workshop4

Okay so a tad late, better late than never I guess.

I don't rmemeber if anyone else noted this, but in the Second Life sign up page, in the 'country' slide, it has 5 or so countries that are isolated from the rest - clearly 2nd life either has a lot of users in these countries, or is aiming at these people (USA, UK, Germany, Japan, South Korea). Yahoo in signing up already had Australia down as my country, though I wasn't using the Australian version. I guess they're already picking up my location through my IP address or something. Lavalife assumed that I was a female looking for casual dating between 25-34 or something.

I'm trying to think whether I'd call any of this racist/sexist. Was anyone in our tute offended by the assumptions any of the sign up pages made? I'm trying to think if I'd say any of the pages I saw were inherently racist.. I'd probably agree with what other people in the tute have been saying about the assumption being the user is white/middle class or above, etc etc. Has anyone thought about things the other way - there's millions of websites out there directed at specific groups that are not the norm? For example, VampireFreaks. On one hand, the obvious assumption is that to be using this website, you'll be into the goth/emo/alternative etc etc community/fashion/culture. That said, on the signup page, you're basically asked for age, name, gender (m/f). At least at that stage of the signup, there isn't anything about country etc.

Does this say the website is making more or less assumptions than say yahoo, and therefore is less racist/sexist? I don't really know. Where I was trying to go with this is that, given the openess of the internet, even if the premier websites (eg massive corporation stuff like microsoft passport, yahoo, etc) don't cater to everyone, I think there's probably a website out there serving that groups needs. Should they face scrutiny because they're assuming the user isn't part of the norm? I don't know. I kinda feel its good to have variety? But really i'm saying this to try put something fresh on this blog.

If this has been especially rambly, I have gotten the 'proper'/full cold thats doing the rounds, and is currently making me feel pretty average. Do i end every post talking about how crap i feel? i have a sneaking suspicion i might.. haha. oh well.