Re: [Air-l] teens and myspace
Danah says, "They definitely don't have a stigma attached to the Internet" and actually, this I find very interesting, because while my early 20s students seem to think it's perfectly normal to be on MySpace or Facebook, and while they find it normal to have relationships there, they think that people who made friends in LambdaMoo must be really weird, socially inept weirdos and that online communities are a thing of the past (not realizing that they are, indeed, part of one themselves). Just a fun-fact. Ulla
Since we are bringing up specific mediums, I'm noticing that chats and MUDs/MOOs keep getting mentioned as having these heavy stigmas attached to them. On the other half of the spectrum seem to be social network sites and instant/text messaging, though I'm sure this varies some by social group. In my own discussions with students about hanging out online, I've noticed that Massive Multiplayer Online Games kind of fall somewhere in the middle of those two poles - not entirely mainstream enough for everyone within an age cohort to do it and feel good about it, but not nearly as (nerdy? dorky? lame?) as hanging out on IRC for hours at a time. I'm interested in this because, at their core, MMOGs combine elements of both chatting and MUDs/MOOs, although they're much more high-tech, so I'm wondering if those stigmatized forms are looked down upon because they're seen as kind of antiquated? Any thoughts? Not to avoid Nancy's original (!) thread, of course, to which I'd say yes, kids these days definitely see online social interaction in general as less stigmatized than they used to (and this change *has* happened pretty quickly). Joshua Raclaw Dept of Linguistics University of Colorado Quoting "Bunz, Ulla" <Ulla.Bunz@comm.fsu.edu>: * Danah says, "They definitely don't have a stigma attached to the * Internet" and actually, this I find very interesting, because while my * early 20s students seem to think it's perfectly normal to be on MySpace * or Facebook, and while they find it normal to have relationships there, * they think that people who made friends in LambdaMoo must be really * weird, socially inept weirdos and that online communities are a thing of * the past (not realizing that they are, indeed, part of one themselves). * Just a fun-fact. * Ulla * * * _______________________________________________ * The air-l@listserv.aoir.org mailing list * is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org * Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: * http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org * * Join the Association of Internet Researchers: * http://www.aoir.org/ *
Oh, don't get me wrong - there's still a lot of stigma against a lot of practices and peoples, both online and offline. Gamers (although not all games), goths, geeks, going online to hang out with strangers, making up "fake" worlds (from D&D to MOOs to Second Life), reading the encyclopedia for fun, ... these are all still lame. But it's not the Internet that's lame... there's just a lot of lame shit there and people who do lame shit. From their point of view, MOOs are *nothing* like MySpace. We can argue otherwise theoretically but that's the mainstream teen view. (Of course, i have a special place in my heart for the goths, geeks, queers and freaks... But that doesn't mean they've gotten any "cooler.") On Mar 1, 2006, at 8:42 AM, Bunz, Ulla wrote:
Danah says, "They definitely don't have a stigma attached to the Internet" and actually, this I find very interesting, because while my early 20s students seem to think it's perfectly normal to be on MySpace or Facebook, and while they find it normal to have relationships there, they think that people who made friends in LambdaMoo must be really weird, socially inept weirdos and that online communities are a thing of the past (not realizing that they are, indeed, part of one themselves). Just a fun-fact. Ulla
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participants (3)
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Bunz, Ulla -
danah boyd -
joshua raclaw