In “The Breakup 2.0,” the article discusses the perceptions individuals have in regards to their media ideologies and how our conceptions of them and how we interact with them can communicate certain ideas between individuals, whether it be to start flirting or to compose a breakup.
People’s media ideologies – their beliefs about how a medium communicates and structures communication— makes a personal email account different from a work email account, or a text message different from a phone call.
And the perceived formality or lack thereof, based on individual conceptualizations of these media of communication, can cause people to go about certain tasks in different manners through different avenues of communication. And the miscommunications around these perceptions can make one feel weird just based on the medium by which a person chose to communicate a certain idea, as was the case with Rianna, Olivia, and her ex-boyfriend.
In "Treat Us Right," the article discusses digital worlds, mostly related to women and certain illnesses like fibromyalgia, and the forums created for victims of various illnesses to share their diagnoses with other victims, created a social web of support in addition to a simultaneous quantification of one's illness through the specific statistics surrounding each individual's diagnosis. In this capacity, the social construction of the illness essentially "shifts to an understanding of how an illness is made real by the processes of subjectification, through the biosociality afforded by the internet." This is what the author terms bioremediation, enabling a shared experience online related to the processes each went through from first awareness to diagnosis to reactions after the fact. PatientsLikeMe is one site focused on throughout the article. Though the site aids as a personal support system for the members, they hold true that "the purpose of the community is to contribute to the development of biomedical treatments." In doing so, the site still maintains a strong emphasis on the frustrations users express as being viewed and treated by doctors and the medical industry (hence the title, "Treat Us Right") in regards solely to their illnesses and not as individuals with emotions and concerns beyond the diagnosis itself. However, the article seems to optimistically conclude that when it comes to general health care and health management, "the move to make bioinformatics part of the construction of a privately defined yet publically enunciated self attenuates the performative aspect of the modern digital subject.... By contributing to an individual disease community, the user was now contributing not only to the good of that particular biomedical community but also to the overarching goals of patient-driven medicine."
My main interests came in the Second Life chapter related to intimacy. First laid out was the language aspect and how, according to the author, text as the main mode of communication was used far more frequently, probably a result of the appreciated distancing affect this allows between members of this community. It only delineates chat vs. instant messaging as ways of communication. The chapter continues to say that the anonymity of the site allows for faster friendships to form as guards are typically down as a result. "Play," or sexual activities at large, is also a factor able to be noticeably extant within SL as a result of loosened guards. In a similar vein, people whose avatars fulfill a particular purpose for them, say a child for age play, can also enter families as entities of emotional support in a range of structures, reasons, purposes, and functions. In the chapter, it concludes with addiction and how addiction to SL, like addiction in real life, is typically funneled into addiction to conversing with people (not necessarily building worlds or changing your avatar), with addiction to virtual human interaction; this is a unique contrast to real life in that addiction typically brings you away from others (so does SL addiction, since, they argue, time is finite and spending time online ultimately draws one away from RL). However, the cause of the addiction, human connection through a virtual medium, seems banal if anything. It sparked an idea in me that maybe addiction could actually be solved or helped through a) real-world connections with friends, instead of the typical rehab programs and isolationist efforts, and b) if A is not a possibility, aiding through the process of virtual-world relationships to harvest a support group, a network of people, with loosened guards thanks to anonymity, to help you through the tough times. Though an interesting topic in regards to addiction, what struck me as the most interesting is the discussion of episteme vs. techne and how love can develop on SL in absence of "knowing" the other person in RL, or in fact because of this. Mentioned among the couples married over SL, one recalls that the relationship in the virtual world is in fact enhanced because superficial judgments on looks and background are factors that rarely if at all come into play; seeming to allow for a more genuine connection, the person mentioned that if she were to know who this person was in real life, social barriers and a tightened guard may come into play. This is a unique concept for me in that I have always held the stereotypical view that relationships that solely take place on line are shallow and a little desperate. However, the chapter makes a convincing point that shallowness can stem from a sense of insecurities and that when online, people feel more free to be the people they want to be and have the confidence to carry out such wishes. Convincing were the descriptions of the dialogue that took place in the various SL weddings depicted. Hopefully we talk about the issue in class; I found the idea at first bewildering, soon understandable, and by the end, almost ideal. If after a relationship is developed it were to continue outside of the virtual world, this may be a really good route to finding an honestly suitable, real partner. This idea seems to attach quite nicely to the rising statistics of couples and spouses who meet on online dating sites, a place where you are more able to express yourself without fear and where genuine connections can be made and led to flourish over real-world interaction, a simple idea I happen to find fascinating.
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