Of gardens and alleys
Walled gardens have existed for centuries, where people of power set up boundaries and within their walls you are subject to not only their rules, but the rule of the community that takes place inside.
The internet has always been a place of walled gardens. One of the broadest progenitors of internet culture, AOL, was a walled garden. Today more walled gardens than ever exist to entice and trap us.
Theoretically, we can wander between these gardens at will. The virtual world is different though, we create our own persona within each community. We could be different people entirely from one garden to the next in a way we can't in real life. Wear your Twitter face into Pinterest and see how shocked people are. Would you wear your Fetlife mask into Facebook?
This has created something of a fragmentation issue. Can we honestly say that there's one place where we are all of ourselves? I don't think I can. There doesn't seem to be one place where I can be all of me. Each community, each garden, has different expectations of who I am. It's mostly my own fault, and it's not entirely different from the real world, just more exaggerated.
In the alleys of the internet you can be yourself, maybe even too much of yourself, free from the expectations of a community. That's where the trolls lurk.
Is there a virtual home anywhere? Is there a place where you can be all of you at once?
The internet has always been a place of walled gardens. One of the broadest progenitors of internet culture, AOL, was a walled garden. Today more walled gardens than ever exist to entice and trap us.
Theoretically, we can wander between these gardens at will. The virtual world is different though, we create our own persona within each community. We could be different people entirely from one garden to the next in a way we can't in real life. Wear your Twitter face into Pinterest and see how shocked people are. Would you wear your Fetlife mask into Facebook?
This has created something of a fragmentation issue. Can we honestly say that there's one place where we are all of ourselves? I don't think I can. There doesn't seem to be one place where I can be all of me. Each community, each garden, has different expectations of who I am. It's mostly my own fault, and it's not entirely different from the real world, just more exaggerated.
In the alleys of the internet you can be yourself, maybe even too much of yourself, free from the expectations of a community. That's where the trolls lurk.
Is there a virtual home anywhere? Is there a place where you can be all of you at once?