Online Communities as more than products of culture

I agree with Wilson, Peterson, in that anthropology is an effective way to study online communities, and I think their justification for this – that online communities are “themselves cultural products” – has become increasingly relevant over the past decade since this paper was written (p. 449). In fact, I would argue that online communities are now more than products of culture; they encompass an entire dimension of culture, just as education, religion, and family, do.

Wilson and Peterson describe “The Internet Revolution of the 80s and 90s as enabling “rapid and fundamental transformation of social and political orders,” but the extent of this transformation is so magnanimous, that the prediction of this evolution could not even be reasonably forecasted ten years out (p. 450).  Their description of change could not even begin to encompass the changes that have come about.

For example, the existence and use of Facebook, has radically changed not only our ways of interacting with each other, but also our ways of perceiving each other. I do not mean this in the simple sense of it – that we can look at pictures of each other and see whom everyone is “friends” with and learn when our birthdays are. Rather, I mean that we (at least I) literally perceive people differently as a result of what is on their profile. Facebook and other social networking sites, have opened up an entire new channel of interaction that operates a very personal level. People argue politics through “comments”, share their break-up woes in their “status”, and generally have no problem sharing exactly what they are doing at any given time. What is just as revealing, is that other people actually do care – sure, we may complain about how “so and so posted ANOTHER comment about how she misses her boyfriend,” but we still read it, react to it, and thus engage with her through this Internet site.

At least in the culture I have most tangible access to, Facebook, and the Internet in general, is not a product of it, but instead, it is entire additional portion of our own personal cultural identity. Wilson and Peterson began to delve into the necessity of exploring “online interactions…[through]…offline power relations and constructions of identity,” and I  agree with this and think at this point, it may be impossible to explore or analyze one without the other. (457).