Mkaram Hinawi - Virtual community Vs. Real community

According to Jennifer Rice, community is a group of people who form relationships over time by interacting regularly around shared experiences, which are of interest to all of them for varying individual reasons. The interesting fact is that there are two kinds of communities, which are the online communities and the real communities, which both have some similarities and differences.

First, in terms of people, they both involve people that interact with each other. Second, the effect of presence differentiates on the people in the two communities. Presence is very important to prove yourself in the real community, while in the online community people do not need to be present. Third, the physicality lets people use their senses to interact with each other, which improve their skills in communication, and this can be considered as an advantage of the Real community. On the other hand, the online community disapproves the skills of communication, which can be considered as disadvantage. Fourth, in the online community the space, in another word, the distance no longer matters, people can be connected to each other in few second from all different places using any kind of chat or mail through the internet. On the other hand, the Real community suffers from the far distance between the countries, which separates them from each other, though the transportation exists. Fifth, in the online community there is no such thing for time limits. for example, if you are in India, you can reach the people in America regardless for the time the distinguishes between the two countries. While in Real community you cannot change the time in the real world. Sixth, you have an opportunity to check from the information that reaches you in the Real community. While in the online community, you cannot be sure the validity of information. Seventh, people can change their identities, images on the online communities. For example, Facebook is one of the most popular social website, and many people tend to change their identities in order to match their image about the perfect guy or girl. In compare of Real community it is hard for a person to change his or her identity.

            A similar situation happened to me on my Facebook account. As mentioned before is a social websites, where you can add new friends or just reach for an old friend. Once, I decided to look up for my old friends that used to be my classmate in high school. Then, I actually found one of them and added her, after a week from adding her I started to doubt that she is not my actual friend because whenever I wanted to open a conversation with her she attempted to end it and started to ask me about my new life and how do I look like now. Later on, I discovered that this “girl” was actually my brother's friend, and it appeared that he is a guy. It was a really embarrassing situation I have been through and unforgettable moment. Then, I started to believe my other friend when she tells me not to trust anyone in any chat or any kind of social website.