Mortal and Immortal

The viability of the on-line communication space EHC as a place for social interaction.

An essay in Cultural Convergence, Master of Arts (Communication), Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia. 2003.

In this paper I will discuss the viability of the on-line communication space ‘EHC’ as a place for social interaction. I myself have been a member of EHC since the very beginning in January 2001. The forum has thus lasted almost 3 years. I asked members of EHC to help me with this essay by writing their thoughts about the EHC as a social space and virtual community, and I have therefore quoted them extensively throughout the essay.

EHC is a closed forum that was created for a specific purpose. EHC is short for Elven High Council, so naturally all of the members consider themselves ‘elves’. Elves are immortal beings, beautiful and wise, good or evil. But as the months went by, members started loosing their elven masks. The mortal humans behind the computer-screens became more or less visible. Members started to share pictures, real life events and physical presence when meeting in real life (IRL). Elwe (20) say:
‘The Elven High Council is a group of individuals originally gathered to discuss Utopia or Utopia-related topics, and more specifically centred on the elven race. I believe it was an original idea and certainly a creative one. Gradually we started moving away from simply elves and simply Utopia - the debates and eventual creation of a 'Lost Soul' rank so that the members who left the elven race could remain and continue to be brethren of sorts.’

Members in EHC are from all over the world, are 12 to 50 years old and live in different time-zones. Today many members are not even playing the online game that is the basis for the forum, but they are still members of EHC. What is EHC? ‘Elven High Council ’, EHC, is a forum for role-playing game (RPG) players, more specific players who have chosen to play ‘elf’ in the RPG ‘Utopia ’. According to the makers of Utopia , more than 80,000 players are battling it out in this fantasy text-and table based online game. In the game you are the ruler of a province, which again is a part of a kingdom of 25 provinces. Provinces and kingdoms battle it out in wars or personal attacks to gain in size and wealth. When you choose your province, you have several options for your province, for example your race, be it human, orc, elf or other. This helps the roleplaying aspect, and it attracts people who love J.R.R. Tolkien and his world in ‘Lord of the rings’. From the website of the game one can read;
‘Welcome to Utopia, a world where reality and dreams come together, a world where the lowliest of peasants can become the world's greatest heroes. A world unlike any other that you may have experienced now stands before you.’

From this game, alliances form to plot wars and strategies in online forums. EHC is not an alliance, but more a gathering of elves. It was created to talk about elven strategies, and to become a member you had to prove you played elf in Utopia. EHC has its own ‘founding father’ document.

The most used space, or ‘thread ’, in EHC is no longer the ‘Strategy’ one, but the ‘General Talk’, and many of the members have not played Utopia for years. I am one of those who managed to quit the game, but still hang around the forum. Why? The roleplaying aspect is still in play, and the members still consider themselves ‘elves’. Even for those that have quit the game Utopia, many common interests are still present. We like elves, for one. Naturally the genre of fantasy-literature is a shared interest, as well as RPG in general. Most of the threads in the forum are based upon the elven character of the member or the ruler of a province in Utopia. Those that are not are ‘General Talk’ and ‘Book Club’.

The roleplaying threads have become less used, as the members are more and more themselves, i.e. out-of-character (OOC). The roleplaying as well as the game factor is becoming less interesting for the members as they get to know the mortal humans behind. The forum has a way of sending messages to other members, there is a voting-section and rules for titles and ranks are in place. Each member has a profile to introduce themselves with, but most are like Bicep’s; it doesn’t really tell anything.

Before I start to discuss the viabilities of EHC as a social space for interaction, I want to look at what a virtual community is, and how we define a community in the physical world.

It is not easy to define what a community is, because of the abstract and complex nature of it. Surratt (SURRATT, C.G. 2001. The Internet and social change. USA: McFarland&Company, Inc.) says that according to Bell and Newby (1974) there has never been developed a theory of community or a good enough definition of what a community is. Surratt however says that a community is ‘people who interact within a limited territory and who share a culture’. She also talks about Ferdinand Tonnies (1887) divide between community (gemeinschaft) and association (gesellschaft). In the pre-capitalist community people was bound together by kinship, shared values and tradition, and social identity arised from common identity and kinship. An association is in contrast a social organization in which people typically have weak social ties and a great deal of self-interest.

Where does EHC fit in? According to Naimark (NAIMARK, M. 1990. Realness and Interactivity. In: LAUREL, B, ed. The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design) , virtual reality requires realness as well as interactivity. He says that the movie world understands realness but not interactivity, while the computer world understands interactivity but not realness. EHC is a forum based on text, so it is not like the movie world at all. How do we get a feeling of realness?
‘Nations must exist in the minds of its citizens in order to exist at all. ‘Virtual communities require an act of imagination to use,’ points out Marc Smith… ‘and what must be imagined is the idea of the community itself.’ (RHEINGOLD, H. 1993. The Virtual Community. )

To look at EHC as a community does therefore require a fair bit of imagination. The physical bodies of the members are scattered around the globe, and may never actually meet. The society is an illusion formed by the technology but more importantly the willingness of the user to treat it as if it were real. Fosheim Grønstad argues that the virtual world is just as real as the physical one. (FOSHEIM GRØNSTAD, O. 1999. Design av virtuelle flerbrukerverdener for fritidsbruk). Like a deaf person’s experience of being treated as an equal in a text-based forum is very real for him. Even though members only communicate through text, they still get to know each other, and after a while a sense of belonging, friendship and community starts to emerge.
‘Virtual communities… [are] social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace. ’ (Rheingold)

Rheingold says that in order to make a community work, ‘at least some of the people [must] reach out through that screen to affect each other’s lives.’ TURKLE, S. 1996. Virtuality and its discontents. In: Life on screen. Identity in the age of the internet.) With the basis of these definitions there is no doubt that EHC is a virtual community. It may have started out as an association, but morphed into a community as time went by.
‘As with Jaina, I think some members of EHC grew on me and that's what draws me back in here. Plus it gives me the opportunity to interact with people from around the world that share similar interests. (..) A very diverse community that seem to fit together into a complete picture.’ (MrNypps, 21)

But how viable is this community as a space for social interaction? Members of EHC do not only communicate with each other through the forum. They use instant messengers, chatrooms, webcameras as well as telephone or audiochat. Some have met in real life (IRL) and four people have married (Jaina and Mani, Rand and Gaia). They are however still coming back to the text-based EHC forum.
‘Why? Good question. I guess, like everyone else, it's gotten to be sort of a comfort zone for me. At first it was just fun and games and nonsense, but as fringe trickled in and out throughout the ages, there's always been a core group of people around. I'm closer to some than others, but I feel like I have a sense (however false it may be with respect to real life) of who most people are.’ (Mireille, 19)

Mireille touches upon two important aspect of a community. It is a place to feel safe (comfort zone) and friendship. These two are linked in real life, in trust. People we meet in a virtual community may not be someone we know well before we trust them with personal information. We are after all hiding behind our anonymity. We choose some that we reveal our real names to, but for the most part we are only known as the avatar we choose to be. Dreyfus (2001) argues that meaning in our lives requires genuine commitment and real commitment requires real risks, and that the anonymity and safety of virtual commitments on-line would lead to a life without meaning. He claims that it’s easy to become addicted to the web because the anonymous spectator takes no risks, all possibilities are open, and there is no fixed identity that could be threatened by disappointment, humiliation, or loss. He further argues that online friendships are not strong.
‘Furthermore, we would be tempted to avoid the risk of genuine commitment and so lose our sense of what gives meaning to our lives.’ (DREYFUS, H.L. 2001. On the Internet. Thinking in action)

Reid agrees that this is problematic , and to some extent so do members from EHC.
‘In fact, I specifically talk to a couple people… about IRL issues because they afford the benefit of having real opinions and feedback, but [with] the near-confidentiality of a diary.’ (Mireille)

Mireille treats some of the EHC-members as a form of diary, and she also admits that the friendships she has might not be real. She can afford to trust them with personal stuff because she knows they won’t be able to touch her IRL unless she lets them. Elwe says:
‘Currently, I am far more attached to my group of real life friends, but that is mostly because each of us has a stake in our relationship… While I consider myself friends with the members of this community, I don’t think that we share the bond of humility that usually binds friends together. If I were to meet someone from this community in real life, I think I might become extremely attached to them because of the near three year experience I have had with them, and that bond of humility might exist then.’ (Elwe)

Mireille takes no risk in telling her EHC friends about herself, but if Mireille met those she has ‘used’ as a diary, she would probably feel the humiliation of a person she has never actually met knowing intimate details of her personal lives or problems. Elwe have not revealed so much, but he has still shared a lot of thoughts, fun and discussions online. What might happen then is that if Mireille and Elwe were to meet someone from the forum they would probably discover they already were closer friends than they both thought.

To take Elwe’s thoughts further, the ‘humility’ of IRL-friends stem from having to bring the body with you. It is more real. The body might not do the things your brain want it to, or look the way you want it to. Dreyfus says that the shape and movement of our bodies play a crucial role in our making sense of the world. Is Elwe more real then IRL than online? Or is it possible that Elwe might show his truer self online? Elwes friends online and offline both know him, but in a different way. This touches upon the way we think of ourselves, our identity. Surratt says that to have an identity is to be situated within a particular social framework. As human beings we travel in many different social situations, we play a number of roles and thus have many social frameworks. She says that our identity is a collection of identities situated in each of those social situations. EHC was based upon a RPG. Roleplay is a natural way to communicate for Utopia-players. Is it possible then that members of EHC fake their online-selves?
‘I, myself, stay pretty true to who I really am when I'm here. If for no other reason than that it would be difficult to keep up the ruse for 3 years! :) I might actually be a little more "outgoing" here than in real life... at least around people I don't know. What you see of me here is how I act around my friends.’ (Mireille, 19)

‘I think small changes occur in that I might say things on-line I would not utter otherwise as there is much less accountability on-line. My personality also often changes with the group of people I am with. I am more creative and quiet when with a group of ‘social recluses’ but when I am with a group of socialites and active people, I often become far more sarcastic and active myself. I think I would prefer to think of it as being able to pull out a part of my identity that can not exist in either of those situations when I speak on-line. I am far more open with people online, I think.’ (Elwe, 20)

‘In real life, as my friends see it, I'm quite shy. Whereas here I'm known as "the nippleman". I guess in here I don’t really care about how people think of me; I'm free to act as I want without the social behaviour criticism as IRL does... No, no identity loss at all. If not, I've gained more knowledge about myself by being in here. By being here I can let out another side of me and let my imagination run wild.’ (MrNypps, 21)

‘It’s still me, just a bit more open, I don't think I'm loosing my identity, perhaps just making it stronger by being able to say what I want.’ (Jaina, 20)

This fits well with what Reid say about a more inhibited behaviour online than offline. Surratt argues that our online-selves are more ‘true selves’; ‘… the most complete conceptualizations of ‘true self’ anyone has yet been able to devise and present’. (Surratt) It is then easy to think that online selves are better than IRL-selves, that it would be better to live all our lives online. But remember Dreyfus, who argues that friendships online may not be as deep. The anonymity is the basis for both effects, and it is therefore hard to gain the benefits without the drawbacks. Dreyfus does however agree with Turkle when he says; ‘The Net frees people to develop new and exciting selves.’ Turkle is interested in how we can get the best of both kinds of community. She says that we belittle our experiences online at our own risk , and that ‘each reality of self gives way to reflexive questioning, irony and ultimately the playful probing of yet another reality. The centre fails to hold.’ (Turkle) In other words, we grow and gain from our virtual lives. Our identity is not one, but many. ‘‘We live in each others brains, as voices, images, words on screens’, said Rheingold in the online discussion. ‘We are multiple personalities and we include each other.’’ (Turkle) All the ‘multiple personalities’ of EHC got together, and what did they do? They started to form a community, to build an online society. EHC has titles and ranks, the elves gain in status according to their activities and presence. Rheingold has observed that people build virtual communities wherever computer-mediated-communications (CMC) becomes available. He thinks this is because the informal public spaces have disappeared from our real lives, and because CMC enables people to do new things. Rheingold talks about ‘collective goods’. In EHC the collective goods were to learn how to play elf in the RPG ‘Utopia’, to share ones knowledge about the gameplay. It still is to some extent. But it has also become a forum where members talk about everything and anything, from world-politics, day-to-day problems and funny stories to marriage and birth. Perhaps in some small way EHC has become an electronic agora for its members. An agora where one may talk more freely and act more natural than one does IRL. After a while members start to feel attached to online friends and acquaintances. Rheingold argues that a community is a matter of emotions as well as a thing of reason and data. The computer-screen may even cease to exist for a while, and the online community is all there is for the time being. Turkle agrees that virtual communities may prove positive for the self. People who have no experience of virtual communities might think the users are losers, computernerds with no friends. I have limited space in this essay to enter these discussions more, but I think Mireille sums it up so well that I will let her ‘rant’ on about it:
‘... well, when you consider how I found out about it and how active I used to be, it'd be awfully hard to convincingly argue that I'm not a loser. What kind of people feel more comfortable typing back and forth to nameless, faceless people than talking to the real ones around them? Ones who are insecure and shy, I suppose. Both adjectives that can apply to me sometimes. It depends on how you take the online thing though... For a while there, I think I somewhat withdrew from IRL because I was so much more comfortable just chatting and posting with the people around here. Especially when things were going badly IRL, I could lose myself in my little online communities and forget that things were crap in the real world. But then I got fed up with myself, turned it around and actually was more confident and outgoing IRL because I'd been nursing that side of my personality online. And the confidence boost of endless compliments (even if they are from little computer nerds; no offence to any of the guys here, of course) on my pictures didn't hurt either. :)
So despite what some technophobes like to purport, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with using the Internet as a means of social interaction (though preferably not a primary one). On the contrary, there is a lot of redeeming value to EHC outside of just fun "social interaction." Nowhere else would I have the opportunity to get such a global perspective on things, or be a part of an open forum including people of different ages and walks of life. We all DO have real lives; we go to school or work or whatever. Hell, some of the younger ones of us have "grown up" together in a crazy sense of the term. I'm sure I'm not the only one who was vaguely interested in watching the changes in people as they graduated from high school or muddled their way through various universities and into the job market.’ (Mireille, 19)

At its peak EHC had around 360 members. Today it is only 73, and only about 20 are still logged on so often as to be called active. Because the RPG factor of the forum no longer is as important for the members, new elven players are not recruited. Without new blood, EHC might be destined to die. Some members might then loose contact with each other, while others have had their lives radically changed, like getting married to another member. Others are to be found somewhere in between, with some friends they will choose to stay in touch with. Much like any other community when members move or things change. I do however believe that EHC might be around a little while longer.
This place gives me something to do every once in a while when I'm on the computer for hours at a time doing research anyways ... its good to know other people are out there. (Thalia)

‘I'm here more or less by accident, but I don't stay here accidentally, I choose to stay.’ (Jaina, 20)

EHC is a virtual community, a space for social interaction that serves its members well by being in some small (yet not insignificant) way their electronic agora. The rules for virtual communities and IRL communities are different, yet similar. They both offer different things, fulfil different needs in us. I believe that most ‘elves’ in EHC have gained from their membership, like Mireille who gained more confidence IRL because of EHC. To have EHC as the only community where one feels belonging may on the other hand be boring, and Dreyfus’ critical voice may come too close to the truth. But then that is the way with most good things in life; too much of it is not good for you.