Weekly Reflection Post for 10/27 Class

First, I’d like to apologize for being a tad late on my post for this week.  I literally just got back to my apartment five minutes ago from my interviews in New York.

In the remainder of her The Breakup 2.0, Ilana Gershon continues discussing the differing media ideologies of different parties using social media and what cultural significance these differences have.  I thought her discussion of Isabella and her ex-wife was especially interesting.  Gershon discusses how what was important about this scenario was the media used, not necessarily the message being mediated.  For example, the ex-wife doesn’t respond to Isabella’s emails but has no problem immediately responding to Isabella’s texts.  That is because of the media ideologies they established in their relationship; text is impersonal and limited so it is ok even after the breakup but email allows for more heartfelt and deeper feelings and desires to be expressed and so cross the boundary that the ex-wife has.

In the first section of Coming of Age in Second Life, Tom Boellstorff focuses on the why and how of his ethnographic exploration of Second Life.  He emphasized the fact that he was using traditional methods to explore a new realm of culture (even the title harkens back to Margaret Meade).  He also commented a lot on Second Life’s status as a virtual world.  He argued that Second Life is as real as the “real” world in many ways, including the variety of social interactions that occur.  He makes a very convincing argument here, showing how any social construct can be interpreted as “virtual” yet still be a real realm of culture.