Week 12: Making up for mistakes

So since I posted about the readings for this week last week I will post the response for last weeks reading for this week :P. This week or last week, however you want to phrase it we talked about online cultures and subcultures specifically in Second Life. The interesting thign about the articles were that each subculture has its own backing even if it can be viewed negatively. In the McCabe article it explores the online subculture of an eating disorder forum, but the catch is it supports eating disorders. The second article is an article that has an open online gay community that supports each other. The last wired article talks about griefers in second life. In my opinion all of these articles contradict each other, mostly the wired article in comparission with the first two. These online communities support each other no matter how odd it may be even if the community is supporting eating disorders. However, every subcommunity has its trouble makers which cause grief. In Second Life these people are called griefers. The question I ask is why when a community is helping each other out do you have trouble makers? The answer I came up with is even within these Second Life communities these griefers also have a subcommunity that allow them to share a common interest with other Second Life griefers. In my explorations of Second Life I have seen many communties, some support the club scene, some are big fanfiction fans such as Harry Potter world in Second Life. These communites all share a common interest which brings them together. I think that these new virtual communities are good to get people to bond with other people and also get help for something they may be embarassed about. Sometimes the subcommunities bond through negative things such as eating disorders or griefing and this is unfortunate, however this shows no matter what problem/hobby you have there will always be a community of people willing to share it with you.