My Culture is Web Culture

Web culture, as defined by the book Web Theory:

"The manner in which the Web represents, enacts, and supports the network society and how its users construct a space that exemplifies the fragmentation of the postmodern and the flows of information that loosely underwrite a sense of dispersed globalization and identity."

...I'm sure that's supposed to be English. You tell me. These definitions really do nothing for my understanding of the term. For an introductory text, they assume we have a lot of knowledge already. But at the same time, they feel the need to complete words like webcamera, because we might not know what a webcam is? Come on. (Okay, soapbox moment over.)

When I think of web culture, I think of basically what I've grown up on. Now, a lot of my experience has to do with fan culture, although I know that's not the only sort of culture on the web. What web culture means to me is this new method of networking between people, and the new ways that information can be shared through digital formats.

Since I was twelve years old, basically since I've been using the Internet, I've been active in fan culture on the web. First, it came through making fan sites. This was before the more community-oriented sites were available, and the Internet seemed like a much smaller place. I might have linked to some other websites on my own, but there was very little communication with other people. When I became interested in a new show or book or movie, I made a new website. There must be dozens of old Angelfire websites floating around out there with my crappy teenage writing on them.

After the websites came the communities. A few years later, I began to use sites like Yahoo!Groups and LiveJournal, networking with other fans to form communities and friendships. The Internet suddenly exploded with people, all out there on their blogs, ready to give their opinions and show off their fanfic, fanart, videos, icons. That's when the idea of web culture first started with me, though I didn't know the term for it. But here was this whole world of other people who were interested in the same things I was interested in. The Internet did become that global village, everyone and everything available to me if I could find the right links and communities.

I will admit, there is the "dislocation of identity and community" that this book talks about. I am not, perhaps, the same person I am online as I am in the real world. Some of my friendships are with people I've never met, people whose real names I don't know. But this new culture has its advantages, too. There are millions of people out there who share my interests, and I never would have found them if it had not been for web culture and the opportunities it provides for worldwide networking.