The Effect of Online Societies IRL, Part Five (and Bibliography)

Entertainment

            We’ve already touched on the issue of online societies that revolve around internet gaming, but because of its popularity, it deserves its own section in this paper.  Online gaming is a multi-billion dollar industry that caters to almost every demographic in some respect.  For the sake of this paper, I will be examining the more addictive and more societal MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game) and other “hardcore” gaming societies rather than the millions of casual players who tend not to be as involved in their games.       

            To start, the MMORPG is arguably the most prevalent and most societal genre of game in existence today.  This genre is defined by games with high production value, hundreds of hours of gameplay, and massive player bases.  One of the most popular MMORPGs is Blizzard Entertainment’s World Of Warcraft, which at its peak had over 12 million players (forbes.com). This game sparked controversy due to reports that many players were becoming addicted to the game and were sacrificing their real lives to spend time win the game. More on that later.

            As a former player of World of Warcraft, I can attest to the fact that the online society of the game is extremely prevalent.  WoW players have their own language, customs, social norms, rules, and hierarchy.  Because of the hundreds or sometimes thousands of hours that players spend in the game world, the umbrella society of WoW is also paired with dozens and dozens of sub societies that have their own rules and systems of interaction.  Within the game, there are three major types of player societies; Player versus Player (PvP), Player versus Environment (PvE), and Roleplayers (RP).  Once a player has chosen which of these three groups they want to be a part of, they then have to decide what class to play.  Each class is different and determines how one can play the game.  After this, players split up into guilds that are groups of players who bond together to achieve common goals and spend a lot of time together in game.  There are further sub societies within guilds as well.  Do you get the point?  Online games like this create extremely complex societies within them. Without these societies, the game world would likely crumble and descend into anarchy, but because players arrange themselves into these online societies, order is maintained. 

            Now, if you’ve never played a game like this before, you may be unfamiliar with how in-depth the life of a guild member is.  For this example, I’ll be using my current experience in a guild for the upcoming MMORPG entitled Guild Wars 2.  Yes, I said upcoming.  The game hasn’t even released yet and I am already well embedded in my guild.  We have weekly meetings to discuss new members, most of who have to endure a rigorous interview process.  There is a forum in which we are expected to post at least twice a day and there are regular times that we are strongly encouraged to take place in guild activates in other games and occasionally offline events as well.  Once the game launches, I’ll be responsible for numerous in-game duties such as gathering materials for my guild, participating in scheduled events, and of course keeping up with everything that I currently do on our website.  This is why many people can easily become addicted to these games.  They are so involved that many people find more satisfaction in these online societies than they do in their offline ones.  These games can eventually completely change someone.  They become confused about which “reality” is more important and that leads to addiction. 

The Future of Society

            The rise of online societies has been extremely fast and seemingly has occurred under most peoples’ nose.  Without knowing it, many of us have become dependent on one or more online societies to augment our offline lives.  This is not always harmful, but it is very necessary to understand the effect that our two types of societies have on one another.  The goal of course, is to balance the influence of each so that we don’t lose ourselves in our onlie activates and forget that it is all virtual. This is becoming more and more difficult as online societies slowly become tangible offline as well.

            Will we eventually reach a point where the line between the virtual and the physical is gone?  Is there a point when our Facebook friends, our gaming habits, and our shopping trends merge with our education, our family, and our careers?  I think is isn’t unreasonable to say that in many ways we have already reached that point.  We like to think that the lives we live offline and the lives we live online are completely separate things, but have we deluded ourselves into thinking this?  Is it possible that we don’t want to accept the truth that we are at a point where one cannot live without the other?  These online societies formed because we couldn’t find something like them offline.  If they were to stripped away suddenly, would we be able to endure?  How would we live without our Facebook profiles? Our Amazon wishlists? Our guilds?  I don’t think we could.

           

Works Cited

"About the USA E-Commerce." About the USA. Web. 22 Apr. 2012. <http://usa.usembassy.de/economy-ecommerce.htm>.

"Ben Huh." 301 Moved Permanently. Web. 22 Apr. 2012. <http://blog.seattlepi.com/benhuh/2012/01/18/why-did-the-anti-sopapipa-movement-go-viral-so-quickly/>.

Chiang, Oliver. "Blizzard On World Of Warcraft's 12 Million Subscribers, And Its Upcoming MMO Successor." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 08 Oct. 2010. Web. 22 Apr. 2012. <http://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverchiang/2010/10/08/blizzard-on-world-of-warcrafts-12-million-subscribers-and-its-upcoming-mmo-successor/>.

The Economist. The Economist Newspaper. Web. 22 Apr. 2012. <http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/02/daily-chart-0>.

"Featured in Social Media." Mashable. Web. <http://mashable.com/2010/07/21/facebook-500-million-2/>.

"Fowl Play." The Angry Birds Videogame Makes Digital History. Web. 22 Apr. 2012. <http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/fowl-play-132086>.

Phillips, Sarah. "A Brief History of Facebook." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 24 July 2007. Web. 22 Apr. 2012.   <http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/jul/25/media.newmedia>.

"Society." Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster. Web. 22 Apr. 2012. <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/society>.

Web. <http://go.channeladvisor.com/rs/channeladvisor/images/us-wp-consumer-survey-2010.pdf>.

Web. <https://www.facebook.com/about/ads/#click>.

Web. <http://www.yelp.com/>.

"World Internet Usage Statistics News and World PopulationStats." Internet World Stats. Web. 22 Apr. 2012. <http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm>.

The Effect of Online Societies IRL, Part Four

The benefit isn’t one-sided.  With the rise of E-commerce, there have also been major strides in customer service which has led to a new type of online society.  In today’s online market, the customer review is incredibly important, with a product’s success sometimes directly tied to the star rating it receives from customers online.  In the 2010 Christmas Customer Survey, Channeladvisor.com found that 92% of consumers consult customer reviews of a product before they buy, and 46% said that they bought a product based on the ratings and reviews of that product (http://go.channeladvisor.com).  This new society of online consumers goes even farther, with sites like Yelp.com is a site that allows users to log in and find businesses that other users like or dislike and base their actions on those reviews (yelp.com).  This is a direct example of how the web intermingles with our real lives.  My choice of dinner reservation or dry cleaner or dog groomer can actually be affected by a few lines of text on a screen.  Wouldn’t it be a strange feeling to know that by typing a paragraph about slow service and bad fish that you directly changed how someone else acted?  Mindboggling! 

            One of the best examples of how an online business and customer reviews have offline ramifications is the wildly popular game Angry Birds.  In 2009, Finland-based game company Rovio Moblie Ltd. was heading into bankruptcy.  With over 51 games that never took flight, the developer needed a hit.  They took that flightlessness and formed a game around it that has been downloaded over 200 million times, making it the most popular paid application in the United States.  Rovio didn’t end the Angry Birds brand there.  A slew of non-digital merchandise has hit the market, including plush toys, apparel, bags, and even board games!  Rovio took their digital game and has turned it into an offline brand with merchandise now even available in Walmart (adweek.com).  This would not have happened without the existence of an online society of mobile gamers who support the game and clamor for more.

            It’s not really a surprise to see companies taking full advantage of these immensely populous online societies and shaping them to fir their own needs.  In fact, it is very common to see various online societies working together for common purposes.  For example, much of Facebook.com’s revenue is geneterated through selling advertising space on their site.  In fact, Facebook uses complex algorithms to match up their user with advertisements of products that they are likely to be interested in.  If I post a status update about going with my family to see a hockey game, it’s very likely that within 24 hours, there will be at least a half dozen advertisements for tickets and merchandise to show up on my homepage (facebook.com).  This cooperation between these groups indicates not only the existence and influence of online societies; it also suggests that these societies work collectively to accomplish goals that benefit them all.  In this way, online societies are somewhat like individuals with ambitions and intentions.

The Effect of Online Societies IRL, Part Three

Facebook has morphed into a virtual journal for many, with the addition of a pool of people who can each act as your personal therapist.  In this way, Facebook is changing the way that we live our lives.  We share more, express more, and communicate more frequently with people than we would otherwise.  Facebook has helped shape our offline society into a more open one, and perhaps one that is thoroughly dependent on the Internet in order to function.

            I know what you’re thinking.  You have this idea in your head that the way our offline society functions is barely affected by the web.  If the Internet were to shut down today, nothing much would change.  I disagree.  As I’ve already mentioned, users of social networking sites like Facebook use these sites to express their emotions to others.  This isn’t only on an individual basis, though.  When individuals share a belief or an idea and express it over social networks, change is almost certainly on the way.  Take the “STOP SOPA” movement of earlier this year.  When it was announced that legislation was being considered that would significantly limit the freedom of Internet users, millions of people mobilized on social networks and demanded that the legislation be shelved (blog.seattlepi.com).  The world heard the uproar, and dozens of websites blacked out on a single day to protest, and the legislation was shelved.  Social networks aren’t simply a cool place to connect with friends online; they are increasingly becoming the hubs for our collective consciousness.

E-commerce

            Now that we’ve briefly covered social networks, let us examine one of the biggest online societies in existence today; consumers.  Once people realized that the Internet was going to be around for a while and could reach millions of people, entrepreneurs began to set up virtual businesses that could maximize their reach into the global market while minimizing their need to do anything else than sitting in a chair behind a computer.  Eventually, this “dot com bubble” burst, but e-commerce has never faded entirely, and in today’s market, internet retailers account for hundreds of billions of dollars of sales globally (usa.usembassy.de).  Before the rise of e-commerce sites like Amazon.com, if you couldn’t get to a brick and mortar store, it was almost impossible for you to buy certain products.  Once these sites became widely known, however, even the most rural areas could order just about any product they desired, giving companies new markets in which to advertise. This new use of the Internet for commerce also gave rise to companies like eBay.com that makes the majority of its profit from sales between customers.  These online auction houses are hugely popular for collectors, people who want to maximize their market for garage sales, and consumers looking for inexpensive goods. E-commerce has been a huge advantage for indie artists and very small companies as well.  Thanks to millions of like-minded individuals, creative society sites have popped up everywhere to give artists with small budgets a place to market their wares.  Etsy.com gives craft makers an outlet to advertise and sell their handmade items, Society6.com is a massive outlet for painters, graphic designers, and photographers, and Threadless.com puts user-made art on t-shirts and sells them on their online store.  These do-it-yourself artists have come together to form immeasurably rich societies around what they create and the people who buy it.

The Effect of Online Societies IRL, Part Two

I believe that the creation and population of online societies was an inevitable consequence of the modern era.  David Bell argues that three processes greatly helped to pave the way for this phenomenon (Bell 95).  These processes are detraditionalization, disembedding, and globalization.  Essentially, because of our push for a “post-traditionalist” society in which we have very few ties to the past, we disembed ourselves from our parents and relatives on an intellectual basis in favor of the pursuit of our own brand of truth and personality.  When this is paired with globalization that has “made the world smaller”, the result is that there is a huge population of people looking for something.  The Internet gave them a place to do that, and online societies were born.

Social Networks

            Now that we’ve taken a brief look at how online societies got their start, it’s time to examine the various forms of online societies and then try to understand how they are affecting us even when we aren’t logged on.      I will be taking a close look at four different categories of online societies.  These are social networks, e-commerce sites, and entertainment.  Every category has a number of popular sites within it that I will briefly cover examine how they have contributed to offline change in major ways.

            The first social network that we are going to take a look at is arguably the most prevalent and certainly the most popular site, Facebook.  In 2004, 19-year old Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook, a virtual network intended to help students at Harvard get to know each other.  By late 2005, all US universities and high schools were able to register their students for the site.  A year later, the site opened its virtual doors to anyone with an email address, turning Facebook into a completely open network of individuals (guardian.co.uk).  Today, Facebook has well over 500 million daily users and is a billion-dollar company (mashable.com).  It isn’t just for individuals anymore, either.  Pages have been created for businesses and charities, and new companies have been formed that market almost exclusively to Facebook users through content like games and applications of all sorts.

            Facebook is a shining example of how a virtual society can heavily impact life offline.  Mark Zuckerberg is the ultimate example of this.  He took a simple idea and made it into a billion-dollar company in less than a decade.  Economist.com reports that the site has nearly 3,000 employees, each with an average income of 1.2 million dollars annually (economist.com).  Facebook.com is churning out millionaires through purely virtual networking.  For those of us who aren’t employees, however, the impact on our real lives is still extremely deep.  Millions of users log on to the site daily, and when they’re logged on, they regularly post content that describes their feelings about goings-on in their lives and about new relationships and so on.  For a nosy person, Facebook is like paradise.  If I am having a bad day, there is a good chance that I will post a status update about it on the site, allowing my entire list of friends to weigh in on my feelings.  I like to say that Facebook is often used as a sort of crowd sourced therapy session.  Journaling is a tool used by people all over the world as a way to relieve stress and help them work through problems.