when the name of the film is put into perspective, and how this relates back to Hayles’ theory about pattern-making and noise as the replacement of presence and absence.
photo Catfish Anatomy Study by ~DelightsJD (issued for reuse with modification by Creative Commons)