Participatory Culture
I’m not really a gamer. I can’t for my life play RPG (I’m still not totally sure what that means exactly) games like Final Fantasy, World of Warcraft, or Zelda. Maybe because of my incapability, I don’t particularly like them. Or maybe it’s because my parents never spoiled me with those shiny expensive gaming consoles, and so my definition of fun didn’t revolve around gaming. I think that gaming is a rather solitary and lonely hobby; especially for kids who are an only-child, and whose obsession of gaming prevents them from socializing. Yes, it’s interactive and participatory, but only with the game console.
With social networking a huge success in the digital era, it really emphasizes our desire to be connected to everyone (I don’t know if gamers are too, but they probably are). You can find a huge list of popular social networking sites, and it grows longer everyday. Social networking sites allow users to chat with other users and publish comments, photos, videos and other personalized content for the each other to see. I’m sure I don’t need to list any examples.
The most popular social site of all time has got to be Facebook - your friends have an account, your entire family (yes, unfortunately for the young ones, the oldies are in too) has their own accounts, teachers are on it, and of course, I’m on it too. It is the very definition of social networking - there is not a single application on Facebook that is made for your eyes only. Every application on the site, even if it is a one player game, involves participation or the indirect inclusion of others. You may play Word Challenge (my one and only favourite game on Facebook) on your own, but you will be compared to your friends’ scores and indirectly interact with them when you try and beat their score. Boy, do my friends make me feel stupid. To make myself feel better, I keep playing and playing, trying to beat whoever is in front of me. What a great way to keep us on Facebook, eh?
Okay, so maybe I'm not a Twitter person either (sorry for the misleading intertextual reference in this post's title. It's actually a childhood hand game). Facebook is definitely a big part of my social participation. It connects me to almost all my friends, allowing me to keep in touch with ones that are too far to see. I can check up on and message faraway friends and have them reply at their convenience. It demolished the time difference barrier, which allowed me to connect with travel buddies that otherwise I would never be able to talk to. MSN is not popular in their countries, and time differences between Asia and North America only allowed my friends and I to talk on MSN only if one of us was staying up very, very late at night (which rarely happens)
Being a social shutterbug, I brought my first digital camera to school with me every single day (until it died a year later from excessive use) and took pictures of all my friends and everything that we did. What I loved about Facebook was the ability to upload infinite photo albums and could tag my friends faces in them. I hated taking pictures and not being able to show my friends, so the tagging and the many friends I had on Facebook gave me the chance to conveniently show all my photos. Getting comments on them were particularly enjoyable, and being able to get a broad readership from my friends was a great thing for me.
Many people believe that online networks like Facebook and gaming sites deter people from socializing face-to-face. It all really depends on the theory of media ecology - whether you have a balance between your online and physical world, because too much of it will indeed be bad. To me, Facebook is a way to keep in touch when I can’t see my friends, not a substitute for seeing them - just like how Theuth says that writing is a receipt for recollection, but not for memory (Playboy).
Works Cited
Playboy. “The Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan.” Playboy Magazine. March 1969. 2 November 2009. Web.
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