The community I’m a member of where this is most prevalent is theoc_slash on LiveJournal.
To begin with, the moderator has an enlarged ego and a sense of entitlement to match. When the series ‘The OC’ ended in February 2007, she made a post about it, and set it so that it’s always the most recent post on the community. In it, she states that she considered closing the community to new stories, but didn’t because it would make her “unpopular” with those “who still care to write”. There were immediately comments from members who felt this was a bad idea. The moderator replied to each comment simply with
“See comment in post above,
Mod”
And then added to her original post: “NONE of you had to jump down my throat about the closing of the community. Nowhere in the above did I say I was going to. If you reread it properly you will discover that fact. So how bout you all calm the hell down and give some real suggestions instead of jumping down my throat about the eight little words that held very little meaning.”
(It’s worth noting that this girl is not the person who created the community. Some time ago, the original moderators fell out of love with the fandom and asked for others to take it up in their stead. This girl was the first and most eager volunteer.)
When looking at the post again for this blog, I saw that further down in the comments there is a deleted post. The moderator’s response is still there, though. It says
“No one will answer your query here. Use the FAQ to figure out how to post here. I shall be deleting this comment.
Mod”
(And I would like to point out here that all of her posts are signed, not with her real name, or even her LiveJournal name, but “Mod” meaning “Moderator”.)
Moderators are needed, as shown in Dibble’s “A Rape in Cyberspace”. As I pointed out in an earlier blog, I am also a member of a much smaller community that had several hate postings. The moderator was needed to step in. However, let’s not forget, absolute power corrupts absolutely. When you give one person authority over hundreds, it’s easy for them to, not necessarily take advantage of it, but start believing they are entitled to it, and not that they are obligated toward those they are moderating. It’s basically techno-tyranny.
Another facet of theoc_slash community the cliques people seem to form. There are about half a dozen writers whose work is infinitely more popular and given more notice than others. Granted, some of these writers are talented, but they’re given almost celebrity status, something that I think no fanfiction writers should be given because, let’s be honest, we didn’t make this stuff up to begin with anyway.
For a community writing about a show about high schoolers, it’s interesting to see how much the members behave like they’re in high school. There’s the moderator, the “queen bee”, and the community members either love her and bow to her every whim or they hate her and talk about her behind her back.
Another community that I’m in, twoseekers, a Harry/Cedric pairing community, illustrates another interesting point about communities: how they can rise and fall in a short amount of time. When the fourth ‘Harry Potter’ film came out, and in part due to Robert Pattinson’s somewhat flamboyant portrayal of Cedric Diggory, the Harry/Cedric pairing exploded on the Internet. What had once been a dusty, barely-used community was suddenly bursting with posts, to the point that there was briefly a spin-off community, twoseekers_news, which catalogued the posts on the first one. It was, quite clearly, a waste of cyberspace, and quickly fell into disuse. In the months after, once the film was out of theaters, the community also fell back into unpopularity. Not completely, of course, because you can’t completely discredit the attention given by the ‘Goblet of Fire’ film, but attention did certainly plummet. The pairing was a brief fad for most, quickly picked up and then quickly put back down again.
Much like a ‘Saturday Night Live’ sketch, this blog started well, and had some good ideas, but sort of ends nowhere. There are a lot of concepts in this blog that I want to go back and flesh out with further thought.
1 comments:
Blog 8 Writing to characterize the features of your online community.
Awesome. You begin your post by listing features that define/characterize online communities:
- purpose
- people engaged in that purpose
- structures to define and maintain hierarchy: moderators, rules + processes for overseeing interaction
And then you point out that there are also unwritten rule/features that determine an unofficial hierarchy. These include a seniority system and membership in cliques. Reflecting on the structures/processes you have identified (and nosing around for subtle extensions of them) and then useing that frame as the backbone for discussing your community will give you a solid project.
As you begin your discussion - you indicate another factor: the personality of the moderator (nice and also very true). This post can easily serve as the basis for a section in your essay. It also raises questions about how moderator's get (and keep) power, how turn-overs in power take place, and whether or not there are "peaceful" processes in place for such things to happen within a given community. The whole point of discussing/describing a community is to make such observations, and consider how it affects to community's social purpose and etc. Your examples, as usual, are very strong.
And I think the term "techno-tyranny" has important implications that I would like to read more about. How is such tyranny inherent to digital spaces and why? Is it simply something participants have to accept? Does it connect to apathy/"I'm annoyed but don't have the motivation to do all the work it would take to change it" issues => which extend to real world social systems - or is it different? This would fit in the discussion section - after you characterize the space.
Side-note: I do not really mean to say this is how you have to write your essay. I am just doing the teacherly thing - rhetorical analysis - thinking about the assignment listed on your syllabus/calendar and suggesting how you can use what you have here toward meeting the objectives. Please take any comments that are useful and don't feel coerced by anything. They are just suggestions - and most of them are pretty off the top of my head.
Back to response to the post.
Keep going with the clique observations. Do you have some theories about how cliques form? Do they always center around a charismatic writer? Can/do posters foster the creation of cliques around themselves? What do the followers get out of being in the clique? Are (as in high school) the cliques competetive with one another - or do they ignore one another (also as in hs - in some cases). Do you have some examples?
You then go on to a new topic - the ephemeral nature of cyber communities - like fads. Again - this raises more questions: what are the features of enduring communities v fad communities? What happens to the old sites? (Nick's post about going to a site that was "abandoned" and constructing the lives of the civilization that lived there resonates with this line of thinking.)
It's OK for this blog to end no where - but you do have a short paper due that "document[s] rhetorical practice in a specific online community".
You could write this fairly quickly using the criteria you set out at the beginning of your blog, and developing your observations in terms of cliques and unstated rules. In some sense, just developing a set of terms of writing about online communities will be an accomplishment. Jenkins' work does not really address some of the issues you raise. You have an excellent start here.
For your long paper - you could spend some in depth time - using multiple communities as examples - to explore the social interactions you set forward here.
Good writing Kevin.
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