Nochmals zum Thema Virtual Communities, zu dem mich letzte Woche eine Forscherin aus Lettland befragt hatte (s. letzten Blogeintrag). Sie hatte dann nämlich noch ein Nachfrage. Und zwar ging es darum, dass meine Hypothese ja besagt, dass es echte virtuelle Gemeinschaften - ‚echt’ im Sinne von gleichwertig zu denen im sogenannten realen Leben (ich spreche eigentlich lieber von der „sensual world“; hier noch mal der Link zu dem Artikel in CMC) - nicht gibt. Was nun, ist das aber für ein Wesen, das sich in den Cyberwelten und Netzwerken tummelt. Ein neues Wesen? Teil des Menschen vor der Tastatur? Oder nicht doch der ganze Mensch?

„Q: to what extent is it possible to separate the virtual identity from the one in the sensual world?
Only to a very small extent, I guess. I have been heavy into Role Playing Games back in the Nineties and do thus have some experience in assuming roles which are not so different from the roles you take on in Second Life or WoW.

My experience is that these roles are facets of yourself. You take on a specific role. This might or might not correspond to your personality. If, for example, you play a barbarian, I do not think that this necessarily reflects your own inner barbarianism. You might just as well play something which is totally different from your real self. I, though, always somehow ended up playing a bard; even if I started out with a ranger, over the time he became more and more bard-like in behavior and in skills. And I guess that does reflect something of my own personality. So it might be hard to lie in RPGs.

But be that as it may, what you play in RPGs or MMORPGs is a role and as that it never encompasses your whole self, but only facets of it. So the role is a separation from your own being, even if yourself shows through to a big extent. And that is also true for the people you are online. But, for starters, on a physical level your online-self is lacking all the substantialities of your bodyliness, and that makes you something other than your whole self.

You can still take on roles in Facebook and Xing. On Xing for example - which is a business-network - you take on the role of your professional self and more or less suppress aspects which you think are not appropriate for your professional appearance. At least, I guess, this is true for a vast majority of people on Xing or LinkedIn. And though you are more your private self on FB, you play a role there also, albeit that this role might reflect more of your real self than in business. It is even advisable to act strategically on FB since the Net never forgets and in the future you might regret the one behavior or the other if you act purely on impulses.

This leaves us with an un-whole appearance as soon as you enter the online-worlds. You can, of course, appear un-whole in RL, i.e. the sensual world, but in cyberspace you are incomplete if you wish to or not. Even if you would succeed in being your true psychological self online, you would still miss the body and its expressions. Thus you are not whole.

The human psyche, that is at least my belief, is not equipped to really cope with this not being your whole self. You can play your roles on this basis, but you cannot be your true self. Being yourself is on the other hand a necessity for a wholesome community. At least for a special type of community - the sociality in all its richness. This special community needs to allow their participants to be their true selfs. They do not need to show their self, but they need to have the possibility to express it if need be. And to achieve this possibility you need the sensual experiences in all their richness because man is a sensual being which needs to hear, see, listen, smell and touch. Human psyche has need of this sensory part.

Online does not allow for this. So online cannot provide wholesome social community, and that is the sort of community I was referring to in my article. Back then, I spoke of hearth fires. You only experience the value of a hearth fire if you are able to huddle together before it. Second Life, WoW, FB, Xing might constitute rich additions to your life, but a healthy basis in the sensual world is necessary for a complete life. And part of this necessity is real-life-community because man is a social animal. And so I would always advise to never neglect this point. People, especially people born after 1990, which rose up using online-realities all the time, are in danger to forget their physical basis if they overemphasize the value of their online-lives.

Try this online ...

Q: And if it is "separatable" enough, does the same criteria for forming a relationship, be it personal or be it creating a community, applies to the virtual self as it does for the self of the sensual world? The virtual self lives pretty much its own life (especially if we take such forms of CMC as SecondLife), why can't we assign it an option to be a part of a community?
That´s kind of schizoid, isn´t it? If the online-self lives in its own world in the sense that it lives in another world than the physical basis, that sounds very unhealthy in my ears. But yes, we can assign it to be part of a community in which we than invest only a part of our own being. But again, that´s not our whole self, and wholeness is what man strives for. The other things are play. It´s okay to play, but we should stay aware of our whole self.

Q: I have myself experienced cases when the trust to the virtual identity of a person far exceeds the trust to the "real" identity
That is a subjective experience of yours which I do not doubt. But I have not experienced something alike. Liking someone - yes. Trusting, feeling friendship to someone I do only know online - no. At most I sometimes have the feeling after conversing with someone online that this someone would be a person I would like to make friends with. But I cannot before having at least shaken hands.

Maybe, I have to reconsider my point on this aspect, but I guess, I can´t as long as I do not experience something alike for myself. Well, taken this way, it comes down to quantities and one would have to count opinions: "How do you think about this?"

Q: What criterias or rules (besides those you already mentioned - trust and friendship) should a group of virtually closely related, never-met-in-sensual-world people challenge to say eventually: we are a community?
Shared experiences might be a way. I guess that for example the peoples in Iran which stood up against President Ahmadinedschad, and which were often organizing over different cities and vast landscapes by online means, and which in vast numbers might never have met, that these people might feel a trusting community. But I guess that these people also would have at top point of their wish-list the point "Meet the others!"

Shared experiences do form very reliable bonds and so they might be a substitute for lacking physical experiences. One should make this topic of a survey ...

Tags:CMC, Social Networks, Netizen, Facebook, Identität, Selbst