DTC 475 Blog Post Four

In my opinion we have always shown degrees of ourselves in different characters at all times – virtual or in “real life”. There is no separation of the two. But are we really? Bell and Bauman argue that “virtual membership is elective and selective” (Bell). Making this virtual membership no different from RL communities-we can select what we are part of and have to be accepted by selected community. For example in a RL community, a student at a university is part of the university community but in order to be part of a university athletic team that student must make the selection to tryout for their team and also be accepted and pass their tests into the team to play. See because even if I wanted to part of something sometimes you have to get an approval from that group and that includes paying or passing to be able to join and speak their lingo.
The image projected by the individual changes as you change your interaction with a certain community because of the specified language of that group it may not be just the language it self it can be broken down even to the vocabulary of a doctor as an example. I think that if you’re part of an online community you get to choose and be chosen as well for participation.
The view of an online community as being a peg community is probably true because both virtual and RL communities use the same process for participation but one is virtual and the other is in physical form.

I think I will use the following for assignment # 2:
http://www.craftforum.com/?gclid=CIW6ou2tjKQCFRL4iAodkhsbHQ
http://www.getcrafty.com/
http://forums.craftzine.com/
I chose these because I LOVE to create things and I have never participated in any online communities for crafters. Now I can take time and analyze these three to see what the similarities and differences are.

Bell, David. The Cybercultures Reader. 2nd. 1. New York, NY: Routledge,
2000. 254-63. Print.