Rewrite: Blogdett's Model

Bridgett Blogdett article called And the Ringleaders Were Banned: An Examination of Protest in Virtual Worlds gives an examination of social movements and hactivism within virtual worlds. Hactivism is a social movement used by different groups on the internet to reach broader onlookers. Hactivists are a non-violent group of people who use legal and illegal tools through computers to reach their goal which is protesting an idea. Blogdett uses different ways to interpret these computer protests but, her main outline is her model of virtual collective action. The virtual collective action uses four primary aspects to look at virtual protests: Degree of visualization, legality, cultural homogeneity, and limitations of participation. Degree of visualization can be defined as the percentage of the amount of organization and participation that was achieved offline or virtually. Legality can be summed up as is a measurement of how legal the actions of the protests were both in planning a protest and holding it. Blogdett uses cultural homogeneity as a measure of how similar individuals with the protest are to each other in regards to cultural views and identity. Lastly is the limitation of participation that is a measure of if and how individuals are prevented from participating in the protest. (Week 7.2 virtual protest power point)

                An example of virtual protest is the making of a Facebook page called, Virtual Protest for Wisconsin, that is protesting for the recall of Scott Walker who is Wisconsin’s governor. This protest is in effective because the Wisconsin Republicans and Scott Walker stripped the middle class of their rights. The Facebook page was made by Public Campaign Action Fund that is a nonprofit organization that is trying to improve America’s finance laws. On the Virtual Protest for Wisconsin page there are numerous updates of protests going on outside of the virtual world that can help the cause for recalling of Scott Walker.

                In Blogdett’s virtual collective action model the Virtual Protest for Wisconsin page is legal in the real world government and in the virtual world. The making of a Facebook page is defended by the first amendment, Freedom of Speech, and in a virtual sense there is nothing wrong with spreading an opinion on websites. The amount of people that have liked the page is around 1,200 people that are the degree of visualization according to Blogdett’s model. The cultural homogeneity of the protest in Wisconsin is hard to determine since a lot of people have seen the page so to figure out similarities between views is hard to come by. I am assuming if people liked the Facebook page then they have the same view as the others, and that is to recall Scott Walker. The limitation of participation is a wide range of people. People who do not have the internet will not be able to see this page and even if people have the internet they have to have a Facebook profile which is not for sure.

SL GOR

John Fredrick Lange Jr. might be better known by his pen name, John Norman, who is the author of the well known Gor series that gives a backbone to the Gor subculture in Second Life. In- game zones where role playing according to the Gor philosophy, are some of the largest factions within SL. The books themselves can follow the primal instincts of man dominating over obstacles that stand in his way. As the Gor series became popular people took the books to the gaming world especially SL.

                Players who enter into a Gor role playing area are welcomed into the mind of John Norman. Norman’s basic outline of his Gor series was to instill an assumed hierarchy based on talent, mainly strength of man. As man conquers the obstacles of everyday life according to Norman woman are the helpers of the male race in there everyday race to triumph over all. Woman must do whatever the man needs and create this psychological god-like role for the man. Multiple depictions of men enslaving woman are found in the Gor series and propose a gender difference between men and woman.  The Gor books suggest to many readers that it is a natural way of life for a man to overrule a woman in every facet of life.

                After getting a basic summary of what John Norman’s philosophy was in the Gor series I reached out to Jessica Holyoke, an experienced writer and player within SL Gorean, to get fundamental knowledge of Gor’s on SL. To my surprise Gorean’s on SL cannot be put into one certain group according to Jessica Holyoke, “…its near impossible to define as Goreans on SL are comprised of at least four different sub-groups; those who engage due to a following of RL Gorean philosophy, those who engage as a more involved form of BDSM role play, those who engage in the role play as a form of historical/tribal recreation, and those who engage in the combat recreation.” All four of these sub- groups follow the novels written by John Norman in some type of fashion with the emphasis on gender roles. It is both to my amazement that these different sub cultures can co-exist and also to Jessica’s as she states, “Amazingly, all four groups can co-exist to some extent, even if sometimes there are tensions between the four types.”