Square Pegs

1) In David Bell's article "Webs as pegs", he dicusses an idea called "peg communities". This idea was devceloped by Bauman who explained it as, "...coat pegs on which we choose to temporarily hang parts of our identities," (Bell, 254). I agree with this notion of online communities being coat pegs for the different aspects of our lives and personalities.

For example, in the meat space of the real world we become limited to identify ourselves through clothing, hair, personal belongings, profession, social activities, etc. These things are again limited to the area in which we live. Someone living in a sparsely populated community in the midwest may not have as many places to shop (to buy clothes), or places to work or hang out. You thus become forced to identify yourself within your immediate surrounding environment.

However, with virtual communities, you become able to explore different ideologies, technologies, social cliques, physical looks as well as things like movies, games, music, artists and books. I am no artist by any means however, I use photobucket to post and share photos and videos I have made (and photoshopped) and am able to share them among fellow amateur photo/videographers. While, in the Tri-Cities, I am not able to share these photos at say, an art gallery because I am not trained, do not have any professional equipment and am not a part of that community.

Obviously, that is just one example of how a person can express themselves or an aspect of themselves in a virtual community where they might not be able to in a meat space community.


2) The 3 sites I would like to choose for Assignment #2 are photobucket.com, deviantart.com and flickr.com. These are all sites which serve to build amateur and professional art communities and also serve those who simply want an easy way to manage their photos, videos, and art online. I have accounts with two of these sites and have friends who use these sites and I would like to compare the usability, uniqueness and set-up of each of these sites.

Burnett, Robert, and David Marshall. Web Theory: an introduction. 1st. New York, NY: Routledge, 2003. 81-104.