Frustarations in Cyberspace

To be completely honest I was not very excited about this week's assignment. Joining an online forum to talk to people in cyberspace was not something I was looking forward to. I thought about Facebook and Myspace and looked at how I used social networking in my everyday life. Although I am not a Facebook user, I do have a Myspace page and do check it fairly regularly. However, I do not communicate with people that I don't know through Myspace. Everyone I talk to through social networking are people that I am acquainted with and have engaged with in immediate communication. When I thought of joining a chat forum a couple things came to mind. The first thing I thought of was a people who cruise the internet, talking to people, and pretend to be someone other than themselves. Maybe they are not telling the truth about their age, status, motives, or even their gender. This is not something I wanted to experience first-hand. The second thing that came to mind was my experience joining a chat board a few years back. I joined a online chat community that was dedicated to a new television show I was interested in at the time. The show got canceled half way through the season and four years later I am still receiving junk emails from people wanting to be my friend who joined the same forum. Despite my previously bad experience I chose to join a chat group dedicated to a newer television that I follow and watch on a regular basis. I thought this new show was in no danger of being canceled and would allow me to give an online forum a second chance.

On this past Tuesday I tried to join the HBO chat group for True Blood, the new vampire show I watch on a regular basis and follow fairly close. Just as with any other website I had to register and create an account. I entered my email address, created a password, and entered the annoying, jumbled text for authentication. I then was taken to a screen telling me to check my email for a verification code to complete the process. Of course I checked my mailbox only to find it empty and not containing any email from HBO with a verification code. I gave it some time and checked again. After several times checking my mailbox and receiving nothing I thought it was possible I entered a typo in the address when I first signed up. After going back to HBO.com and completing the entire registration process I found out my original idea was wrong; I received an error message stating that the email address provided was already registered. There was not a lot I could do other than wait. On Friday afternoon I had finally gotten a confirmation from HBO, seventy two hours after I originally signed up.

In any other situation I would not be particularly frustrated but due to the urgency of this assignment I was not pleased. Perhaps it was nothing more than Murphy's Law, or perhaps we become too dependent on the internet and technology. Postman would argue that although technology itself is not a bad thing, too much of it can be harmful. My experience was just one minor example but it showed me how reliant we have come to be on the internet and technology. This says a lot about our culture; we expect technology to be efficient and work whenever we need it to, but we know this is not always the case. We cannot rely on technology, and especially the internet, to always be reliable. When our society becomes completely dependent on technology we put ourselves at its (technology) mercy. I believe our culture has become so technologically infatuated that we let the internet and technology run our lives. By doing this we are subject to many problems that we would not otherwise encounter.

In the interim of waiting for a verification email from HBO I decided to look and see what else I could do to solve this problem. My solution was to buy a cheesy application for my iphone that allowed me to talk to other people who were interested in skateboarding and snowboarding. When I started to do this I looked at what other people were saying and made it a point to respond to all of the posted threads before starting a new one. This seemed to be what Wood and Smith refer to as characteristics of the group and its members. The commonalities between all of the group members determined how much interaction occurred between us. Responding to the other posts before posting my own seemed like the appropriate thing to do. Once I did I noticed that the people I responded to posted back and responded to my thread. It seemed like a courtesy to do this. I also noticed the communication being very informal and brief. I am not so sure if this was due to the fact it was an online forum, or just because people in this group were responding via iphone and did not want to take the time to make complete statements.

My experience was overall frustrating and not something I would want to go through again. I was finally able to reach some people in cyberspace and converse with them. However, this is not something I see myself continuing any time soon. I think I have had enough chat forum experience for now and hope to not receive any junk mail from HBO in the near future.