Joining Up

This exercise was a little strange for me in that I've seemingly joined whatever Internet communities I would be interested in already. When I first started using e-mail extensively in 1994, one of the first ways I began connecting to people on line was through listservs, mostly connected to music groups. Over time, I join, left, and rejoined a seemingly endless number of groups on the Internet, chat rooms I was a regular of or message boards I spent far too much time caring about. These days, I try to avoid as many of these gathering places as possible, mostly just because I'm far more protective of my time these days. I exchange emails with people from back in the day when I was a part of those groups, and I'm connected to a number of Facebook groups that I have varying levels of interaction with, but I was reluctant to get into another interactive fray.

Still, since it's an assignment, I had to do it, so I signed up for a writing group listserv here in Tucson. I thought since I'm working on a book and working on a degree connected to writing, that seems like the most appropriate group to join. The process was simple after finding the group on Yahoo!, send in an email and wait for the administrator to approve my status. Once I received my confirmation via email, I wrote in with an introductory email describing myself a bit. The next day there were a few replies from people welcoming to the group, which was not terribly surprising, and a few people asked follow up questions. Afterwards, I participated in the group's discussions when I had something to contribute. I don't think I'm going to stick around in the group now that I'm no longer obligated to do so (nor did I choose to get in on the in-person meetups the group had), but overall I was welcomed and appreciated (as best as I could tell). Remarkably, there weren't really any disagreements during my time in the group, although the generally genial nature of the people I “met” would lead me to believe that this particular group didn't have too much drama. The interaction was relatively valuable, and I could see where some people might find value in being part of a community of people near them with similar interests and concerns.

What did my time in the group teach me about culture? Not all that much, I suppose. I was trying to think of what Neil Postman would think of the fact that I would join a group of people all within twenty miles of my own home, and with his generally dismal outlook on online interactions, I think he would have found the idea upsetting. Instead of being involved in people's lives intimately through a person-to-person social club or group, I chose (well, chose to because of a class) to interact sporadically on my own schedule, with the ability to check in and out at any time. While there are certainly disadvantages to internet-only interaction, these sorts of groups are (for better or worse) perfect for our overly-busy American culture. While the post-war generation had their social clubs, bowling leagues, etc, time constraints and the end of the simple 9-5 workday have taken away those opportunities. Instead, internet communities offer an opportunity to connect to others with similar interests without sacrificing exceptional amounts of time.