Online Fan Clubs: Group mechanics, emotional addiction, and separation anxiety

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Online Fan Clubs: Group mechanics, emotional addiction, and separation anxiety
 

Online communication strips emotional cues from conversation: tone of voice, facial expressions, and body language amongst others. This creates anonymity which hastens intimacy. People become bonded in mailing lists. The regular contact creates a sense of a relationship. Real time chats increase the rate of information exchange and the software architecture allows for transposing the event into a book form to be read and digested at a later time.

The virtual neighborhood
Virtual contact promotes support, encouragement, and sharing thus overcomes isolation. The Group becomes the neighborhood, a community, the coffee shop, the Saturday night drag down main street to see and be seen. In groups at first there is the honeymoon period where all is wine and roses, then comes the disenchantment period where the boundaries are tested, and finally there is cohesiveness. Early provocateurs challenge the group leader and then depart to form, sometimes, hostile communities that thrive on fight and flight.

The Fan Club
These fan clubs are the newly identified school yard gangs that are operated by, primarily, cyber bullies. These fan club members had prior been emotionally addicted to the Group they have exited from (exit is either voluntarily or involuntarily). Their detrimental emotional dependence on the Group had been brought on by loneliness, lack of emotional support in their personal lives, lack of self esteem because of lack of socially productive activities. In real life boys tend to use their fists to resolve arguments, and girls tend to use friendship. This trend follows into the Group setting online. You will find that the males tend to flame but remain static on the boards, and the females tend to use flight into cliques on other boards from where they use friendship as a weapon by exclusion and flame from a distance. It is a fascinating phenomenon. When these two types of Group member become hostile they often use language as a weapon rather than to explore ideas. Flaming results from inadequate empathy for other individuals. The solution to flaming is complex but, industry wide, the only real known solution is strong group guides, moderators, and structure.

The anxiety in separation
Once it is determined that the members behavior within the group confines has become detrimental to the Group, and all other avenues have not worked, then the only solution is to remove the member by banning. Then a more interesting phenomenon develops. The banned member, or members then develop a type of severe anxiety separation disorder. They use any means available to re-join the former Group. This can be in the form of volumes of email to the moderators personal email box, the solicitation of continuing members for empathy thru an email campaign, a campaign via Instant Messenger, and sometimes, in the more overt cases, the formation of an online group from which to launch an attack.

The attack can either be in the form of flaming, plans to ostracize of the perceived perpetrator, or repeated vain attempts to circumnavigate the blocked board via spawned ISP addresses or newly created identities. Why is it that members, who had previously expressed sincere displeasure with a Group, would go to such extremes to re-join the group they were previously flaming? This type of separation anxiety is common. Reality is that there are millions of groups out there for these individuals to join. The only one they are seriously concerned about is the one they were just removed/banned from. This separation anxiety can be brief, or can escalate to years of hostility in the online environment.

These fan clubs are quite common. Since most violate the Terms of Service for ISPs as being primarily hate groups they, in short order, find the website removed by the ISP. But, of course, then the group just moves onward and forward to other campsites on the internet sometimes as a group, sometimes as individuals.

Conclusion
Each Group and group member emerges from a cocoon, both different in acquired skills exiting than they entered. The process of initiative and creativity only determines a starting point. Learned life skills determine the balance. The Fan Club is one outcome. There is a more positive one but those involved in this activity rarely grow to solve interpersonal problems as they do not recognize or understand the dynamics that lead them down this path.

Kathleen Johnson

Kathleen Johnson works for Primedia.inc as a moderator on the AllExperts Board for About.Inc. Kathleen also owns multiple Groups on Yahoo and has participated online for many years observing and writing articles on Group dynamics

DANGERS OF DIGITAL DATINGLINDA J ALEXANDER, ESQ

As we enter the new millennium the Internet is evolving into a major meeting ground, one that affords us access to people all over the world and draws us daily into online relationships with individuals we have not yet met. An increasing number of people are using the Internet to meet and get acquainted with potential mates.

While many of those online interactions do bloom into friendships and relationships, a small number do not have happy endings Beth Wadsworth learned this lesson the hard way. When Wadsworth began exchanging emails with Thomas Abney, she thought she, too, might have found love on the Internet. It turns out that what she had really found was a dangerous man who would try to kill her.

Wadsworth met Abney in 1999 while surfing the Web. The two hit it off and began corresponding. "We just started talking and trading information about our lives," says Wadsworth. " We seemed to have the same values and morals."
After only one month of emailing each other, Wadsworth invited her potential new love to visit her. Abney flew to San Diego, where Wadsworth lives, and the two spent some time getting to know each other off-line. Abney wasn't who he appeared to be, however.

When the visit was coming to an end, he turned violent without warning. "He jumped on me and started strangling me," Wadsworth remembers. "I was totally in shock."

When it was over, Abney had attacked Wadsworth with a claw-hammer and slit her throat with a steak knife. He then took Wadsworth's wallet and car keys, leaving her for dead.

"I don't remember being hit, but I had three gashes in my skull," Wadsworth says. "He probably thought I was dead when he left."

Beth wasn't dead, however. She managed to call 911 for help, and Abney was arrested at the airport. He was eventually convicted of premeditated attempted murder, robbery, and auto theft and was sentenced to life plus 14 years in prison.

"I felt pretty stupid that I'd let this stranger into my house, and this is what happened," Wadsworth says. "I will never meet anybody on the Internet again."

While the dangers faced by Wadsworth and other singles aren't unique to online dating, the anonymous nature of the Internet does make it easier for people to be deceptive about who they are.

With the concernsand dangersof meeting others in this manner rising exponentially, it is no surprise that one website has already clicked with millions of netizens: WhoisHe.Com and WhoisShe.Com, a professional service designed to verify if persons are who they purport to be.

Are they married? How old are they? Have they ever used an alias? Are they really a doctor? Do they have any bankruptcies, liens or judgments against them? Do they have a criminal record? Have they committed domestic violence? Are they a registered sexual offender? A pedophile?

Know what you are getting into before you invest your heart, money, or your life, says Linda Alexander, a Southern California attorney and website founder. WhoisHe.Com, which works under the motto, "When in Doubt, Check Them Out," offering background checks, personal profiles, criminal and civil record checks for potential mates, prospective employees, in-home service providers, future step-parents, business partners and nannies. The cost of the service provided by WhoisHe.Com and WhoisShe.Com range from $39 to $75.

"About 60 percent of the time, we find that people aren't telling the truth," Alexander claims. Background checks, criminal and civil record checks are important, according to Alexander, because it's easy to be deceived when looking for love online. "You do not have the same visual cues about someone as when you are face to face with a person," she says. "Somebody behind a computer screen, can be anything they want to be.

You have no idea who's on the other side of that screen. We tell our clients it is important to Be Safe and Be Smart. To take control of your future. Information is the key.
A similar check could have helped Wadsworth. For instance, Abney had told Wadsworth that he had never been married, but Alexander found a civil record for a divorce. Alexander says that background and record checks would have revealed that Abney had lied about many personal details, which might have served as a warning to Wadsworth.

"It tells her that the man is not telling the truth," Alexander asserts. "He's a liar. He has something to hide in his life. I don't know if it tells her that he's going to swing a hammer over her head and that he's going to beat her almost to death, but I think it is enough to say, 'Watch out, red flag, don't let this man in the door.'"

These warning come too late for Wadsworth, who is currently taking a break from romance and the Internet while she works to recover from the physical and emotional wounds she has suffered. "I sleep with the light on every night," she says. "It's affected me."

While more and more singles are turning to the Internet to meet their mates and many online dating stories do have happy endings, it is important to remember that there are dangers to digital love. Wadsworth hopes that what she went through will help to warn others of those dangers.

WhoisHe.Com and WhoisShe.Com has been widely recognized on CBS 48 HOURS" and the CBS Early Show; The Other Half,in People Magazine, listed in Yahoo Internet Life Magazine's top 100 sites for the Year 2000, Seventeen Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine, Kiplinger Magazine, and USA Today.
Anyone harboring doubts about anyone else can check out the website at http://WhoisHe.Com and at http://WhoisShe.Com and questions can be sent to Admin@WhoisHe.Com or call Linda Alexander, Esq. at 760-806-4377.

LINDA J ALEXANDER, ESQ is an attorney and the President of WhoisHe.Com / WhoisShe.Com. WhoisHe.Com and WhoisShe.Com provides comprehensive background, criminal and civil record checks for employment screening, prospective mates, business partners, nanny checks, in-home service providers, Nanny Checks, future step-parents since 1997. She can be reached at 760-806-4377 or at CheckHimOut@WhoisHe.Com or CheckHerOut@WhoisShe.Com