The Online Community?

[Jonathan Randall]

The Online Community? I first started lurking on this site in Oct. 2004 when it came up on a search for "Fred Villari". I remembered this guy and his martial arts shoe ads in the 1980's and when I saw his videos advertised in Black Belt Magazine I was curious. To my great surprise, a year and a half later, I'm now a Moderator at Martial Talk with over 2,000 posts and spend a large amount of my free time here. Is this the wave of the future? Will online communities such as Martial Talk supplement or replace even the local communities of half a century ago? Thoughts?

 

[Carol]

It sure is the way of the future.

Most people hardly know their neighbors...and that is not necessarily a bad thing. Some of my closest friends are people that I originally "met" in an online community several years ago and we ended up being great friends in real life.

While I belong to a big school, not everyone is very social with one another. Most of the adults there have kids in the program, so I hardly ever find someone that wants to get together off the mat and practice or even hang out and have a cup of coffee. But....thanks to MT I've been able to meet a couple of folks in my area and even had a chance to train with them...and I hope to meet even more. I wouldn't have had this opportunity simply trying to network through my own school.

 

[Jenna]

The Online Community? I first started lurking on this site in Oct. 2004 when it came up on a search for "Fred Villari". I remembered this guy and his martial arts shoe ads in the 1980's and when I saw his videos advertised in Black Belt Magazine I was curious. To my great surprise, a year and a half later, I'm now a Moderator at Martial Talk with over 2,000 posts and spend a large amount of my free time here. Is this the wave of the future? Will online communities such as Martial Talk supplement or replace even the local communities of half a century ago? Thoughts?

Hey Jonathan A very interesting thought I wonder what lead you to this????

Obviously online communities like this lovely one here cannot provide everything that we can get within our real world local communities I think few might argue that but likewise there is a amazing world of diversity here that I know I could never hope to tap into on the local level and I do not think there is any shame or loss of values in allowing online communities to sit equally and on a par alongside the local communities. I think you are right though in many ways the old fabled communities and especially those you mention the post WWII closely knit ones my grandad would recount to me are disappearing as people seem happy to live more insular lives. I mean, I don't even know my next door neighbour except to say hello in the morning and I I only found out recently who lived down my street. But I know if there was ever a problem in my street that the sense of "community" will suddenly shine brightly as it did a while back when a water main burst and flooded several of the houses at the bottom and suddenly everyone was right there and that was encouraging to know people haven't closed themselves off altogether. Yet.....

While the online community gives us access to and brings together the most fantastic knowledge and experiences and generates friendships from among people in places that would possibly otherwise never be able to exchange viewpoints, while all this is amazing I think it would be sad if we allowed the online to completely usurp the real because that is us moving voluntarily into the sterile clinical realms of those scifi films like Gattaca or The Island or whatever. Still not to take anything away from MT and I mention this wonderful little patch of cyberspace that is MT to the exclusion of the other MA forums which are not discussion platforms at all but merchandising shops for egotists and bigots and idiots.

Yay MT

Yr most obdt hmble srvt,
Jenna

 

[Phadrus00]

Jonathon,

Great question! I have been part of online communities since the dawn of them on Bulletin Board Systems (Yes I am old AND that much of a geek! *grin*) and have watched it expand into a mainstream way of communicating with other people. It is an amazing use of the Internet and shows the poeer and democracy of networking in that it allows people to share a common interest despite being physically dispersed across the globe.

But while this is an amazing use of technology the reality is that it cannot replace real face to face contact. The trend now in web applications is to marry up interests with physical locations, to connect the cyber-world back to the real-world. It's not enough to know people that share my interests, I wnat to also be able to meet them and interact in the physical realm. We are seeing it in mobile phone applications and ad hoc networks that allow you to connect to other people within a radius of your current physical location.

Will it change society? Yes almost certainly! We will tend to meet more people who share our interests at some level and I think we will become more aware of what other people are interested in. Therre is a risk that we will all become more "specialized" in that we interact more with people that share our interests and less with people that we have little in common with. Perhaps we will have to hope that in the future power outages are frequent enough to keep us mixing with people we have nothing in common with... candlelight is good for that sort of thing.. *smile*

Rob

 

[beau_safken]

I'm kinda glad to have people that are in online communities at time. Not only do you get to have people that you like and can chat with..but don't have to do anything like: ride to the car parts store, walking dogs and the like.

Course it would be fun to do a picnic eventually but hey that could happen in the future... Transporters....Yea....

 

[Ping898]

I think it is the way of the future for a number of reasons

1) easier to find people of similar interests
2) easier to spend 10 minutes here 6 times a day "socializing" than it is to sometimes carve out an hour's time at some local group
3) easier for you to be who you want. If you are an introvert in person, you can be an extrovert online. If you are wheel-chair bound in person, no one online needs to know. You can escape reality if you want.

 

[Phil Elmore]

Online discussion communities are double-edged Swords of Damocles hanging over all of us, if you'll forgive me the compound metaphor. While they do indeed have their uses, they also facilitate and encourage the worst in us -- primarily due to the anonymity and distance separating those who come into conflicts of opinion. People posting to such communities tend to forget that everything they say is being archived, somewhere -- which may come back to haunt them later.

 

[Shirt Ripper]

The various powerlifting and strongman boards have been invaluable to me in getting connected to the real community in that pursuit...the same can be said to a lesser degree of this one for this pursuit. They are okay by me thus far...

 

[RandomPhantom700]

The Online Community? I first started lurking on this site in Oct. 2004 when it came up on a search for "Fred Villari". I remembered this guy and his martial arts shoe ads in the 1980's and when I saw his videos advertised in Black Belt Magazine I was curious. To my great surprise, a year and a half later, I'm now a Moderator at Martial Talk with over 2,000 posts and spend a large amount of my free time here. Is this the wave of the future? Will online communities such as Martial Talk supplement or replace even the local communities of half a century ago? Thoughts?

Dunno if it will replace in-person communities, but the online community is certainly an equally substantial part of modern life. I mean, look no further than MySpace.com. Some people such as myself honestly have an easier time getting to know people online rather than spur-of-the-moment in-person encounters. I've met a few people, and maintained long-distance friendships, quite well through MySpace. Online communities have a few appealing qualities; you control the level of anonymity, there's less pressure, there's usually some common ground involved (martial arts here, for example), and the only thing you have to pay is your internet service. I think it's the appeal of socializing at your own pace that makes online communities so attractive, and successful.

Anyway, just my 2 cents.