Everything is at your fingertips on the Net, and increasing numbers of us are beginning to find more and more of our entertainment, news and friend interaction online.

It doesn’t matter if we miss an episode of Prison Break or Lost, we’ll be able to find it on the Internet. In fact, there’s not much we won’t find on the World Wide Web these days, and with broadband connection now cheaper than World Vision sponsorship ($1 a day!), plenty of people are beginning to live online.

Many who have grown up with the Internet are increasingly finding it to be the source of their entertainment. We can get the same shows as on local TV, more variety from around the world and often sooner than TV. Downloading or even just playing music on the Net is an industry in itself. News outlets across the globe have exhaustive sites, meaning we needn’t have a newspaper in hand if we’d prefer to be at a screen. Shopping and education are both just a mouse-click away too.

Personal interaction now makes up a major part of regular Internet usage as well. Beyond the basic match-making and chat rooms, online communities have developed and some people now spend as much time there as they do in their ‘real life’ communities. These virtual communities allow anyone and everyone to have their say-and we love it.

Digital Communities
Whether it be just the simple grouping together of people on email lists and bulletin boards or the slightly more sophisticated setup available on places like Myspace, online communities aren’t a new occurrence. But they have developed into a lifestyle. Sites like Bebo and Myspace allow us to have a complete online identity, opening the door into our life so that we can either converse privately with specific people or publicly via blogs and comments.

Myspace has over 90 million members world-wide. It is the largest of a number of networking and blogging sites available for anyone who wants to set up their own little piece of online real estate. If you haven’t been swept up in the phenomena, or just don’t (yet!) spend much time online, the general gist is that basically anyone can create their own website or profile page. You enter details about yourself, any images you would like to include and you’re away, how much you utilise and develop your real estate is then up to you.

The ease with which we can become involved and the proliferation of Internet access means many of us are becoming immersed in online communities, routinely choosing to use them to contact friends as opposed to face-to-face interaction. Geographic barriers are broken down so you can be in ‘sametime’ or at least regular contact with people the world over. So people often have hundreds or thousands of ‘friends’ ... according to their profiles.

Alter(ed) Egos
‘According to their profiles’ is important to note. It’s inevitable that much of what people put on their profiles is false. It is easy to masquerade as anything we like or to exaggerate and embellish facts about ourselves online. Even just setting up specific photos is portraying a selective view of ourself. And this is part of the attraction-the ‘safety’ of a computer screen means people can’t necessarily make judgements of the real us.

The ability to determine just how much or little people find out about you is something of a new privilege the Internet accomodates. Where forging friendships in person takes effort and a certain vulnerability, networking on these sites requires little more than the clicking of a mouse.

What’s also attractive to the general public is the ability to have some sort of contact with favourite musicians and actors as many celebrities use these communities for promotional networks to keep in close contact with fans (it’s almost expected that a band will have a Myspace site). Often these celebs don’t maintain their profiles themselves, but it does create a semblance of personal connection between fan and star, no matter how distant they are in reality.

Have Your Say
Another notable aspect prevalent among the many who live online is the use of forums and blogs (short for web-logs). These are the online quivalents of traditional talkback radio and journal writing. Like their predecessors they have a part to play in the free expression of opinion.

Forums act like a corkboard where people can leave messages relating to designated topics and many people can have their say. As with talkback, prejudices can become starkly evident and debate can become heated-users need to maintain a degree of respectability by giving measured and appropriate responses. Many sites, including The Salvation Army’s www.firezone.co.nz, host forums so that visitors can discuss relevant topics and issues.

Blogging is more diary-like, often similar to mind maps as a writer shares opinions with anyone willing to read them. Interestingly, these are often being turned to by mainstream media sources as a gauge to public opinion. However, research has shown that over 75 per cent of bloggers do so to express themselves-as a hobby, not a vocation.

As with opening the doors of our life via profile pages, blogging also brings some cause for concern. What we say can be misconstrued, offensive, outlandish and even have legal ramifications! The anonymity that many of us feel allows to say anything is not, in reality, as sure as that. Recently, employees who have slagged off their boss or workplace, both in New Zealand and abroad, have lost their jobs when their companies
found the blogs.

‘People are so naive and get a false sense of security from the Internet,’ Christchurch lawyer Paul Brown told The Press last month, ‘but it is easy to track things down. Even if you are anonymous or just imply things, if the employer thinks they could be identified, they could have a case.’

Wisdom and caution are clearly needed when writing or uploading anything onto the Net. The chance to state our view is enticing but we need to be responsible in how we approach activities online.

Rather than bagging people or situations in a raving blog, it could be sensible to listen to the words of Jesus in Matthew 18 verse 15: ‘If a brother hurts you, go and tell him-work it out between the two of you. If he listens, you’ve made a friend. If he won’t listen, take one or two others along so that the presence of witnesses will keep things honest, and try again.’ (The Message) This doesn’t say, ‘Announce it to the world via blog’!

by Ben Kendrew (reprinted with permission from War Cry-New Zealand, Fiji and Tonga Territory)