Essay 1: Never being regular (by Fredrik)

First time I was introduced to online communities I was about eleven years old. My family owned a PC which was mostly used by me and my six year older brother. Rather than using, we were of course playing with it. My brother to tried connecting to a BBS to get more games, apps and mod-music. I didn't understand much at first, he had received the personal invitation from a school friend and the interface was command based. But then, when he tried out the new graphical BBS hosted by some staff of a major Swedish tabloid, I also found a way to experience e-mail, chatting, file-sharing and discussion. I enjoyed it for a few years, in the end overlapping with an introducing internet-connection. It was a private and regulated community, and though accessible through the internet, it had built-in limitations. One could argue that the BBS was not an online community as we refer to them today. Actually, a classmate at that time argued with me that internet was overall superior to this BBS. By now I realize he was really bright to see that there was no future for the BBS. For me it was the community that counted though, and when it eventually closed down I was at a loss.

Since then, I was always looking back and wondering: “What good is today's internet socially?”. Regardless it was online gaming, homepage making or music sharing, I found myself socializing as secondary to the activity. Usually it didn't seems so strange, because I had such a diversity of activities going on. So I rarely had a chance to become regular. IRC and MUD were a bit difficult to get into and instant messaging was an activity limited to keeping in touch with classmates and occasionally some random foreigner.

There were times when I though “maybe this is what my internet community will be like”. By the year of 2000 I was a teenager and regular at the major Swedish community site. This kind of site made it a lot easier to stick to some small topics and expand one's own network, sometimes through existing friends.

However, those small topics were usually discussed somewhere else, and soon this site become out of fashion. The lesson learned out of this was that communities that I associated with a certain site are transcient (though the site remains). Fortunately, it motivated me to look and see what other kinds of communities were out there. On the negative, I became reluctant to investing time and interest just for the sake of becoming member of one internet community. The only thing that kept me interested was the emerging subculture.

When new subcultures were turning physical, I experienced it was socially more authentic, thus taking less part in the online community. Blogs were formed, making it possible for me to keep up with lots of people and the events around them. I was eagerly expanding my network offline, but not everyone I met had a similar attitude to the network. There were a few conflicts with those who remained and prefered being mainly active in the online community. And, there was confusion in using handle names. In some situations I was even regarded as complete stranger, while others admitted some mutual enthusiasm.

Among those who were more into the offline network on the other hand, interesting stories were shared. For example about how we picked up this or that interest which had originally sprung from one the same subculture on the internet. No one had ever imagined how large and diverse the online networks had become. If everyone were doing like me, the growth would have been slower I think. In this context, non-deterministic development seems obvious (and supported by Benkler 2006).

I can see another perspective of what happened as through social rules of the blogs and comments. After all, it is pretty easy to distiguish fellow bloggers from the lurkers. But it's not just a matter of being somebody's best friend or another stranger. I believe it makes a difference for what kind of ties you'd expect. In this regard, it's easier for me to understand my social benefits of the internet community.

Upon the whole, the truly social aspects of internet are not as important for me as the new possibilities of developing special interests are. Maybe they once were, as for everyone who have their first encounter with social media, and enjoy a form of escapism. Those media that offer an entirely new role and context and possibly worth sticking to rather than “real life”. But seeing a subculture grow from nothing to becoming more popular that popular culture, I think there are higher issues at stake here.