Virtual Reality and Virtual Communities Essay

Virtual community has resulted in a cultural shift as indicated by the deconstruction of “friendship” pushing the term and its meaning to almost insignificance. In the five-week Tinder case study, the participants have progressing interactions and associations with individuals of diverse cultures. This factor is largely driven by social reconstruction which, according to Castells (2014), is a result of pursuit for people whose attributes are similar. The social platforms facilitate the tremendous and broad sharing of ideas and thoughts across cultures since virtual societies allow their members to closely relate and associate with one another.

The issue of cultural shift is also evidenced by Castells (2014) who believes that the global universe and restriction-free interaction facilitate the establishment of a global identity which imparts a feeling of belonging to the global culture and enables the participants to talk with individuals from different regions through social platforms like Tinder. These changes, Castells (2014) observes, have resulted in a diminished innate identity about a hybrid identity, by integrating the attributes of primary customs with the aspects of global customs. This is notably with the five-week case study where none of my participants cared about my identity or cultural background and neither did they show an interest in identifying with their cultures. With these arguments, the paper can claim that the community has undergone tremendous dependence on the maps, models, and depictions of life, therefore, leading to the loss of tough in the realm of the actual cultures. Arguably, a virtual community thrives in a state of hyperreal.

A cultural shift is also portrayed by the fact that social platforms and the development of virtual communities have weakened the magnitude of relationships between individuals in local societies. The person I engaged through Tinder seemed to enjoy chatting with a stranger and even indicated that he was free for a call. This is central to a conventional culture where people are expected to spend quality time with their closest families and friends. This is explained in the sense that the members of virtual societies opt to use new means of interacting and associating with individuals from various cultures. In my Tinder engagement, I noted that the profile of most ladies included a variety of cultures from whom they desired to interact, mingle, and date. The virtual community has resulted in the development of a new culture attributed to a significant level of heterogeneity, yet minimal degrees of interconnectivity.

Another aspect of the cultural shift associated with social platforms is the concern about privacy. Throughout the five weeks of study, privacy was not much of a concern since the participants I engaged with freely shared their information, including personal contacts, with me. Arguably, this has been fueled by the rapid advancement in communications and computing power in both the private and the virtual communities. As Castells (2014) notes, networks are defined by individuals with varying degrees of privacy and profiling. He posits that self-presentation of the actual individual linking with real people is the key to success in social platforms contrary to anonymity.

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From the discussion, it can be noted that virtual communities go beyond friendship and race and aim at attracting similar individual mindsets and individuals with similar goals. Members of a certain virtual community initiate a strong sense of being similar in ideas and create flexibility of opinions for their members (Granovetter, 1977). With the members maintaining continuous communications, they can make follow-up updates about sensitive information on how to improve themselves and their overall association or relationship. This was the case in the five week Tinder case study where our relationship improved through persistent communication. Arguably, I noted that individuality is not based upon individual feelings, shared thoughts, and personal illusions but it is usually based on how we grow each day depending on the various people we interact with and maintain relationships with either mutual or consensual. This helps individuals to bring up various interesting ideologies as to how one can develop.

Rather than having a specific culture or background belief that they can use to associate, the creation of strong ties in Tinder has led to the embracement of all cultures, evaluating them, analyzing them, and picking the best traits out of the cultures hence making it difficult for people to group these virtual communities based on a specific culture. It is regarded as a breed of culture. These strong ties can lead to changes such as divergence of traditional, and social beliefs and what is termed as normality in cultural existence. Hence, this increasing human activity can lead to unnatural cultural beliefs and values. A change in personal beliefs and values can lead to an individual paradigm shift and as seen, there can be a brain drain of cultural background due to activities of the global platforms. People tend to copy the advanced cultural ties (Castells, 2014).

Conclusion

The internet creates diverse research and orientation grounds to which individuals create and develop their cultural beliefs and guidelines towards a better culture or rather better persons. As noted from the readings, Granovetter (1977) is of the view that the Internet facilitates the establishment and development of strong social ties among people in a certain virtual community. This creates the world to grow in a parallel manner such that when one is exposed there is a high chance that one adopts the act of perfection. By following and being followed on Tinder by different people globally, there are chances that one improves his or her communication progress and how a person deals with other people, a person eventually gets to achieve a new form of being psychologically and performance of new roles. In my five weeks of study, I achieved all the objectives of the study.

These assumptions are indeed a reality under such because, as these individuals appear to be freely and easily adapting to the natural realities people opposed that the global world would become opposed to. Through the participants’ engagement in Tinder, it is also notable that these individuals possess high intellect in dealing with all situations and dealing with other individuals attractively. It is strongly agreed, through the anthropologic five weeks Tinder study, that the way to move forward internationally is to adopt the method of being globally accessible from each channel hence the creation of strong ties. This highly indicates that people around the globe are changing also to adopt the activities of these global businesses and communication, a view aligned with Castell's (2014) work. The second theory of people changing individual cultures and adopting other cultural ties from people around the globe tends to embrace the ideas emanating from people in a particular culture that people lose their culture and norms. Instead, these virtual communities create the best of the best cultural ties to specific individuals.

Choosing from these cultures, good values and virtues make an individual develop better and more attractive cultural ties such as those aiming at acknowledging the importance of individual creativity to develop a better world. Eventually, as seen in the five weeks of Tinder study, when we get to accept new friends, it helps bring better individuals and pave the way for great ideas where everyone can take part in the talk. This will loosen the harsh relationships between the local community and the virtual community, also reducing the tension about lack of cultural respect.