Net 102 Assignment 2 Essay 1 Sex blogs and Social Acceptance

Internet Studies 102/502: The Internet and Everyday Life

Assignment: 2

Essay: 1

Grade: Distinction (73%)

Sex Blogs and Social Acceptance

Adult materials such as pornography, sexual blogging and dating have become part of everyday life, particularly for regular anonymous internet users. Pornography and varying degrees of sexual content are now considered part of mainstream websites through forms of blogs, advertising and various connective links.  Blogs, with particular attention to hentai (app1) presumably contain content that has a large percentage of pornographic images and sexual content associated with them. This paper will discuss how internet users regularly utilise blog sites that contain varying degrees of pornographic (app 2) / altporn (app 3) content and as such blogs of a sexual nature are showing greater acceptability within main stream internet use with lesser degrees on anonymity.

Wellman and Haythornthwaite write, “It is time for more differentiated analyses of the Internet to take into account how it has increasingly become embedded in everyday life. The master issue is whether the Internet is drawing us away from everyday life or adding layers of connectivity ...” (Wellman and Haythornthwaite, 2002).  The evolution of the internet and its content has generated extended study and discussion forums concerning involvement and integration into everyday lives. As a form of new media technology, the internet is now regarded as being one of the most pivotal and accessible technologies available. 

While there are certain regulations in place for the entry into some pornographic websites, pornography is thriving on the internet, discovered either intentionally or accidentally by most Internet users. Society as a whole is extremely interested in the subject of sex both in real life and via the World Wide Web.

Schnarch and Morehouse. Social Psychologists, report that “... sex is one of the most researched items on the internet today ...” (2002).  Fiske shows us that “... distance is a key marker of difference between high and low culture, between the meanings, practices and pleasures characteristic ...” (2008).  Sexual viewing or supplying of either explicit photographic images, adult and or child, authoring or reading web diaries or web streaming facilities such as pay per view or membership orientated sites that incorporate hentai or non mainstream sexual practices could possibility contribute to social misunderstanding if the user is exposed.

The Internet may serve as an important platform for sexual self-expression and as such the explicit sexual content of blog websites that has been viewed or contributed to may be an instigating factor for hiding identity on line and off, “...freedom of expression and the right to privacy, use of anonymity is legal...” (Palme, Berglund 2002)

The Collins English Dictionary defines Weblogs as:

·         Personal Web site that provides updated headlines and news articles of other sites that are of interest to the user; also may include journal entries, commentaries and recommendations compiled by the user; also written web log; also called blog.

 Rebecca Blood comments on the origins of blogs, “... original weblogs were link-driven sites. Each was a mixture in unique proportions of links, commentary, and personal thoughts and essays ...” (Blood, 2000). Attwood suggests in her article ‘No Money shot ...’(2007) that “... rich technology ensures web sites create ease of access that has enabled and even increased the involvement of users and the participatory nature of a cross section of society ...” 

 Technorati, one of the largest blog directories on the World Wide Web is currently tracking 1242412 (Technorati, 2010) blogs of various subjects. It is unknown how many sexually orientated blogs exist in the blogosphere.

Blogs of a hentai nature written by women have tended to attract large followings. Blogs titled such as Girl with a one track mind, Wonkette/Washingtonienne, Belle De Jour, Tasty Trixie and Eros have gained altporn pop culture status over the last decade. And as such “... porn is able to become chic ...” (Attwood, 2007).  In 2004 the graphic sexual blog written under the pseudonym of Abby Lee, Girl with a One Track Mind by Zoe Margolis began its inception and rise in popularity with a simple objective, as stated by Zoe Margolis “... I decided to write about sex in my blog because I felt that the feminist and female-centred perspective is missing from mainstream media ...” (2008). Since 2004, the blog has become extremely popular showing a readership per annum in the millions, earning the site twenty fourth ranking by the British website, The Guardian in their 50 most powerful blogs. The inclusion of ‘Girl with a One Track Mind’ on the afore mentioned list suggests that blogs of a sexual nature are showing greater acceptability within main stream internet use and as such integration and reading of blogs of similar class content are becoming a social normality instead of a social abnormality.

Sexual blog sites of varying genre have garnered wider social acceptance within the internet community per say and as such a lessening degree of anonymity has been demonstrated. This paper has explained how internet users are utilising blog sites that contain varying degrees of sexual content and as such sexuality of the World Wide Web has become part of everyday life in internet mediated activities. 

Bibliography

Attwood, F. (2007). No Money Shot? Commerce, Pornography and New Sex Taste Cultures. Sexualities, 10(4), 441-456.  Retrieved 6/10/2010 from Curtin University of Technology Library E-Reserve

Barak, A. (ed.) (2008). Psychological aspects of cyberspace: theory, research, applications Ch. 8. The Sexy Side of the Internet: an Examination of Sexual Activities and materials in Cyberspace. p 185-208 (p 189) Retrieved 9/10/2010 from Curtin University of Technology Library E-Reserve

Blood, R."Weblogs: A History and Perspective", Rebecca's Pocket. 07 September 2000. 26 July 2010. http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html   Retrieved 7/10/2010

Cutin University (2010) Web 101, Net 102 Course information, Retrieved 5/10/2010

Cutin University (2010) iLecture:  Web 101 Blogs by Dr Tama Lever, Retrieved 6/10/2010

Ess. C, Sudweeks. F , Voiskounsky A (1998) Proceedings Cultural Attitudes Towards Communications and Technology. Internet: Culture Diversity and Unification, Retrieved 8/10/2010

http://www.it.murdoch.edu.au/~sudweeks/catac98/pdf/07_voiskounsky.pdf

Fiske, J. (1992). Cultural Studies and the Culture of Everyday Life. In Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, & Paula A Treichler (Eds.), Cultural Studies (pp. 154-173). New York: Routledge

Guardian News and Media Ltd (2010) world’s 50 most powerful blogs.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/mar/09/blogs Retrieved 9/10/2010 

Hine, C. (2000) Virtual Ethnography. Sage Publications Ltd. Retrieved 8/10/2010 p 37-44

Margolis, Z (2008) Zoe Margolis. Retrieved 9/10/2010

http://www.zoemargolis.co.uk

Meyer, C. (1993-1994) Sex, Sin, and Women's Liberation: Against Porn-Suppression. Tex. L. Rev. 1097  http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/tlr72&div=39&id=&page Retrieved 9/10/2010

Palme,J and Berglund, M. (2007) Anonymity on the internet.

http://people.dsv.su.se/~jpalme/society/anonymity.html  Retrieved 9/10/2010

Schnarch,D, Ph.D. and Morehouse,S, Ph.D. (2002) Online Sex, Dyadic Crises, and Pitfalls for MFTs Sept/Oct., issue of Family Therapy Magazine Retrieved 8/10/2010

http://crucibletherapy.com/online-sex-dyadic-crises-and-pitfalls-mfts

Technorati (2010) http://technorati.com/blogs/directory/ Retrieved 9/10/2010

weblog. (n.d.). Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition. Retrieved October 06, 2010, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/weblog

Wellman, B and Haythornthwaite, C (2002): The Internet in Everyday Life
Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, An introduction (p 8) (alk.paper) Retrieved 6/10/2010 from Curtin University of Technology Library E-Reserve

Appendix

1.      Hentai: Sexually explicit media images.

2.      Pornography:  It is notoriously difficult to define pornography, definitions rest on the prejudgement and prejudices of the viewer.  Ambiguous terms: writings, drawings, photographs or like. (Meyer, 1994)

3.      Altporn: Sometimes called punk porn or indie porn, as these names suggest, has a particular subculture focus. (Attwood, 2008)

Facebook Suicide. Interesting article

Disclaimer: I have not written this article, I make no claim to have written this article.
Micah M. White, "Facebook Suicide ," Adbusters, June 4, 2008. Archived by WebCite.
This piece for an activist magazine issues a call for to leave Facebook; read the comments as well. What relationships between the control of our social networking information (power), community, identity, profit (economy) and privacy does this highlight?


Commit Facebook Suicide, Adbusters #77

I'm no stranger to the internet, but you'll never find me on Facebook. You may scoff at my refusal - I used to do the same, rolling my eyes whenever my elders claimed resistance to the latest internet phenomenon - but Facebook is a scary, commercial dead-zone that's killing our real-world relationships.
Like most Americans in their mid-twenties, I am a child of the computer-age. That I did not immediately jump on the Facebook wagon is not due to an innate dislike of technology or an irrational fear of the web, but merely because I graduated from college before Facebook became a university fad. I was, like an ever-decreasing number of people, happily oblivious to this social network website. But then something troubling happened: my wedding photos appeared on Facebook.
In a typical website, a user may upload a photograph, write a funny caption and that's it. But in Facebook, users are asked to identify who else is in the photo. This is the crucial difference that allowed a friend of a friend of a friend to view pictures of my wedding a bridesmaid had uploaded. Although neither my wife nor I ever joined Facebook, our names, pictures, social connections and wedding photographs were already in its database. With 60 million users busily adding information about their hobbies, political positions, employment, education, friends and plans for the weekend, you too might be in Facebook without your knowledge.
My first reactions to learning about my presence on Facebook were contradictory. On the one hand, I felt the thrill of social connectedness - an exhibitionist feeling of delight at having my existence confirmed by a third-party. But I also felt violated and confused. Having never used Facebook, I couldn't understand how my wedding pictures had gotten there or who was now able to view them. And I became concerned about what Facebook will do with the information it's collecting about me.
In a recent Fast Company magazine article, Facebook's vice-president of product marketing and operations explained that while companies like Google are concerned with "demand fulfillment" - helping a consumer find the product they want - Facebook is cornering the market in "demand generation" - subtly encouraging individuals to consume products and services they'd otherwise not care for.
The first step toward demand generation was encouraging users to share information about their interests, favorite movies and books, and political beliefs that would allow Facebook to send advertisements targeted to their demographic. The second, controversial step that Facebook took is to partner with dozens of online retailers so that when a Facebook member buys a widget on a partner's site, all their Facebook "friends" find out. The sinister system they have developed would be akin to my computer automatically emailing my address book when I purchase a book online.
By turning members into consumers who involuntarily advertise to their friends, Facebook hoped to extract profit from social interactions. However, by commercializing friendships, Facebook has irrevocably destroyed its image. And now, a vanguard of the anti-Facebook movement is developing out of the increasing number of members who have seen the commercial direction that the site is going and the effect it's having on their social relationships. No longer a fun, harmless place to hang out, Facebook has become just another commercial enterprise.
Because Facebook has intentionally made it very difficult for users to leave the site, demanding that they manually delete every bit of information that they added into the system before their account will be removed, a growing number of users are fleeing the site by committing what has been called "Facebook Suicide." By manually removing their Facebook friends before deleting their account, indignant users ensure that their friends are fully aware of the real reasons why they are leaving the site.
The movement could reach epidemic levels as more members commit Facebook Suicide. If users prefer to kill off their electronic selves rather than submit to corporate control of their friendships, then Facebook, and the other corporate lackeys, will learn that they can't exploit our social relationships for profit. From viral growth will come a viral death as more demand that Facebook must die so that our friendships may thrive.




UPDATE: Caving to pressure, Facebook has made it easier to get off the network. Click here to commit Facebook suicide today.