The Social Medium of Technology

It seems common to me that when a person habitually immerses themselves in virtual realms, filled with real people controlling virtual avatars, they begin to lose or allocate less attention to the physical social identity, adopting a virtual identity. In other words, a character can be formed around the virtual world and that character can dominate a large percentage of our entire character. The level of sophistication that virtual realms have reached is already staggering; you can form entire social alliances of hundreds of people who all actively engage in the virtual activities every single day. MMO’s most accurately encapsulate that notion of social alliances and their success is nothing to be denoted or dismissed.

A guild, which is a feature of every MMO I’ve ever experienced, is an organism. The guilds success is reliant on each individuals contribution which thereby, although subtly but in some cases evidently, contractually binds the individual to the guild. In extreme cases, the management of a guild can overtake the majority of a person’s life, demanding a daily amount of hours. When a majority of your days are spent contributing to the well-being of the guild, you must adopt a hive-mentality; that is, you must dissolve your own personal ambitions in many ways. If you’re in a raid which has taken you months to gear up for and a piece of equipment drops (which is the ultimate reward for the dedication required to progress in MMO’s) and there are two people which need it but one needs it more because he/she is in a more crucial position, then the other person must dutifully sacrifice his/her own personal ambition. Additionally, one must not behave sourly after the sacrifice has been made, it’s all for the greater purpose of the overall condition and success of the guild.

Outside of the guild, however, when a character is exploring the vast world and engaging in quests, social bonds can be formed which are so strong that you feel almost obligated to sign on each day at least to see if your friends are online. Social bonds in MMO’s rely on the fundamental principles of physical social-bonds: cost-benefit and interaction. In a sense, as simians, we always calculate what we can get from our peers and how much we have to put out in order to garner it. Furthermore, that person must be pleasant to interact with, refraining from insults and betrayal and focusing on co-operation and comedy. We naturally seek people who we can gain something from but they must also be trustworthy, reliable and generally pleasant to be around. The same principles apply to MMO’s, in some cases these principles are actually more complex in MMO’s. 

Social acceptance in the physical world can be largely determined by our aesthetic quality. That is, if you’re pleasing to the eye, if your facial structure or body structure appeals to someone, they are more likely to accept you and interact with you, regardless of your depth-of-character. In a digital medium where you have removed the physical interaction, you merely remove the aesthetic acceptance; all of the characteristic interaction still remains. You still must be reliable, co-operative and generally pleasant, but you could also be socially-excluded in the physical world due to your aesthetic quality. Aesthetic quality is subjective but social groups tend to adopt a similar scale of aesthetic judgment. When you remove the physical component of interaction, you aren’t necessarily diminishing the quality of interaction; you’re merely removing certain components of interaction as a whole. Social interaction is a large web, you can’t say our interaction is solely reliant on physical exchange because it’s completely feasible to have an entire conversation and learn every intricacy of a person by talking to them through text. You can still form an emotional bond to that person, you can still feel empathetic and you can still cultivate a friendship; the absence of physical-interaction isn’t necessarily bad. 

Physical interaction, however, is much more visceral. In the physical flesh you can have an entire conversation with someone although the interaction was silent. I’ve often had silent conversations with my girlfriend which purely involved a dancing of the eyes with no verbal exchange. An interaction like that resonates with the deep and visceral levels of our being, stirring us on levels which symbols cannot depict. I believe the physiological response to something like that is undeniably powerful, rewarding an immense sense of elation and comfort which ultimately propels contentment. Something so powerful cannot be recreated through digital environments but that isn’t the only component of interaction and social bonds, as I described. It is very important and beneficial, perhaps even imperative for our perpetuation as a species, but you cannot isolate that as the sole component of bonds and interaction because bonds go beyond the intimate bonds between lovers, we cannot forget that our social groups are comprised of myriad characters. These characters benefit us through our interaction with them: supplying comfort, companionship and comedic-relief. Sharing a laugh with someone can be enacted through a digital medium and still be just as powerful; sharing a laugh with someone is powerful regardless of the medium. 

Our digital mediums, although rejected and ridiculed by many as facile mediums of interactions, teach us a lot about what it means to be human. If we can form powerful social bonds without ever tangibly seeing a person, what does that say about our nature as a social animal? If we can form an entire alliance, a guild, an intricate organism of hundreds of individuals co-operating for a common goal, much like a nation but through a digital medium, what does that say about our nature as a social animal? I’ll leave you with those questions to answer on your own.