Practicum 6 - Kasi

A blog post I came across this week was particularly interesting in relation to Rheingold's definition of virtual communities. User Ms. Artie Abrams posted about her hypothetical wedding to Glee cast member Artie, taking the time to go into extreme detail about her attire (since she's goth, the wedding will be "quite odd, scary, and black"), the setting, her wedding party, and their musical lineup at the reception. The wedding party consisted of other Wiki members, which she tagged. I was curious to know if some/most of those people are her friends from "real life" or if she met people through talking with them on the wiki. She calls her maid of honor, Glee+kurt+me=love, her best friend, so it seems like they probably knew each other before. Either way, there is a sense of community that creates human feeling between users, and there are "webs of personal relationships" that develop through public discussion. She was not the first contributor to  post a wedding blog, and many of these people have received criticism from the rest of the community citing that they are unnecessary, immature, weird, and they make some people "feel like outsiders." Since Ms. Artie Abrams is an admin, however, she seems to have more of a voice and wasn't directly criticized like some of the others who did the same thing.