Among the five readings I did (listed below) for this session, all of them mentioned the question of interactional influence between online and offline activities, in other words, interactions within the cyberspace and physical space concerning social networking. Interestingly, more than one article used the word “shallow” to describe online “friendships”, which can be a little prejudicial. It reminds me of what my dad said when he saw me spending too much time online back in high school, “The more time you spent online, the less you can learn in the real world.” In his mind, no matter how efficient our life and work are with the use of Internet, “face to face” interaction is still irreplaceable, and online communication is more or less “dull”.
My dad’s point of view may represent some people’s attitudes toward social computing, but obviously not those in our materials. It is more like revealing the bright sides of social computing in this session, especially compared to the implications we discussed last week. First of all, no matter online or offline, according to David C. Evans, the human behavior patterns that were involved are all the same, only the online activities can reach a wider range, hence make social computing “a slight evolution in human relations”. A handy instance will be “Six Degree of Separation”, no matter it has been completely proven or not. In Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism, a point of view is looking for friendship online seems to be focused on quantity while offline choices often highlight the quality. Though this is the current situation of having too many online friends, it can be considered as an action of “status seeking”, which can be a proof of users online status, and since on many SNSs, users’ friendship can be managed by grouping, this situation can be explained as maintaining the quality when pursuing for quantity.
Albrechtslund, who talked about two trends in building friendship regarding social computing: online-to-offline and offline-to-online, discussed the question of people’s lives after their social computing activities. According to him, as users’ digital trails are “external”, they probably will get influence by those trails in their real world life. Albrechtslund also criticized on Tribble’s point that users’ online activities might destroy their offline opportunities. To me, this seems to be discriminate as well, it’s even like Big Brother is watching, and waiting to seize upon someone’s honest mistakes, to some extent. And by studying the relations between Internet use and depression, LaRose came out with some results concerning interactions of online and offline psychological conditions. Positively, social computing with real-world friends can alleviate depression, like when my grandparents also started to use MSN messenger to communicate with me after I came to the U.S.; yet negatively, stresses that users got from the virtual world might come before, but not after those stresses from the real world. But anyway, it is not like social computing will diminish established strong social ties (offline) – like what social displacement hypothesis figured, and maybe what my dad thought! Instead, another hypothesis stated in Galston’s article is that youngsters are likely to transfer their online grouping mode to their offline social practice, and bring big changes to real world organizations. If we agree with Galston’s values of the two principal cultural forces of Contemporary American society, we should be prepared for the possibilities of both the manner of making individual choices and community belongingness will be influenced by social computing activities.
While writing these above, I kept thinking about one question: what are the different levels that can describe the relations between users’ online and offline social network? At this moment, I am only able to figure out three: preservation, extension, and reverse. The first level is a more like a convenient reflection of the real world network, which can be explained by my grandparents, who only use MSN messenger to communicate with family. The second level - extension, can be described as an expansion of people’s real lives. They reflect their true identities in the online social network. By doing this, first, there social links are increased; then, they not only expand their own experiences for certain object or subject, but also enrich other people’s experiences when commuting with them online. This will be the level I would like to investigate this time when I’m exploring through an online community.
The community I chose is Polyvore – a crowd-sourcing site for fashion lovers. I wonder if this site is sponsored by some commercial websites or not since it has prices and hyperlinks to them, but at least it is a good place for them to spread their information. The main function of this site is an application that works like “dress up your Barbie”, only there is no Barbie, but a clipboard where users can drag their favorite items together to build up an outfit and post it. And all those “items”, are pictures of clothes, shoes, and accessories that come from online stores. This is the main part of this community, like the diary function in a blog site where users can express their opinions. Besides, there are basic SNSs functions like profile, comment, grouping, and “like” tag. There is also a “Q&A” section where users can give their opinions to some other users. It is quite a coincidence when I was browsing that I saw a question about maxi skirts, which I was able to answer because I just got one for myself several days ago.
In general, my experiences here satisfied me, and speaking of what this allow me to do that I couldn’t have done offline? Tons! First, I would never have the chance to know so many talented stylish people and their views of fashion since I am not working for Vogue or Harper’s Bazaar; Secondly, by posting my “sets” and “comments”, I got the chance to know what my “taste” is like by others’ commenting and responding, I will also be willing to share my experience and knowledge that come from this site with my real world friends, and all of these are also extending my experiences of fashion (very little though) that I would like to take as a case to explain the extension level of peoples’ online social networking compared to their offline social networking.
