Tutorial Task Five: MSN, FACEBOOK (and other social networking websites) VS VIRTUAL REALITY

What is different about the kinds of socialising that happens in these spaces?

On social networking websites a user uploads video’s and pictures of themselves and communicates with others via status updates and wall posts. If you know the user (which I ALWAYS do if they are a facebook friend), you can be certain that the photos/video’s/communications of/with that friend, may portray a sliver of “real reality” (“real reality” being the experiences and events occurring in everyday life). Consequently, socialising on these social networking sites runs parallel to “real reality” because one, you know the people you are communicating with and two, you portray real photos/video’s/communications of yourself (it may not be a correct depiction, but because you know who you are communicating with, certain aspects are correct). Because this is the case, social skills are still required to communicate with friends- this being a major difference between social networking websites and virtual reality sites.

Virtual reality takes users one step closer to “made-up reality” (“made-up reality” being the experiences and events you wish/fantasise to occur). In virtual reality, such as Second Life, you create a character by choosing a certain appearance (such as physical features and clothes) and you use this character to communicate with other characters. Virtual reality does not allow you to control the type of people that enter “your” world, this being a big difference compared to social networking websites. The majority of the time you are communicating with people you don’t personally know, so certain social skills are not required when socialising. In a sense you can be/act/say/look how you want, in other words, you are making your own reality. This is not possible on social networking websites (unless you are friends with people you don’t personally know). I personally found it difficult to communicate, let alone socialise, on these virtual reality sites because there was no common ground and it was hard to be personal with other characters/users that you don’t personally know (and quite frankly, who are talking about random things!)

In summary, I personally believe that social networking websites facilitates users to communicate/socialise in a more realistic (and trustworthy) manner, compared to that of virtual reality.