#online environments

[posthumanwanderings]

[fleursartificielles]

Now I am reading about how the possibility of creating multiple personas in online environments has contributed to an increase in individuals with dissociative identity disorder and how extreme multi-tasking leads to mental illness. 

[mirrormirrored]

...how are multiple realities experienced and conceptualized, when they are simultaneously complemented by experiences in virtual spaces?

"Exploring Identities Through the Internet: Youth Experiences Online"

—Mechthild Maczewski (p. 125)

Maczewski asking how online and "onground" experiences may influence and shape each other

[mirrormirrored]

One could surmise that when onground experiences do not allow for a young person to feel powerful, respected and accepted with all of her or his identities, the online virtual environment provides for a further life space in which young people’s interests, self and identities can be explored in interaction with others.

"Exploring Identities Through the Internet: Youth Experiences Online"

—Mechthild Maczewski (p. 122)

Maczewski speculates that, while community interaction is important for self-growth and exploration, young people often don't feel empowered enough to do that in their daily lives. Virtual communities, however, are predisposed to overlooking certain aspects like youth that can make people feel undervalued. The very nature of certain virtual environments give more encouragement for people to explore their identities uninhibited.

[mirrormirrored]

However, On the internet, I feel that I can explore his [my] ideas and thoughts to a fuller extent, I can write what I want and if I want to leave someone or just not want to talk to someone, I can ignore them, a nifty function that life does not have to offer. Back to my point on how I can explore who I am, through my experiances [sic] on the internet, I have found out that people tend to be more onest [sic] with what they are feeling. They tend to express their feelings and emotions in a way that I find to be very freeing. I mean, how often do people just tell you what is really on their mind and I have noticed that I tend to do the same myself. However, that sort of attitude tends to leak into my daily life more and more often. For example, today I got into a discussion on Affirmative Action with one of the more articulate speakers at my school and I pressed my case very well because I told him what I was feeling and I was very vocal on my opinion. Reality is what you make it, to me reality is both dark and ugly as well as beautiful. Who knows, that reality might not be real to anyone else, however, to me that is what it is, the internet is just another aspect of my reality and is almost as important as the “real” world. (S. 1999)

"Exploring Identities Through the Internet: Youth Experiences Online"

—Mechthild Maczewski (p. 124)

One young person shares how the nature of their online interactive experiences have influenced their "onground" expression.

[mirrormirrored]

For participation online to be meaningful for Fg. and Ky. it to enhance an existing onground interest (additional free music lyrics) or offer something that was not available in their onground communities (opportunities for youth political activism with people she enjoyed).

"Exploring Identities Through the Internet: Youth Experiences Online"

—Mechthild Maczewski (p. 122)

[touchthefarthestmoon]

We Must Not Shut Up About How Women Are Treated on the Internet

I regularly see anti-woman trolls celebrating when they think they've successfully driven a woman off the internet. This isn't a joke or an abstraction—it is a direct politically-motivated action to silence women's voices. The volume and intensity of harassment is only magnified for women of color and disabled women and trans women and other intersecting identities. And when you complain, you're told you're being "oversensitive" or "focusing on the negative" or "letting the trolls win" or, the classic, "destroying freedom of speech."