The blurring of realities.

Within the class the other day there was the suggestion that people who play games like “second life” can often loose contact with the boundaries of reality and confuse the two worlds. At first I thought that this was complete BS. How can you confuse the two realities? You are either at the computer or you’re not. There is either physical contact with human or there are words on a screen. But as I thought about it I found that within my experience there has been a blurring of realities.

Although logic will always dictate that there was no actual contact with the person as they are many miles away, there is still some sort of emotional connection. When I talk to people online in real time through msn, skype or facebook chat there is an element of reciprocation on behalf of the other person. They can answer all of the questions in real time and it becomes irrelevant where the person physically is situated in the world. It is the conversation that I remember not the medium. This being said in the ‘real world’ it is the information that is revealed to me by the other person that I remember. I remember that I spoke to someone and I don’t remember if it down the shops or on the phone.

To me I think that the virtual and reality blur when there is only superficial contact. I don’t mean this in a nasty way but simply when there is a general conversation that doesn’t involve any issues or conflict. I believe that this is more my sense of, what I believe to be, proper communication in such an event then a reflection upon the media itself. I prefer the face-to-face contact when resolving a conflict then words on a screen.

Tell me what you think.

Anonymity breads vulgarity.

As I trawl the Internet I have found that when people are able to be anonymous they perform crude and offensive acts. Where I have noticed this behaviour is at the “comment” part of sites like youtube.com. I don’t care that people behave this way but I was just wandering as to the reason why they feel they can get away with it.

If you read the comments after the video ‘Trent from Punchy” on youtube http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=0RjC-vh06_c you will see that people are not afraid to vent their racist and elitist stereotypes. On user (freakytzank) says

“i live in roselands which is next 2 punchbowl, n i have 2 say he would b the cream of crop cos the whole area is just full of scums like that. FUkn pingasssss, hahaha best ambassador 4 canterbury area”

When I talk about anonymity I am allowing for the fact that you can see the username of the person. However this doesn’t offer any real world information. They are obscure (xitedbeava135) and gibberish and do not reveal the real ‘identity’ of the person. Without their real identity revealed to the world there is no consequence to rude behaviour. What can the website do? In my experience the worst that can happen is the banning and blocking of that username to that server or site. This proves to be a minor inconvenience and doesn’t stop the problem for people simply create another username.

I have a friend that plays an online war game where the player is part of a troop of soldiers that fight the enemy. It is set in a modern day country using modern day weapons, gear and machinery. For a while he found it entertaining to ‘hack’ the game so that he was able to see where the enemy forces were and to make his weapons more efficient. These actions were against the rules of the game and after about two minutes of such actions he was blocked from that server. To get around this problem he simply signed in under the same username to a different server. This proved to only be a minor inconvenience as he could continue playing the game as normal from then on.

The problem of vulgarity on the Internet is one that is not easily fixed. All the power in theory is in the hands of the website wizards. They can control who is allowed onto the site as well as the content of the site. People can simply change their online identity and continue their outrageous behaviour.