Cyberspacea Subculture?
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Cyberspace is a subculture? Who would of thought of this one? Not me, but since where talking about it I guess I belong to it. Personally I use the cyberspace for communicating with relatives, school work, playing games over the internet, and browsing while at work when there is nothing else to do. My brother uses Yahoo! on the internet, for chatting and playing the games available at Yahoo!. My wife only uses the internet for email here at the house and while at work she uses it for ordering supplies also. It is hard for me to apply Gerbners categories to my own experience because I watch very little TV, but I will try. (Petracca and Sorapure, 2001) The TV shows that I do watch have mostly little young adults using the internet, meaning 12-18 years old, they are white males to young to work or living off there parents, in good health and they have MP3 players that they download music for. I assume since they did not say the web site(s) that they were downloading it from they go tit illegally, most likely have not gotten a sponsor yet from the name to be included. I know this to be false because it just so happens today while playing my favorite game, Star Wars Galaxies, the guild that I belong to, only two in the guild actually know each other, we got a the age subject and almost everyone that was talking today was 21-30 years of age, but then again it was during the morning hours when most kids are at school. Almost everyone I talked to today had jobs, except for one but I will talk about her later, ranging from technical jobs to cashier clerk. Most had jobs, in my estimate, earning at least $30k-$40k a year. I know here are a lot of kids that play this game, because of the stupid remarks that I have seen.
On with the lady know by “Drusella” on the game. I have been sort of paying attention to what she types on the guild chat line so these are some of my thoughts of her. She comes across as the stereo-typical house wife. She spends most of her day doing nothing and I know this because I log on at various hours of the day and she will be posting away on the guild chat line. She drinks a lot, when her typing becomes hard to understand shes been drinking too much. She stated that she does drink because it makes dealing with her husband when he is home easier, mostly because he spends way to much time working. I think she said he was a lawyer or something like that making about $100k a year. She just recently, last night, referred to him as almost ex, but has been saying that she hopes to divorce him. I personally do not fell sorry for her, because she could always do something else besides play on the internet and sit at home. I said that last line because it seems to me that the other guild members fell sorry for her by the typing they do after she goes off on a tangent.
Well back to the subject at hand. I can not say much about the health of the other cyberspace folks, but if they are like me most likely they are over weight, comfortable I say, but generally in good health. I would say that most commit some kind of crime on the internet, like downloading music for their MP3 players without paying for it. That was an example of the most talked about crime, but I know it has decreased with the music industry suing the individuals that downloaded it, instead of the company that put the software out there for them.
And with that it leads us to the subculture of music. I think music is a subculture and I think TV programs down play it. Vh1 did put out a documentary show showing how everyday people and all walks of life get obsessive with the music as fans. It showed the majority of the fans where females from the ages of 10-16 years old. Race sort of mattered if the majority of the group or singers fans were of the same race, while the off races fans decreased. What I thought interesting and most likely why I remember this program is because it showed judges, doctors, and anyone the professions that could afford to follow a particle singer or group to be the most fanatical of the fans, because they would buy tickets to every concert and then follow them across the globe. Now while I said I think TV down plays the music subculture is because I do not remember any on the programs that I have watch actually show anyone that was religiously into any particle singer or group. It seems to me that a TV program will only do this if they are paid to do it, because one week some will like one group and then like a different one the next while in the TV program only a day has passed.
Movies are sort of like music, you have the fanatics that dress up as characters of a movie just to go and see it. Who would fathom the thought that Star Wars the re-release of the original would have lines of folks standing around corners of a building just to watch a movie? I have seen TV programs where they actually portrayed folks doing this on more than one occasion. It just like music not everyone does this but I think the mass media got this one correct. I would say that the majority of lower to middle class