Thursday, December 19, 2013

On Digital Nativity and Appearance on IdeaChannel

I'm beginning to think that my ideas and comments are becoming more relevant as I age. This bodes well for the future :)

Anyway this time it's a comment I made on the Idea Channel episode on "Digital Nativity"



Hit the jump for more...


I commented:

"I do think that there is a difference between native internet-users and ones who learn internet usage. That said, this difference is more in terms of innate recognition of social norms that exist on the internet. I grew up on Something Awful and 4chan and Newgrounds and Youtube and various other forums around the internet, and all of these places that have partially defined how we behave on the internet and how we relate to people we meet there. If someone hasn't spent thousands of hours immersed in internet language and culture wouldn't you expect them to accidentally violate those cultural and linguistic standards?

For instance: when Blizzard (and later google) talked about (or were rumored to have talked about... I forget what happened now)  _requiring_ real names on their services, that makes a lot of sense from their point of view. But their userbase exploded with indignant anger because this suggestion was in violation of a major cultural feature of the internet. Many of their users grew up under a pseudonym. To take that away was to take away their cultural name (or their anonymity, depending on who you ask).

Whether they were really ignorant of what they were suggesting is irrelevant, because it reveals the culture of local residents of the internet."

And then I got a lovely response (@5:27) in his subsequent video on bullet hell shooters:



Anyway, that just made me feel like a special little snowflake! :D

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