Pinterest, to say the very least, is an overwhelming visual sensation. It is not one for the lite hearted or the typical artistic protester. There are a million opportunities of the world all waiting for your hovering fingertips to click on them. There is hours and days and years of feed, feed that you break down and create a focus for. It’s your personal representation of yourself, your interests, and your hobbies. We now have the introduction of whole generations that know technology as the for front of their lives and the lives of those around them. Is this a new age form of community?

To a high degree, the digital world has related the opportunity for all users to be/ become the ‘flaneur’. Prouty, in defining a flaneur, has defined an average internet user. “Someone adrift in the city, detached observers strolling through the streets at a leisurely pace” (Prouty, 2009). In other words, a user alone within their phone or computer, browsing through the internet without having to be seen or have it even known that they are there. It’s only the small few that see this opportunity to create mayhem.

The flaneur came about at the hands of urbanisation, the urbanisation of so many people that it became impossible to have eyes on everyone. This within an internet sense, is a danger. Prouty spoke of pick pocketers in the early times, well this generation has a much more viscous form. They are called ‘trolls’. Trolls can hide and remain hidden, they use all possible means to remain anonymous within the hateful things they say. They will start an internet uproar only to sit back and watch it spread.  This is sadly a common thing across all platforms. Platforms that were created for interaction and means of communication, but in doing so provide the ability for comments. This is where the trolls see their mark.

Still we ignore the comments to create a space of our own. A space that we have mapped out within our head. A way of knowing were the best resources are, the pins that interest you most, the horrible places that you stay away from. It would become one very interesting, quite complex map, yet it becomes one that we are most comfortable with. The maps “reflect how we see the world, or ‘our’ world” (Kuttainen, 2017). They are an image of our own thoughts and ideas, “they inform and shapes how we act in and conceptualise space and place” (Kuttainen, 2017)

Bloch, E (2017)

There are protective measures in place across the internet. A community of officers who deem the inappropriate aspects. But as the reading says, “the sheer size of the city was a threat to the individual” (Prouty, 2009). These protective measures are mapped out within every forum, there are report buttons everywhere and it only take a few second to report something to a higher power. As mentioned in the lecture “web sites controlled by powerful gatekeepers = strategies that attempt to control space whilst also conveying a sense of user-generated content, user empowerment” (Pauwels & Hellriegal, 2009).

Baltrusaitis, J. (2017). ABC Four Corners: Rise of the Trolls.  [Hyperlink]. Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2017/06/19/4686319.htm

Bloch, E.  (2010). Map of Online Communities. [image]. Retrieved from https://xkcd.com/802/

Kuttainen, V. (2017). BA1002: Our space: Networks, narratives and the making of place, lecture 2: Power. [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from http://learnjcu.edu.au

Pauwels & Hellriegel. (2009). “Strategic and tactical uses of internet design and infrastructure: the case of YouTube””

 Prouty, R. (2009). A Turtle on a Leash. Retrieved from http://www.onewaystreet.typepad.com/one_way_street/2009/10/a-turtle-on-a-leash.html