Cyberspatial Life: Online Forums

One of the first books I read attempting a social, sociological, or ideological analysis of the web was one written by Howard Rheingold. He described his experiences at www.well.com, which seemed to be an interesting adjunct to his daily life. While pursuing his word-processed activities, he would occasionally pause to engage in conversations with friends from around the world. These friendships, as he observed, were based on shared interests rather than geographic proximity, and would never have occurred without the Internet. He could ALT/TAB from one desktop window to another, transferring his attention from a Word document to an online debate.

I think WELL is probably unique, in the sense that it attracts people like lecturers, writers, artists, journalists etc. People, in other words, with a fairly substantial education and/or active, liberal interest in ideas and discussion. But you have to pay for it. Perhaps I will one day, but so far my ‘feeling’ for the ‘net is that it’s a democratising, empowering, non-capitalist medium. That’s the point – it connects people to other people in multifarious ways, and a subscription charge is, to my mind, ideologically questionable. I’m sure WELL is worth paying for; it’s only a small monthly sum. There are, however, other ‘places’ on the web which cost nothing. I prefer a grass-roots attitude based on the Tim Berners-Lee origins of the web, as opposed to a corporate or mainstream-media attitude, where offline practice is transferred to the networked digital medium. Where the P word – profit – is one of the governing objectives.

This is partly why I was interested in www.utne.com. I’d also read and enjoyed some of their magazines, so I knew what their ‘style’ was like. Eclectic, modern, liberal and sometimes semi-academic – rather like Recumbent Gaze. There might be an article about the fashion for coffee shops, next to an investigation of city life: are they decaying, what are they for, do we enjoy living in them? Even the advertisements were interesting – yoga centres, post-graduate courses in Eastern Philosophy, bookshops, painters and photographers selling their wares…my kind of magazine. So I decided to use the Utne Café, the online forums.

It’s wild. And it’s been a learning experience which I wish to document, because it is otherwise lost and forgotten, mere pixels thrown into a sea of fathomless digital data. Random connections with other people I will never meet; frequent clashes (i.e. debates) that are never properly resolved because someone else makes a post which derails your original point. Or maybe the person who disagreed with you has to get on with life: food from the supermarket, TV to watch, money to earn, whatever. Maybe they just enjoy disagreeing with everyone, because it gives them an apparent ‘voice’ they otherwise lack in a sadly disempowered life. It’s like Speakers Corner (for non-UK people – the ‘soapbox’ tradition at Hyde Park in London), where everyone goes home after an hour or two of opinionated rhetoric. What is clear is that in public online forums people sometimes have dissonant agendas, creating situations which are both stimulating and polemic, and frustrating and enervating. You can reach a stage where there is no point investing any more time or energy at a particular forum, where your thoughts are merely flung into a cyberspatial abyss, like a message in a bottle that sinks to the ocean floor. So I decided to consolidate some of my experiences with a piece of considered writing, that I can post at my own site where it will stand as a personal reference point, and a public summation of a few weeks of private activity.

I’m intrigued when some people make little two or three lined posts in the forums, abbreviated observations which clearly indicate they are passing tourists who haven’t bought any shares. Their disconnection, it seems to me, is more healthy than my own plugged-in attitude. I find it quite difficult not to invest time and energy in a situation where I am contributing my own thoughts. And writing this article enables me to redeem some value from situations which sometimes felt empty and unrewarding. Open-access discussion forums are sometimes more like a computer game than reading a book: pixels dart around and they excite you because of what they represent, but when you kill the demon, enter the secret chamber or attain the highest score, the satisfaction is a little hollow. Your engagement does not reward; it is after all, just a game.

I’ve played very few computer games, and I know they can be absorbing good fun. But they can also consume vast amounts of time that is ultimately unprofitable. I have, however, read a huge number of books, magazines, newspapers etc. which more or less enriched my subsequent life. I’ve traversed the post-graduate terrain of academia, and this is more where my interests lie: books, and/or sustained, developed, considered thinking. At the moment (8.3.03) I’m reading a book about David Lynch, Cinema 2 by Gilles Deleuze, Creative Evolution by Henri Bergson, White Teeth by Zadie Smith, and about 20 others it’s too boring to list. So why would I swap words with random and distant people (mostly US)? Because there are – to balance the above paragraphs – intelligent and articulate people who sometimes, like myself, post well composed, thoughtful content. Because it’s fun to swap ideas quickly and easily. Because it’s fun to see who’s out there, and what they have to say.

Online forums are a multifarious experience, just like the people that frequent them. They illustrate some of the social ideals of Tim Berners-Lee. They are a place where democratic, anti-authoritarian exchange is possible, cutting across offline demarcations like who has published a book or hasn’t, who has a large bank account or who is barely surviving. I don’t care who someone is according to that kind of criteria. If they have something interesting and relevant to say, that’s enough. The rest is irrelevant, because it only applies in respective offline lives. And yet you cannot establish or expect even this - the liberal idealism you may prefer! I had to challenge a forum host for his inappropriately authoritarian manner, where he insisted on a power relationship where he had it, I didn’t, and I was to conduct my postings under his magnanimous judgement. I was not intimidated, as he intended, and the ensuing conversation was subsequently recorded for anyone to refer to, should the situation arise again. In fairness, he has probably dealt with ‘flamers’ and trouble-makers in his capacity as host. But it’s not very intelligent to assume that everyone is like that, it’s not appropriate to adopt a dominating ‘policing’ attitude by default, to refuse to engage in equal adult-to-adult conversation. I had to emphasise that I was a civil and educated person, and his threatening manner was clearly established as rather ridiculous. The conversation is still there, for anyone to see.

Like I said, the Utne forums are wild. They also vary quite considerably, and the commentary above applies to my experience in one or two specific areas. Yesterday I investigated other forums, and one of them was noticeably ‘sweet’ and welcoming. I felt I was recognised as a person rather than a set of ideas with an accompanying online identity, entering into a pattern of interaction which is sometimes quite predictable: you say this, I say that. Yes that might be true, but so is this. And so on. I enjoyed the little “thank you for sharing that” which I received in my newly discovered place, and reflected that I might spend more time there, in future, than the more argumentative places. I posted a message at the latter that ultimately, I am not terribly interested in male-female debate (that’s what it was) and while this is correct, I recognise that I sometimes became involved in debates and adopted a particular rhetorical stance.

So perhaps what I’m looking for, ultimately, is the same kind of thing that I enjoy offline. Friendships, which recognise at least some of the full range of background and personality that is James. A cyberspatial coffee shop, with sticky buns and comfy seats, rather than a Speakers Corner debate.

James switched his computer off. But was last seen wandering around unexplored areas of Utne dot com.