06-13-2002, 07:40 PM
Quote:I thought you were suggesting that we were liars. Silly me, how could I have misinterpreted what you were really trying to say. I stand corrected.
It's pretty simple, fucknut. You can't look past the opportunity to make your sad attempt to lure me into a fight, long enough to see that there is some merit to what I am saying. The discussion is actually an interesting one, if you can get over your idea that you are totally honest with yourself in your perception of your behavior. I would tell you to think outside the box, but that would require a form of advanced cognition, the likes of which I doubt you've ever experienced. Take your over-priviliged sagging ass to the corner and sit the fuck down. Allow the under-educated overly-opinionated mulatto flex some literary knowledge on the subject of cyberspace communities and their effect on the human psyche.
Quote:Virtual Identities:
One of the most interesting aspects of cyberculture is the changing notion of selfhood. How do we represent ourselves within online spaces and how is this representation different from the 'real' self? Where are our bodies when we negotiate through electronic spaces? How much of our online persona is a product of self-representation? How can -- or do -- we tweak this persona?
The following essays, articles, and books explore some of these questions. Well before the now-famous New Yorker cartoon ("On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog"), the included scholars were busy examining issues of gender, sexuality, and race in and on the mediated space of the Internet.
Bromberg, Heather, "Are MUDs Communities? Identity, Belonging and Consciousness in Virtual Worlds," in Cultures of Internet: Virtual Spaces, Real Histories, Living Bodies, edited by Rob Shields (London: SAGE Publications, 1996): 143-152.
Although the work's title suggests a discussion revolving around online communities, this essay is largely concerned with notions of identity and consciousness within IRCs and MUDs. Beginning with a brief literature review of the Net and claims of transcendence, Bromberg, a graduate student in the Departments of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University, continues by suggesting that users of IRCs and MUDs do so to combat the "malaise and inconsistency of what is currently called the 'postmodern condition'" (147). This use, according to Bromberg, serves four social functions: solace for lonely users, identity play for pleasure and exploration, erotic appeal, and mastery over one's environment. The essay ends with a tempered conclusion that life on the Net constitutes an altered state of consciousness.
Miller, Laura, "Women and Children First: Gender and the Settling of the Electronic Frontier," in Resisting the Virtual Life: The Culture and Politics of Information, eds. James Brook and Iain A. Boal (San Francisco: City Lights, 1995): 49-57.