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| Online race |
| 10.04.03 (3:20 am) [edit] |
In response to [Daves] blog about identity on the Internet, I wonder if people really care (when first starting out on MOOs) how the other people describe themselves when looking for their first conversation. When I have gone onto lambdaMOO I have never thought about what description the person has given themselves and to be honest don’t really care so long they are interesting to talk to. On lambdaMOO race is not an option to specify when signing on, only gender is because of program code requirements but you have as much space as you want to write a description where race can added. I was surprised to read in Lisa Nakamuras article (Cybercultures reader, p713) that if no race was described then the user was presumed to be white due partially to the demographics of online users at the time being mostly white and the utopian belief system in MOOs (highlighted again on ‘there’ where we saw nearly all characters had white skin). Up until our last lecture, which Tom talked about race in cyberspace, I had never considered the race of a person online nor had I presumed their colour, all I have been interested in is the surroundings and chatting with others. I haven’t come across an online MOO for certain races but presume they are out there, anyway after Tom’ s discussion I realised I hadn’t seen the MOO phenomenon as being a racial space and don’t understand why someone would want to put their race in their description as an online community like lambdaMOO is meant to be a “…free space for play, strive towards policing and regulating racial discourse in the interest of social harmony” (CCR, Nakamura, p713). What are other people’s views on online race?
Ruben
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