Those of you who were in the chat at the time might have noticed that I consider sites like these the "Port Rextons of the Internet"; maybe there might have been even more fitting comparisons, but that's not what the topic is about. I figured I'd make my 800th post about online communities in general.

It seems some shows try to portray the Internet as a crime-magnet; they focus on the larger communities, and problems within them, despite the apparent differences between the larger ones and the smaller ones. It would be like pointing to examples of crime in Detroit and saying "that's offline communities for you" without looking at small towns at all; aside from the point about focusing on the negatives within a community, it seems to focus too much on a certain size of community. Much like in offline communities, there seems to be more of a sense of community in smaller online communities than larger ones, and much like in offline communities, even the larger ones don't necessarily lack a sense of community as much as they're made out to. There can be communities within communities; just like there's different parts of NYC, different sites have different sub-boards, and on some sites different people tend to be in different sub-boards more often. The Internet has its villages, and its big cities. There are things you can do in offline that you can't online, but at the same time, there's also things you can do online that you can't do offline... such as being in multiple communities at a time.

Different communities also seem to have differences in popular opinion; if this had been just a couple years ago I would've assumed these patterns would have to be coincidences in what I noticed, since it didn't seem to make sense why those differences would be there. But, a combination of first year science at MUN offline, and watching videos of Richard Dawkins and Carl Sagan on youtube online, since then, helped remind me that a truly science-centric approach means that it shouldn't have to be the case that you understand WHY the patterns are there; the conclusions you come to should be based on the patterns you look at, not the other way around. But there seem to be double standards against the Internet; in some news stories, talking about the "effects" of MSN on people's grammar, claim that "the Internet" is hurting people's grammar. Aside from the questionable idea that even MSN is to blame, why talk about "the Internet" when referring to an instant messaging service that uses it? With the variety of styles, views, and communities themselves on the Internet, one has to wonder why we would even hear such anti-Internet things from anyone.

Maybe it's competition?

I remember reading, online, a certain Time magazine article saying that the established media's real problem with youtube isn't so much with copyrights as with trying to compete when the rest of us have something better, and that on youtube, celebrities can compete with a sleepy kitten or someone dancing and lose. I found that point appealing, and I think it applies not just to youtube but to many other places on the Internet. People who want to can draw and put out their own art, and other people can look at it, talk about it, and compare it, without needing to go to a museum. People can create their own video games not necessarily for money but out of creativity, which makes the idea that video games "aren't art because they're for profit" questionable at best, even if it's a perspective expressed by video game developers themselves; just because THEY'RE in it for the money, doesn't mean everyone else is...

But then again, if this is how people make a living, I guess it's understandable that they wouldn't want to let go. I'd like to think that if people could look at the competition problem not as a case of the big evil old media trying to maintain a chokehold, but as a case of people wanting to protect their careers, maybe others might not have as much of a problem saying they don't like the competition. As the old saying goes, you'll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar...

EDIT: Fixed typos. o.o EDIT2: Reworded subjectline and some parts of post.