At the time when I first started playing World of Warcraft the game was pushing 14 million subscribers. That's a huge fan base. Among all those millions of people, I managed to form friendships with a few. These friendship's were not real friendship's in the sense that we did things together outside the realm of the game. Inside the game we were friends and like any good friendship there was a sense of loyalty. My group of friends knew what to expect from each other inside the game even though their real life may leave more to be desired.
Comparing the online music community and the online gaming community I would say they are very similar. Both communities brought people together who share a common interest. I would imagine a lot of these people would never associate with one another outside the area of interest. This to me is the magic and downfall of the online community. The power of the online community allows for people living in remote areas of the world and people who chose to live a remote life to engage with other human beings. This engagement, although artificial, may be the only contact some of these people have with other humans. Having human contact is good. Not having face to face human contact is bad. I know first hand how detrimental online gaming can be to real life.
For about two years, my life was work, come home and play, eat, sleep, and start all over again the next day. Some days I would find my self late to work, not a good thing. Long nights playing a video game led to a lack of sleep and poor work performance. I was able to see the negative aspect of my actions and developed some control. I survived and made it through, but this was not the case for everyone I knew. The game of World of Warcraft is a community. Like any community talk gets around. People share things with others like they would share in person. News about birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, births of new children, all are shared openly. I even heard about at least two divorces and one relationship break up. This connection to real life and the escape from real life is what makes an online community special.
What was not mentioned in the article by Nancy Baym is the fact that people are different while online compared to real life. An online community offers people the opportunity to be someone that they are not. People can hide anonymously behind some kind of online profile hiding their true self. This opens the door for deceit and victimization of the weak and naive. Following the in game chat I was able to notice that people will fall for just about anything. Some people build so much trust with people playing the game that they forget how to figure things out for themselves.
Nancy Baym describes the positive side towards online communities, but the dark side of online communities can not be forgotten. This is the internet we are speaking about after all. Like real life there are good and there are bad. I believe that online communities are great. They bring together a diversified group of people under one common theme. The internet was made to transfer knowledge and online communities does just that.
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