Rheingold's "Multi-User Dungeons and Alternate Identies" - Gender Switching

In last week’s reading, “Multi-User Dungeons and Alternate Identities” by Howard Rheingold, MUDs are introduced as “imaginary worlds in computer databases where people use words and programming languages to improvise melodramas, build worlds and all the objects in them, solve puzzles, invent amusements” and much more. As users log on to MUDs they create new identities and/or false identities. Rheingold says, “…the population of online-gender-switchers numbers in the hundreds of thousands.” What he means here is that when users create new identities, there is an overabundance of males creating female characters and females creating female characters. As I read the article, I found it a little weird that this was occurring so I decided to do a little research to find out why users participate in gender switching.

http://www.lubbockonline.net/blogs/duff/index.php?entry=entry071116-091531

I managed to find the blog post above entitled, “Confessions of a gender-switch gamer.” The blog poster, a gender switch gamer, says he plays as female characters when participating in online games. He immediately refutes that he is a man who likes to dress in women’s clothing. When he creates female avatars, he doesn’t think of the female characters as himself, but rather as a story he is watching. This can be compared to fans of popular television shows such as Alias or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Male fans of the show don’t see themselves as the female characters. They merely enjoy watching the female characters in action. By reading the blog post, I now understand Rhinegold’s statement regarding the heavy appeal of gender switching in the online gaming world.

Rheingold's "The Virtual Community" - Facebook

Rheingold is back this week in our reading schedule to discuss “The Virtual Community.” In the article, written several years ago during the early stages of the Internet, he introduces the WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link) that allows computer users to publicly converse around the world. Rhinegold then goes on to discuss virtual communities. He says, “[p]eople in virtual communities use words on screens to exchange pleasantries and argue, engage in intellectual discourse, conduct commerce, exchange knowledge, share emotional support, make plans, brainstorm, gossip, feud, fall in love, find friends and lose them, play games, flirt, create a little high art and a lot of idle talk.” What he is saying here is that online communities are almost identical to real life communities, except that there are no real physical bodies involved.

The best example of this idea is the increasingly popular, Facebook.com. Although it started as a networking site just for college students, it has turned into one of the largest networking sites in America. It began with just people friending their real life friends. The initial users didn’t understand the dimensions that Facebook could be used for. It allows you to see your friends’ friends, therefore providing users with the ability to network with people who have a common friend. Facebook has now grown and allows people to sell things in the marketplace, write comments to on each other’s walls, poke (flirt with) each other, create graffiti expressions on one another’s pages, create online Facebook group petitions, schedule real-life events and more. Of course, it would take days to list every feature of Facebook. The main idea is that Facebook allows people to communicate and network in ways similar to a real life community, but in a virtual setting independent of their physical bodies.

Andrew Keen's "The Noble Amateur" - Citizen Journalists vs. Real Journalists

Our first reading this week was “The Noble Amateur” by Andrew Keen. It was a very interesting reading because it offered a particular viewpoint on how the Internet is damaging our culture. Keen’s main argument in this article is that amateur content creators are bringing down our society by providing misinformation to the masses through sites such as Wikipedia and blogging. He compares journalism to citizen journalism. Citizen journalists are “people who are not employed by a news organization but perform a similar function” to real, educated professional journalists. However, Keen also mentions that citizen journalists “aren’t held accountable for their work in the way real reporters are.” He says here that bloggers and Wikipedia editors can get away with the posting of misinformation while real journalists on television and in newspapers could get fired or put in jail.

A story from my internship at a local news station last summer reminds me of Keen’s statement above. One of the freelance reporters decided to cover a story on a man who was recently arrested on the popular show “To Catch a Predator.” The reporter decided it would be an interesting story if he contacted the man’s neighbors to see how they felt about living nearby to an alleged sex offender. The man arrested had a generic name and the reporter decided to pick a name out of the phonebook in the designated town. It turns out that the reporter chose the wrong man that was arrested and wrongfully accused the man of being a sex offender in his story. This report somehow managed to get on the air because this station was small, and during the weekend the fact-checkers were understaffed. The wrongfully accused man sued the news station for false accusations and the reporter was instantly fired and never heard from again.

It is scary to see how fast a career can disappear before your eyes. This story shows that real journalists are held accountable for their work. If a citizen journalist had decided to do this same story and post it on his blog, I highly doubt the man would have been able to sue the blogger. This ties into Keen’s statement that citizen journalists can get away with a lot more than real journalists when it comes to reporting misinformation.