All Dressed Up With Nowhere to Go (Virtual Communities)

Virtual communities provide people with similar interests the opportunity to interact and share ideas in an online environment, regardless of geographic location. This facilitates a plethora of online collectives hosting environments of interaction for members of minority groups that often find themselves ostracized from mainstream society. Flew cites the following explanation for such participatory behaviour; “They will be communities not of common location, but of common interest. In each geographic sector the total number of users will be large enough to support extensive general purpose information processing and storage facilities. Life will be happier [for] the online individual because the people with whom one interacts with most strongly will be selected more by commonality of interests and goals than by accidents of proximity.” Whereby online hubs are established for interests groups, hereby promoting development and expansion of the group, be it ethnic, socio-political and subcultural.

The most publicised and notable virtual community is the subculture of emo. Hartley defines a subculture as "a group of individuals who share particular interests, ideologies and practices," which often challenges mainstream and popular culture. Virtual communities enable the cultivation of subcultures in an online environment, whereby users can establish their identity. According to Thornton, communities are not forming out of resistance, and rather out of shared tastes and interests. Thornton refers to these communities as ‘taste cultures’, whereby members oppose mainstream discourses in a shared online experience.

Social networking interfaces, most significantly MySpace and forums, have rapidly expanded the global networking potential of the emo subculture. Brian Bailey of the University of Rochester defines emo as a “youth subculture that listens to a specific genre of music, which is characterized by feelings of vulnerability and a willingness to express heart-felt confessions about adolescence.” Emo emerged in the mid to late 1980’s from the Washington D.C hardcore punk scene with bands such as Minor Threat. The style differed from the typical punk in terms of lyrical content and sound. Whereby hardcore punk was about aggression, emo focussed more specifically upon emotion and personal experiences, hence the name. It began with bands such as The Promise Ring and Rites of Spring. Emo then experienced three separate waves of expansion and evolution, the third (and present) wave began operating within the height of internet culture from 2000 and into the present. It represents the transition from an underground scene to a globally recognised subculture. Emo is categorised by a style of music, dark attire, styled hair, heavy eye makeup and a general sense of brooding and teenage angst.

Virtual communities helped to mold the subculture by allowing followers to network with other likeminded people and establish a sense of uniformity and identity across the global subculture. Operating upon the idea of collective intelligence, whereby no one knows everything, but everyone knows something, and together resources and ideas can be pooled and combined.

However consequentially the rapid expansion of emo as a virtual community has left the subculture open to mainstream exploitation in what Thornton describes as the “subcultural kiss of death”. Whereby over time the music transitioned from bands such as Mineral to Jimmy Eat World to My Chemical Romance and the traditionally underground style found itself gaining attention from commercial media outlets such as MTV. Where in a movement which had traditionally drawn so heavily upon the ideology of DIY, bands tagged as emo were being signed to major labels such as Capitol and Warner Reprise. And where the expansion in online participatory culture has led to excessive media attention has cultivated the intended perception of a member of the societal movement of emo. Whereby in its own fantastic paradoxical hypocrisy members construct their appearance upon a popular mainstream understanding of emo. The movement feeds off the mainstream presumption of what they should wear, listen to and how they should behave. Consequentially nullifying the social purpose of emo as a subculture and condemning its existence as cosmetic.

However that is not to say that emo is not a successful and important virtual community. It merely demonstrates the powerful effect online and virtual communities can have upon subcultures, which as demonstrated can be either positive or negative. Mainstream exploitation may have signalled the decline in the social importance of emo as a subculture, however the commercial opportunities within the movement have rapidly expanded, and the subsidiary music genres have experienced a massive growth in exposure and popularity, which for many could be heralded as a positive. Consequences aside, it is irrefutable to say that virtual communities have a critical importance in society and hold a powerful position on society.

References:

Jones. (1998) cited in; Flew, Terry. (2004). Virtual Cultures in Flew, Terry, New Media: an introduction, Melbourne: OUP, pp.61-82. Queensland University of Technology: Course Materials Database https://cmd.qut.edu.au./cmd/KCB295/KCB295_BK_57409.pdf (accessed May 1, 2008)

Hartley, J. (2002). Communication, Cultural and Media Studies: The Key Concepts, 3^rd Edition. London: Routledge

Thornton. (1995) cited in Hartley, J. (2002). Communication, Cultural and Media Studies: The Key Concepts, 3^rd Edition. London: Routledge