One Student's Observations of an Online Community

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One Student's Observations of an Online Community

An online community is a place where individual users with common interest come together to build relationships with similar people. Recently I was looking through the Yahoo and MSN websites, searching for an interesting community to join. Unfortunately, all of the message boards I was interested in had been inactive for over a year. Online communities must involve growing relationships among active users. Many people believe that online communities are a waste of time and are destroying our current society. Howard Rheingold, an author, argues another point of view (92).

Rheingold states that a virtual community is an online group in which relationships are developed through interaction. He also says that virtual communities are an advance in the uprising technological world. Virtual communities bring people of different backgrounds and locations together through a common interest (Rheingold 93). Rheingold shares with his audience stories of young parents rallying together while their infants are in critical condition. This exemplifies that online relationships are important to many people. Rheingold argues that although we may not experience face to face interaction with fellow online users, it does not keep us from developing a sound and structured society. It may not be traditional, but online communities are societies that are here to stay. The relationships developed through online communities will remain only if users post frequently and take a genuine interest in other user's posts (Rheingold 92-97). In an attempt to find a community to join and a group of people I could form growing relationships with I logged on to many diff...

... middle of paper ...

...own at collegehumor.com, growing relationships are almost guaranteed. This website has brought me to a group of people who I enjoy interacting with. Although I have not been able to fully integrate into their community, I am hoping that with time, I will be considered a senior myself. This message board community is a great place to sit back, relax, and let the laughter come.

Works Cited

CollegeHumor.com. Homepage. 28 Oct. 2002. <http://www.collegehumor.com/bbs/>

"God damn headaches." 1 Posting. Online Posting. 30 Sept. 2002. 7 Oct. 2002 http://www.collegehumor.com/bbs/

"God damn headaches." 6 Posting. Online Posting. 30 Sept. 2002. 7 Oct. 2002. http://www.collegehumor.com/bbs/

Rheingold, Howard. "The Virtual Community." The Wired Society. Ed. Carol Lea Clark. New York: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1999. 92-97.

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