WEEK 10 – “Games and Avatar: Facebook-The Good, The Bad and The Ugly”

I used to have a Facebook account up until a few months ago, when I finally decided that I have had enough and deactivated it. I found that I could no longer divide my time equally between the ‘real’ world and the ‘virtual’ world: I realized that, little by little, I started spending more and more time in the Facebook world than I should have in the ‘real’ world.

Have a presentation to do? I’d post a groaning status in my Facebook before doing the research. I should be should be doing my assignment? Ah, I’d better take care of my games in Facebook first, almost Level 51. Not up for cooking tonight? I wrote on my sister’s wall to ask her to cook.



Facebook is one of the latest trends in social networking and is used by over 10 million people worldwide – Facebook (FB) started out as a site designed for and available to students at Harvard University but it is now a public site and has become the number one choice of communication (Stern&Taylor, 2001, p. 9)



What was once a little just-for-fun turned into an addiction: I and I finally took a leap in faith and deactivated my account. And the uproar it created amongst my friend was unbelievable: I was interrogated by many and were demanded to make a new one. All along my brain was going: Don’t you think Facebook is disassociating you from the real world?

What was once a direct interaction between two people – the presence of physical touches and a face-to-face interaction – is now replaced by ‘hugs and kisses’ application and writing on each other’s walls?

Fung notes that online communication becomes a platform for users to communicate and interact with others who they think share the same values and beliefs, thus creating imagined communities and the bonds that ties them together are essentially communicative act (2006, p. 134). These bonds, however, as Fung further notes that, will end if someone cuts off his or her communicative, often due to busy schedule during examination time or when he or she moves to a new stage of life.

So, was I right to have closed it down? Were they right to have insisting on me keeping it active?

The golden question is this: In this modern era where our world is shaped by advanced technologies: where does ‘real’ ends and ‘virtual’ begin?

According to Robins, cyberspace and virtual reality give us a chance to substitute a reality for a more conformity with our desires for the unsatisfactory real one (2000, p. 92).

And Fung notes how extended social network – the extended brotherhood or sisterhood on the online communities – also enhances social relationships in real life (2006, p. 132).

It is true that we cannot live without technologies, especially in this age where technologies play a significant role in our everyday lives – let it be in education, business, government, or simply for leisure reason, almost everything nowadays are relying on to technologies to work or operate.


References:
Fung, A. (2006). Bridging cyberlife and real life: A study of online communities in Hong Kong. In Silver, D. M. and Adrienne Steve, (eds.), Critical cyberculture studies (pp. 129-139). New York: New York University Press. Retrieved June 21, 2010, from UBD Ebrary Website.

Robins, K. (2000). Cyberspace and the world we live in. in Bell, D. and Kennedy, B. M. (eds). The cybercultures reader (pp. 77-95). London: Routledge.

Stern, L. A., & Taylor, K. (2007). Social Networking on Facebook. Journal of the Communication, Speech & Theatre Association of North Dakota, 9-20.