World Wide Web

To cope with the loneliness caused by her extreme physical isolation, Diane has become heavily involved in mainstream social networking websites including Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, and Blip TV, and has acquired many casual, but not intimate, friends. Curiously, she seems most to favor her video blog, which functions for her as a performance, a diary, and a confessional, depending on her emotional state. For Diane, the appeal of this form of communication must be control: whereas live social interactions are unpredictable and collaborative, online conversations may be easily limited, redirected, and aborted. Diane is very enthusiastic about her participation in these communities. She frequently checks her profiles to see if she has any new friends, and spends most of her time online looking at other people’s profiles. Occasionally, she engages in wall-to-wall messaging. While this activity may be somewhat therapeutic, we are concerned that one unpleasant or hostile exchange may cause Diane to shun even this constrained form of communication, totalizing her isolation from the outside world.