Gaia Online – a Brand New World

If you thought Facebook and MySpace were the height of social networking, think again. Likely you’ve already heard whispers about sleeping giants like SecondLife which are touting the same opportunities to “find” and proclaim one’s identity, but are also making their services more “sticky” through creating a virtual world in which its users can do more than just interact, but also participate. Like the July 14 Business Wire article entitled “Gaia Online Completes Series C $11 million funding” goes to show, it seems that SecondLife isn’t alone. Already more than 5 million individuals have plugged into Gaia’s network and the number is climbing. Although the trend of people turning towards online landscapes for socializing surely doesn’t surprise you or I, what should capture our critical attention is the manner in which they recruit the generation of boys, girls, men, and women currently coming into their own. After all, what reflects more accurately upon a group than the advertising ploys that suck them in?

As you can see from the picture I’ve included below (taken from Gaia’s homepage on July 18, 2008), the biggest persuasive element is the bold, flashy phrase “Express Yourself.” The captioning below that runs “There are millions of members on Gaia, but there’s only one you.” Our individuality, or particularity, is so crucial to us — even the designers at Gaia recognize that, and yet still we attempt to express our particularity through a medium which cannot possibly contain or communicate it (see Dr. Corey Anton’s essay “Agency and Efficacy in Interpersonal Communication: Particularity as Once-Occurence and Non-Interchangeability” in the Atlantic Journal of Communication). And while issues of expression are legitimate and demanding, I must confess to being amused by another persuasive element which apparently appeals to today’s teens: right above the “Start Here” button rests the caption: “Registration is easy, secure and not boring.” Not boring? Hallelujah.

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