Dear SWT,
It seems that there are as many subcultures on-line as in “real” life.
What I mean by that is that real life subcultures have “migrated” to
the virtual world and found a home. Therefore, I include examples of
sub-cultures specific to the web, and others that have found a home on
the web and become their own sub-culture.
It’s particularly interesting how many organizations refer to
themselves as an internet “Society”, “League,” “Community,” or
“Club.” I used these keywords to determine subcultures while creating
the list of examples below:
To begin, you might look at this site about “net culture” with a lot
of great links:
http://www.creativehat.com/netculture.htm
From the above site I found a link to cybersociology, at which I found
this article titled “Communities in Cyberspace” by Peter Kollock and
Marc Smith.
http://www.usyd.edu.au/su/social/papers/Kollock1.htm
Another article titled “Understanding the Internet Community”
http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue4/valauskas/#dep4
This site also has a great list of cyberculture links from the
religious to the irreverent:
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Cyberspace/Culture/
Arguably the first internet “subcultures” emerged via Usenet,
discussion lists, and bulletin Boards. According to the above
article:
“The Usenet is the largest conferencing system and has a unique form
of social organization…the Usenet has no central authority, no single
source of power that can enforce boundaries and police behavior. No
one owns most Usenet newsgroups; most newsgroups are anarchic in the
technical sense of the term – they have no central authority though
they do have an order and structure. Almost anyone can read the
contents of a Usenet newsgroup, create entirely new newsgroups, or
contribute to one. This makes the Usenet a more interesting and
challenging social space than systems that are ruled by central
authorities.” (Kollock and Smith, 1998)
Google Groups, for example lists too many discussion groups to count
about almost any topic you can think of.
://www.google.com/grphp?hl=en&ie=UTF-8
The internet as an industry created a new society of IT folks
For example:
http://www.apnic.net/community/
http://www.internet-information-services.com/internet-community/
http://internet.about.com/cs/onestopcommunity/
The creation of the internet also led to the creation of a society of
“cyber-outlaws,” otherwise known as Hackers: “They make it, we break
it” (Hackers.com)
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/tech/DailyNews/hackers990203.html
http://www.landfield.com/isn/mail-archive/1999/Feb/0022.html
http://www.hackers.com/
http://www.hackershomepage.com/
Then, of course, there are the internet gamers who come together
on-line:
http://www.internetgamersclub.net/
http://www.sfrt-igcr.net/
http://www.cigs.nl/home/home.html
http://ecl.daddeln.de/control/view_team.php?clan_key=1955
In the same vein are the sci-fi and fantasy folks, who have also found
a home on-line:
“Earth not all that you hoped for? Escape to the future in Cybertown.”
http://www.cybertown.com/main_ieframes.html
Sci-Fi community
http://communities.prodigy.net/sci-fi/
Sci-Fi/Fantasy Artists’ Community
http://www.epilogue.net/index.html
Internettrash offers “[a] place for various sub-cultures: “geeks,
aliens…trekies,”
http://internettrash.com/
The following sites contain lists of sub-sub cultural sci-fi/fantasy
communities by genre:
http://pub56.ezboard.com/bscifialliance9477
http://www.jedigirl.com/
Loosely related are the Cyberpunks, which refers “less to a sci-fi
subgenre, and more to a movement that was the beatnik underside of the
evolving digital culture, encompassing the countercultural
fascinations of the 90s -- the computer underground, rave/house
culture, zine culture, designer psychedelics, goth morbidity, etc.”
http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades/cpunk.html
http://project.cyberpunk.ru/
http://www.livejournal.com/community/cyberpunk/
http://project.cyberpunk.ru/idb/
Beyond the sub-cultures specific to the web are those that have been
transformed by the web:
National/ethnic cybercommunities:
“An early promise of online interaction was that it would render
irrelevant such markers as race, gender, status, and age. Because
online interaction strips away physical markers, the assumption was
that social categories assumed to rest on physical characteristics
would wither away” (Kollock and Smith, 1998).
However, the wealth of ethnic identity oriented sites dispels this
idea. Instead:
“in online interaction racial identity springs from a participant’s
perspective on racial issues rather than from physical cues” (Kollock
and Smith, 1998).
Among the many, many “ethnic” sites are:
Nativeweb: Uniting indigenous folks around the world:
http://www.nativeweb.org/info/
Canadian Macedonians
http://www.biserbalkanski.com/
Ukranians
http://forum.vbios.com/“
Latinoweb:
http://www.latinoweb.com/
Electric Italy
http://www.nettuno.it/electric-italy/
The Singapore Internet Community
http://www.geocities.com/newsintercom/
Some sub-cultures are more….ummm, unusual?:
An internet “subculture” dedicated to the JonBenet Ramsey Case:
http://www.acandyrose.com/
Some are quite disturbing. An article about cyber-hate, white
supremacists on-line:
http://www.aijac.org.au/review/1998/2313/cyberhate2313.html
I hope you find this helpful. If you require additional assistance,
please request a clarification and allow me to respond before rating
this answer.
Search Strategy:
internet subculture
internet community
cyber culture
gamers
sci-fi
cyberpunk
Thank you,
gitana |
,
0 Comments
)