Hi Mary
This SFF mailinglist I have been mentioning a couple of times now is quite
interesting as a space for identity construction. My visits there have so
far been of a recreational nature -- but once a researcher, always a
researcher. I prefer the asynchronous format, as synchronous chat stresses
me up too much.
The place I'm talking about is very hybridic.
Most of the kids use one or more nicknames -- some of them have their yahoo
or hotmail addresses under their nickname, but even those who have their
realname in the address usually sign off messages with something
nicknamish. So I pretty soon became Eva the Weaver (which is true to my
biography: I HAVE been a tapestry weaver's apprentice). Then, on the other
hand, I have, since October, seen two or three rounds of "Welcome surveys"
-- triggered by the arrival of a batch of new subscribers, but it seems the
long-term participants love filling them in. I should think you know the
genre: a mixture of silly questions, fanclubbish ones, trivia and opinions,
and actuarial stuff like realnames, birthdates, geographical location etc.
Answers, too, can be any mixture of serious and joking. But most who fill
them in do give their realnames. I don't have the patience with long lists
of favorite bands etc. but I have filled in a short version, hinting at my
awesome age.
The interaction is also a mixture. For one thing, some of it is interactive
narrative, mostly taking place in the fantasy town the participants have
built for themselves and keep rebuilding. MOO without the MOO permanence of
the textual environment. That's where I found myself developing the alter
ego of She Who Dissects Sentences, as I had a squirmish with a gifted
German 19-year-old (with a penchant for the darkside) over the form and
syntax of the subjunctive. I never knew grammatical analysis could be such
an enjoyably gory business.
Then there's SFF discussion, general and specific -- the plots and
characters of the author the list is devoted to are subjected to fits of
detailed scrutiny. You can imagine I poke my nose into those debates.
There's fanclubbish stuff, and there are opinionate exchanges about
anything that kids in and around their twenties will have opininate
exchanges about -- which I mostly take as background noise. There are
welcomes and self-presentations of a more ad hoc nature as people come and
go. Well, I guess the survey phenomenon shows there's a certain awareness
that it is not just new arrivals who need to introduce themselves to
everybody who is there already, but the other way around is also necessary.
There is also sharing of life's joys and sorrows: who gets married, who has
a baby, who loses a job, who gets assaulted on campus on Halloween night...
down to who is having a slow day at work... the list is endless.
And there's the organizational stuff about list practices: how should we do
this or that, where's that website with the old archive from the 1998
chapter by chapter discussion (which got about one third through a hefty
volume)... etc.
So there's both a constant building of the virtual environment, it is
recurringly inserted in the RL circumstances of participants, and there's
neverending identity work.
cheers
Eva
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