Virtual Communities

K I'm in a really weird mood... Have an accounting test this avo and a film essay due. rah. Woe is me. So this week was all about online communities. Again, kinda creeps me out but, what can you do? In Holmes' reading he acknowledges that due to the nature of informational culture, the geographical community suffers. I think this is why I get weirded out by the whole thing, the thought of people glued to the computer all day being 'technosocial' as oppose to being 'real-life social' (this is very much a generalization, I know) annoys me. I understand that virtual communication can create life long relationships and strong ties between different people, but I struggle to get the 'emotional investment' side of it all when you couldn't physically recognize the person...
This, however is just me being narrow minded, I'm sure theres much more to it. In our lecture Erika discussed the importance of strong and weak ties in a virtual community. These ties are the social bonds that an online community can create. There is a criteria for determining the strength of these bonds; time, emotional intensity, mutual trust and reciprocity. Heaps of different factors contribute to the success or failure of each relationship, or community as a whole. Language, religion, experiences, upbringing all determine how the ties will come together. The most imperative of these is language, a shared code as a tool for communication. This 'blogger' site involves us all in a virtual community. Despite the fact that my online behavior is probably very different to others in coms205, it is through this assignment that we have all been tied together. Quite nifty.
Cool cool so now I best be studying for that test...how exciting.