Fragments from Bell
Bell, David (2001) “Chapter 5: Community and Cyberculture” in An Introduction to Cyberculture, Abingdon: Routledge pp.99-112
To paraphrase Bell, some argue that late modernity is characterized by heightened reflexivity involving making choices about our identities since we are disembedded (our experience is no longer rooted in a particular place) which leads us to question the taken-for-granted and leads to detraditionalization – we imagine new forms of community and we choose who we want to be p.96
Ironically, others argue that the forms and functions of community may have changed but it has not led to an erosion of the ideal of community.
Bell citing Rheingold – the possibility of community comes out of shared interests, share social codes (netiquette) and reciprocity (knowledge pot-latching) as well as longevity, critical mass and ‘sufficient human feeling’ p. 100
Bell citing Baym (1998) an online community is a community if participants imagine themselves as a community. P. 102
The texts that constitute the shared space of community…’enable participants to imagine themselves as part of the community’.
Fragments from David’s fans
On first video:
So this is where the David-fascination started. Sometimes I have to watch these videos from this to the point when I found out about David’s farm and started to follow his channel. I quess I found out about David’s farm about half a year after this video.
The video that started it all! 50 pages of videos later, here we are! Good job David! It’s almost like your Farm is Paradise! You have way to much fun!
On the farm:
If there was such thing as “Too much fun” this would be it. I’d never be able to leave the place. Badass!
I just watched that front to back and my envy kicked in pretty good. Real people living life. Nice sunset
id pay good money for a vacation to this redneck paradise
its so sad that wolf is dead and all the haters, dave i support you all the way, you live life the right way
I see that u are sharing a Canadian Lager with your buddy the frog at 3:18… too much fun!
You guys know how to do summer!
Commentary
What is interesting about Davidsfarm is that it is a real place and most of the videos are filmed there. I would not say that the real place is a community – however, the videos project an image of community, in the old fashion sense of Toennies’ gemeinschaft. Fans continually comment that this is the kind of place they would like to have and many say they are going to try to get to the real farm (and some have). In addition, looking through the more recent comments on the early videos, it is clear that fans, whatever, their entry point when they find Davidsfarm, go through the list of uploaded videos and start going through them from the beginning to get a sense of Davidsfarm. I see evidence of an imagined community through the comments of the fans. The elements which are explored in other sketches are:
- Identification – rednecks, lessons learned
- Shared interests – cars, sharing knowledge, teaching
- Human interest – Wolf, the cats
- Solidarity against a common enemy
